US foreign policy is popular - in the
US By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON -
Mistrust of the United States, particularly its
president, has grown steadily in Western Europe over the
past 10 months while anti-American sentiment in the Arab
world remains pervasive, concludes a major new
public-opinion poll of nine countries.
Large
majorities in each of the eight foreign nations surveyed
(the United States was the ninth country) believed
Washington pays little or no attention to their
country's interests in making its foreign-policy
decisions, according to the latest report of the
four-year-old Pew Global Attitudes Project (GAP)
sponsored by the Pew Research Center for the People and
the Press.
Majorities in five European countries
also said they believe the continent should chart a more
independent course in its foreign policy, while at least
two-thirds of respondents in the same countries, with
the exception of the United Kingdom, agreed it would be
a "good thing" if the European Union became as powerful
as the United States in order to check Washington's
power.
In the four predominantly Muslim
countries covered by the survey, anger toward the United
States since last May, when GAP last conducted polls
there, has dissipated somewhat, but al-Qaeda leader
Osama bin Laden remains broadly popular.
"There
is a huge chasm between the Muslim world and us," noted
former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, who chairs
GAP and its international advisory board. "To lessen the
gap, we need the unity of the non-Muslim world, and we
don't have that unity," she told reporters on Tuesday.
"I find very little in this report that is
reassuring, and much of it is very worrying," added Kurt
Campbell, a former assistant secretary of defense who
directs the international security program at the Center
for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) here.
"We're starting to see signs [that gaps between the US
and its European allies] might in fact be structural."
The new GAP survey, which was carried out
between mid-February and the beginning of March, covered
opinions about the United States, the "war on
terrorism", the war in Iraq and related issues in the
UK, France, Germany, Russia, Turkey, Jordan, Morocco and
Pakistan, as well as in the US. The same countries were
also polled in April 2002; on the eve of the US-led Iraq
invasion in March 2003; and two months later, in May
2003.
The latest survey's release comes in the
wake of last Thursday's devastating bombings in Madrid
that resulted in the upset victory of Spain's Socialist
Party, which has taken a far more critical view of US
foreign policy, particularly the Iraq war, than that of
the outgoing ruling party headed by Prime Minister Jose
Maria Aznar, one of US President George W Bush's
staunchest allies.
Some analysts have suggested
that the Madrid bombings, the first major terrorist
attacks claimed by al-Qaeda in Europe, might actually
bring European attitudes closer to those of the Bush
administration. Indeed, countries surveyed by the GAP
that have suffered recent terrorist attacks - Russia,
Turkey and Morocco - were the only ones that saw
significant increases in support of US anti-terrorist
efforts since last May.
But that might be about
the only good news the GAP poll offers for the Bush
administration.
The survey found little change
in opinion on the war in Iraq since May, when
disapproval in the seven countries that did not take
part in the invasion hovered around 85 percent. The only
exception was in the UK, where those who believed Prime
Minister Tony Blair made the right decision in going to
war fell from 61 percent to 43 percent.
Doubts
about the motives for US military efforts were found to
be pervasive in both Europe and the four predominantly
Muslim countries. Majorities in all but the United
States and Britain (33 percent) said they believed the
Bush administration's main interest is to "control
Mideast oil", while majorities in five of the countries,
including France, said they believe his goals included
"dominat[ing] the world".
Near-majorities or
majorities in all of the predominantly Muslim countries
said another goal was "to protect Israel".
Majorities in France, Germany and each of the
predominantly Muslim countries said they did not believe
that Washington's "war on terrorism" was motivated
primarily by the fight against terrorism. In Russia, a
48 percent plurality expressed similar skepticism.
Majorities ranging from 50 percent (Britain and
Russia) to 67 percent (Morocco) said they believed the
impact of the Iraq war hurt, rather than helped, the
global efforts to stop terrorism, while between 45
percent (Britain) and 78 percent of people (France)
outside the United States said they had lost confidence
in the trustworthiness of Washington as a result of the
Iraq war.
Moreover, significant majorities in
France (82 percent), Germany and Jordan (69 percent),
Turkey (66 percent) and Russia and Pakistan (61 percent)
said they believed US and British leaders deliberately
lied about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD)
before the war, as opposed to having been given bad
intelligence. In the UK, 41 percent believed that they
lied, while in the US the percentage was 31 percent.
"The credibility of the United States is sinking
and the numbers who believe that Bush and Blair lied to
them is incredibly serious," noted Albright.
The
notion that Washington acts on its own without taking
into account the interests of other nations was most
prevalent in France (84 percent), Turkey (79 percent)
and Jordan (77 percent), but even 61 percent of British
respondents agreed with the statement. By contrast, 70
percent of US respondents thought Washington took other
nations' interests into account.
Indeed, in
almost every question of the survey, US respondents
provided a substantially different answer than
respondents from the eight other countries, including,
in most cases, Britain.
"There is a huge gap"
between the perspectives of Americans and the others,
noted Pew director Andrew Kohut. "The gap isn't
narrowing in these surveys; if anything, it's widening,"
he added.
Despite a reduction in the intensity
of anger directed against the United States in the
predominantly Muslim countries last May, GAP found that
support for both bin Laden and the idea of suicide
bombings remained disturbingly high.
Bin Laden
was viewed favorably by 65 percent of respondents in
Pakistan, 55 percent in Jordan and 45 percent in
Morocco. Two-thirds of Moroccan and Jordanian
respondents said suicide bombings against Westerners in
Iraq were justified; for Pakistanis, the percentage was
46 percent. Even higher percentages said suicide
bombings by Palestinians against Israelis could be
justified - from 47 percent of Pakistanis to 86 percent
of Jordanians.
A major gap between Western and
Muslim views of Iraq's future also emerged. While
substantial majorities, from two-thirds (France and
Germany) to more than 80 percent (US and UK) of
Westerners said the Iraqi people will be better off
because of the invasion; pluralities and majorities in
Islamic countries, ranging from 44 percent in Turkey to
70 percent in Jordan, said they would be worse off.
At the same time, confidence in the ability of
the US-led coalition in Iraq to address the needs of the
people has slipped sharply in Europe, while opinions are
more mixed in the Islamic countries. The most dramatic
decline was found to be in the UK, where those who
believed the occupying power would do a good or
excellent job fell from 41 percent last May to 30
percent.
Respondents in the three Western
European countries also agreed by more than 4:1 that the
United Nations could do the best job of stabilizing
Iraq.
Similarly, strong majorities in the three
Western European countries agreed that countries should
only use force in dealing with an international threat
with the approval of the UN Security Council. In the
United States, only 41 percent agreed with that
statement; in Russia, the percentage was lowest, at 37.
For the predominantly Muslim countries, percentages
ranged from 38 (Pakistan) to 47 percent (Jordan).
(For more on the Pew Poll, go to
http://www.people-press.org)
