The world public rejects the United States role as a world leader, but still wants the US to do its share in multilateral efforts and does not support a US withdrawal from international affairs, says a poll released on Wednesday.
The survey respondents saw the US as an unreliable ”world policeman”, but views were split on whether the superpower should reduce its overseas military bases.
The people of the US generally agreed with the rest of the world that their country should not remain the world’s pre-eminent leader or global cop, and said they prefer that it play a more cooperative role in multilateral efforts to address world problems.
The poll, the fourth in a series released by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and WorldPublicOpinion.org since the latter half of 2006, was conducted in China, India, the US, Indonesia, Russia, France, Thailand, Ukraine, Poland, Iran, Mexico, South Korea, Philippines, Australia, Argentina, Peru, Israel, Armenia and the Palestinian territories.
The three previous reports covered attitudes toward humanitarian military intervention, labour and environmental standards in international trade, and global warming. Those surveys found that the international public generally favoured more multilateral efforts to curb genocides and more far-reaching measures to protect labour rights and combat climate change than their governments have supported to date.
Steven Kull, editor of WorldPublicOpinion.org, notes that this report confirms other polls that have shown that world opinion of the US is bad and getting worse. However, this survey more closely examines the way the world public would want to see Washington playing a positive role in the international community.
Although all 15 of the countries polled rejected the idea that, ”the US should continue to be the pre-eminent world leader in solving international problems”, only Argentina and the Palestinian territories said it ”should withdraw from most efforts to solve international problems”.
The respondents tended to agree that the US should do ”its share in efforts to solve international problems together with other countries” in: South Korea (79%), the US (75%), France (75%), China (68%), Israel (62%), Peru (61%), Mexico (59%), Armenia (58%), Philippines (55%), Ukraine (52%), Thailand (47%), India (42%) and Russia (42%).
In a majority of countries — 13 out of 15 — the public agreed that Washington is ”playing the role of world policeman more than it should”, including France (89%), Australia (80%), China (77%), Russia (76%), Peru (76%), Palestinian territories (74%) and South Korea (73%).
Seventy-six percent of those polled in the US also agreed that their country plays too big a role as a global cop, but 57% of Filipinos disagreed with the statement, and Israelis were evenly split on the issue.
Majorities felt the US cannot be trusted to ”act responsibly in the world” in: Argentina (84%), Peru (80%), Russia (73%), France (72%) and Indonesia (64%). But majorities or large percentages in the Philippines (85%), Israel (81%), Poland (51%), and Ukraine (49%) said the superpower can be at least ”somewhat” trusted to act responsibly.
Although most of the countries involved in the poll had majorities who believed the US is too involved in policing issues of international concern, there were mixed views about whether it should reduce its military presence around the world. Only five out of 12 publics favoured decreasing the number of overseas US military bases: Argentina (75%), Palestinian territories (70%), France (69%), China (63%) and Ukraine (62%).
Majorities in the Philippines (78%), US (68%), Israel (59%) and Poland (54%) favoured maintaining or increasing the current levels of US military bases. Armenia and Thailand leaned in favour of maintaining current levels or reducing base locations, while India was divided. No country favoured increases.
The survey clearly shows that the perception of the US role in the world is negative and getting worse, but some publics did have significant numbers that felt relations between their country and the US were getting better.
Most of the respondents in India (58%) and China (53%) felt relations were improving, while pluralities agreed in Australia (50%), Armenia (48%), Indonesia (46%) and Thailand (37%). Majorities or pluralities in Poland (60%), South Korea (56%), Israel (52%), Ukraine (52%) and Russia (45%) said relations with the US were about the same.
No countries had majorities or pluralities who say relations with the US were getting worse. — IPS