Op-Ed: The World's View of the U.S. May be Changing

A new report released by an influential think-tank based in Washington D.C. has revealed some interesting statistics regarding how the world currently views the United States.

The Pew Global Attitudes Project is jointly chaired by Madeleine Albright , a former U.S. Secretary of State, and John Danforth, a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. It's role is to compile data from across the globe in order to understand what the world may be thinking on a range of important issues and it is one of seven projects operating under the auspices of the Pew Research Center. Whilst the funding for the project is provided through a charitable trust whose founders were leading lights in the conservative movement of the 1940s, at present it is generally regarded as a non-partisan organization. Now with the publication of its latest report, which analyzes the attitude of other countries to the United States, it is possible to see how, if at all, the election of President Obama may have changed world opinion. Six different questions relating to various aspects of American attitudes and policies within the global context and the success or otherwise of the War on Terror were put to those who took part in the survey but it is perhaps the answers to the questions of whether people now view the United States favorably or unfavorably and what level of confidence they have in the U.S. President that are the most revealing. Kenya, birthplace of the President's father, and Indonesia, where he attended school between the ages of six and ten, are both countries with their own special ties to President Obama and it is therefore not altogether surprising that both should give the President and the U.S. in general high marks. Kenya has the highest percentage of respondents in any country who view the U.S, with 90%, and its President, with 94%, in a favorable light, in fact even more Kenyans have a favorable view of the U.S than Americans, at 88%, do themselves. Indonesia has nowhere near the percentages recorded in Kenya but the question of whether they have confidence in the U.S President showed a sharp increase from 23% who gave a positive response in 2008 to 71% who did so in 2009. The Middle East and the countries elsewhere who have become battlefields for the War on Terror returned significant results. But only in so much as the countries that President Obama has attempted to reach out to with what he deemed to be a new and friendlier attitude have only given a lukewarm response to his overtures and in Israel confidence in the U.S President and his country has declined, although that decline is more marked for the man himself than it is for the U.S. as a whole. The Palestinian Territories are included in the survey and the favorable view there of the country they have generally considered to be Israel's greatest ally has only crept up by two percentage points to 15 since 2007. Countries considered U.S. allies in the Middle East such as Egypt, Jordan and, not strictly Middle East but bordering countries there, Turkey have shown single digit increases when it comes to a favorable view, but with the 27% in Egypt the best showing clearly there is work still to be done by the Obama administration to win over the people of that region. But the paltry gains in the countries in and around the Middle East could even be counted as successes when compared to Pakistan. Although never a great appreciator of the U.S, in the last eight years the highest percentage voicing their approval of the U.S was the 27% in 2006, 2008 to 2009 has seen a slip in the approval rating from 19% to 16%. President Obama himself fares slightly better, with his 13% approval rating nearly double the 7% of President Bush in 2008, yet it is hardly a ringing endorsement. One continent on which the U.S. and the President do seem to have enjoyed a remarkable improvement in their fortunes is Europe. The likes of Britain, France, Germany and Spain all record approval ratings for the U.S well in excess of 50%, with France running at an impressive 75% and Germany increasing from 31% in 2008 to 64% in 2009. For President Obama the numbers are even more notable. Amongst the aforementioned European countries in 2008 President Bush only had the confidence of 16%, 13%, 14% and 8% of the respective populations. Now those percentages have transformed themselves into highly respectable figures of 86, 91, 93 and 72. Finally it is always worth knowing what your neighbors think of you. For the U.S the answer is that they like them more than they did before but apparently not as much as many of the Europeans do. In Canada the U.S gets a positive rating of 68%, almost identical to Mexico's 69%. Meanwhile the President has the support of 88% of Canadians, up from the 28% who supported President Bush in 2007. Mexico has a lower level of confidence at 55%, yet that is still much higher than the 16% who backed President Bush in 2008. Ultimately many in the U.S may not care what others think of them. At least now they cannot say that they don't know what the world has on its mind. The full results of the survey, conducted between May 18 and June 16 and involving 27,000 respondents, can be accessed at the Pew Global Attitudes Project website.