- Even the ambition is gargantuan. Only an American pollster
like Pew would contemplate asking 38,000 people in 44 countries (speaking
63 languages and dialects) what they think of America. Only a superpower
would try to take the world's temperature thus. The trouble is - when you
hold their thermometer up to the light - the reading that comes back says
this power isn't so super after all.
-
- Take just a few out of thousands of figures. Nineteen
countries with data available for comparison showed antipathy to the US
on the rise, and goodwill draining away. Favourable ratings in western
Europe, pretty consistently, were down five or six percentage points over
the last three years. That turned to 22 points in Turkey and 13 points
in Pakistan. Just 6% of the Egyptian public has a favourable view of the
United States.
-
- Is the spread of American ideas good or bad? Here in
Britain, 50% say bad. But this soars to 67% in Germany, 68% in Russia,
71% in France - and rampant hostility the moment you get near the Middle
East. Try Turkey at 78%, Pakistan at 81% and Egypt at 84%.
-
- Does the US "consider others: not much/not at all?"
Fifty-two per cent in Britain sign up on this line. But that's 73% in Canada,
73% in South Korea, 74% in Japan, 76% in France.
-
- Do you reckon American policy towards Saddam is driven
by getting its hands on Baghdad's oil? Forty-four per cent of Brits agree;
54% of Germans; 75% of French. Would you let the US use your bases to attack
Iraq? Eighty-three per cent of Turks say no.
-
- But maybe the most chilling question of the lot was reserved
for Muslim respondents only. Did they approve of suicide bombing in defence
of Islam? Seventy-three per cent in Lebanon said yes. Well, they would,
wouldn't they? But what about the 43% in Jordan, the 44% in Bangladesh,
the 47% in Nigeria, the 33% in Pakistan? And in Indonesia (including Bali)?
Twenty-seven per cent said yes. Those are hundreds upon hundreds of millions
of people with a totally different take on what constitutes terror. This
is alienation on the grandest scale.
-
- Now, of course, polls are only polls, a sampling through
the autumn which can change with the seasons. And, of course, 44 countries
don't represent the whole world. Some places - like Saudi - aren't hot
on publics with any opinion. Some places - like Uzbekistan - appear to
have gone overboard for smiling Americans bearing suitcases full of dollars.
And, as with any survey of this complexity, there are counterflows. We
quite like American movies, music and such. We benignly prefer a world
where America is the "only superpower" - and 53% of Russians
say this "makes the world a safer place".
-
- Yet it would be crazy to airbrush these findings away.
They don't show a surge of sympathy and support over the months since 9/11.
Precisely the reverse. They don't show trust and identification with American
aims or American leadership. Rather the opposite. And the perception gap
yawns ever wider. Only 20% of Americans think the US doesn't consider other
countries much or at all. Eighty per cent of Americans believe it's good
to see US ideas and customs spreading round the globe.
-
- Here - very solemnly, indeed glumly - is the rub. A moment
of profound disillusion, waiting to happen. A moment when phrases about
the "world's only superpower" turn dusty on the lips.
-
- We tend to talk of American hegemony as though it were
established by force of arms. Tanks, planes, marines - and the cash to
drive them on. That is the obvious fount of power. It is also the language
of the politicians who sit in Washington. They take their physical dominance
seriously; they have means of enforcing their policies and their ideologies
- with or without outside assistance.
-
- This isn't - before the steaming emails from points west
begin flooding in - a matter of criticism. George Bush and Dick Cheney
didn't hide their beliefs from the electorate in 2000, or even last month.
Their reaction to the destruction of the World Trade Centre has, in reality,
proved pretty measured. They absolutely clearly have most - though not
all - of the American public with them, for the time being at least. Dear
Alistair Cooke, writing his increasingly blood-curdling letters from Manhattan,
hears the sound of the patriot drum.
-
- But there's a terrible limit to all this. The only superpower
may, for a while, seek to ignore the rest of the world while it makes its
plans and gives its orders. It may deride the distant wimps, wets and fanatics
who decline to join the dance. It may enfold itself in a cocoon of grieving
and determination. That is understandable.
-
- It is also, though, totally at long-term odds with that
bit of the American psyche which needs to be liked and respected, which
needs the dream of a shining city on the hill to which peoples around the
world aspire. An open society. A society that travels, cares, enjoys the
fruits of globalisation - and has no long-term means of shucking away unwelcome
messages.
-
- Open societies could grow closed in the teeth of the
cold war. They could demand obeisance with menaces. But the picture that
Pew - an American institution - paints for America comes without menaces
attached. It is one of hearts and minds being lost, of allies flaking away,
of nations like Japan, Korea and Italy beginning to cross to the other
side of the street. Can a "superpower" deal with such distrust
and dislike? No: not if it needs to be loved.
-
- What the World Thinks in 2002 can be found on the Pew
Research Center
- www.people-press.org
-
- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2002
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,856482,00.html
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