New Survey: World opinion -- US cannot be trusted any longer "to act responsibly in the world"

[sabra]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18209432/site/newsweek/

The next U.S. president will have a tough job turning around the world's opinion of America, a new survey shows.


Web-exclusive commentary
By Michael Hirsh
Newsweek


April 19, 2007 - The results are now in. Whoever becomes president on Jan. 20, 2009, the next leader of the free world may face a task akin to taking over command of the Titanic. After the iceberg.

That is the message behind a new multinational survey, released this week by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and WorldPublicOpinion.org, which showed that nations around the world reject the idea that the United States should play the role of preeminent world leader. A majority of respondents polled in 15 countries, representing about 56 percent of the world’s population (the survey included China, India and Russia), also said the United States cannot be trusted any longer "to act responsibly in the world." As Richard Holbrooke, the former U.N. ambassador, sums it up bluntly: “No president will ever have handed over a worse international situation than George W. Bush.”

The current results contrast markedly with surveys taken at the end of the '90s. Even as recently as 2002 (before the invasion of Iraq, in other words), a Pew survey found that despite criticisms of U.S. policy, a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, most people accepted a one-superpower world, if grudgingly. Even in countries that have since become virulently anti-American, like Jordan, Egypt and Russia, majorities back then concluded that “the world is safer with the United States as the lone superpower,” the survey noted. To compare 1999 State Department data with recent surveys by the Pew Trust, favorable views of the United States have dropped in Britain from 83 percent to 56 percent, in Germany from 78 percent to 37 percent, in Morocco from 77 percent to 49 percent, in Indonesia from 75 to 30 percent, in France from 62 to 39 percent, in Turkey from 62 to 12 percent and in Spain from 50 to 23 percent.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

1. Bullies are seldom liked by those they bully.

America has paraded itself has the bastion of freedom and democracy for decades. The rest of the world has now come to see us for the predatory neo-colonial empire we have become.

[SharonAnn]

3. Yes, I told my Canadian relatives that the U.S. should not be the largest military force

on the planet. We cannot be trusted to use it well.

Our belief in "American Exceptionalism" is our undoing. It is not right just because we do it.

I'm so ashamed of what has become of the America I believed in, the American Foreign Policy I thought we had, the privatized and power-hungry militarized empire we have become.

[Lex1775]

4. Not the largest

The US military is not the largest on the planet. That honor currently belongs to China. WHen the USSR still existed it had a larger Armed Forces then the US as well.

[Javaman]

6. True, but we have the worlds largest budget. I think people confuse the two. nt

[liberal N proud]

2. Thanks to the bu$h regime

It will take decades to rebuild the trust we once enjoyed in the world.

[Lex1775]

5. Is it possible...

... that this survey could be a bit slanted? It does mention that India, China and Russian populations were pulled. Two of those (India and China) are the next up and comings and Russia is an OLD enemy, of course they wouldn't want to see the US as the world "leader".

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. No - India is far keener on the US being the pre-eminent leader than the US itself is

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/images/apr07/CCGA+_ViewsUS_graph2.jpg http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/images/apr07/CCGA+_ViewsUS_graph3.jpg

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/home_page/345.php?nid=&id=&pnt=345&lb=hmpg1

On the question of how much the US can be trusted (which isn't a competition), those 3 countries are in the middle of opinion.