Bad news, America: World doesn't like We the People

WASHINGTON — The United States long has been a source of irritation for the rest of the world, but the news is worse this year.

While Europeans and Asians and Arabs increasingly have disliked U.S. policies or specific U.S. leaders in recent years, Americans were liked and admired.

Polls show an ominous turn. Majorities around the world think Americans are greedy, violent and rude, and fewer than half in countries such as Poland, Spain, Canada, China and Russia think Americans are honest.

"We found a rising antipathy toward Americans," said Bruce Stokes of the Pew Global Attitudes Project, which interviewed 93,000 people in 50 countries over four years.

Few analysts expect more than marginal improvements, short of another Sept. 11.

"In my judgment, you're going to see a lot of this hostility disappear only when various countries really feel they need friendly relations with the United States, probably for their own security," said Richard Solomon, a veteran diplomat and negotiator who is president of the U.S. Institute of Peace, a federally funded nonpartisan think tank. "It will probably take some major event for that to take place."

The dislike is accelerating among youth, Stokes said. For example, 20 percent of Britons younger than 30 have an unfavorable opinion of Americans, double the percentage of 2002.

The problem, Stokes said, "is Americans, not just [President] Bush."

In increasing numbers, people around the globe resent U.S. power and wealth and reject specific actions such as the occupation of Iraq and the campaign against democratically elected Palestinian leaders, in-depth international polling shows.

America's image problem is pervasive, deep and perhaps permanent, analysts say, an inevitable outcome of being the world's only superpower.

Stokes and his colleagues at the Pew Research Center, a respected, nonpartisan public-opinion group in Washington, D.C., found that fewer and fewer people see the United States as a land of high ideals and opportunity. More than half those asked in France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Britain said the "spread of American ideas and customs" was a "bad thing."

This represents a major challenge for the United States, which, after a period of aggressive "go-it-alone" foreign policy, again is coming to rely on allies and international partners.

For example, the United States has counted on Britain, France, Germany and the United Nations to persuade or coerce the Iranian government to abandon its nuclear program. And it shares its military burden with 9,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan and 20,000 in Iraq.

Credibility problem

Keeping the peace, winning the war on terrorism and other critical goals are achievable "only if people like you and trust you," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center.

Instead, Kohut and his associates find U.S. credibility eroding, even among NATO allies.

Almost half those polled in Britain, France and Germany dispute the concept of a global war on terrorism, and a majority of Europeans think the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. More than two-thirds of Germans, French and Turks think U.S. leaders lied about the reasons for war and think the United States is less trustworthy than it once was.

Kohut found a significant decline among those holding "favorable" views of the United States. In Brazil, 52 percent held a favorable view of the United States in 2002; that had dropped to 34 percent one year later. In Russia, the pro-U.S. portion of the population dropped from 61 percent to 36 percent over a year.

People also reject the U.S. lifestyle portrayed in films and TV. Asked where to find the "good life," no more than one in 10 people recommended the United States in a poll conducted in 13 countries, Kohut said. More popular: Canada, Australia, Britain and Germany. Only in India did the United States still represent the land of opportunity, he found.

No question this is bad news, but put it into perspective, Solomon said. "It's an attractive aspect of our culture that we worry about what other people think. The French couldn't care less if they make people unhappy."

Even friends are uneasy

Even among the United States' newest friends, such as India — where Bush in March signed an agreement on nuclear cooperation — there is "uneasiness about whether we have come too close to America and surrendered independence of judgment to the sole superpower," said Ambassador Salman Haidar, former Indian foreign secretary and head of its diplomatic corps.

The United States spends about $1 billion a year on international broadcasting and the public-relations campaign it calls "public diplomacy," run out of the State Department by former top Bush campaign operative Karen Hughes.

Separately, the Pentagon directs "information operations" and psychological-operations programs that have included paying journalists in Iraq to write favorable newspaper articles.

"We probably deserve a D or D-plus as a country as how well we're doing in the battle of ideas," Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said March 27 at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa. "We're going to have to find better ways to do it, and thus far we haven't."