To See Ourselves as Others See Us: How Publics Abroad View the United States In the Post-9/11 Era by Ole R. Holsti

Political scientists distinguish between power as material capabilities and power as the ability to get others to do one's bidding. The United States is the world's most powerful country, but some recent events provide compelling evidence that overwhelming military and economic power may not always yield a comparable level of international influence. French and German reluctance to support the American invasion of Iraq is well known, but other traditional friends that have openly opposed U.S. policies include Canada, Mexico, Chile, Turkey, Egypt, South Korea, and many others. Only seven of thirty-three Latin American and Caribbean countries backed military action against Iraq, and for the first time in its history, Canada refused to send troops to a war being fought by the United States and Britain.

Most of the recalcitrant countries are democracies whose leaders must deal with legislatures and electorates. Opinions about the United States held by their publics can thus be an important constraint on foreign policymakers, although it is an open question how much weight they give to public views on foreign affairs.

A plethora of international surveys have made it possible to achieve Robert Burns's aspiration. Gallup International, the Pew Research Center, the German Marshall Fund, and the British Broadcasting Corporation have provided a great deal of data on how the United States and its policies are viewed in more than sixty countries. Here we report findings from twenty-six countries for only two questions: appraisals of the war on terrorists, and assessment of American sensitivity to vital interests of others.

The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks stimulated multiple surveys about the ways that publics abroad view the United States. Pre-9/11 State Department surveys revealed that they generally shared favorable views of the United States. That was especially true among NATO allies (Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy), as well as countries that had recently been invited to join that alliance (Poland, Czech Republic) or aspired to become members (Bulgaria, Slovakia). Russia was a very important exception. Although the Cold War had ended during the 1990s, that decade also included several major issues that roiled relations between Washington and Moscow, notably the civil wars that erupted with the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia.

After the 9/11 attacks and the invasion of Afghanistan to remove the Taliban regime and pursue the al-Qaeda terrorists, most publics abroad continued to view the United States favorably. Countries with substantial Muslim populations-Turkey, Pakistan, Indonesia, Kuwait, Egypt, and Morocco-were notable exceptions. Favorable appraisals of the United States generally declined sharply once international attention turned to Iraq and the American invasion of that country.

The good news is that most publics abroad are not reflexively anti-United States, as they often continue to view the American people, as well as American science, technology, and education and many basic institutions, in a favorable light. Yet by 2003, Edward Djerejian, who had been appointed by President George W. Bush to assess anti-Americanism abroad, asserted in an October 3, 2003, briefing at the Foreign Press Center that, "The bottom has indeed fallen out of support for the United States." A brief examination of data on how publics abroad view the war on terrorism and American sensitivity to the interests of others illustrates Djerejian's sober conclusion.

Pew international surveys in 2002, 2003, and 2004 asked respondents abroad whether they favored or opposed "the U.S.-led efforts to fight terrorism." The results, shown in Figure 1, can be summarized in two broad generalizations. Respondents in the participating countries expressed a wide range of views and, with a few exceptions, assessments of the U.S. effort were less favorable in 2004 than they had been two years earlier. Some respondents apparently distinguished between the military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, viewing the former as a legitimate response to the September 11 attacks but the latter as a diversion from the fight against terrorists.

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Publics in eight of the nine NATO countries strongly favored American antiterrorism policies in 2002. Aside from Turkey, where the opponents of U.S. policies outnumbered the supporters by almost two to one, in none of the other countries did as many as one-third of the respondents express opposition. Interestingly, support for American policies in France, Germany, and Russia exceeded that in Great Britain. The postwar 2003 and 2004 Pew surveys revealed some erosion of support among several NATO allies, but even in France those in favor narrowly outnumbered the opponents of U.S. actions.

Variability across countries and generally declining support for American counterterrorism policies emerged most clearly in countries with significant Muslim populations. Except in Nigeria, expressions of opposition dominated responses in the three Pew surveys. The United States has generally maintained good relations with Egypt (the recipient of the second-largest annual foreign aid package), Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey (a NATO member). Nevertheless, in 2002 public support for U.S. policies in these countries ranged from moderate (56 percent in Kuwait) to abysmal (5 percent in Egypt), and the subsequent surveys did not unearth substantial changes.

To See Ourselves as Others See Us: How Publics Abroad View the United States In the Post-9/11 Era

By Ole R. Holsti