Q&A Ny Times
Q&A: Muslim 'Fear and Loathing' of the U.S
From the Council on Foreign Relations, June 19, 2003
Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, says that the Iraq war caused further damage to the global image of the United States. Antipathy toward Washington is spreading in many Islamic countries, some of which view the United States as a threat. In a recent Pew survey, "majorities in seven of eight Muslim countries think that the United States might threaten their country militarily," Kohut says. "Last year we had loathing of the United States, this year we have fear and loathing."
The war also boosted anti-U.S. and anti-Bush views in Europe. President Bush "comes across to the Europeans as the quintessential American who doesn't understand Europe and doesn't care as much about Europe as other presidents have," Kohut says.
Kohut, the former head of the Gallup Organization, was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on June 18, 2003.
The results of the Pew Center's latest poll of world attitudes toward the United States are disturbing. Please summarize its conclusions?
The image of the United States has been slipping around the world. Our survey in 2002 found fewer people in most countries having a favorable view of the United States compared to surveys taken by the State Department prior to the 9/11 attacks, in 2000 and 1999. This year, in a survey taken in 20 countries and the Palestinian Authority after the war in Iraq, we see the image of America slipping even further. This includes views of the American people themselves.
We see other ways in which the publics of the world have been divided by the war in Iraq. One, the image of the United Nations has slipped just about everywhere--the percentage of people saying it's having a good effect on countries [is] down consistently not only in countries that opposed the war but also in the United States and Britain. We see a greater percentage of Europeans saying there should be more independence from the United States. The transatlantic relationship, a pillar of the post-World War II era, has been undermined in terms of public attitudes by the war in Iraq. And we also see the bottom falling out in attitudes toward the United States in the Muslim world.
Is that still the case in the Muslim world? Press opinion toward the United States, based on what I see on the Internet, seems to have moderated since the end of the Iraq war?
That may be press opinion, but looking at the ways in which the Muslim publics that we surveyed this year viewed us versus [their opinions] last year, last year was very bad, and this year is very, very bad. The percentage of Muslims saying that they think that there are threats to Islam has increased in most countries. There's a general sense that there's a worldwide threat to Islam, and guess who that threat is? Majorities in seven of eight Muslim countries think that the United States might threaten their country militarily. Last year we had loathing of the United States, this year we have fear and loathing.
There's one other point I want to make about the Muslim world. Last year, we found Muslim antipathy toward the United States in the Mideast and in Pakistan. This year we find it all around the world. We also find it in Africa, among Nigerian Muslims, and in Indonesia. It's a deepening and a spreading of antagonism toward the United States post-Iraq. And [there is] the very sensational [survey] finding that publics in so many Muslim countries have high confidence in Osama bin Laden.
What about European attitudes toward the United States?
Favorable opinions are even lower than they were last year. [There is an] increasing view that the United States is unilateralist, that perhaps Europe has to find its own foreign policy, or foreign policy that's more distinct from the United States' [policy]. Some people have a more favorable view of the United States after the war in Iraq, but it's only a matter of degree. About 40 percent of the French and Germans give the United States a favorable review. There are a lot of fences to be mended to get back to where we were.
How much of this animosity is directed at President Bush and how much at the United States in general?
When we ask the question, Europeans often say, "The problem is not America, the problem is Bush." But in fairness to Bush, we see in this series of surveys a great deal of resentment toward American power and suspicion about American power. I think you can make the case that Bush has made this problem worse from a European point of view but, given where we are in history--being the sole superpower and having such a huge gap between our power and the power of the rest of the world--a certain kind of resentment is natural.
We saw that in response to the attacks after September 11. People were very sympathetic, but it wasn't very long before they were also saying in Europe, "You know, it's good the Americans know what it's like to be vulnerable." That reflects the resentment of U.S. power. Last year, many Europeans insisted that we wanted to invade Iraq for oil and not because we really wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein. This showed the suspicion of American motives. They say it's Bush, but my own second-guessing is that it goes beyond Bush.
When I interviewed Josef Joffe, the publisher and editor of Die Zeit, the other day, he said one of the issues is that Bush is not Bill Clinton, that Europeans liked Clinton's personality, whereas Bush comes across quite differently. Is there much to that? |
