America and the World (Or: Do They Like Us? Should We Care?)

The recent Pew Global Attitudes Project Report has some interesting, disquieting, fascinating date about how citizens of an array of countries perceive other countries. America’s standing in the world is up slightly, but is still in the depths. As my colleague, area coordinator (i.e. boss) and periodic Rebunk reader Roland Spickermann (who first sent me the link to the full report) pointed out to me, China is more highly regarded than the US in much of the world. My response to that initially was to ask how seriously one can take such a report. But then Pew is highly respected, and since that is what the data concluded, then at minimum, we have a perception problem, and it may be worse than that. It is simply not a healthy state of affairs when countries, most of whom are our allies, are genuinely afraid of or dislike us. Perhaps we can laugh off the fact that the Jordanians pretty much seem to hate us. But when majorities polled in Spain, Russia, Germany, France, England, and the Netherlands (with Canada falling within the margin of error) all have more favorable views of the tyrants in Beijing than of the democrats in Washington, we need to do some self-assessment.

Although she does not write explicitly in response to Pew's findings, Anne Applebaum is aware of the data on Anti-Americanism. She has a piece, “In Search of Pro-Americanism,” in the latest that might serve as a response to such findings. There are still those who value and cherish the ideals that we do our best to represent. And she presents some data that shows that all might not be lost for America in the rest of the world. Nonetheless, we need to take seriously the findings of the Pew study, because it seems to me that the rest of the world wants and needs America to be that great city on a hill. Simply asserting that we are will not be enough.