Even though President Obama has been enjoying his holidays in Hawaii, he will most certainly have been thinking about his past and future decisions. Without a doubt, the Middle East will figure prominently among his list of key topics for the year 2014. Improving the distrustful relationship between the United States and the Muslim world has been one of the main goals of the Obama administration, attained with limited success at best.
From his first days in office, Obama has sought a rapprochement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, to such an extent that some governors, such as Rick Perry, have accused him of betraying Israel. In November, after weeks of secret talks, he has struck a major symbolic coup by making a phone call to the Iranian president Rouhani. In 2009 during a landmark speech in Cairo, he boldly declared to ‘seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect’.
However, the results of the yearly Pew Research Global Attitudes Project paint a somewhat pessimistic picture. The five countries surveyed that have the least favourable opinion of the United States are all Muslim countries from the Middle East. Despite the administration’s conciliatory rhetoric, its actions speak a different language and give an easy explanation for the dislike, and even hatred, the United States encounters in these countries.
For example, only 11% of Pakistanis see the United States in favourable terms. Regularly, Pakistanis are killed by U.S. drone strikes. The most recent drone strike happened only a week ago, on 26th December and hit a compound in a village bordering Afghanistan. It is not a surprise that a population that is attacked weekly by a foreign military, in the absence of an official state of war, dislikes this country. Indeed, the American drone policy is a very unpopular one all around the world. In only three of the countries surveyed in the Pew project does a majority of the population approve of the U.S. drone policy. Unsurprisingly, two of them are Israel and the United States itself.
Muslim children in New York City supporting Park51. Image credit: David Shankbone
Another example, Egypt, can be explained equally as easily. The 84% of Egyptians that have an unfavourable view of the United States see American as failing to act during their struggles against Hosni Mubarak’s repressive regime, and the lack of condemnation of the coup d’état staged by the Egyptian military. The only sign of displeasure with the military’s conduct has been a reduction of aid payments from $1.5 billion to something around $1.25 billion, which is a weak move compared to the brutal crackdown on opposition groups to the military regime.
There is, however, an important distinction to make. What is absent from all the explanations given above, are ideological or religious differences. While the bottom five countries with the least favourable view of the United States are all Muslim, the decisive factor is that they are all from the Middle East. Muslim countries in other regions of the world view the United States in much more positive terms. It is American policy in the Middle East that frustrates the populations from Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey, Palestinia and Jordan, not an apparent hatred of American values and civilization. For example, majorities in Nigeria (69%), Indonesia (61%) and Malaysia (55%) have a favourable view of the United States. These countries are all overwhelmingly Muslim, and yet do not hate Americans and their way of life. Indonesia’s positive picture of the United States may be explained through the different use of the U.S. navy in this part of the world. While the military has been used repeatedly to invade Middle Eastern countries, in Indonesia the navy provided help after the 2004 East Asian tsunami. Again, it is policies that make countries like or dislike another country.
Further evidence from the Pew project supports this conclusion, that it is American policies that make other populations dislike the United States and not any innate hatred of American values.
The revelations by former NSA-contractor Edward Snowden of the worldwide mass surveillance organized by the American national security apparatus have severely damaged Americas reputation throughout the world. For example, in Germany (53%) and Argentina (41%) the spying on Chancellor Merkel, and President Kirchner respectively, seems to have had a major detrimental effect upon American popularity. Thus, one can assert that it is the United States itself with its policies and actions that have made it unpopular, rather than the existing belief, bordering on conspiracy theories, that other populations and/or religions have an intrinsic hatred of American civilization.
On a more positive note, then, it is crucial to note that this finding implies that declining American popularity is not inevitable and that a change in American foreign policy, away from unilateralism, military muscle-flexing and secret mass surveillance, towards multilateralism, soft power and transparency will result in a much improved international standing of the United States. It is unsurprising that a country behaving in such a way is unpopular; nobody likes the bully on the playground. In this sense, it is also important to register that the Pew project also found that other countries see American democracy, ideas and customs in much more favourable terms than its drone strike policy.
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