OT: A Decent Respect


WASHINGTON - It was in 1776 that a group of British colonists living
along the Atlantic seaboard of North America felt compelled to offer a
public justification for their "Declaration of Independence" from their
mother country out of "a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind".

That justification, a bill of particulars against King George II for a
host of offenses, including violations of what would come to be called
human rights, was designed to rally British and European public opinion
behind the colonists' cause.

As the nation marks that occasion exactly 230 years ago Tuesday, a
series of surveys from around the world over the past three years makes
clear that contemporary "Mankind" believes that the United States no
longer accords its opinions the "decent respect" that those who founded
the country believe was its due.

Those surveys suggest that the image of the U.S. as a benign hegemon
that takes account of the interests and opinions of the peoples of other
nations -- consciously cultivated by Washington for more than a century -
- has been effectively shattered by the unilateralism of the
administration of President George W. Bush and particularly its invasion
of Iraq.

"One of the reasons that people around the world are so upset with the
U.S. is the perception that in the post-World War II era, the U.S. was
the champion and leader of an international order based on international
law and mutual constraints, when it could have created a form of great-
power domination," said Steven Kull, director of the University of
Marylands Programme on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA).

"As the leader and promoter of such a system, the U.S. was expected to
set the example for all the rest, but Washington is now perceived as
violating the same rules it did so much to establish," according to
Kull, who cited Bush's decisions to ignore the United Nations in going
to war and the Geneva Conventions in treating detainees in its "global
war on terror" as key moves that both defied and outraged public opinion
abroad.

Even after 16 months of vigorous efforts by Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice to reassure U.S. allies and potential rivals, such as
Russia and China, that Washington cares about their views and is
committed to multilateralism, public opinion abroad has remained
stubbornly skeptical, according to former Foreign Affairs editor, Fareed
Zakaria.

Rice, he wrote in a Newsweek column coincidentally entitled "Why We
Don't Get No Respect", has "engineered a broad shift in American
diplomacy over the last year, moving policy toward greater
multilateralism, cooperation, and common sense on Iran, North Korea and
Iraq, and several other issues."

"And yet it hasn't produced a change in attitudes towards the United
States," he went on, citing surveys by the Pew Global Attitudes Project
and the Financial Times (FT) released just last month.

The FT poll found that the U.S. under Bush is considered by European
public opinion to be more dangerous than either North Korea or Iran.

The Pew survey of 14 foreign countries found that strong pluralities or
majorities in all but two nations said that the Iraq war had made the
world "more dangerous" and that the U.S. presence in Iraq was "more
dangerous" to world peace than the alleged nuclear-arms ambitions of
North Korea and Iran.

These findings were broadly consistent with previous surveys, including
a Globescan-PIPA poll of 35 countries released in February, and a Pew
poll released in June 2005 that found a sharp drop in the belief by
respondents in Europe and the Islamic world that Washington took into
account the interests of their countries in making its foreign policy
decisions compared to the period before the Iraq war.

In yet another poll Globescan-PIPA poll released in January 2005, large
pluralities and majorities of respondents in 18 of 21 countries said
they believed Bush's re-election to office would have a negative impact
on global peace and security.

What was particularly surprising about the latest Pew poll was the
degree to which Washington's image, particularly in Europe and the
Middle East, had slipped since the year before, when Rice's campaign to
put diplomacy and consultation first had just gotten underway.

In May 2005, Pew had found a rebound in foreign attitudes toward the
U.S. compared to its findings in surveys conducted in the year following
the Iraq war when foreign views of Washington, and particularly Bush,
plunged to the lowest level ever recorded. Most analysts had expected
continued, if modest, improvement between 2005 and 2006.

In fact, however, U.S. favorability ratings, as well as support for
Washington's "global war on terror", resumed their post-Iraq war decline
in both Western Europe and the Islamic world, with particularly steep
declines found in Spain, Russia, Indonesia, Jordan, and Turkey.

Zakaria blamed this on a number of factors, including a lag between the
general public, particularly in Europe, and governments which, he
insisted, have been very appreciative of Rice's -- and Bush's --
efforts.

Other important factors, he noted, included the continuing presence in
the administration of arch-hawks, including Vice President *** Cheney
and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, who may be able to constrain Rice's
flexibility, especially on Iran and North Korea.

Moreoever, according to Zakaria, U.N. Amb. John Bolton's confrontational
style has been particularly destructive and has contributed to the
perception that the administration remains deeply divided and that its
new emphasis on diplomacy and multilateralism has been dictated more by
necessity than conviction. "In five minutes of posturing in front of a
microphone, Bolton undoes five months of careful work by his boss, the
secretary of State," he wrote.

In fact, however, the problem lies much deeper -- in the belief that the
U.S., especially under Bush, still does not accord a decent respect to
the views and opinions of other nations, whether it involves the
invasion of Iraq and the refusal to apply the Geneva Conventions in
the "war on terror" -- for which Bush remains unapologetic -- or global
warming, the International Criminal Court, or the administration's
doctrine of pre-emption.

"à(A)n America that does not understand -- and makes little effort to
understand -- why it has become so unpopular abroad is almost certain to
find itself both disliked and ineffective in many parts of the world,"
noted political commentator David Rieff in a reflection on the latest
Pew poll and U.S. "exceptionalism" that appeared in the New York Times
Sunday Magazine this weekend

Decent Respect" Might Help Image Woes Abroad
by Jim Lobe





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