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In the most unsurprising news ever, the United States is now beloved by the world again. Everyone celebrate!
The United States is the most admired country globally thanks largely to the star power of President Barack Obama and his administration, according to a new poll.
It climbed from seventh place last year, ahead of France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Japan which completed the top five nations in the Nation Brand Index (NBI).
“What’s really remarkable is that in all my years studying national reputation, I have never seen any country experience such a dramatic change in its standing as we see for the United States for 2009,” said Simon Anholt, the founder of NBI, which measured the global image of 50 countries each year.
He believes that during the previous administration of George W. Bush the United States suffered in the world ranking with its unpopular foreign policies but since Obama was elected, and despite the recent economic turmoil, the country’s status has risen globally.
“There is no other explanation,” Anholt said in an interview, referring to the impact of Obama.
The global survey, conducted by GFK Roper Public Affairs & Media, involved 20,000 people in 20 rich and developing countries around the globe. They were asked to rate 50 nations in categories such as culture, governance, people, exports, tourism, landscape and education.
And hey, guess who else has risen in the global popularity rankings? Those ethical do-gooders, China. They score low on human rights and the environment, but gosh darn it, they’ve just got such great culture!
Now, why might the world love the United States again? As Neal Boortz pointed out, it’s because we’re weaker.
This one is not too hard to figure out. We go back to the Pew Research poll conducted in Europe in 2008. That poll showed that nearly 60% of Europeans wanted the United States to be weaker. They didn’t like the US being as strong in economic and worldwide political affairs as we were. Soooooo … along comes Barack Obama, and at every turn he projects American weakness. He trashes the European missile defense system. He kowtows to Russia’s Putin. He absolutely fails to take a strong stance on Iran and their nuclear ambitions. He disengages from Iraq and continues to show indecisiveness in Afghanistan. The shrinks at the sight of Hugo Chavez. He won’t meet with the Dalai Lama because it might make the Chinese mad. Weakness at every turn … just exactly what the respondents to the poll said they wanted! A weaker United States!
So now our popularity in Europe is on the way up! Really tough to figure out why, isn’t it?
Barack Obama has led us to change, all right — change from a global superpower and the strongest, most powerful country in the world to a country that is weak enough to make Europeans swoon and France look tough.
Still glad you voted for Obama??
Hat Tip: House of Eratosthenes
Edward Richardson says: While I agree that this is due in part to Obama’s castrating our nation from a defense standpoint, it is overwhelmingly due to the fact that much of “the world” (I’ve always found this term elitist…it means city people in twenty industrialized nations) regarded Bush as Sauron and the war in Iraq as the war against Middle Earth.
I don’t think that those polled in “the world” know that Obama killed our F-22 program, or that our top general in Afghanistan has been begging for months for 40,000 troops. They just know that Bush is gone after 8 years of their hatred for him being stoked by their own liberal media.
I read an interview with David Kay, our chief weapons inspector in Iraq, in which Kay noted that he was in China when he got the call for the job. The Iraqi War had just begun and Kay noted that the Chinese media were running propaganda on ChiCom TV that made it look like we were suffering massive casualties and losing all the battles.
This is (cough)…the world.
All during the Bush administration all over the internet I would read, from the left, how hated we were. On message boards, myspace, facebook and all the rest. I always asked for proof. I always asked for some small shred of evidence. These are the same people who have never been outside the US.
I have been living here since 1994. Hatred shown toword Americans? Never saw it and I only once felt it. He was a hippy looking student. It was Christmas 2004 and I was shopping with my daughter for a present for my now ex wife. I speak English to my daughter and this slimeball hear me. HE followed us all around the store ranting about how bad Bush is and how illegal the war in Iraq is. I asked him as politly as I could that we meet later over a few beers and discuss this like adults. He called me a coward then went in to a rant about how American soldiers love killing children and raping women. My daughter started crying. She knows I served and that I am a veteran. I slapped the snot. Open handed across his left cheek. He called the police and when they arrived they questioned him then me.
I was told that no charges would be filed against me and I was even offered to press charges against him for public insult, stalking and harrassment. I declined and that was that.
You see the left is loud. they scream the loudest and have the ear of the press. Americans were never hated. The Bush administration was hated but only be a small minoriety. Atleast here in Germany.
Jesse Jackson speaks about Obama’s Nobel Prize
Some say with surprise
Obama how’d he
get a Peace Prize?
They say how could he have won?
With all his accomplishments
he aint done
Some say the Nobel committee gave him a present
For voting in the U.S. Senate
130 times present
But just in case you missed it
All his accomplishments
I will now list it
How about that bling,
He got that
from a Saudi King
Often he would score
In a basketball game
15 point or more
Or how can you discount his dreams?
He had
for our Olympic teams
Or what about all the Community organizing he has done
Teaching inner city kids
being chased by gangs how to run
The Nobel committee Obama they did choose
Look at Bush
all he ever got was a pair of shoes
Edward Richardson says: Steffen,
Hatred is relegated to emotional pieces of crap like that idiot who ranted at you; but the masses in Europe in general (along with half the voters in the United States), while not hating, certainly dislike, and may even hate, albeit quietly.
While I was living and working in New York City, 3 naturalized Englishmen I worked with certainly held a quiet contempt for America. I worked with two of them at a software company across the street from the World Trade Center and even after 9/11 they would utter things about how our war in Afghanistan (Afghanistan! Iraq had not even happened yet) was “American Imperialism.” I believe in their heart of hearts they also believed the US deserved 9/11 for its support of Israel, but they wouldn’t dare say it at work.
I’ve encountered in my 15 years in NYC and NJ Indians, New Zealanders, Irish, and English who held quiet contempt for this country even as they lived and prospered in it. The English, Irish, and New Zealanders were the absolute worst. There is an arrogance to the UK and their far-flung nation-settlements that abhors America’s power, freedom, and meritocracy.
As for Germany, you won’t see people foaming at the mouth, but if you just read a little Der Spiegel or the papers you will notice things like German courts declaring that our liberation of Iraq from Hussein violated “international law” and many other such proclamations.
It’s ironic that the country that perpetrated the Holocaust and a world war very recently, when our grandfathers were alive and getting shot up trying to pull the Nazi boot out of the faces of France, Italy, and Great Britain, should lecture anyone about “international law.”
Steffen Caldwell says: Edward you are right to an extent. I think it’s more than contempt for our country. I think it’s jelousy. You see after WWII The French and English empires were pretty much dead. Along Comes America and fought a terroriable war but asked nothing for it.
When you look back to the English, French and the Spanish they not only fought wars for conqure but fo money, slavery and expansion.
MY point is that we send our best to fight for other people’s freedom. England, France, Germany and Spain never did. They only fought for greed.
I read the German papers an some “news” magazines. Well only on an ampty stomach. Der Spiegel being one of the worst. They have yet to question Obama or anything he says. I have written many times asking fr sorces and proof. I get nothing back. OH well won’t keep me from trying.
But I did win one small, but for me an important fight. No longer does my daughter have to call scoccer football in class. She calls it scoccer! Not a very huge win but a win is a win.
sonja says: I am one of those who can’t stand your nation. The people are cool, the nation is not.
Allow me to present my reason – America can’t help but interfere in anything and everything and is arrogant in the extreme. Your nation believes that superior firepower solves all wars (a falsehood as evidenced by Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq), and that it is superior to every other nation in the world.
As a nation, you decried the abhorrent attack on your country, mourned the thousands killed, then set about killing more of your own people in retribution, plus uncounted (and un-cared-for by your country) innocents.
Edward, are you aware that your country helped Hussein gain power in the first place? Did you know about the millions the South Vietnamese government murdered while your troops held the government in power? Do they ever teach you about the Phoenix Program? Your country is responsible for a lot of things in this world that people don’t like.
And for all your supposed superiority, you can’t even agree that universal healthcare will help those less fortunate than the middle and upper classes and get on with implementing it.
Edward Richardson says: Sonja,
The last time 3000 Americans were murdered prior to Sept. 11th we destroyed Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany and spent over a decade occupying both (which are now, incidentally, nice little democracies and a threat to no one). We still have more troops stationed in Japan than we do currently in Afghanistan. We have more troops in Germany today than we do in Afghanistan. Combine our soldiers in Germany and Japan and they eclipse the number we have now in Iraq.
We didn’t set about “killing” our own “people” when we went to war. That’s an absurd statement. Every single individual in our military is a volunteer and after 9/11 re-enlistment rates in the armed forces skyrocketed to record levels. Every soldier I know, male and female alike, is proud to serve and each has been to Ira
Edward Richardson says: (continued)
…Iraq at least 3 times.
We destroyed the Vietcong’s ability to make war also, so yes, military might does matter. Once Nixon bombed the north and the Ho Chi Minh trail the communist begged for a meeting in Paris and we had “peace with honor.” We basically quit that war for political reasons. It was run from Washington from the beginning anyway.
As for Iraq and Afghanistan, both were and are huge successes. I doubt you know much of anything about military history but never has a country the size of Iraq been overrun and its leader deposed with so few casualties. Combine the casualties we’ve endured in Iraq and Afghanistan and they’re still less than what we lost in one month of WWII. We haven’t lost 1/10th the number of soldiers in 8 years there that the Soviets lost when they decided to invade Afghanistan.
The Iraqi and Afghan people are doing fine. There are millions of them and just because some terrorists in an extreme minority blow 20 or 30 of them up because they want to scare them into submission doesn’t mean they will.
As for “helping” Hussein, Iraq at that time was at war with Iran and Iran was our enemy. Alliances are made and broken all the time. Witness Japan and Germany, once mortal enemies, now docile friends. Diplomacy is kenetic.
Sonja,
“I am one of those who can’t stand your nation. The people are cool, the nation is not.”
And I’m supposed to care…um…why? BTW, it’s pretty idiotic to say you like the people but hate the country, since people make up a country. Or is it that you just like the leftists in this country?
“Allow me to present my reason – America can’t help but interfere in anything and everything and is arrogant in the extreme. Your nation believes that superior firepower solves all wars (a falsehood as evidenced by Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq), and that it is superior to every other nation in the world.”
Generally, those who have the superior firepower wins, provided it’s backed by the willpower to use it. You’re from Australia. How did you conquer the aborigines again? Through harsh language? Nope, through guns and numbers. Right now we have the firepower, but not the national willpiower to use it. And yes, we are usually better. However, rest assured that if we collapse, China will be there to pick up the pieces and believe you me, they’ll listen to you guys even less than we do. That is, if the muslims have gotten to you first. Every top dog interferes in the world. Every. One. Go back and read up on your history.
“As a nation, you decried the abhorrent attack on your country, mourned the thousands killed, then set about killing more of your own people in retribution, plus uncounted (and un-cared-for by your country) innocents.”
Oh sweetie, if it were up to me, I’d turn Afghanistan into nice shiny glass. To protect the life of one (yes one) American soldier, I’d fire a battery of MLRS’s into a village to wipe it out. And I’d keep doing that until they got the message to knock off the bullshit. But then, that’s what war is; all hell. The civilians in this country (well most…and I am one) don’t have a clue as to what war is. Hence the halfassed way we’ve fought it up to this point. I don’t believe there are innocents in war, not the way it’s fought today.
“Edward, are you aware that your country helped Hussein gain power in the first place? Did you know about the millions the South Vietnamese government murdered while your troops held the government in power? Do they ever teach you about the Phoenix Program? Your country is responsible for a lot of things in this world that people don’t like.”
Of course we are. I never said we were perfect. We’ve made mistakes. Every empire does. As for South Vietnam, I can guarantee you that Ho Chi Minh killed a hell of a lot more than the South ever did, especially post war (go ask some of the Montagnards about that).
“And for all your supposed superiority, you can’t even agree that universal healthcare will help those less fortunate than the middle and upper classes and get on with implementing it.”
Seriously, what is your obsession with our health care system? You’re not even a citizen of this country, so why should you care what we do? Most people who do not have health care in this country do so out of choice. They don’t buy the necessities, they get the frills. That’s why we have some seriously effed up things going on now. People in this country need to learn that they should buy necessities and then get the frills later on.
Edward Richardson says: Matt, let me try and give Sonja some perspective by addressing some nations she probably should hate.
First Congo War (November 1996 to May 1997) — 60,000 civilians killed by a Marxist army
Second Congo War (1998-2003) aka Great African War — 5.4 million civilian casualties
War in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992-1995) — 100,000–110,000 (civilians and soldiers) killed and 1.8 million displaced
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 — Between 400-800 civilian
s shot during democratic protests. Scores of others executed in purges afterward
North Korean famine caused by Kim Jong Il – 2.8 million estimated dead, mostly children, in three years. Number comes from agricultural official who defected. Kim just fired off five medium range missiles today in a show of force. How many could he have fed with what it cost to make those multi-million dollar missiles?
Cuba — Between 6000-7000 Cubans risk their lives annually to make the 90 mile Gulf crossing to the United States. The Coast Guard has admitted to picking some Cubans up on surfboards trying to paddle to Miami. Average Cuban income = $15/month. University of Havana grads are considered lucky if they get jobs rolling cigars.
Knott Buyinit says: I wonder where Sonja is from? (From under a bridge with the rest of the trolls, I suppose…)
Take heart, Sonja, wherever you are, you may sleep safe and sound in your little country tonight because of the armed forces of the United States of America. If we were the hegemonists you make us out to be, you would be a fellow citizen (and, alas, probably a DemoCRAT).
Edward,
To be honest, it’s utterly pointless trying to give perspective to numbtards who think more with their hearts (and that’s conditional) and not with their brains. Bear in mind that you’re dealing with a person who didn’t think Communism was a bad idea in a previous Cassy post last week.
Knott, Sonja indicated that she was from Australia in a post a while back. Hence my comment about the aborigines…
Edward Richardson says: Mat,
If she’s Australian then she really needs to reassess her attitude toward the American military. Were it not for them Imperial Japan would’ve stomped the Aussies. The Japanese Army had an invasion plan on the table and had we not destroyed their Navy’s entire surface fleet, the land down under would be the land of the rising sun. At the very least they would have devastated the civilian population as they did to the Chinese at Nanking and elsewhere.
Only 14,000 of the 21,467 Australian prisoners taken by the Japanese survived captivity. My grandfather had his leg shattered at Guadalcanal beating back the Japanese. His legacy? Australians whining about American might two generations later.
Speaking of American might, after the tsunami that killed tens of thousands in Indonesia a few years back, did you see any country other than the United States send over a nuclear powered aircraft carrier that converted sea water to purified drinking water for the survivors on the islands and coastal areas? I didn’t either. Of course, no other country has a nuclear powered aircraft carrier save the U.S., but I doubt they would have sent one were it otherwise.
Here’s a nice little stat for some perspective on the US and Australia: the entire nation of Australia dedicated itself to sending $50 million over 5 years to help combat HIV in Africa.
One American businessman, Bill Gates, donated half a billion for AIDS research and over $150 million to help fight it in Africa alone.
Before Sonja says “I like the people like Gates, just not the country” let me inform everyone that under George H.W. Bush, U.S. aid to Africa quadrupled from $1.3 billion to more than $5 billion.
Edward,
I’m aware of those battle plans. That was one of the reasons why they wanted Port Moresby so badly in southern New Guinea. It would have been an excellent staging area for their forces. However, I think the plan called for invading northern Australia (which would have been bad enough). I’m not really sure they would have been able to pull off a complete conquest given their army commitment to pinning the Chinese down. But yes, your points are excellent nonetheless.
Your comment on spending was also very good. One thing that kills me is that many people around the world think that we’re stingy with our money because our government doesn’t send a buttload of money to support problem areas. However what these jackasses don’t take into account is that privately, Americans send a huge amount of money from their own pocketbooks for causes and that blows away any likewise “government” support (they did a study on this a few years back and it ended up with a conclusion that private American support equalled worldwide government support worldwide, or at least I’m pretty sure it did).
Guadalcanal was an absolute hell from what I read about it so my hat’s off to your grandfather. I don’t know what was worse, German technology and leadership or Japanese fanaticism (though I suspect the latter). Did your grandfather recover from the injury or did he lose the leg? My grandfather was in Europe (84th Infantry Division) in the Ardennes and northern Germany and almost certainly had it easier (though it was still no picnic). My grandfather never told anyone about his experiences except for me when I was a kid, which I thought (both then and now) as quite an honor.
OH I just HAVE to get in on this.
Sonya you mentioned the Phonix Project in Vietnam. Well let me ask you if you know the whole story of the project? I doubt it as most of it is still classified by DoD.
My father told me last year that he worked in the project for 6 months. He was assigned to MACV. He told me about the men and women he helped to train. the good men and women whose families were slaughtered by the Vietcong. Women who were raped and left alive to be shamed by thier villages.
You see Sonya you do not have the full understanding of any subject you mentioned. Health care in America? What do you care? Hell why should you care? Health insurance is NOT a right but a privilage to those who work hard and take thier health seriously. I’m willing to bet a months pay that you were bred to think these things. Sorry you are wrong. So get on with accepting it.
So a whole nation is not “cool”? What kind of crap is that? Does the United Stated of America want to be cool? Well Obama right now wants to be. But he is a complete moron. I couldn’t care less about what he wants anyway.
American’s are aggogant? To an extent yes but not anymore than most other people on this planet. Have you ever gone on vacation with Germans or English? I have partied with Aussies here in Germany and let me tell you how arrogant they are. they honestly tried to tell me that if it wasn’t for the battalion of troops Austrailia sent to Vietnam we would have gotten our asses kicked out in 67. Seriously a whole battalion did all that? Yah OK.
Have you ever served your nation in war? I have and let me tell you when the green and white tracers are “floating” over your hear you are very very happy with all the fire power you can get. In Vietnam militarialy we smashed the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese. We won every battle fought. We took all ground lost in Tet of 68 and took back more. The press and the politicians lost that one for us.
Afganistan? Please. The Brittish and the Russians tried and failed. We haven’t. But the politicians will loose that one for us also.
Iraq? Hmmmmmmm seems to me that we are handing more and more over to the Iriqis every day. Seems like a win to me. But I forget I am dealing with a military genious who has server many years, in many different wars. Yah OK. I guess my 2 little pissant wars don’t mean much to you.
Which innocents are you refering to? One source says 10,000 in Iraq and a different one says 5 million. hmmmmmm What about the innocent girls in Iraq who can for the first time attend school? What about the villiages in Iraq who have for the first time running water? What about the people of Iraq who have homes? What about those innocent people? Thought so…
Yes we sponsered Saddam. Yep we sure did. But you forgot to mention why. Why is that Sonya? Why don’t you present the whole story. You see there was this bearded guy in Iran who decided he didn’t liek the government in place. Soooooo he got a bunch of people together and they started killing people. Then when he had enough people together he took power. He also took a bunch of Americans hostage. We got our people back but only after President Reagan told them a few things about what our military would do if they don’t give us our people back. These people who took over have keep right on killing, raping and degrading an entire population. Refrence the last election there to fully understand the conditions.
Saddam was against these people and fought a war with them. Have you ever read the book “The Art of War”? I have many times. Very good book by the way. All kinds of tips and tricks to wining a war. One of which is My enemies enemy is my friend. Does that make sense to you? I doubt it. you think every thing has to be roses and unicorns doesn’t it?
Sonya you stay where you are living right now. Please don’t come to the US for vacation. Arrogant people who fail to see a whole story because of thier arrogance are not welcome.
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