What was america’s standing in the world

Do you think the U. Do you think the United States does or does not have a special responsibility to be the leading nation in world affairs? Because of the United States' history and its Constitution, do you think the U.

Next, we'd like to ask you about foreign trade. For the following countries, please tell me if you believe each has a fair trade policy or an unfair trade policy with the United States. Next, I'm going to read a list of possible foreign policy goals that the United States might have. For each one please say whether you think it should be a very important foreign policy goal of the United States, a somewhat important goal, not too important a goal or not an important goal at all.

How about -- Defending our allies' security? How about -- Preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction? How about -- Securing adequate supplies of energy for the U.

How about -- Promoting and defending human rights in other countries? How about -- Preventing future acts of international terrorism? How about -- Working with organizations like the United Nations to bring about world cooperation? How about -- Promoting favorable trade policies for the U. How about -- Helping other countries build democracies? How about -- Promoting economic development in other countries? How about -- Maintaining superior military power worldwide? How about -- Protecting weaker nations against foreign aggression?

How about -- Helping to improve the standard of living of less developed nations? Good for U. Bad for U. In your view, what is the greatest advantage the United States has over other countries? Next, we'd like you to think about how the United States compares with all other modern, industrialized nations in the world in several areas. For each of the following, please say if conditions in the United States are the best, above average, average, below average or the worst, relative to all other modern industrialized countries.

Next, how important do you think what happens in each of the following countries is to the United States today -- would you say it is vitally important, important but not vital, not too important or not at all important? Turning to the issue of foreign aid, do you think the United States is now spending -- [ROTATED: too little on foreign aid, about the right amount or too much on foreign aid]?

Foreign Trade: Opportunity or Threat to the U. To understand how this moment in U. All of this is happening in the final year of the first term of the most chaotic, loathed, and disrespected president in modern American history. Blair and others were also quick to point to the extraordinary depth of American power that remained regardless of who was in the White House, as well as the structural problems faced by China, Europe, and other geopolitical rivals.

After almost four years of the Trump presidency, European diplomats, officials, and politicians are to varying degrees shocked, appalled, and scared. They have also been unable to offer an alternative to American power and leadership, nor much of a response to some of the fundamental complaints consistent to both Trump and his Democratic challenger for the presidency, Joe Biden: European free riding, the strategic threat from China, and the need to tackle Iranian aggression.

Read: Why America resists learning from other countries. Michel Duclos, a former French ambassador to Syria who served at the United Nations during the Iraq War, and who now works as a special adviser to the Paris-based think tank Institut Montaigne, told me the nadir of American prestige has, until now, been the revelations of torture and abuse inside the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad in What makes things different now, according to Duclos, is the extent of division within the United States and the lack of leadership in the White House.

It was the tone, rather than the music, which alienated him. As the world watches the United States, is it the tone or the music that is causing such a visceral response? Is it an aesthetic thing, in other words, an instinctive reaction to all that Trump represents, rather than the content of his foreign policy or the scale of the injustice? If this is true, is the revulsion against the U. The world has, after all, opposed the music of American policy before: over Vietnam and Iraq, world trade, and climate change.

Bush, who was widely mocked, reviled, and opposed abroad. Put bluntly, Trump is unique. At the most basic level, Bush never recoiled from the core idea that there was a Western song, and that the lyrics should be composed in Washington. Trump today hears no unifying music—only the dull beat of self-interest. Yet if America no longer believes in its moral superiority, what is left but moral equivalence? It is as if Trump were confirming some of the accusations leveled at America by its most fervent critics—even when those claims are not true.

Anne Applebaum: The false romance of Russia. As my colleague Anne Applebaum has shown, the Soviet Union oversaw famine, terror, and the mass murder of millions. Today, with Beijing overseeing the mass surveillance of its citizens and incarcerating one ethnic-minority group almost en masse, the same can be said of China.

And yet this claim of moral equivalence is no longer the smear of a foreign cynic but the view of the president of the United States himself. What, do you think our country is so innocent? Such cynicism—that all societies are as corrupt and self-serving as the next—had previously been wholly rejected by the U.

Today, international relations is little more than a transactional bargain for the United States, and power—not ideals, history, or alliances—is the currency. Demonstrators have marched in Australia and New Zealand, both of which have their own distinct racial divides and history of abuse, as well as in Britain and France, each with histories of colonialism and continuing race and class divisions.

It is remarkable, as Ishaan Tharoor of The Washington Post has pointed out , that it took the death of a black man in Minneapolis for Belgian authorities to pull down a statue of the person responsible for some of the most heinous colonial crimes in history.

For Europe, in particular, continued domination by the U. In London and Paris, however, there is an increasing acknowledgment that this cannot be the case—that there has been a fundamental and permanent shift. Those that I spoke with divided their concerns, implicitly or explicitly, into ones caused by Trump and ones exacerbated by him—between the specific problems of his presidency that, in their view, can be rectified, and those that are structural and much more difficult to solve.

Almost everyone I spoke with agreed that the Trump presidency has been a watershed not just for the U. Words once said cannot be unsaid; images that are seen are unable to be unseen. The immediate concern for many of those I interviewed was the apparent hollowing out of American capacity. Take the confusion over the coming G7 summit in September.

Trump sought to broaden the group, notably including Russia and India, with the aim, I was told, of building an anti-China concert of powers. Spaniards hold the most positive assessments of the American response, but even there, only one-in-five think the U.

On the flip side, in every country surveyed, roughly eight-in-ten or more say the U. And, in 11 of the 13 countries surveyed, half or more say the U. These numbers are particularly low when compared to how publics think other countries and organizations have handled the outbreak.

Consistently, the shares who think the U. Only in Japan does the comparison between the U. In most countries, at least half or more believe their country has done a good job dealing with the virus. However, the U. Attitudes toward political parties also impact assessments of the U.

Those who hold favorable views of right-wing populist parties are more likely than those who hold unfavorable views to think the U. The differences between supporters and nonsupporters on this mark are sharp: Across all 11 right-wing parties surveyed, there are double-digit gaps in views of the American response to the outbreak.

Political ideology also influences how people assess the American response to the outbreak in roughly half of the countries surveyed. In Spain, Germany, Canada, Italy, the UK, France and Belgium, those who identify as being on the right of the ideological spectrum are significantly more likely than those on the left to positively assess the U.

South Korea and Japan — the two nations geographically closest to China among those surveyed — are the only countries where the U.

In Australia, Canada and the European countries surveyed, China is the top choice. Previous surveys have found that the U. But in Canada, Europe and parts of the Asia-Pacific, more have chosen China — consistent with the pattern of findings in the current survey. Overall, ratings have not changed significantly in most countries since , despite the drastic economic challenges spurred by the coronavirus pandemic.

As the U. Just one-in-five or fewer in Canada and Western Europe trust the president to do what is right. The countries surveyed with the highest confidence in Trump are both in the Asia-Pacific region, and ratings in these countries are still very low.

Roughly one-quarter of people in Australia and Japan believe the president will do the right thing in international affairs. In previous years , confidence in Trump has been relatively higher in some countries such as India, Israel, Kenya, Nigeria and the Philippines, but due to the coronavirus outbreak, interviewing is not currently possible in countries such as these where we typically conduct face-to-face interviews. Italy 9 percentage point decrease and Australia -6 points are the only countries where confidence in Trump has decreased since he first took office.

There is a significant gender gap in confidence in 10 of the 13 countries surveyed. The educational divide is relatively small, but significant in seven countries.

In Australia, the UK, Italy, Canada, Sweden, the Netherlands and France, those with less than a secondary education have more confidence in Trump than those with more education.

Relative to the gender and educational differences, ideological differences are greater when evaluating confidence in Trump. The largest ideological divide is in Australia. A similar pattern can be seen in every country surveyed except France.

Mirroring the ideological divide, people who have a favorable opinion of right-wing populist parties in Europe also have more trust in the U. Trump is the least trusted among these six leaders.

Xi also receives relatively negative ratings across the board. About three-in-ten in the Netherlands trust Xi, the highest share among the countries surveyed. Confidence in Xi has also decreased since the previous year in 10 countries. Very few in Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands hold this view, while Italians are the most likely among countries polled to have confidence in the Russian president.

Britons are similarly divided in their opinions of their prime minister. Roughly half or more in 12 of the 13 countries surveyed expect Macron to do the right thing in international affairs.