March 29, 2004-New five-country survey of Western European adults shows few dislike Americans or the United States but most dislike President Bush and his foreign policies.
When people think about foreign countries their views are generally not all positive or all negative. They usually see both good things, which they like, and others, which they dislike. This is certainly true of European attitudes to the United States today.
When people in the five largest European countries think of the United States, they tend, on balance, to feel positively about the American people, American films and television programs, the quality of life in America, and how Americans do business. On the other hand, large majorities of Europeans have negative opinions of President Bush, U.S. policies in Iraq and Afghanistan and of recent American foreign policy. So the phrase "anti-American" is capable of many meanings and is potentially misleading.
This ability to differentiate is particularly strong when Europeans consider the people, as compared to leaders and government policies of the United States.
-- Only 13% of these Europeans, on average, have negative opinions of the American people, and only 33% have negative opinions of the United States.
-- Fully 70% have negative opinions of President Bush; 69% have negative opinions of U.S. policies in Iraq, and 62% have negative opinions of American foreign policy since 2000, when President Bush came to power. Other aspects of the United States which are viewed positively, on average, by pluralities in the five countries are:
-- American films and television (48% positive, 22% negative);
-- The quality of life in America (45% positive, 21% negative); and
-- "How Americans do business" (37% positive, 24% negative).
On the other hand, majorities of Europeans in the five countries have negative opinions not only of U.S. foreign policy and President Bush but also of American food (56% negative, 17% positive). We suspect that this is strongly influenced by perceptions of American fast food chains that are, of course, pervasive across Europe. These are some of the results of a poll conducted online by Harris Interactive and its European subsidiary HI Europe between February 27 and March 4, 2004 among 2,637 adults in Great Britain; 2,547 in France; 1,273 in Germany; 2,407 in Spain; and 1,301 in Italy. It should be noted that the survey was completed just before the bombing in Madrid that killed more than 200 people.
American values, justice and system of government
Most Americans are proud of traditional American values, American justice and the U.S. Constitution. Furthermore many Americans believe that other people share these favorable opinions and look up to the United States, its freedoms and its system of government as a "shining city on a hill." The reality is rather different in the five European countries surveyed. Only a quarter of these Europeans hold favorable views of American justice and governmental systems. Using the averages across the five countries, pluralities hold negative views of American courts and systems of justice (by 41% to 26%) and of the American system of government (by 40% to 26%).
Attitudes to American values are less negative but not strongly positive. A modest 34% to 30% plurality rates American values positively. Here, as in other questions, there are big differences among opinions in the five countries. In general, the Italians have the most positive views of the American system of government (50% positive, 20% negative), of American values (44% positive, 23% negative), and American justice (44% positive, 23% negative). The Germans and French are the most negative on these two criteria.
Very different attitudes in the five different countries
The average results for the five countries are based on very different responses in each country. In general, the Italians and, to a somewhat lesser extent the British, have the most positive attitudes to the United States, while the French and the Germans are the most negative. Spanish attitudes toward the United States (as measured just before the recent Madrid bombings) mostly fall somewhere in the middle, closer to the five-country averages. Some exceptions to this pattern are that the Spanish people feel as positively as the British and Italians toward the American people, American multinational companies and American movies and television.
The relevance of these results to the U.S. election campaign. Senator John Kerry, now certain to be the Democratic presidential candidate, recently said that "all across the world the Americans and America are meeting with a new level of hostility." To judge by these European data, this is not strictly accurate. Our surveys find relatively little hostility towards Americans and not very much towards America. The hostility is focused on recent American policies and President Bush, not on the people or the country.
However, these results do confirm that the administration and its foreign policies are deeply unpopular in Western Europe and that President Bush has antagonized the great majority of people in the five biggest European countries, even though only small minorities there can really be described as "anti-American."
Of course, Senator Kerry and the Democrats may use evidence such as this to criticize the president and his failure to put together more of an international coalition before invading Iraq.
Supporting the United States in the reconstruction of Iraq
Given the high level of European hostility to U.S. policies in Iraq, one of the more surprising findings in this research is the level of support for contributing financially (but not with troops) to the reconstruction of the country. Half or more of the adults in Germany (58%), France (57%), Britain (52%) and Italy (50%) -- but far fewer in Spain (28%) even before the Madrid bombing -- favor their countries providing "substantial money . . . to the reconstruction of Iraq." However, there is very little appetite for "sending substantial number of troops" to Iraq, except in Britain, which is already providing more troops than any other ally, where almost half (47%) of all adults favor this.
Possible linkages between attitudes to U.S. policies and leaders and attitudes to the U.S. and Americans
Perhaps the most important finding in this research is that attitudes to the United States (and surely to other countries also) are not monolithic. Many of the Europeans who dislike President Bush and his policies do not dislike the United States or Americans. Over time, however, there may be linkages with one set of attitudes influencing others.
As this is the first time that Harris Interactive and HI Europe have asked these questions in these five Western European countries, we (unlike the surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press) have no measures of how attitudes to the United States have changed over the last three years. It is evident, however, from the Pew surveys that they have changed and that they moved up and down in response to events.
Historically, it was obviously true that hatred of German, Japanese and Soviet leaders and their policies during World War II and the Cold War fueled hostility toward these countries and their people. These may be extreme cases, but it would be reasonable to assume that if most Europeans continue to strongly dislike U.S. policies and leaders, this would, over time, fuel hostility toward the United States and the American people.
For Complete Breakdown of Attitudes, See here.