Brian Knowlton :
©International Herald Tribune, August 15, 2001
Bush Gets Low Marks in Europe
Poll Finds Wide Disapproval of President's Conduct of
Foreign Policy
Citizens of the four largest West European countries disapprove of
President George W. Bush's handling of international policy by
wide margins, according to a new opinion survey.
The Europeans object in particular to the U.S. president's
positions on global warming and missile defense. They express
only slightly more confidence in him than in President Vladimir
Putin of Russia.
Overwhelming majorities of Europeans in the poll describe Mr.
Bush as a unilateralist, concerned only with U.S. interests. By
margins of 3 to 1 or more, they say he understands Europe less
well than earlier American presidents.
The poll, the first big multicountry opinion survey of reaction to
Mr. Bush's foreign policy, was conducted this month in Britain,
France, Germany and Italy by the International Herald Tribune in
collaboration with the Pew Research Center for the People and
the Press, a nonpartisan U.S. polling group, and in association with
the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations. A poll including many of
the same questions was conducted in the United States, as well, to
compare American and European responses.
The results demonstrate the substantial challenges facing the new
U.S. administration as it seeks to move ahead on thorny and
complex international issues such as environmental protection and
arms control.
"This administration, and the Bush campaign that preceded it, have
been very explicit about pursuing American interests in a narrow
sense," said Dana Allin, a specialist in trans-Atlantic relations at the
International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. "One
shouldn't be surprised if European publics react badly to this kind
of rhetoric."
The survey did, however, find strong support in Europe - in fact,
stronger than in the United States - for Mr. Bush's decision to
keep peacekeeping troops in Bosnia and Kosovo. Europeans also
backed his efforts to promote free trade, and only about 1 in 5 of
the European respondents said the basic interests of Europe and
the United States had grown further apart.
"If there is a bright light in the poll results," said Andrew Kohut,
director of the Pew Center, "it is that most reject the idea that the
U.S. and Europe are drifting apart."
But the Europeans' confidence in the underlying trans-Atlantic
relationship served to underscore the dissatisfaction with the
current U.S. president himself. Disapproval of Mr. Bush was
strongest in Germany and France, where solid majorities disliked
his performance on the international stage.
The president fared least badly in Italy, but even there 46 percent
expressed disapproval, with 29 percent approving and the rest
declining to answer.
In the United States, citizens supported Mr. Bush's international
policy by a margin of 45 percent to 32 percent.
The Europeans gave Mr. Bush drastically lower approval ratings
than they now give his predecessor, Bill Clinton, whose support
among Europeans started low but rose gradually during his
presidency.
"Any new president is likely to have a rough treatment from
European allies who were just getting comfortable with the old
one," Mr. Allin said. Mr. Clinton, he noted, "was ideologically in
tune with the center-left governments that came to power in the
major West European capitals" during his term.
Six months into the Clinton presidency in 1993, Europeans were
complaining that America was showing no leadership, and that Mr.
Clinton, the former governor of the Southern state of Arkansas,
was "goofy" and undeserving of respect. A Tokyo Broadcasting
poll in Japan found that two in three Japanese said they mistrusted
Mr. Clinton.
The IHT/Pew poll was conducted not long after Mr. Bush
completed his first six months in office, when he drew considerable
criticism in Europe from leaders and commentators for actions that
some have said showed arrogant disregard by the world's
dominant superpower for allied views.
Perhaps most salient was Mr. Bush's decision to abandon the
Kyoto Protocol to decrease greenhouse gas emissions, a move
that prompted the highly unusual decision by 178 other countries
to go ahead without U.S. support. Controversy has erupted as
well over Mr. Bush's plan to construct anti-missile defenses, even
if it means withdrawing from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile
Treaty, and over his decisions to temporarily back off from
confidence-building talks with North Korea and to repudiate a
Clinton administration decision to sign an accord to establish an
International Criminal Court. The new administration also has
withheld support for efforts to complete or enforce a biological
weapons treaty, an international ban on land mines, a small-arms
control pact, an anti-money-laundering effort and United Nations
population control programs.
The Europeans surveyed not only objected to Mr. Bush's policies
but also questioned whether he wanted to work with them to solve
common problems. More than 7 in 10 of those surveyed in each
European country said that Mr. Bush acted solely based on U.S.
interests in making foreign policy decisions. Asked whether Mr.
Bush took Europe into account, fewer than 2 in 10 in any country
said that he did. On specific issues, Europeans disagreed with Mr.
Bush's abandonment of the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gases
by a margin of about 8 to 1. That was far greater than the 44
percent of Americans who disagreed with it.
Mr. Bush's support for the death penalty in the United States was
roundly criticized during his recent visits to Europe, and poll
respondents in Italy, Germany and France disapproved of his
position by 2 to 1 or more. Britons were evenly split on the issue.
On the bright side for Mr. Bush, the Europeans approved by
double-digit margins his free-trade policies and decision to keep
U.S. troops in the Balkans.
On missile defense, Germans, long among the most sensitive
Europeans to issues of arms control, resoundingly disapproved of
Mr. Bush's plan to develop an anti-missile system even if it meant
withdrawing from the ABM Treaty. The margin was 83 percent to
10 percent.
The opposition to the missile plan - which critics say could cause
instability in Europe and possibly a new arms race in Asia- was
nearly as large in Britain, France and Italy. "This certainly has to be
a matter of concern to the president," said Robert Jervis, president
of the American Political Science Association, "because he needs
cooperation and support from European leaders, and European
leaders are to some extent responsive to their public opinions."
Mr. Jervis, a professor of international politics at Columbia
University, has said that much of the world sees "the prime rogue
state today" as the United States.
Other analysts have been more sanguine, saying that any
president's first months in office are bound to be bumpy; that
European leaders, at least, have gradually warmed to Mr. Bush;
and that he, like other presidents, is likely to turn increasingly to
international issues and will have no choice but to seek foreign
cooperation.
"If you look at the early European reactions to Carter, Reagan and
Clinton, it was all very simplistic," said Jackson Janes, executive
director of the American Institute for Contemporary German
Studies, at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. "The first six
months is a rush to judgment," he said.
Mr. Bush, moreover, retains substantial support at home on many
international issues.
"His favorable ratings on foreign policy are not bad among
Americans. They're slightly to the positive," said Steven Kull,
director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the
University of Maryland.
"By and large, the American public approves of Bush's handling of
foreign policy," said Mr. Kohut of the Pew Center.
By contrast, Europeans expressed little confidence in Mr. Bush.
Only 2 in 10 French respondents and somewhat higher
proportions of British (30%) and Italians (33%) said that they had
a fair degree of confidence, or better, in his conduct of world
affairs.
Germans gave Mr. Bush better marks, with just over half voicing
at least some confidence in his abilities. Europeans overall
expressed only a bit more confidence in Mr. Bush than in Mr.
Putin of Russia. Mr. Bush edged out Mr. Putin by margins of 4 to
10 percentage points among respondents who expressed a fair
degree of confidence in him, or better, regarding world affairs.
On the negative side of the ledger, larger numbers of Britons and
Italians expressed "not too much" confidence or "none at all" in
Mr. Bush than in Mr. Putin.
The Europeans had significantly more confidence in their own
national leaders. For each - Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of
West Germany, President Jacques Chirac of France, Prime
Minister Tony Blair of Britain and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi
of Italy - a majority of respondents in his country had a fair amount
or a great deal of confidence in him.
Analysts emphasized that one of the central features of Europeans'
dissatisfaction with Mr. Bush was the sense that the United States
was behaving in a unilateral way.
"The interest in which we act is a narrower American interest than
was true, I believe, of previous American administrations," said
Mr. Jervis of Columbia University.
The Bush administration has insisted that it is fully engaged with its
partners. Rejecting the unilateralist label affixed by critics abroad
and in the Democratic Party at home, a senior State Department
official has described the Bush approach as "à la carte
multilateralism." A degree of unilateralism is natural for the world's
only superpower, Mr. Allin said. "But it is a problem for Bush if a
crisis erupts - in the Persian Gulf or Taiwan Strait - where
European views and interests are ambiguous," he said. "His
unpopularity certainly could impair his ability to line up allied
support for U.S. action."
Is Mr. Bush in sync with the American public on questions of
unilateralism?
"He is somewhat out of step with the American majority," Mr. Kull
said. "In general, the public is very pro-multilateralist, and tends to
favor all kinds of international cooperation."