Miller Center study says U.S. global image still suffers
Published: October 1, 2009
Global dissatisfaction with the United States persists despite a recent uptick in foreign views of President Barack Obama — and that will be difficult to reverse.
That is the conclusion of a one-year study due out this morning from a task force of 20 political scientists chaired by Jeffrey W. Legro, chairman of the University of Virginia’s Department of Politics and a scholar at UVa’s Miller Center of Public Affairs.
“U.S. standing — its position with respect to reputation, stature, or prestige in world affairs — declined dramatically in the past decade,” the report says. “What’s more, many American leaders and citizens worry that this decline, despite a recent upturn, may be part of a long-term trend — one that will be hard to reverse.”
The American Political Science Association will release the task force’s report this morning at the National Press Club in Washington.
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Reader Reactions
How do they feel about a core foreign policy of appeasement? Dictators and terrorists don’t respond well to a weak president. Are they on board with Obama bending over for Russia and China, and sacrificing relationships with smaller and some recently independent countries? Georgia, Czech Rep., Poland and other countries may put in imminent danger as we saw last summer. This, in return for tepid to weak and still non-existent support from Russia & China on Iran. It seems that Russia and China still want to keep up their business dealings with Iran regardless of whether they develop Nukes to threaten Europe and Israel. In the end, I don’t think Israel will stand for this. What happened to the lovey-dovey relationship with Iran that Obama spoke of in April? Obama’s foreign policy experiments of befriending and softening of tough policies on untrustworthy Dictators is not fundamentally sound. This policy has historically proven not to work all the way back to days of Jimmy Carter and beyond. The world is watch and seeing just how far they can push Obama.
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