Posted on: Monday, December 9, 2002

EDITORIAL
Bush doctrine strains benign U.S. image

President Bush has a valid point, of course, when he observes that sometimes the world's most powerful country must carry a lonely burden, no matter what anyone else thinks.

But that doesn't mean it shouldn't care what the rest of the world thinks. A study released last week by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press suggests that Bush's penchant for unilateralism in his first two years in office, ranging from spurning the 1997 Kyoto greenhouse emissions protocol to asserting the right to take unilateral, aggressive, pre-emptive action anywhere, has unnecessarily burdened the United States with growing opprobrium.

But it also suggests that, in addition to resentment caused by rising perceptions of Washington's arrogance, we are increasingly seen as self-centered skinflints when it comes to helping those less fortunate.

Anti-American sentiment is spreading, the study finds. In most Muslim nations, it is profound, but it is growing in the countries with which we most identify, such as Great Britain and Japan.

"Relatively few Americans have any idea of how critically we are seen around the world and the ways we're criticized, and what we're criticized for," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Center. He might have added that many Americans are geographically illiterate and uninterested in how the rest of the world sees us.

But that's no basis for forming American foreign policy.

This landmark study of public opinion in 44 nations finds rising disapproval not only of America's business practices, its unilateralism and policies that are seen as increasing the global gap between rich and poor. It also finds rising impatience with American proselytizing of democratic ideals that it fails to practice uniformly at home.

How the rest of the world perceives us is important. For instance, the Bush administration is proudly lining up the support of the Turkish government for a war against Iraq. But the Pew survey found the 83 percent of Turks are opposed to using Turkish bases to strike Iraq. That contradiction isn't long sustainable.

The survey found huge numbers of people whose chief concerns are AIDS and infectious diseases, pollution and environmental problems, ethnic and religious strife, the gap between rich and poor, poor drinking water, lack of healthcare — and hunger.

The United States, whose per-capita foreign aid is the lowest of the industrialized nations — and growing lower under Bush — is in a position to help lighten all of those concerns.

Americans who travel abroad know there's still a reservoir of respect and even affection for us as individuals. And they know that reservoir is slowly going dry.

Bush belatedly is attempting to build an anti-Iraq coalition. But that's far from enough.