by Staff Reporter
March 14, 2013 (TSR) – The median approval of U.S. leadership across 130 countries declined to 41 percent in 2012, down by 8 percentage points from 2009, the first year of President Barack Obama’s administration, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday.
The image of U.S. leadership continued to be the strongest worldwide in Africa in 2012, bolstered by strong majority approval in sub-Saharan Africa. However, this strong support in the subcontinent, which first showed signs of weakening in 2011, waned more in 2012.
U.S. leadership remains far less popular in North Africa, except in Libya, where U.S. support for the revolution may have generated an almost unprecedented level of goodwill toward America. A majority of Libyans (54%) surveyed before the attack in Benghazi approved of U.S. leadership in 2012.
In Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Egypt, no more than one-third approved and ratings remained mostly flat. Algerian approval of U.S. leadership is down slightly since 2011, dropping from 37% to 30%.
While the U.S. image stabilized in the Americas in 2012, it slipped in Europe amid economic turmoil on the continent. Median approval of U.S. leadership in Europe declined to 36 percent from 42 percent in 2011, and 47 percent in the first year of Obama administration.
Median approval of U.S. leadership in Europe has slipped 11 points since Obama’s first year in office but was still twice as high in 2012 as it was during the last years of the Bush administration. Half of the loss took place in the last year alone, suggesting the U.S. was likely shouldering some of the blame for the ongoing financial crisis in Europe. A median of 36% approved of U.S. leadership last year, down from 42% in 2011.
Losses in approval largely outnumbered any gains in Europe, but ratings in many countries remained stagnant.
U.S. leadership failed to regain favor in countries such as France, Spain, and Sweden, where approval fell below the majority level in 2011 and stayed there in 2012. Further, views of U.S. leadership continued to worsen in some countries hard hit by the economic crisis, suffering double-digit losses in Hungary, Croatia, Macedonia, and Austria.
Although the Obama administration shifted its foreign policy focus to Asia since 2011, the approval ratings of U.S. leadership there were found to be heading in a negative direction in 2012. Still, the 37 percent median approval in Asia in 2012 was higher than any rating during the Bush administration.
In fact, the highest disapproval rating of U.S. leadership was in Pakistan, where 79 percent of the surveyed held negative views, followed by Palestine where the disapproval rating stood at 77 percent. Pakistanis’ disapproval soared 30 percentage points between 2012 and 2011, amid an increase in U.S. drone attacks and massive protests against an anti-Islam U.S. film released in last September.
U.S. leadership faces increasing challenges as it attempts to build engagement worldwide, and in many places, this job may be even tougher than it has been in the past and thus far has been unable to recoup the favor it lost among audiences in key countries in 2011 and has continued to lose support in many places.
This shift suggests that President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, who took office in February, “may not find global audiences as receptive to the U.S. agenda as they have in the past,” Gallup said.
In fact, USA may even find even once-warm audiences increasingly critical.
