A new Pew Center survey on global attitudes was the subject of this morning’s Christian Science Monitor breakfast, where D.C. pundits and reporters periodically converge over coffee and sausage links. Summoned to comment were former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former Senator John Danforth and Pew President Andy Kohut.
Though perhaps the most fun observation was how much Republican Danforth and Democratic Albright, both former ambassadors to the U.N., seemed like a sweet old couple when they disagreed — each back-and-forth had the tone of “Sorry, Sweetie, but I’m gonna have to diverge with you there, even if you do make the darndest bunt cake this side of the Mississippi.” — there were plenty of intriguing statistics that underlay the discussion. A sample below:
1. When asked what opinion they had of China on a “very favorable” to “very unfavorable scale,” 97 percent of Chinese people put themselves in the favorable camp.
By comparison, 49% of Americans said they have a favorable opinion of China (while 85% said they have a favorable view of the United States). And other countries ventured much lower: 34% for India, 30% for Germany, 20% for Turkey – and who would expect Japan, strained as those tensions are across the East China Sea, to top 26%?
So why, one reporter asked Albright, do the Chinese think so highly of their own country? Sure, people tend to overlook their own nation’s faults more than others, but when 19-year-old Chinese workers are throwing themselves out of buildings because of working conditions and 150 million people are living below the $1-per-day poverty line, one might expect that nationalistic affection to have a bit of dent.
Albright’s answer was that while currently hosting the World Expo, Chinese pride is bolstered by the Olympics-esque sense that “the world is coming to China.” However, an estimated 95% of Expo attendees are coming from China itself. Perhaps just those displays of grandeur and international solidarity have been enough to sway opinion: The survey also found that 73% of Chinese people think China-U.S. relations have improved in recent years. Meanwhile, only 25% of Americans said China was more a “partner” than an enemy.
2. Germany’s approval of NATO has dropped significantly — from 73% to 57% — during the last year.
This sparked one of the longest (yet still polite) struggles between Albright, who took the classically liberal line of wanting to bolster existing agencies, and Danforth, who expressed the desire to see NATO replaced — or at least some of NATO’s roles replaced — by a new coalition altogether. Both agreed that, as Albright put it, a team that practices together is better than any team you’ll find in a pick-up game — their analogy for the ad-hoc way NATO troops come together in times of trouble, but Albright thought with a bit more practice and cooperation with other agencies, NATO could be up to snuff. Danforth said the use of NATO started to fizzle when its reason for being, the Cold War, did, and that the U.S. acts too unilaterally within NATO — a feeling the survey reflected in general; in no European country did the majority think the U.S. takes their interests into account when making foreign policy decisions.
What both seemed to gloss over was the problems the E.U., comprising the countries that are central to any such coalition, brings to light on both fronts. In terms of cooperation, EU security forces and NATO are peas that don’t even like to be in a room together, much less a pod. And in the EU, there is an immense amount of “Euroskepticism,” both generally in terms of being involved in supranational organization and in that organization requiring a standing army. “EU is the premier partner,” Albright told TIME of NATO. “And the two organizations have to work together better.” Will that actually happen? “I think so.” (Read with the emphasis on “so.”)
3. When asked whether the U.S. is too religious or not religious enough, 64% of Americans said their country needed to be more religious.
This didn’t come up in the breakfast discussion, but it seemed striking nonetheless. For starters, the wording hides the true question: Is the U.S. too Christian or not Christian enough? According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, almost 79% of Americans are Christian and 16% are unaffiliated. And it’s hard to imagine that the 0.6% of those practicing Islam read the question as regarding whether America is as Muslim as it should be.
Perhaps this is a reaction to having Obama in office instead of Bush. Obama has courted the atheist vote, on White House grounds nonetheless, while Bush famously quipped that he didn’t know whether atheists should be considered citizens. Then again, Obama gave a send-off to his first Oval Office speech that would be hard-pressed to sound more religious. “Tonight, we pray for that courage,” he said of overcoming the BP oil spill. “We pray for the people of the Gulf. And we pray that a hand may guide us through the storm towards a brighter day. Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.”