Tuesday, 12 October 2010

Criticism of US foreign policy

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/views_on_countriesregions_bt/623.php

The website which I came across focuses on the subject of American foreign policy and how it continues to receive heavy criticism on various fronts. There are three polls on this site including "America's treatment of countries", "America's role in the world" and "America's cooperation with other countries".  I will focus on the first poll.

For the first poll it shows that on average two thirds of the countries feel as though America abuses its power and uses its threat of military power to gain advantages, there are varying degrees of this view with Mexico, Pakistan, Palestinian territories, South Korea and Turkey at the top end of the scale with over 80% of people believing that America abuses its power. Even in countries such as Great Britain and France nearly 70% of people feel this way. The US is criticised for failing to abide by international laws, this can be seen in the Iraq conflict whereby the US was seen to somewhat ignore the UN and fabricate information about Weapons of mass destruction, also using its power to convince other countires such as the Britain and Spain along with 48 other countries to back them in this conflict. Eventhough the majority of the public in these countries were against the war it may have been seen as a sensible move to cooperate with America incase of future conflicts.

The majority of people believe that Obama is positive for America but only if he can implement his own policies and do the right thing in international affairs. This hope in Obama still doesn't make people look favorably at America as a whole though.

Steven Kull, director of WorldPublicOpinion.org comments, "Most people around the world seem to have a positive view of the young new captain at the helm of the American ship of state, though many people see this huge ship as still carrying forward domineering policies."

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