Support for Israel has damaged America’s standing in the Middle East.
While both China and Russia have improved their standing in the world over the past year, the US has seen its approval rating deteriorate in the Middle East and even in Europe, according to respondents from 53 countries.
Dubbed Democracy Perception Index 2024, the survey was compiled by the German company Latana, on behalf of Alliance of Democracies, an NGO headed by former NATO secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
Russia and China are now viewed as positively as the US in most of the surveyed countries in Asia and the Middle East/North Africa (MENA), as Washington’s approval has plummeted due to the conflict in Gaza. Among Europeans, support for the US has also seen a decline.
“For the first time since the start of the Biden administration, many Western European countries have returned to net negative perceptions of the US,” according to Frederick DeVeaux, the senior researcher at Latana.
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The reversal of previously positive attitudes has been “particularly stark in Germany, Austria, Ireland, Belgium and Switzerland,” DeVeaux said.
America’s global reputation took a beating since last year, in particular in Muslim-majority countries surveyed – Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco, and Türkiye. The researchers attributed this to President Joe Biden’s unequivocal support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
Meanwhile, sentiments on Russia and China in every region except Europe are steadily getting more positive, the survey found.
The European region is the only one besides the US that still supports cutting economic ties with Russia over the Ukraine conflict, while the rest of the world prefers to keep doing business with Moscow. The world is also divided “between the West and the rest” when it comes to sanctioning Beijing if it were to “invade” the island of Taiwan.
The Democracy Perception Index is an annual survey carried out in 53 countries. This year’s research canvassed some 63,000 respondents for opinions about “democracy, geopolitics and global power players.”
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