Last week saw the publication of three important pieces of research into public opinion around the world: an assessment of what American citizens think of their governments foreign policies; a survey of what people in other countries think of the US; and most remarkably a report on what Iraqis inside Iraq are saying with increasing frankness about the future of their country.
It adds up to a fascinating snapshot of world opinion. Opinion is deeply divided. One persons reasonable belief is another persons delusion. Here are some of the salient findings.
US good on terror, bad on global warming
The Program on International Policy Attitudes asked US citizens for their Ratings of US Foreign Policy.
American citizens were asked how well they thought the Federal government was dealing with a range of international problems and issues.
On balance, Americans thought their government was doing well in the war on terror and in relation to Iraq. They were less emphatic but still generally positive on US handling of nuclear weapons proliferation, international trade, promoting democracy and human rights in other countries, and making the United Nations (UN) more effective.
They were pretty evenly split on US responses to world hunger and the administrations approach to the IsraelPalestine question. But they were critical of US input on tensions between India and Pakistan and the world AIDS epidemic. By an even larger margin, they believe the US is doing very badly on international drug trafficking and global warming.
US citizens were asked how they thought people in other countries would rate how well the US is managing its foreign policy. Overall, Americans believed that foreigners had a rather negative view.
Muslim nations: suicide bombing 'can be justified'
This last finding is born out by research in forty-four countries by the Pew Charitable Trusts published in What the World Thinks in 2002.
Pew was not permitted to ask sensitive questions in some important countries such as China or to do any polling at all in others, such as Saudi Arabia. But the combined surveys add up to one of the largest simultaneous efforts to gauge world opinion ever conducted.
Negative opinions have increased in most nations over the past two years. But people in most non-Muslim countries continue to view the United States favourably.
Favourable views of the United States declined in Britain from 83 to 75 per cent and in Germany from 78 to 61 per cent. In Russia, by contrast, they increased in from 37 to 61 per cent. There were also striking increases in favourable opinions in two countries with significant Muslim populations: Uzbekistan (from 56 to 85 per cent) and Nigeria (from 46 to 77 per cent).
The US campaign against terrorism was opposed by most people in countries that have a large Muslim majority: in Egypt, 79 per cent opposed US actions, in Jordan 85 per cent, in Indonesia 64 per cent, in Lebanon 56 per cent, in Senegal 64 per cent, in Turkey 58 per cent and in Indonesia 64 per cent. Pluralities took that view in Pakistan (45 per cent) and Bangladesh (46 per cent).
The only other non-Muslim countries surveyed where majorities opposed the effort against terrorism were Argentina and South Korea. Argentina, in the midst of an economic crisis when the survey was taken in the autumn, was critical of the United States on several other measures. In South Korea, relations with North Korea where Seoul holds different views from Washington was probably an important factor.
But throughout Europe, at least two-thirds of the public backed the US war on terror, and in the predominately Muslim central Asian nation of Uzbekistan, now with a significant presence of US troops, 91 per cent supported it.
The findings on Turkey, where the Pentagon wants to use air bases and ports in case of war with Iraq, are striking. Favourable views of the US have dropped from 52 to 30 per cent in the past two years. Only 30 per cent of Turks said they supported the campaign against terrorism and 74 per cent said the United States did not pay either much or any attention to Turkeys interests when setting policy.
But perhaps the most extraordinary finding in the surveys was on attitudes to suicide bombing. People in fourteen countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East were asked if they believed that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets are justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies.
Majorities said it was often or sometimes justified in Lebanon (73 per cent) and Ivory Coast (56 per cent). More than 40 per cent in Bangladesh, Nigeria and Jordan, and more than 25 per cent in Pakistan, Indonesia, Ghana, Mali, Senegal and Uganda said suicide bombing was justifiable.
Iraq: come, kindly bombs
openDemocracy continues to publish the voices of Iraqis themselves during this time of crisis. All the voices we have published are those of exiles. Now, the International Crisis Group (ICG) reports on something even more remarkable, Voices from the Iraqi Street.
During a three-week visit to Baghdad, Mosul and Najaf undertaken in SeptemberOctober 2002, ICG says it found virtually all Iraqis it encountered to be far more willing to talk than expected and far more willing than on previous occasions. This fact alone is a strong indication of the regimes diminished ability to instil fear and of the feelings shared by many Iraqis that some kind of political change is now inevitable.
The attitudes of ordinary Iraqis toward a US strike are complex. There is some concern about the potential for score-settling that might accompany forceful regime change. But the overwhelming sentiment among those interviewed was one of frustration with the status quo. Perhaps most widespread is a desire to return to normalcy and to put an end to the abnormal domestic and international situation they have been living through. A significant number of those Iraqis interviewed, with surprising candour, said that if such a change required an American-led attack they would support it.
Thoughts about a post-Saddam Iraq remain extremely vague and inarticulate. Iraqis at home appear genuinely uninterested in topics that currently are consuming both exiled Iraqis and the international community such as the make-up of a successor regime and the question of federalism as a means of accommodating political aspirations of Iraqs various political communities. The Iraqi regimes repression has devastated civil society and any autonomous form of political organisation. The result is a largely depoliticised and apathetic population.
The notion of leaving the countrys destiny in the hands of an omnipotent foreign party has more appeal than might be expected and the desire for long-term US involvement is higher than anticipated. This appears to be premised on the belief that any such military action would be quick and clean and that it would be followed by a robust international reconstruction effort.
The opposition in exile, touted by some in the international community as the future foundation of Iraqs political structure, is viewed with considerable suspicion and, in some instances, fear.
A wide gulf separates the attitude of Iraqis from that of much of the rest of the world. For the Iraqi people, a state of war has already existed for two decades. The question is not whether a war will take place. It is whether a state of war finally will be ended.