Who Do You Love?

Tale of Two Wars
Both Iraqis and Afghans have gotten up close and personal with U.S. military forces, but their perceptions of America are worlds apart. Seventy-two percent of Afghans say U.S. influence is positive, but only 27 percent of Iraqis agree. The Iraqis show a similar disdain for BritainWashingtons top coalition partnerbut they are less hostile to Europeans. China and Japan are at the top of the heap in Iraqi eyes. Iraq and Afghanistan also have different views on mutual neighbor Iran: Iraqis lean toward a negative view and Afghans are generally positive. Afghans seem positively disposed to the international powers that have contributed to its reconstruction and have warm feelings toward most major powers. But the first cut is the deepest: Afghans still dont think much of Russia.

Irans Rough Date
Tehran, locked in a game of nuclear brinkmanship with the West, likes to say that it will rally the worlds weak against the rich and powerful West. But it appears few are ready to follow. Respondents around the world rank Iran last in a list of seven countries. In 24 of the 33 countries where people were surveyed, a majority or plurality of respondents said Iran has a negative influence in the world. Iran may imagine that there are many people out there rooting for it as it defies the big powers with its nuclear program, says PIPA director Steven Kull. But this poll suggests that the number of people behind it is quite small and swamped by much larger numbers who are worried about the direction Iran is going.

Red, White, and Booed
The United States standing dropped sharply as a result of the Iraq war, and it hasnt hit bottom yet. Australians, French, Italians, and even the British grew even more hostile to the United States in 2005. The notable exception was Poland, which grew even more pro-American, perhaps because of U.S. support for Ukraines Orange Revolution, with which Poles can identify, and renewed authoritarianism in Russia.

Love on the Rocks
Russia and China both revealed their harsher sides in 2005, and they seem to have paid a price in popularity. Chinas hard-line anti-secession law targeting Taiwan, its fueling of anti-Japan sentiments, and an internal crackdown on civil society are likely to have contributed to its drop in the polls. Russian President Vladimir Putins growing authoritarianism at home and opposition to democracy movements in Russias near abroad sent its popularity sharply downward. The good news? Russians and Chinese are still quite fond of themselves.

Japan the Irresistible
A mild mannered, wavy-haired prime minister plus a relatively stable economy and Harajuku girls apparently make a country lovable. Japan topped the 2005 popularity poll. Japan saw no major upheavals or foreign-policy mishaps last year, whereas China, France, Russia, and the United States all stumbled in one way or another. All but two of the countries surveyed had a positive opinion of Japans influence. Only South Korea and China see Japan in a negative light, a product of lingering wartime resentment stoked by controversies such as the way the Japan records the history of World War II in its textbooks and bluster in some quarters about a more aggressive Japanese foreign policy.

The source for all charts is the poll of 39,435 people that was conducted for the BBC World Service by international polling firm GlobeScan, together with the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland. The 33-nation fieldwork was coordinated by GlobeScan and completed between October 2005 and January 2006.
Note: All values have been rounded to the nearest decimal.

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