Gallop: Russians' Approval of U.S. Leadership Drops to Record 1%
* Rating in Russia is lowest in a decade for U.S.
* Median approval stable at 45% worldwide
* Image of U.S. leadership improves in Europe, the Americas
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Just 1% of Russians approved of U.S. leadership in 2015 -- the worst rating in the world last year and the lowest approval Gallup has measured for the U.S. in the past decade. Remarkably, this is even worse than their previous record-low 4% approval in 2014.
The current record-low rating of 1% in Russia reflects the increasingly tense relations with the U.S. since the crisis in Ukraine and the threat that many Russians, as well as residents of several former Soviet states, feel the U.S. now poses to their countries. In fact, Commonwealth of Independent State (CIS) countries again dominated the list of least-approving countries in 2015, with ratings also in the single digits in Belarus (9%) and Kazakhstan (8%). The only non-CIS country or region at the bottom of the list is the Palestinian Territories (9%).
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Update: Gallup: Just 1% Russians approve of U.S., Obama, far worse than Bush (Washington Examiner).
WNU Editor: And that is a "soft" 1%.
With some of the reporting coming from the Russian media it seems hardly surprising that support for the US is low. Furthermore given this one-sided reporting it's not hard to understand whay some NATO officials would conclude that negotiation is impossible.
ReplyDeleteWith that said Russia has the most powerful military on force on earth. Being despised by the world's most powerful country cannot be good.
I see three basic ways to deal with this. 1.) Wholesale, complete, and unconditional surrender, 2.) Deploy our nuclear and conventional forces in ways that make the inevitable Russian victory pyrric enough that they would not consider attacking us in the first place. 3.) Look for ways to add value to Russua and it's leaders. A good place to start here is probanbly Ukraine. Essentially support Russia's position here. While I would not expect western Europe to change position because we do but it should, in time, lessen tensions. Additionally, a withdrawl from NATO is probably in order. This "alliance", does not seem to help our national defense, seems to undrmine it, and is enormously costly. Such poljcy may dven help lessen tensikn with Russia.
I do NOT advocate option 1 but would consider it if it is the ONLY way to save 300+ million lives. Our best options seem to be a combination of 1 and 2.