People walk in Red Square during heavy snowfall in Moscow, Russia, Jan 27, 2019.
VOA: Polls Show Americans, Russians Have Evolving Views of Each Other
ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA — Americans’ views of Russia have plummeted to levels not seen since the collapse of the Soviet Union, according to a newly released survey by the U.S.-based Gallup polling center.
The data say 52 percent of Americans see Russian military power as a direct threat to U.S. vital interests, and that a third identify Russia as the United States' arch rival, thereby displacing North Korea from the top position in Gallup's semi-annual ranking of perceived U.S. enemies.
The percentage of Americans who view Russia unfavorably also increased a single percentage point to 73 in the latest poll, a record high in Gallup's trends.
The findings follow a January 2018 poll by the independent Moscow-based Levada Center showed that two-thirds of Russians called the United States their main enemy.
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WNU Editor: The Gallop poll results are here .... Majority of Americans Now Consider Russia a Critical Threat (Gallop). What's my take. Most Russians do not view the U.S. as a threat, and a lot of Russians if given the chance would immigrate to the U.S.. As to the American view of Russia .... groan .... a lot of them still live in the Cold War without realizing how much has changed.
6 comments:
WNU _ I really like Russians, BUT your view is a bit simplistic .. "groan"? You serious?
a. Russia did meddle in US elections - not as much as the MSM wants us to believe, but still
b. Putin just unveiled a load of doomsday devices (not an exaggeration) that are totally reckless.. and I say that as a European.. these devices will at one point malfunction and cause a lot of damage and misery to innocent people.
c. Russian operatives have been found guilty of poisoning targets abroad (e.g. in the UK), but then again the stupidity and amateurism caused them to accidentally (see point b) kill innocent bystanders when they left the poison behind.. how dumb can one be?
d. Doping... just wrecks the image of an entire nation.. on top to then pretend "Russians so strong" only to lose at the olympics bigly when you cannot dope
e. The war in Syria and Putin's support for Assad
f. Putin's support for that Venezuelan pig who managed to f up an entire country that was doing actually quite well
g. Invasion of Ukraine and Georgia -- not forgotten
It's all connected. Again, I am very pro-Russian (people, not Putin), but you have a very simplistic approach to understanding world reaction to Russians.. and doubly so American reaction
a. Russia did meddle in US elections - not as much as the MSM wants us to believe, but still
Agreed. Still it says something about the electorate that this is a danger. I have not expected much in decades from an electorate that is in large part, panem et circenses. That has been discussed since at lead the 1980s. Any voter or politician who goes there is to be despised and thrown into the cold.
F & G Agreed. I do not know that Venezuela was doing quite well, but in comparison to what the witch doctor did, pre-Chavez days of Venezuela were halcyon days.
Personally, I think Russia has been insignificant on the world stage over the last 20 years. Having said that, Putin has put them back on the world stage lately, albeit ingenuously, so it's more about Putin projecting power. I really fear the number of unruly state actors is increasing, with more failing causing permanent damage; at some point, the world will reach a point it will need to react.
On many occasions anymore, if I can't see a sign of some sort to denote from which country the photo originates, I can't tell one place from another. Latest insight....N. Korea and China's city real estate. Fashions, cars, infrastructure....homogenized.
After the 2016 presidential elections, I do not trust polls anymore. They can easily be manipulated, and likely they all are. Yet the media breathlessly reports the results like they mean something. Sickening. As an American, I can assure you that Americans wish to be friends with the Russian people. Now the Russian government, they are to worry about.
Americans had a favorable opinion of Russians after the Cold War, but in the last 10-15 years the behaviour of the Russian government has changed that. Putin sees the world in a very win/lose terms, and wanted to rebuild the Russian empire. It didn't see the post-Soviet borders as legitimate, or that it needed to treat its Near Abroad according to international law and respect their sovereignty. That has negatively changed how Americans view Russia.
Certainly, Russia had a right to complain about some of the West's actions during the 1990s when Russian power was at its ebb, and the West could ignore Russian desires with impunity. But regardless of NATO's actions in the Balkans or some bad advice for domestic reforms, the West did not act as a predatory power, and it went out of its way to include Russia with the G8 summit and NATO-Russia Council.
If Putin did not attempt to stoke discontent in Russian ethnic minorities in neighboring countries (like it has in the Baltics and elsewhere), if it did not try to subvert democratic reforms and the rule of law in its neighbors, if it did not invade Georgia or Ukraine, and if it acted in cooperation with the West, opinion would probably still be favorable.
Fundamentally, Putin views democracy and the rule of law as an enemy to his regime. It is an enemy internally because it may remove him from power. It is an external enemy because it would prevent him from recovering territories the Soviet Union loss. This has put it at direct loggerheads with the West. In response, he is doubling down on those activities.
Russia, right now, is simply a bad actor. And relations with the US is simply not going to be good.
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