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Biggest threat … China or America?
Good news Americans. Europeans no longer view you as the biggest threat to global security. According to a new poll, China has now supplanted the United States in the top spot.
China may have been hoping to garner a positive image in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics, but the issue of Tibet has destroyed that effort.
An opinion poll commissioned by the Financial Times has found that 35 percent of respondents in the five largest European Union countries see China as a bigger threat to world stability than any other country. Last year that figure was 19 percent and in 2006 it was only 12 percent. In contrast, the United States has slipped into second place with 29 percent of respondents viewing it as the biggest threat, down from 32 percent in 2007. The poll was carried out in Spain, Italy, France, Germany, and Britain.
A report on the poll appeared in today’s Der Spiegel newspaper.
Comments
By gwardan
April 16, 2008 12:10 PM | Link to this
We must fight to be number one again.
By West Cobb Dad
April 16, 2008 12:27 PM | Link to this
I agree with gwardan. We are at or near the bottom in all of the education testing against the rest of the world, among other polls. And the ONE thing we are number one in Europe, we have lost out to China. Where is Reagan when you need him?
By sr
April 16, 2008 12:32 PM | Link to this
George Bush’s six years in office have so damaged the image of the US that people worldwide see Washington as a bigger threat to world peace than Tehran, according to a global poll. The Washington-based Pew Research Centre, in a poll of 17,000 people in 15 countries between March and May, found more people concerned about the US presence in Iraq than about Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons ambitions.
By sr
April 16, 2008 12:32 PM | Link to this
George Bush’s six years in office have so damaged the image of the US that people worldwide see Washington as a bigger threat to world peace than Tehran, according to a global poll. The Washington-based Pew Research Centre, in a poll of 17,000 people in 15 countries between March and May, found more people concerned about the US presence in Iraq than about Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons ambitions.
By sr
April 16, 2008 12:33 PM | Link to this
George Bush’s six years in office have so damaged the image of the US that people worldwide see Washington as a bigger threat to world peace than Tehran, according to a global poll. The Washington-based Pew Research Centre, in a poll of 17,000 people in 15 countries between March and May, found more people concerned about the US presence in Iraq than about Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons ambitions.
By Canes
April 16, 2008 12:56 PM | Link to this
George Bush hands down. Too bad the rest of the U.S. falls under Bush.
By tasam21
April 16, 2008 12:56 PM | Link to this
Yes china is really a biggest threat to world as we all notice. during the imperialism period most of stronger country first started their interest in Africa. Which is now at 21st century China is playing that same game for e.g at Darfur, Zimbabwe, Nepal, Pakistan, Burma all the weak country is the puppet of China. Most of Chinese didn’t believe in religion as Mao himself stated religion is useless: he didn’t believe in religion that show how Chinese leader are.
By FarLeftLoons
April 16, 2008 1:25 PM | Link to this
Who cares what the rest of the liberal, pacifist, sitting on their a** world thinks? They sit by and watch Darfur, the Holocaust, Bosnia, Pol Pot. The US should be at the bottom of the list if the rest of the world was fair. Since we’re not, the world is nuts so who cares what they think? Yeah, I’m sure the US is more dangerous than Iran, Sudan, and so on. Right.
By Koz
April 16, 2008 1:27 PM | Link to this
The European Union is the biggest threat.
By FarLeftLoons
April 16, 2008 1:32 PM | Link to this
Don’t forget that the US is the most charitable country in the world. The rest of the world forgets it, or choose to ignore. It would get in the way of their anti-US rants, and then all those Bush effigies would go to waste.
By GS
April 16, 2008 2:24 PM | Link to this
Saudi Arabia.
The Saudis are spreading hate and terrorism around the globe with money we give them when we fill up our tanks.
We are defenseless. They can pull the plug on oil shipments to the US at a moment’s notice. Since they control OPEC, Saudi Arabia can cut off the US oil supply by about 33% (that’s half the imported oil). With their cash reserves, Saudi Arabia can survive a boycott for almost a decade. We cannot function missing that much oil; the strategic oil reserves give us 6 months without OPEC. ANWR is a drop in the bucket.
Face it, the power that Saudi Arabia yields is far more powerful than The Bomb or the Chinese army. Sorry to depress you.
By amy
April 16, 2008 2:25 PM | Link to this
Yes, China is an emerging economic power. Every thing you buy in the store is made in China. But, we have only ourselves to “blame”—we have empowered China by all of these US Corporations who have sent their manufacturing plants to China. They are becoming the biggest superpower as far as the business side of things go, but they have a long long way to go in the human rights arena, treatment of their citizens, starving children, and lack of environmental consciousness. They need to clean up their polluted country. In those aspects they are still a third world country.
By Yeswecan
April 16, 2008 2:27 PM | Link to this
And I thought it was the US media(i.e. the AJC) as the biggest threat to global security.
By DK
April 16, 2008 2:32 PM | Link to this
When you spend almost as much on “defense” as the entire rest of the world combined, what do you expect? If I were a citizen of another country, I’d be scared of us as well. It’s kinda like Chuck Norris. He maybe nice and charitable and all, but if he walked up to you and told you that he’s decided that you’re against him and he is going to kick your @ss, there is very little you could do to stop him. That is the position we place the rest of the world in when we decide to keep spending on defense like the cold war never ended. Add to it an administration that tells our allies that “they’re irrelevant” and “you’re either with us or with the terrorists” and it’s easy to see why people are scared of us.
By Osama Bin Laden
April 16, 2008 2:53 PM | Link to this
As soon as President Bush gets out of office I’ll be back on top. None of the Democrats will stand in my way and Senator McCain isn’t much better. Prepare to become an Islamic State you infidels!
By Tray
April 16, 2008 3:11 PM | Link to this
The U.S. is simply not a threat. We have almost always been a ‘you fire first, then we’ll attack’ Nation. We do have a problem, however, with policing the world. Who declared America to be the nation to rescue everyone else in need? We fought alone for our independence, but yet we help othr countries? Our forefathers built this great nation by themselves…yet we have to help iraq build thiers…WITH OUR MONEY??
Anyways…wrong blog…we really aren’t a threat to anyone, and we’re building missle ‘DEFENSE’ systems, not offensive nuke silos. While i will admit that the US could probably invade and take over ANY NATION ON THIS PLANET, we won’t do it, goes against everything this country was founded on.
Now, we were viewed as the “largest threat to global security. To me, that means it would be the U.S. who starts WWIII-and i do see that coming, unfortunately very soon. I don’t think it’s China, though, I think it will be Iran or N. Korea who starts it.
Example-Iran wants nukes to defend themselves??? How can an offensive weapon be used in a defensive way. It may deter someone from attacking, but if they do attack you on your own soil, are you going to nuke your own country??
By Dan
April 16, 2008 3:16 PM | Link to this
Yep the rest of the world hates us according to the polls, of course if you look at the elections for heads of state over the last 8 years, in most of the economicaly and politically significant countries an anti-american incumbant has been ousted by a pro-american politician. People like to complain, but they realize that free societies have nothing to fear and everything to gain from a positive relationship with us.
By FarLeftLoons
April 16, 2008 3:18 PM | Link to this
Tray,
If we DON’T help other poor nations, we’ll still be hated and the world will call us greedy and selfish. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
By We're Number 2!
April 16, 2008 3:59 PM | Link to this
So - if the US invades Tibet to liberate it from the Chinese - will be liked more or hated more by the Europeans? Such a quandary!
By The Truth
April 16, 2008 5:05 PM | Link to this
Who cares what Europe thinks? If it weren’t for the US then they’d all be speaking German right now. The US is the best country the world has ever known. We’ve helped more people than ANY other country. Who gives more money to help countries? Who did Indonesia cry out to after the tsunami? AMERICA! Not England, Germany or France. Who died for freedom when the rest of the world sat on it’s passive a@#? AMERICA. So all you libs can just shut up All you do is complain about W and don’t do a DAMN thing to help!
By Man
April 16, 2008 5:10 PM | Link to this
I say liberals are the biggest threat to the world. They spread communism and depression throughout America. If it weren’t for liberals we’d have our own oil fields, cheaper energy, fewer prisons, jobs, low taxes and cheaper health insurance. Most lawyers are liberals and they have made health care costs shoot through the roof, caused jobs to go over seas and high taxes.
By Libs Suck
April 16, 2008 5:24 PM | Link to this
‘If we ever forget that we’re One Nation Under God, then we will be a nation gone under.’—Ronald Reagan
Sounds like Reagan knew what he was talking about. Libs HATE Christianity with a passion.
By sgt chris
April 16, 2008 5:49 PM | Link to this
Let’s not start on the French..Why dont we just bring everything american home, let the world police itself? If we invade the country we should have invaded after 9-11, gas would be like .75 cents a gallon..lets go invade saudi arabia!!!
By iewgnem
April 16, 2008 6:04 PM | Link to this
I think its important to differentiate between different kind of threats: economic threat or military threat.
For the US, Europe has always been dependent on the US, they’ve essentially got use to the “threat” already. militarily, the US is invading countries left and right, that’s where the threat is.
China on the other hand is no military threat, even if China don’t have a non-interference policy people hate so much its spending is dwarfed by the US. Economically China is taking more European and American jobs than every before, for the average people doing the survey, its those jobs that hit closest to home.
On a side note: US might be the world’s biggest doner of aids, but lets not forget, they are usually the one that caused the need for aid in the first place.
By Joe
April 16, 2008 7:21 PM | Link to this
Yo SR, why don’t u take your terrorist loving self and move to Tehran. I’m sure you would enjoy your same freedoms and privileges under the Ayotollah and his band of Mad Mullahs as you do here in the USA. What a loser.
By Mike In Woodstock
April 16, 2008 10:51 PM | Link to this
another hate America blog, proudly brought to you by the AJC. I’ll bet anyone on this board $100 that the AJC will not run a single negative article about America if Hillary or Osama wins the election.
By Scooter
April 17, 2008 7:39 AM | Link to this
Sad!
Hey hows that circulation going?
By Carbon Footprint
April 17, 2008 8:04 AM | Link to this
The question is not who’s the bigger military threat. The question is who will cause the shortest lifespan.
The chinese diet will allow a man to live to be 130 years old. The american corn based diet: half that. We graze. They respect their bodies.
Corn: it’s not food. It’s feed.
The way to defeat the chinese is to put a American Restaurant on every street corner.
The only problem I can see is that there isn’t one chinaman in 1 billion that can pronounce “Hamburglar” correctly….
…perhaps a course in Chi-bonics.
By Sol Rosenberg
April 17, 2008 8:25 AM | Link to this
Liberals keep complaining that George Bush has “so damaged our status in the world.” The very fact that libs have done nothing but bash George Bush and poor millions of dollars into moveon dot org, is the reason that we are viewed in a negative light. We are all Americans and need to respect our President and put differences aside.
By whatever
April 17, 2008 9:19 AM | Link to this
The Chicoms indeed represent a military threat. All they have to do is throw up a sat with a few million ball bearings in the path of a couple of our gps sats to take out our c and c. Remember last year when they used a kinetic kill weapon on their own sat? It’s funny how you guys always see it in liberal v. conservative terms. It’s ball bearings v. satellites.
By FarLeftLoons
April 17, 2008 9:29 AM | Link to this
iewgnem, you’re an idiot. The US is in no way responsible for the poverty and disease in other countries. Corruption and ignorance in those countries are responsible. Fanatical religion is the other reason (especially throughout the middle east). Not our fault.