Americans are turning their backs on the rest of the world, showing a tendency towards isolationism that has risen to the highest level in four decades, according to a poll published yesterday.
Almost half (49 per cent) said the U.S. should ‘mind its own business’ internationally and let other countries get along as best they can, the Pew Research Center found.
The results appear to conflict with President Obama’s activist foreign policy, including a newly announced build-up of 30,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Only 32 per cent of those questioned favoured increasing U.S. troops in Afghanistan, while 40 per cent favoured decreasing them.
And fewer than half, or 46 per cent, of those polled said it was somewhat or very likely that Afghanistan would be able to withstand the radicals’ threat.
Forty-one per cent of those surveyed said the U.S. plays a less important and powerful role as a world leader than it did a decade ago, up from 25 per cent who said that just before the September 11 attacks, the report said.
Pew Research Center president Andrew Kohut said the ‘very bad economy’ appeared most responsible for the growth of isolationist feeling.
He said the public was also ‘displeased with the wars we are waging in Iraq and Afghanistan’.
While isolationism and unilateralism reached four-decade highs among the public, the stature of China increased.
Among Americans polled, 44 per cent said China was the world’s leading economic power compared with 27 per cent who named the U.S.
In February 2008, 41 per cent said the U.S. was the leading economic power, while 30 per cent said China.
A majority of Americans surveyed, or 53 per cent, see China’s emerging power as a threat to America.
The United States is seen by a comfortable majority, 63 per cent, as the world’s leading military power.
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