Well, our popularity has fallen in the US for the US over the last decade, so you aren’t alone…though we still have an 80% favor-ability rating, so that’s something.
I figured I’d like to some videos if anyone is interested. Here is one from YouTube that directly answers the question the OP is asking. This is a broader one on which countries love the US…it has the stat showing that even in the US the US’s popularity has fallen. This one, however, is about countries that hate the US, and Russia is in there as well, so it’s also addressing the OP somewhat. They are only small 3-5 min videos but thought I’d toss them in for the hell of it.
My point, if I actually have one, is that I question the useful nature of this kind of data. Do poll numbers like this EVER influence US foreign policy?
No…why should it? We aren’t in a popularity contest, and frankly what the citizens of other countries feel about the US really shouldn’t affect our foreign policy. It’s just an interesting insight into how we are viewed, especially when there is such a radical change as you can see in Russia from 2011 (where the previous decade it was a slow, steady climb upward) on where it basically radically changed from 50% favor-ability to less than 20% and still dropping.
The recent dramatic rise in anti-American sentiment is directly linked to the conflict over Crimea. If you look at polls prior to 2014, you can see more positive attitudes about the US. But the shift to extreme negativity is not gradual but sharp and clearly connected to the Crimea/Ukraine events. As I mentioned above, the relentless anti-US rhetoric in state-controlled media certainly reinforces negative views.
When I was still in grade school (he was still in West Germany and I would not meet him for another ten years), our sixth grade class read in Junior Scholastic about the *Wirtschafts Wunder * (“economic miracle”) wrought in Germany after the war. My guess is he did not want to admit it. (On a slightly different topic, I quoted a passage in a ballot proposition handbook to him: “If the Soviet Union decides there will be anti-nuclear demonstration in Amsterdam next week, there will be an anti-nuclear demonstration in Amsterdam next week.” He called me “politically naive.”) As you might imagine, his comments on political matters did not impress me.
Exactly Putin’s point about US interference in Ukraine, which is neighboring like Mexico is to the USA - the famous conversation:
[/QUOTE]
Be kind of like if the US was annexing Baja Mexico and had our army on their border (while denying it was of course) at the same time we were destabilizing their government and supporting groups within that would overthrow that government and bring the country into position that we could annex or otherwise subvert the entire nation to our will. Of course, the difference is that we aren’t doing that…while your buddy and his minions are in the Ukraine. So, yeah…that’s a really good example of the differences. Well done!
As to the video, yeah, we’ve discussed that before. Rather than a drive by link, what do you find compelling in the video that demonstrates how the US was behind the Euromaidan unrest in the Ukraine…something that someone who ISN’T buying Putin’s horseshit would believe or at least fine plausible?
He was referring to an allegation that the U.S. exploited other countries economically following WWII. Reminding people of the Marshall Plan (which of course wasn’t entirely altruistic, in keeping with many good government policies) sounds appropriate.
Shhshhhshhh! on talking about the U.S. annexing anything while Bryan Ekers is following the thread.
To treat the OP’s question in a more deferentially serious manner using academic criteria, I believe we can ascribe America’s relative unpopularity among Russians to what I have described in a forthcoming paper as “The Four J’s”.
That is to say, Jealousy, Jingoism (theirs), and Just Plain Bored (when you’re living in a desolate backwater and things are deadly dull with nothing but the next bottle of vodka and Dynamo hockey reruns to look forward to, there can be an irresistible impulse to make a fuss over what Die Amerikans are doing).
Oh, and also Jews (we have too many, or they’re too influential, or something like that).
The Four J’s also explain much of the resentment commonly voiced against USers from other parts of the globe (particularly in op-eds, letters to the editor and Internet forum postings), though there are regional variants and add-on excuses.*
*“how come Football isn’t more popular in America?” “How come you’re not into cricket?” “Waaaaah”
As for the US unpopularity in Russia, I am struck by Putin’s imperialist ambitions and the degree of propagandizing that goes on in Russia, reminiscent of the cold-war era Soviet Union – which is kind of where Putin would like to take Russia in an explosion of expansionism. Lord knows, there’s enough to criticize the US about, but for Putin, the truth isn’t where criticism ends, it’s where it begins. Sometimes it seems that the hallmark of Kremlin propaganda is just making stuff up.
Heck, look at Trump ’ s campaign promise to make America great again. That’ll always have more traction than saying you’re ALREADY great and you don’t even have to elaborate - everyone can just fill in the blanks with their own imaginations of what a great future would look like.
If I may take this discussion in a slightly different direction (but please, continue your trains of thought, in addition to this post:)). I forgot to bring up one important point: homosexuals. They typically hate them in Russia, esp. the male ones. In the USA, we even largely support gay marriage, for the first time in history.
This fact has to make some Russians mad. Am I mistaken?
You are, yeah. US unpopularity in Russia predates the relatively recent US acceptance of gay marriage.
As I’ve said before in this thread, the attitudes of non-Americans to the US - whether those attitudes are positive or negative - is overwhelming driven by (their perceptions of) Americans role in, and actions in, the wider world. 90% of what shapes Russian attitudes to the US is going to be US foreign policy, as it affects Russia and Russian interests. And you could substitute almost any other country for Russia in that statement, and it still holds good.
Seriously, I welcome US sanity with respect to same-sex marriage. I look forward hopefully to the development of US sanity with respect to firearms. But these are not the things which shape my assessment of the US as a global citizen, or my assessment of whether the US is, on balance, advantageous to or detrimental to me, or to the community of which I am a member.
If you keep interfering and bombing the fuck out of peoples around then the world is going to judge you, and in recent decades only one country in the world has bombed populations as a matter of course, while sometimes cajoling other nations to join with it.
Every other country in the world conducts relations without bombing with planes and drones and missiles.
