TW: Some folks regard an American POTUS being popular in France as either irrelevant or outright bad news (I do not). Regardless the Obama Administration is rapidly restoring large measures of respect for the U.S. throughout the world. Some of the reasons are obvious, less bellicosity and more engagement. Some are more subtle. Building power is not all about guns and even $.From Economist:
"MUCH of the world will resent us no matter what we do, at least when venting to pollsters from the Pew Global Attitudes Project." That's James Kirchik, arguing in the Weekly Standard last October that Democrats were foolish to believe that a restrained, multilateral Obama administration would dramatically improve America's image abroad. And, when the latest Pew Global Attitudes Project data came in last week, it turned out Mr Kirchik had been right—if by "much of the world" you mean "Pakistan and Israel". Pretty much everywhere else, the Obama administration has been punching up America's brand with numbers that would make Don Draper drool.
The leap in confidence that the American president "will do the right thing" was most shocking—not just the jump in France from George Bush's 13% to Mr Obama's 91%, but from 30% to 62% in China! That's, what, 450m people? (Oh, wait—urban China was over-surveyed. Okay, let's call it 200m.) Even in "new-Europe" Poland—don't forget Poland!—Mr Obama scored 62% to Mr Bush's 41%.
Much of this improvement is tied to Mr Obama's personal characteristics and image. But much of it isn't. It's the result of policy shifts America has made over the last six months—some of them below the radar of the American public.
For example, Hillary Clinton just wound up an immensely successful trip to Southeast Asia, ...Condoleezza Rice's visits to the region were much less frequent and this was more problematic for American foreign policy than Bush Administration officials seemed to realise.
...a raft of American and Southeast Asian experts identified a failure to send "appropriate-level" diplomats to regional meetings as a major impediment to improving America's relations in a region increasingly coming under the sway of Chinese "soft power". Experts from Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia complained that America did not seem to be engaged in regional issues and that the low rank of the officials it was sending to the region sent a message that it didn't consider Southeast Asia important..."
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