May 17, 2021

ED FRONTLINES: World sees US as biggest threat to democracy

Posted May 17, 2021 12:08 PM
<b>John Richard Schrock</b>
John Richard Schrock

By JOHN RICHARD SCHROCK

When “The Guardian” summarized results of a worldwide survey, the large percentage of folks who think the U.S. is a bigger threat to democracy in their country took many by surprise.

The Alliance of Democracies Foundation commissioned the Latana polling company to conduct the survey of 50,000 individuals from 53 major countries during February through April of this year. 44 percent of those surveyed indicated the U.S. was a threat to their democracy. Only 38 percent feared Chinese influence and only 28 percent expressed a fear of Russia.

This perception of America as a threat to democracy from around the world has been increasing over time, with the greatest increases seen in Germany and to a lesser extent in China. The European democracies are also generally negative about the United States.

“The biggest perceived threat to democracy isn’t foreign election interference, Russian influence, or the power of Big Tech—it’s economic inequality.”

In addition, “Across the 53 countries surveyed in the Democracy Perception Index (DPI) study, an average of 81% say that democracy is important, ranging from 92% in the birthplace of democracy, Greece, to 62% in Japan. This is a majority opinion in all countries.”

“The countries considered most democratic by their citizens are Denmark, Switzerland, and Norway.”

That the world sees the U.S. as a greater threat to world democracy comes as a shock to many Americans. Yet many responses in this survey confirm this has been their perception over time. Why does the world perceive us differently? The survey does not go into detail, but the answers are simple.

Today, “U.S.A.! We’re number one!” is only true about one factor: we spend more on military that most of the rest of the world combined. We have over 850 overseas military installations. More than any modern country in the world today, they see us trying to tell other countries what to do. The U.S. refuses to recognize the International Criminal Court and a range of treaties and conventions. For instance, the U.S. just vetoed the proposed U.N. Security Council action on Israel.

The U.S. is no longer the leader in science research authorship, international patents, number of scientists graduated, nor in most other indicators of technology leadership.

Aside from migrants, few Americans are bilingual. Nearly half of Europeans speak two or more languages. Many U.S. university foreign language departments are closing due to lack of students. We send relatively few students overseas for study.  When other country’s students come here to study, speaking English and living here for several years, they then return home to build a country that knows us. Meanwhile, we do not know or understand them, their language or their culture.

Foreign students often arrive in the U.S. to find that America has far greater poverty than they were led to believe by media. We are becoming more economically unequal. We are the only advanced country not to provide universal health care. For a wide range of medical indicators, we are nowhere best. We have the highest obesity rate. Before the pandemic, we were the only developed nation in history to lose a month in average life expectancy. We are legalizing addictive recreational drugs.

We appear selfish in our hoarding of COVID-19 vaccines. This survey does address citizens’ views of their country’s handling of this pandemic in detail. Again, we rank low.   

Most Americans know little to nothing about other countries since they only watch U.S. news. Only if an American is killed in a plane crash overseas might they pay attention. Our news networks in turn respond to our unconcern by disregarding most foreign news. —American viewpoint. —American bias.

Our recent “America First” policy is no positive phrase. Much of Europe associates this exact term with our earlier pre-WWII pro-Nazi movement.

American’s form of democracy has problems. This survey reveals that the rest of the world knows it.

Readers can access The Democracy Perception Index online at:
https://f.hubspotusercontent00.net/hubfs/7049607/The%20Democracy%20Perception%20Index%202021.pdf  

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John Richard Schrock has trained biology teachers for more than 30 years in Kansas. He also has lectured at 27 universities in 20 trips to China. He holds the distinction of “Faculty Emeritus” at Emporia State University.