"34 percent of Americans agree that Europe should be running the show..."

Flag of the European Union

as we continue to live in our own little world...

(from alternet)

Okay, they hate us. So what's new?

A new poll conducted by GlobeScan and the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) reveals that citizens in twenty out of twenty-three countries would like to see Europe become more influential than the United States in world affairs. The survey tested attitudes toward the five permanent members of Security Council and Europe as a whole. The majority of citizens in only six countries (including my friend's South Korea) view the U.S. role in the world as mainly positive -- a dismal popularity rating comparable only to that of Russia. Here's how bad it is: even China rated higher than the United States in popular assessments of its global conduct. The United States also took the top prize as the country most widely viewed as having a negative influence on the world (in 15 countries), with Russia coming a close second (14 countries). And this in a poll that did not include countries in the Middle East, who would have likely put us way ahead of Russia.

but getting back to the 34%...

[O]ne-third of Americans want Brussels, not Washington, to be calling the shots on the global arena. This trend is a good bit more significant than the six-fold increase in traffic to the Canadian immigration website immediately after the November elections. It buttresses the findings of previous polls that have shown clear majorities of Americans dissatisfied with U.S. unilateralism (and a much higher rate of disapproval of U.S. foreign policy in other countries).

the eu has made no secret of the fact that it intends to be the world's "most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy by the year 2010..."

The U.S. media may not have noticed it but Europe is looking more and more like the winning team. U.S. outlets barely covered one of the most significant indicators of Europe's expanding power -- the inclusion of ten new members in the EU in 2004. The price of this lack of attention will become clear fifty years from now, when American workers are paid in euros and sales from Doner Kebab Hut surpass that of McDonalds. As Norwegian foreign minister Jan Peterson made clear in a recent speech in Oslo, the future belongs to Europe:

"One of eight UN countries is an EU member state. The EU generates about 20 per cent of the world's total GNP. The internal market is the world's largest multinational market. The euro has become the world's strongest currency after gaining 50 per cent in relation to the dollar during the three first years of its existence. There is even a European space agency, which has 200 satellites orbiting the Earth and which is planning to make a European the first human being to reach Mars."

And this from the foreign minister of a non-EU country!

(as a side note to this story, there has been an ongoing, complicated dicussion between norway and the eu about membership which is detailed here...)

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