European Institute

A Pew Research opinion survey shows President Barack Obama maintaining his extraordinary popularity in Europe as a global leader – despite some political setbacks at home and abroad.

Ratings of America are overwhelmingly favorable in Western Europe. For example, 73% of French and 63% of Germans say they have a favorable view of the U.S. (Approval rates of America have also jumped sharply in Russia (57%), up 11 points, and in Japan (66%), up 7 points.) The new findings emerged from the latest edition of the annual Pew 22-nation survey of global attitudes. In most wealthier countries, he gets “an enthusiastic thumbs-up” for the way he has handled the world economic crisis.

The glaring exception is the U.S. itself, where as many people disapprove of his approach as approve.

American foreign-policy experts have called for NATO to seek to join in any international re-arrangements for Kirighi, "With the violence around Osh continuing and a very real possibility that the conflict could expand to engulf parts of neighboring Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, NATO and the United States must immediately engage with regional partners to help restore security", according to a New York Times piece authored by a former U.S. ambassador to Moscow.

For several years, the American chattering classes have boiled with feverish discussion about the rise of Islam in Europe and the terrorist threat nurtured by extremists in ghetto-like Muslim communities in European countries. Much of the tone and substance of this discussion about an ominously emerging “Eurabia” has come from books by a handful of prominent American political analysts who charge Europeans with placating the growing Muslim minorities on their soil and thus harboring and inciting Islamic extremism.

Reflecting a general trend in Europe toward economic austerity and nationalism, voters in the Netherlands swung to the right on Wednesday by electing their first liberal (i.e., conservative) presumptive prime minister in almost a century while giving huge gains to xenophobic politician Geert Wilders.