Europeans seeing a more dangerous world?
WASHINGTON — This year’s Transatlantic Trends shows that U.S.-European relations are less and less about how we feel about each other and more and more about what we can do together in the world. Unsurprisingly, Europeans didn’t wake up this past year and fall in love with the current U.S. administration. Those numbers bottomed out in 2004 and have flatlined since then, with only 17% of European who support President Bush’s international policies. What has changed is how Europeans see international threats, with increases in the percentages of Europeans who feel likely to be personally affected by international terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism, and large numbers of immigrants or refugees coming into their countries. It’s led to something of a convergence on these issues — in 2005, the gap between the U.S. and Europe on international terrorism was 18%, now it’s 8%, on Islamic fundamentalism, it was 10% in 2005, now it’s 5%.
But Europe hasn’t had any major attacks in the past two years, some observe. Yes, but as this week’s story about the plot on German airports shows, thwarted attacks can have a powerful impact on people’s perceptions as well. Last summer, an uncovered plot on the German rail system woke up the German public to the unfortunate reality that they are not, as they sometimes say, an “island” immune to the threat of global terror since they didn’t participate in Iraq. German Interior Minister Schaueble has been making this case in the German press for months, and it seems to have registered with the public — the largest increases in threat perceptions took place in Germany. To be clear, Germany had the lowest threat perceptions on these issues in 2005 but these increases bring it closer into line with the European averages.
Does this mean we’ll all agree on everything going forward? Of course not. The thwarted attacks have led to a vigorous debate about civil liberties and government powers, a debate that’s been happening on both sides of the Atlantic. But it might be a good start, a foundation for at least seeing the same threats and discussing what to do about them. And our poll numbers support this: even though Europeans continue to dislike President Bush’s international policies, 54% of Europeans who feel the EU should take greater responsibility for dealing with international threats also think the EU should do so in partnership with the United States.