The United States has become less respected abroad today than in the past, both from the views of international relations experts and the overall U.S. public, according to a latest survey by U.S. research center Pew.
Of the foreign affairs experts interviewed, 93 percent said the United States is less respected by other countries today compared with the past, according to the report released on Monday.
The report, authored by Kat Devlin, a research associate focusing on global attitudes at the center, also shows merely 4 percent of respondents believed America has received as much respect as before, and two percent said that the leading power in the world has got more respect from abroad.
The report is based on a survey conducted in October 2018 by the College of William and Mary, with 1,157 interviewed. The respondents include those who work at a U.S. university or college in a political science department or professional school, as well as those conducting research on international issues.
Among the international relations experts, about 82 percent self-claimed followers to the realist school of international relations theory believed the United States is less respected, while over 95 percent of those adhering to liberalism or showing nor particular inclination held the same opinion.
Pew found a similar conclusion in its own survey conducted one year earlier interviewing 1,504 adults, with 68 percent of whom seeing a decline in other countries' respect for the United States.
A sharp partisan divergence has been displayed among the public overall, with 42 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents claiming that America is less respected and 87 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning respondents saying so.
The report also noted that recent public sentiment about whether the U.S. is less respected around the world looks similar to 2004 in many ways, when then U.S. President George W. Bush was dealing with the aftereffects of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
