As a philanthropy that believes in following the data, the Rockefeller Foundation has long supported surveys to help us understand how people feel about world events. But as an American, I stopped short when I saw the results of our latest survey. The poll of 35,000 respondents in 34 countries asked people to rank which country poses the biggest threat—Russia, China, or the United States. The U.S. was the number one pick in half of the countries. In fact, one in three people around the world see the United States as a threat—more than China.
Let those numbers sink in for a moment. One-third of the world now fears a country that for most of its existence has thought of itself—with evidence on our side—as the last best hope on earth. When I ran the U.S. Agency for International Development, I recall driving into villages in remote parts of Western Africa, India or Indonesia. Walking into a schoolhouse in the middle of nowhere, I’d see John F. Kennedy’s portrait hanging above a blackboard. People around the planet admired the United States and those like Kennedy because we willfully established our domestic and foreign policy as a means to universal human dignity.
