(NEW YORK) MintPress — As the debate continues in Washington, D.C. over how far the U.S. should go in providing support to the opposition in Syria and taking measures to ensure aid groups’ access to the civilian population, it highlights the extent to which political and humanitarian concerns are so often intertwined when it comes to deciding how to proceed.
Strategic and moral considerations aside, the Pew Research Center, the nonpartisan Washington-based “fact tank,” has been looking at another related issue: whether American disaster relief boosts its image in the recipient country. The answer is mixed.
While American humanitarian assistance for Japan after last year’s earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis appeared to help, as did aid to Indonesia after the tsunami of 2004, not all countries, among them Pakistan, are as grateful.
Jump in U.S.-Japan relations
The numbers speak for themselves. In March, 2011, the U.S. launched Operation Tomodashi, which was an unprecedented effort by Washington and the American military to provide help to Japanese quake and tsunami victims. The operation, which lasted from March 12 until May 4, involved nearly 24,000 service members, 189 aircraft and 24 naval ships, at a cost of nearly $90 million.
In Japan, according to Pew, America’s image was already quite positive before the crisis. Roughly two thirds (66%) of the respondents to a spring 2010 survey by its Global Attitudes Project expressed a favorable view of the U.S. A year later, in a pew survey conducted just weeks after the tsunami, 85% gave the U.S. a positive rating, the highest percentage among 23 nations polled.
Tellingly, Japanese public opinion also shifted on an issue that’s often seen as a weak spot of America’s global image: the perception that the U.S. tends to ignore the needs of other countries unless it wants something in return. In 2010, just 31% of the respondents said the U.S. takes into account the interests of countries like Japan. A year later, 51% held this view.
The fact that the operation was so successful didn’t hurt. A November, 2011 report by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and Japan’s leading business lobby, noted Operation Tomodachi went well because it was a peacetime operation carried out in a single country. Not to mention one that wasn’t suspicious of American motives.
Improvement in Indonesia
Humanitarian efforts in Indonesia also led to a more positive image for the U.S., even in a predominantly Muslim nation where opinions of the U.S. had turned largely negative after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Before the Iraq war, the U.S. was generally popular in Indonesia, but in a 2003 poll taken after the war began, only 15% of Indonesians expressed a favorable opinion of the U.S.
Pew surveyed Indonesia again in the spring of 2005, just months after the December, 2004 tsunami that struck the Bandeh Aceh region and other parts of the country. Roughly eight out of ten (79%) people said that the significant amount of aid from the U.S. had improved their impression of America, and positive views of the U.S. more than doubled, rising from 15% in 2003 to 38% in the 2005 poll.
Still, the Indonesian results also illustrate the limits of the effect that aid can have. Although attitudes towards the U.S. improved significantly in 2005, they didn’t return to pre-Iraq war levels. America’s image only truly recovered in 2009 after President Barack Obama, who spent many of his childhood years living in the Indonesian capital Jakarta, took office.
Problems in Pakistan
Following the major earthquake in northern Pakistan in October, 2005, the U.S. pledged significant levels of aid, eventually totaling more than $500 million. A Pew survey of the following spring found that the vast majority of Pakistanis were aware of American relief efforts, and the views of the U.S. improved slightly, with 27% of the respondents giving the U.S. a positive rating, up from 23% the previous year.
But even that modest level of goodwill soon eroded. By spring of 2007, U.S. favorability had slipped to 15% in Pakistan. And the U.S. received no image boost in 2011, despite providing nearly $600 million in disaster relief following the floods in the summer of 2010 that affected as many as 20 million Pakistanis.
In fact, according to Pew, about seven-in-ten Pakistanis see the U.S. as an enemy; less than 10% consider it a partner. Relations have been problematic since the 9/11 terrorist attacks . Under pressure from the U.S., Pakistan joined the subsequent War on Terror as an American ally. Thousands of civilians and troops have been killed as a result.
The situation further deteriorated after a November clash on the Pakistan-Afghan border in which a U.S. air assault killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. Other 2011 incidents that America’s image hard: the shooting deaths of two Pakistanis by a CIA contractor in the city of Lahore, and the U.S. Special Operations raid that killed Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani suburb .
Lessons learned
The Pew study concluded that “the lesson for disaster relief efforts is that they are more likely to have a significant effect on public attitudes in countries where there is at least a reservoir of goodwill toward the U.S. In nations such as Pakistan, where countervailing issues and deeply held suspicions drive intense anti-Americanism, enhancing America’s image through humanitarian aid may prove considerably more difficult.”
Still, there is another lesson to leave with: In times of humanitarian emergencies, help should be offered even if gratitude isn’t expected. Consider the case of the earthquake that struck southern Iran in December, 2003.
In the aftermath of the quake in Bam, which killed some 30,000 people, the U.S, which had not had diplomatic relations with Tehran since the 1979 revolution and American hostage taking, sent in more than 200 personnel and over 150,000 pounds of medical supplies.
Then President Mohammad Khatami thanked Washington, noting, “Humanitarian issues should not be intertwined with deep and chronic political problems.”