STANDING MATTERS. Yikes. The only two countries viewed less favorably than the US are Israel and Iran? We need to work on our people skills. Look, I know that folks on the right like to dismiss these international surveys as equivalent in importance to high school yearbook awards, but there's a serious diplomatic point lurking in here. Broadly speaking, when we're popular with the citizens of other countries, it is popular, or at least achievable, for their governments to support our initiatives. When we are not, it becomes much easier for foreign politicians to achieve easy popularity by standing up to the uncouth Americans. In other words, our international image governs the incentives other countries have to cooperate with us. When it's down, the incentives point against cooperation -- and thus our agenda items go unfulfilled. Moreover, as you've seen in Latin America and Europe, it become politically rewarding to "stand up" to America, and thus even governments that would quietly stand with us are forced into relative opposition by domestic political competitors eager to levy charges of capitulation and lap-doggery. The more interesting argument against consciously working to improve our international standing is, as someone put it in at an event I recently attended, the "if you gives a mouse a cookie" concern. Under this construct, any attempt to change our policy to appease international criticism will only demonstrate weakness to other countries, and so they will keep raising the bar for their approval. That seems dangerously misguided. When the mouse asks for a cake, you can always say no. But until we offer up some cookies, when we ask the mice for anything, they're going to say no, too. --Ezra Klein
