US Public to UN: We Support You But Do Better

By John Washburn

March 3 -- Americans told the United Nations in Gallup Poll results released on Feb.19 that the UN must do better. Only 31 percent of the respondents thought that the international body is “doing a good job,” up from 26 percent the previous year, marking the highest approval rating since 2005, when George W. Bush was president.

The Gallup World Affairs and other polls also show that different words in two apparently similar questions can make a sensational difference. It turns out that saying that the UN is not doing a good job is not the same as calling for the United States not to support the United Nations.

Indeed, polls over the years have shown Americans answering questions about US support for the UN with majorities in favor ranging from 55 percent to 70 percent. A 2008 poll by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations had typical results. It reported that 79 percent of those who were asked if the US should strengthen the UN agreed “strongly” or “somewhat.”

In that same poll, the US public was clear about what it wanted the UN to do: members’ authority to enter countries to investigate human rights violations – 73 percent; send marshals to arrest genocidal leaders – 71 percent; and organize and command a standing peacekeeping force – 70 percent.

The recent Gallup poll, conducted Feb. 1-3, also found that 45 percent of Democrats were twice as likely as Republicans (22 percent) to credit the UN with doing a good job.

Gallup has been polling Americans on their views of the UN since 1953. On average, 40 percent of Americans say each year that the UN is doing a good job. The UN got its highest rating, 58 percent, in 2002, just months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in New York and Washington. At the time, the UN Security Council passed counterterrorism measures to restrict the capacity of Al Qaeda and the Taliban from raising money and recruiting supporters. Under the tenure of John Bolton as US ambassador to the UN from 2005-2006, however, the relationship between the US and the UN soured because of criticism lobbed by Bolton against the organization.

The results of the Gallup poll are good news for UNA and UN supporters generally. Disappointment with the UN is that it is doing too little -- not too much -- and that it has not destroyed Americans’ support for the UN. Those views and demands of our citizens precisely fit UNA’s mandate: to strengthen the UN and its relations with the US.

John Washburn is the convener for the American NGO Coalition for the International Criminal Court, part of UNA-USA.