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Contact: Christopher Whitney - 312/821 7516 - CCFR Julianne Smith - 202/745 6665, 202/745 0058 - GMF AMERICANS AND EUROPEANS AGREE TERRORISM IS TOP THREAT Landmark Survey Finds “A World Transformed” One Year After September 11 WASHINGTON, D.C., September 4, 2002—One year after the biggest terrorist attack on U.S. soil, nearly all Americans (91%) believe terrorism is a critical threat to the United States. Terrorism is mentioned most often as one of the two or three biggest problems facing the country, cited even more frequently than the economy. The most comprehensive survey ever of U.S. and European foreign policy attitudes also finds that Europeans believe terrorism is the number one foreign policy threat facing their continent. Large majorities of Europeans and Americans support the use of military force to combat terrorism. Worldviews 2002, a massive survey of how more than 9,000 Americans and Europeans look at the world and at each other after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., was undertaken by The Chicago Council on Foreign Relations (CCFR) and the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF). “The tragedy of September 11 has created a seismic shift in U.S. public attitudes about the world and America’s place in it,” said Marshall M. Bouton, president of CCFR. “Our survey finds that American public interest in world news is at the highest level in the three decades of Chicago Council surveys, with more Americans supporting policies that combine international cooperation with the use of military force.” “Despite reports of a rift between U.S. and European governments, our survey finds more similarities than differences in how the American and European publics view the larger world,” said Craig Kennedy, president of GMF. “In facing a world transformed, there is fundamental agreement regarding friends, enemies, and the need for both the European Union and the United States to play cooperative roles in world affairs.” A large majority (75%) of Americans questioned in the survey favor using U.S. troops to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq, but only 20 percent think the U.S. should act alone. Sixty-five percent of the Americans and 60 percent of the Europeans questioned say the U.S. should only invade Iraq with UN approval and the support of its allies. While the survey finds President Bush enjoys a warm “thermometer rating” of 72 degrees on a scale of 0-100 among Americans, only 53 percent say his administration’s overall handling of foreign policy is “excellent” or “good.” Fifty-five percent of Americans give the Bush administration positive ratings for its handling of international terrorism, while only one in three give the administration positive ratings for its handling of the Arab-Israeli peace process and the situation in Iraq. Europeans rate the administration’s conduct of foreign policy less positively than their American counterparts (38% “excellent” or “good”). Forty-seven percent call its handling of terrorism “excellent” or “good,” and only 20 percent approve of its handling of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The survey shows a sharp increase in the number of Americans (61%) who see Islamic fundamentalism as a critical threat to vital U.S. interests. A significant majority (76%) of those questioned say that, based on the events of September 11, U.S. immigration policies should be tightened to restrict the number of immigrants from Arab or Muslim countries. The survey of public opinion in six European countries finds that more than half (55%) of those questioned believe that U.S. foreign policy is in part to blame for the September 11 attacks. At the same time, a slightly larger majority (59%) of Europeans believe U.S. conduct since the attacks aims to protect the U.S. from further terrorist attacks, not to enforce the United States’ will around the world. ### Sponsoring Organizations This is the first time The Chicago Council on Foreign Relations and the German Marshall Fund of the United States have conducted a joint survey. It is based on the quadrennial survey of U.S. attitudes on foreign policy conducted by the CCFR since 1974. The Chicago Council on Foreign Relations is one of the largest independent, nonprofit international affairs organizations in the United States. The Council provides members, specialized groups, and the general public with a forum for the consideration of significant international issues and their bearing on American foreign policy. The Council's goal is to further awareness and broaden understanding of international relations and foreign policy. The German Marshall Fund of the United States is an American institution that stimulates the exchange of ideas and promotes cooperation between the United States and Europe in the spirit of the postwar Marshall Plan. GMF's programs promote the study of international and domestic policies, support comparative research and debate on key issues, and assist policy and opinion leaders' understanding of these issues. Worldviews 2002 Methodology The U.S. survey consists of 3,262 interviews (2,862 by telephone and 400 face-to-face) comprising a representative national sample of American men and women, 18 years of age or older. The European survey consists of telephone interviews (except in Poland, where the face-to-face method was used) with representative national samples of 1,000 men and women, 18 years of age or older, in each of six countries—Great Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Poland. The surveys were conducted by Harris Interactive in the United States and by MORI in Europe, with the fieldwork for both surveys begun on June 5 and completed July 6 in Europe and July 10 in the United States. For results based on the total sample, one can say with 95 percent confidence that the error attributable to sampling and other random effects is +/- 3 percentage points for each European country and varies between 2 and 4 percentage points for the United States. The U.S. survey has been conducted every four years since 1974. # # #