Most Americans think US should 'mind its own business' abroad, survey finds

Secretary of state John Kerry. The survey suggests Americans are eager for less intervention in foreign policy. Photograph: Francois Lenoir/Reuters

A majority of Americans believe the US plays a less important and powerful role in the world than it did 10 years ago, according to a long-running study that found that most people now believe America should “mind its own business internationally”.

It is the first time the survey of US foreign policy attitudes has recorded such a sentiment in almost four decades of polling. 

The findings, published on Tuesday by the Pew Research Center in association with the Council on Foreign Relations, suggest Americans want their leaders to adopt a less interventionist approach, although there is a growing desire for the development of stronger trade and business links abroad.

The US is now widely seen as less respected abroad, bucking a trend in which Americans believed their reputation had recovered since Barack Obama was elected. Impressions of how the US is perceived under Obama are now, broadly, as negative as they were in the final days of the George W Bush administration.

That may stem partly from a belief that America's power is in decline. According to the poll, Americans’ views about the geopolitical clout of their country has reached a historic low, with a majority (53%) for the first time believing that the US plays a less important role than it did 10 years ago. The proportion saying the US is less, rather than more, powerful has increased 12 points since 2009 and has more than doubled – from just 20% – since 2004.

The survey was conducted in a year in which the US pulled back from a military intervention in Syria, chose a diplomatic route to secure a nuclear deal with Iran and sought to contain the international fallout over disclosures by whistleblower Edward Snowden about the reach and nature of surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency.

The American public appears generally divided over Snowden’s leaks, and on related questions about the correct balance between security and civil liberties. Most of those questioned (55%) said Snowden’s revelations, which were first published in the Guardian in June, had “harmed the public interest”, although a sizeable minority of 34% said the whistleblower had “served the public interest”.

Perhaps surprisingly, the proportion of Americans who said the government’s anti-terror policies have gone too far in restricting civil liberties of average people has declined slightly since July, from 47% to 44%.

However, those critical of the impact of counter-terrorism policies on civil liberties still outweighs the 39% of Americans who believe national security programs have not gone far enough.

The poll confirms a significant shift in public attitudes, with growing concern about the privacy implications of national security efforts. As recently as January 2010, 58% of Americans expressed greater concern that government policies had not gone far enough to provide protection from terrorism, compared to only 27% who believed than that they had gone too far.

In broad terms, the survey is likely to be interpreted as evidence that President Obama’s cautious approach to foreign policy is backed by a public wary of becoming too embroiled in problems abroad. 

However, most people surveyed disapprove of the president's handling of foreign policy, with particularly negative views reported of his handling of China, Afghanistan, Syria and Iran. Terrorism is the only foreign policy area on which more Americans approve of the job Obama is doing than disapprove. 

Exactly half of Americans believed the use of drone strikes against terrorist suspects in Pakistan and other countries has made the US safer – while only 14% say it has made the US less safe.

The latest survey, repeated every four years since 1993, was conducted in the week before November 6, before the interim deal with Iran – aimed at halting its nuclear program – was forged in Geneva. 

But it highlights the scale of challenge for the US administration in selling an agreement with Tehran to the American public. According to the survey, 60% of Americans believe Iran’s leaders are “not serious” about addressing international concerns over their nuclear enrichment program. 

One of the starkest findings in the survey was in response to a question about whether the US should “mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own”. 

A majority of respondents – 52% – said they agreed with the statement, while just 38% disagreed. The authors of a report accompanying the survey described it as “the most lopsided balance in favor of the US ‘minding its own business’ in the nearly 50-year history of the measure”.

The results show how much public opinion has changed since 2002, when just 30% of Americans believed the US should mind its own business. 

Views on geopolitical influence in the world, however, contrast with American perceptions about the global economy. More than three-quarters of those polled were supportive of growing economic ties with other countries. Echoing other surveys, most Americans appear to believe that China is a stronger economic power than the US.

How a creationist fatwa proved a shocking example of Wahhabi Islam's influence

A fatwa was issued against Hasan, saying that 'his support for women going bareheaded if they wished, and for a secular form of government, were sufficient grounds for a death sentence'. Photograph: Scott Barbour/Getty Images

Usama Hasan was the imam of a mosque in Leyton until he was driven from the post by death threats. This is perhaps the most extreme reaction there has ever been to an article on Comment is free: the death threats were the response of a section of his congregation to a piece he wrote here defending the truth of evolution. He kept his head down for a couple of years after that, to protect his family, but has now resurfaced as a fellow at the Quilliam Foundation, the counter-extremism thinktank.

At the weekend, he was in Salisbury, at the Muslim Institute's Winter Gathering, and I chaired a discussion with him there on creationism among Muslims. In close-up his story was even more shocking than it appears in summary. A visiting Saudi cleric issued a fatwa, from the Green Lane mosque in Birmingham, that supported his enemies in the congregation: not only did it explain that anyone who denied creationism was an apostate, who could (and should, in an ideal state) be killed, but that his support for women going bareheaded if they wished, and for a secular form of government, were also sufficient grounds for a death sentence.

Since these judgments were circulated in jihadi circles, Hasan and his family were in real danger as a result and were granted police protection for a while.

This is shocking enough as an example of what Saudi influence on British Islam can lead to. I'd like to believe that visiting preachers are now rather more careful about what they say in public. But in the absence of hard evidence either way I will maintain an attitude of suspicion. Wahhabi Islam really is a loathsome and dangerous ideology.

We knew that, already, of course. It's good to be reminded. But there are some small aspects to his story that deserve consideration. I asked him which of the three "crimes" he had been charged with was the most serious. It's not easy for the western mind to understand how they fit together. To us, evolution is a scientific theory, the headscarf is a matter of fashion, and secularism is a political programme. How can any of them – let alone all of them – be considered so dangerous that their proponents must be killed? Which was the real offence?

He replied that they were all equally serious, except that to some people the headscarf mattered less – to others it was the most important. They all appear to fanatics as unpardonable violations of a pure Muslim identity.

In this country, of course, secularism is unavoidable, and so is the knowledge that many Muslim women choose not to wear headscarves, and many more the full veil. But creationism can remain an invisible marker of Muslim identity and there's some reason to suppose that it remains so.

Nearly half the audience in Salisbury had been raised as creationists, and they are a core part of the intellectual elite of Islam in this country. Many in fact worked as scientists. But it emerged clearly that you can be a creationist without it affecting any other part of your life. Hasan himself took a degree in theoretical physics at Cambridge and later a doctorate in artificial intelligence – but remained a creationist through all those years. He admitted that his 20-year-old self might well have called for the death of his 40-year-old self.

So what can be done about this? In the short term, it is obvious that outrage is quite useful. There are some things – death threats are a good example – to which the answer is "You just bloody can't do that in a civilised country". In the long term, we must hope for social change which involves hundreds of thousands of individual changes of heart. And that is where the limitations of outrage become apparent.

Contempt is a hugely counterproductive tactic when it comes to creationism. Sure, it makes the contemptuous feel good. But since creationism is adopted and transmitted as a marker of identity, contempt becomes aimed not at the idea (which is most unlikely to be understood, even assuming it is coherent) but at the identity which it expresses. That really doesn't work on a minority that already feels excluded and discriminated against. Assimilation is based on the assumption that the mainstream culture is superior – as it clearly is superior to Saudi Islam – but the paradox is that it can only work when it involves genuine respect for the cultures that are to be assimilated.

Obama to renew call for minimum wage increase as protests planned across US

President has indicated he supports raise from $7.25 to $10.10
• Union-backed protests set for Thursday in cities across US

President Barack Obama reflects as he discusses the successes of the Affordable Care Act in Washington DC Photograph: Xinhua/Landov/Barcroft Media

Barack Obama will repeat his call for an increase in the minimum wage to close an ever-growing inequality gap in a speech delivered in one of the poorest corners of the nation's capital.

The president will deliver remarks on Wednesday in Anacostia, a deprived neighbourhood just six-miles south of the White House, the day before hundreds of fast-food restaurant workers in more than a hundred US cities strike in a major demonstration over low pay.

The federal minimum wage currently stands at $7.25 an hour, or about $15,000 a year, and Obama has already indicated he will back a Senate measure to increase the minimum statutory pay to $10.10. 

A union-backed day of action on Thursday follows hundreds of protests last Friday targeting Walmart over pay and conditions. Obama has repeatedly laid out the case for addressing poverty, acknowledging that while the US economy has grown modestly under his tenure at the White House, unemployment has remained steadfastly high and inequality has grown.

Obama is not expected to propose any new policy initiatives in the speech. But the White House says he will reiterate his call for an increase in the minimum wage and promote possible economic benefits of the troubled healthcare law. Obama also is expected to call on Congress to make a deal on 2014 spending, pass a farm bill with enough money for food stamps and extend unemployment insurance for the long-term unemployed before the end of the year.

Polls show that the economy remains the single biggest concern for Americans, despite the recent focus on problems with the healthcare law. While some economic indicators are showing positive trends, unemployment remains high at 7.3%.

Setting the tone for his state of the union address early next year, Obama is expected to highlight policy priorities that he has previously called for, including attracting businesses from overseas, simplifying the tax code, spending on infrastructure, improving education to compete for high-tech jobs and making college more affordable.

Those ideas have been recurrent themes in Obama's economic agenda, but most have failed to materialise.

Obama has attempted to include some of those policies in past negotiations with Republicans for a comprehensive budget deal that would lower long-term deficits, raise revenue and increase upfront spending to spur the economy. But those efforts have failed and current budget negotiations between congressional Democrats and Republicans are far less ambitious.

"The economy is elemental to most Americans, and it is the principal focus of this presidency," White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Tuesday, noting that Obama inherited the worst recession since the great depression in 2009. "We've seen sustained economic growth and job creation for a long time now. But we are not where we need to be."

Obama is expected to press Congress to strike a deal that at least softens the blow of automatic spending cuts that are scheduled to kick in after 15 January. He also is expected to call for a renewal of jobless benefits for 1.3 million long-term unemployed people that expire just three days after Christmas. The additional weeks of benefits have been extended each year since 2009, but a senior Republican lawmaker, congressman Tom Cole of Oklahoma, said Tuesday that Republicans oppose yet another extension.

Wednesday's speech is sponsored by the Center for American Progress, a think tank with close ties to the White House. It is the latest in a series of Obama addresses focused on the challenges of attaining the American dream, from a 2005 commencement address at tiny Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, to his speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, in late 2011, to a return address at Knox College last July.

Yasser Arafat died of natural causes, French investigators say

 Scientific and medical experts rule out possibility that Palestinian leader was poisoned amid reports of high levels of polonium-210

The ailing Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat pictured boarding a helicopter in October 2004, a month before he died. Photograph: Odd Andersen/AFP/Getty Images

The Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died of natural causes, French investigators have concluded. The team of scientific and medical experts found his death in 2004 was due to "old age following a generalised infection", ruling out allegations he was poisoned, it was reported on Tuesday.

Swiss scientists had previously reported "unexpectedly high activity" of radioactive polonium-210 in Arafat's body and personal effects, including his clothing, leading to accusations that he was assassinated.

On Tuesday, it was reported that the French investigators had ruled out poisoning in their report but that traces of polonium had been found.

A source told Reuters: "The results of the analyses allow us to conclude that the death was not the result of poisoning."

The information contradicts reports last month that the Swiss team thought it was likely Arafat had been poisoned after finding polonium levels up to 18 times higher than expected. However, the Swiss stopped short of categorically stating the radioactive substance had killed him.

Arafat's widow, Suha, said on Tuesday night that she was shocked by the contradictory conclusions of the Swiss and French teams who had examined the same samples from the body.

However, she insisted that both teams had reported higher than normal levels of polonium-210 and lead-210 in the samples.

"There is a doubt and that doubt is, did the poison in the body contaminate the outside environment, which is the conclusion of the French team? Or did something in the outside environment contaminate the body?" she told a press conference in Paris.

"Now I have to trust in justice and science and hope the experts manage to reach some conclusion."

She added: "I am shocked by the contradictions from the most celebrated experts in Europe."

Her lawyer, Pierre Oliver Sur, told journalists he and his team had examined both Swiss and French reports and compared the figures they contained. In some samples, the Swiss found more radioactive contamination than the French and in others the French found more contamination.

"Faced with experts with divergent conclusions ... we will continue the debate. It's like two sides of the same coin," he said.

"What we are looking for is a scientific certainty and that is what we will keep looking for."

He said he had not seen any report from the Russian experts, the third team to have examined the samples.

"We are starting from the same point. The figures are different, but they have arrived at the same conclusion: there is radioactive polonium and radioactive lead. This is a constant."

After Arafat's death in November 2004 at the age of 75 in a French hospital, doctors said he had succumbed to a stroke caused by a blood disorder. However, doctors in Paris said they could not establish the cause of the disorder.

In July last year, Suha Arafat filed a civil suit in a court in Nanterre against person or persons unknown for murder. An investigating judge ordered a murder inquiry the following month.

Arafat's body, buried in Ramallah, was exhumed last year so that separate teams of French, Swiss and Russian investigators could collect samples from his body and investigate them independently.

Palestinians have accused Israel of involvement in Arafat's death, but the Israeli authorities have denied the accusation, describing it as "unreasonable and unsupported by facts".

On Tuesday, Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation executive body, said she could not comment on a report she had not seen, but she was still convinced Arafat had died as a result of foul play. "I am certain that it was not death by natural causes," she said.

Yigal Palmor, spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, said the French results "come as no surprise, and their conclusion is only logical". The French scientists were the only credible and independent team to examine samples taken from Arafat's exhumed corpse, he added, pointing out that the Swiss scientists were commissioned by Arafat's widow, and the Russians by the Palestinian Authority.

"Nevertheless, some people will not look at the evidence and will keep on stirring this. Like all successful soap operas, it will not end as long as there is public demand for more," he said.

Hezbollah accuses 'Israeli enemy' of killing commander in Beirut

Hussein al-Laqis was allegedly killed by Israeli forces. Photograph:AFP/Getty Images

The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah on Wednesday accused Israel of "assassinating" one of its commanders outside his home in southern Beirut.

A statement issued by the group said Hussein al-Laqis was killed as he returned home from work around midnight. It did not say how he died.

Lebanese security officials said assailants opened fire on Laqis with an assault rifle while he was in his car. He was in the car park of the residential building where he lived in the Hadath neighbourhood, some two miles south-west of Beirut, they said.

He was taken to a nearby hospital but died early on Wednesday from his wounds, the officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

The statement accused Israel of responsibility for the killing. It said Israel tried to kill him several times, but had failed.

"The Israeli enemy is naturally directly to blame," the statement said. "This enemy must shoulder complete responsibility and repercussions for this ugly crime and its repeated targeting of leaders and cadres of the resistance."

Hezbollah, which has fought several wars against Israel, has also been fighting alongside Syrian president Bashar Assad's forces in that country's civil war, sparking attacks across neighbouring Lebanon.

Laqis spent his entire life in the Shia group from the time of its inception until the last hours of his death, according to the statement. His son died fighting Israel in the month-long 2006 war.

Poorer countries need privacy laws as they adopt new technologies

Tunisians at an internet cafe in El Djem. Unctad warns that storing and accessing data remotely brings a range of legal as well as technological and infrastructure challenges for poor countries. Photograph: Oliver Berg/EPA

Developing countries need to adopt and enforce privacy and data protection laws as they attempt to bridge the "digital divide" widened by the advent of new technologies like cloud computing, according to a new report.

The Information Economy Report 2013, released on Tuesday by Unctad, the UN trade and development body, warns that the global shift towards cloud computing, which allows users to store and access data remotely, brings a range of legal as well as technological and infrastructure challenges for poor countries.

"Cloud computing has the potential to offer users in developing countries access to unprecedented resources of computing power and storage," says the report, noting how cloud services can help cut costs on hardware and software, provide greater flexibility and mobility, and enable worldwide collaboration. However, it warns that as services offered via the internet become more complex, unreliable and expensive broadband access in many developing countries, together with power outages and a lack of IT skills risk widening the digital divide.

"We've had the tendency to look at the digital divide in terms of whether you have access or not to technologies, and so some think the digital divide is closing because more people have access to mobile phones. But it's important not only to have access but to have quality access," said Torbjörn Fredriksson, lead author of the report.

During an average minute in 2012, Google received 2m search requests, Facebook users shared around 700,000 content items and Twitter sent out 200,000 tweets, notes the report. However, an estimated 60% of such cloud traffic came from Europe and North America, followed by the Asia-Pacific region (33%). Latin America, the Middle East and Africa together accounted for only 5%.

Broadband prices remain high in many poor countries. While in 2011 the average monthly price for fixed broadband was estimated at less than 2% of per capita income in developed countries, in developing countries that figure was 40%. The cost of mobile broadband in poor countries is between 20% and 30% of per capita income.

Data security and privacy concerns –which have intensified worldwide following the revelations in 2013 about NSA national surveillanceprogrammes and reports on access by law-enforcement agencies to data hosted by cloud service providers – are among the most important issues facing developing countries, says Unctad.

Some cloud applications, particularly consumer-focused services like webmail, are already being used in many developing countries despite the lack of data protection laws, said Fredriksson. "It is very important to accelerate attention towards these areas … countries need to be aware of the potential, but also the risks of the cloud"

As of 2013, 101 countries had data privacy laws or bills in place. Only 40 developing economies have such laws or bills .

"For governments of developing countries, it is essential that appropriate laws and regulations are adopted and enforced in these areas," says the report.

Cloud services today are dominated by a few very large service providers, almost all with headquarters in the US.

The NSA revelations have caused people worldwide to doubt the wisdom of entrusting their data to cloud services operated by American companies, and some US firms have said they risk losing billions of dollars as customers become increasingly wary of using their services.

"The debate that has been sparked is very useful in that governments and other users are forced to think through the implications of uploading data to the cloud. This does not only relate to developed countries but to developing countries too," said Fredriksson.

Carly Nyst, head of international advocacy at NGO Privacy International said no government, company or development agency should "blindly move" to promoting cloud services before the privacy of individuals online can be ensured.

"With all of the potential that cloud computing holds, it also poses some serious risks to the protection of a user's personal information," she said. "This is especially true in developing countries, where an absence of strong data protection and privacy laws, coupled with weak accountability mechanisms, means that information stored in the cloud is vulnerable to a variety of threats, from hacking to corporate exploitation to a snooping government."

This month the UN adopted a resolution drafted by Germany and Brazil reaffirming the "human right to privacy in the digital age". The resolution was also sponsored by developing countries Bolivia, Ecuador, Indonesia, Peru and Uruguay.

Joe Biden praises Xi Jinping's ability to manage disputes

US vice-president's visit was intended to focus on economic issues but has been overtaken by row over China's air defence zone

Joe Biden and the US ambassador to China, Gary Locke, meet visa applicants at the US embassy in Beijing. Photograph: Pool/Getty Images

Joe Biden praised the Chinese president's commitment to managing differences candidly as he arrived in Beijing on Wednesday on a trip defined by regional disputes.

The US vice-president's week-long visit to Japan, China and South Korea was originally intended to focus on economic issues but has been overtaken by the row over China's new air defence zone.

Biden said the US and China needed to expand practical co-operation and deliver results – and made his remarks about Xi Jinping's handling of disagreements – as he met vice-president Li Yuanchao in Beijing's Great Hall of the People, before dinner with Xi himself. He is expected to press Chinese leaders to avoid "destabilising actions".

He will meet the premier, Li Keqiang, on Thursday, before flying to Seoul.

Earlier, Biden encouraged young Chinese citizens to challenge authority. Visiting the visa section of the US embassy with the ambassador, Gary Locke, he thanked those waiting for wanting to visit the US and added pointedly that he hoped they would see "innovation can only occur where you can breathe free".

He added: "Children in America are rewarded not punished for challenging the status quo ... The only way you make something totally new is to break the mould of what was old."

Speaking one day after global education rankings by the OECD showed Shanghai taking the top position in maths, reading and science, with Americans lagging behind many of their Asian and European peers, he added: "Even though some countries' educational systems are better than America's, particularly in grade school, there is one thing that's stamped in the DNA of every American, whether they are naturalised citizens or natural-born.