Why the Leader in Almost Every U.S.-Allied Country Has Low Approval Ratings

Eric Zuesse

Here are the NATO member nations where Morning Consult monthly tracks the Approve/Disapprove percentages, the nation’s leader, and the Approve/Disapprove percentages as-of June 2024:

Poland, Tusk, 48%/41%

Italy, Meloni, 42%/52%

Spain, Sanchez, 38%/56%

Belgium, De Croo, 38%/47%

U.S., Biden, 37%/56%

Turkey, Erdogan, 35%/57%

Sweden, Kristersson, 34%/53%

Netherlands, Rutte, 34%/60%

Canada, Trudeau, 30%/63%

Norway, Store, 26%/67%

Germany, Scholz, 25%/69%

UK, Sunak, 25%/68%

France, Macron, 21%/73%

Chechia, Fiala, 19%/74%

Here are non-NATO members that Morning Consult also polls in:

India, Modi, 70%/24%

Mexico, Lopez Obrador, 62%/34%

Argentina, Milei, 60%/37%

Switzerland, Amherd, 53%/25%

Ireland, Harris, 47%/37%

Brazil, da Silva, 44%/51%

Australia, Albanese, 44%/44%

Austria, Nehammer, 31%/61%

South Korea, Suk-Yeol, 20%/74%

Japan, Kishida, 13%/72%

I’ve not found any polling-results on China’s President Xi, but two polls are relevant: On 22 August 2022, I headlined “NATO-Affiliated Poll in 53 Countries Finds Chinese the Most Think Their Country Is a Democracy” and reported that, “A poll in 53 countries by the NATO-affiliated “Alliance of Democracies” found that 83% of Chinese think that China is a democracy. That’s the highest percentage amongst all of the 53 countries surveyed. And, the “U.S. was worse than average, and was tied at #s 40&41, out of the 53 nations, with Colombia, at 49%” — barely less than half of Americans think they live in a democracy. Furthermore: the Edelman Trust Barometer does polling in 28 countries, and some of its questions are likewise relevant. On 24 March 2023, I headlined “How Nations’ Citizens Rate Their Own Government” and reported that of all 28 nations surveyed by the Edelman organization, the trust in the Government was the highest in China, at 91%, while only 39% of Americans trust their Government. Only 37% of Russians do, and Russians have distrusted their Government ever since there has been polling on that — the disparity between how Russians rate their Government versus how they rate Putin is enormous and has no parallel in any other country that I know of. Perhaps local governments are lousy there. It’s a disparity that ought to be examined scientifically. But, also, U.S. President Biden’s saying, of Putin, “For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power” is plain evil, just like his calling Xi a “dictator” is. He is an extremely popular leader, perhaps more trusted by his citizens than any othernation’s leader is. For Biden, with a net job-approval of -13% at that time (-19% now), to be saying such things about national leaders who have served their nations vastly better than Biden has been serving his, is hateful, closed-minded, petty, and extremely dangerous both to his own country and to all countries; it is despicable, and clearly marks him as a leader who needs to be regime-changed as soon as possible (but not replaced by anyone in his Administration, since he has surrounded himself with individuals who are just as dangerous as he himself is). The same can be said for almost all of the leaders of America’s colonies (‘allies’).

The reason is that in U.S.-and-allied countries, the leader doesn’t represent the public but instead represents the billionaires who had financed the leader’s campaigns. To the public, the leader had made promises with no obligation to fulfill on them, but to the few individuals who had donated most of that leader’s campaign cash, the leader had made promises which to fail to fulfil would cause not only cessation of further campaign cash but non-fulfilment by the billionaire of the promised career-support (board seats, etc.) after the politician’s retirement from public office. A billionaire notices when the politician fails to fulfill on promises that had been made to him or her, and will act accordingly, but the general public don’t, and they have no way to retaliate, other than to vote for a different agent of billionaires — which is nothing (the billionaires remain still in control over the Government, though by different agents). So, it’s only fake ‘democracy’ in these nations.  

The actual democracies are targeted by the U.S. empire to be regime-changed and so are claimed by them to be instead ‘autocracies’ or ‘dictatorships’, but the proven dictatorships are the U.S. and its colonies (‘allies’). However, only in the United States has there been detailed scientific political-science empirical research published on whether the Government is a democracy (approximating one-person-one-vote) or instead an aristocracy (more like one-dollar-one-vote), and all of those studies show unequivocally that the U.S. Government is an aristocracy: rule by and for only the super-rich.

Every empire is a dictatorship — first by the imperial Government over its colonies, and then within each of its nations over its own subjects. That is how ANY empire functions.

And the publics within the U.S. empire (like in ANY empire) are subjects, not really citizens there. They are subjects of the billionaires, the local aristocracy. (Furthermore: in some of these countries, foreign billionaires are also allowed to donate to political campaigns; so, it’s not always only local billionaires.)

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.