On Thursday, Americans awoke to a massive amount of news about the Brexit vote in Britain and wondered what all the fuss was about. Though the referendum election had been big news throughout Europe for months, most social media users in the U.S. were unimpressed.
On Friday, after the Brexit proposal won at the ballot box, instructing the UK to pull out of the European Union, Americans stood up and took notice. Mostly because the unexpected UK abandonment of the EU was hitting the New York stock market hard and fears of a U.S. recession hovered over the economy.
On Tuesday, terrorists suspected of an affiliation with ISIS launched a three-phase attack at an airport in Turkey, using sophisticated methods, automatic weapons and suicide bomb vests to kill 41 people and wound 147 (above). Today, those attacks have attracted far less attention in America, based on social media activity, than previous assaults on Paris and Brussels.
All of this leads to a basic question: Do Americans care about overseas events?
A fascinating world map that was created using new Google technology and published by The Washington Post reveals that the U.S. does have a somewhat healthy interest in the happenings in foreign countries – but in a collectively bizarre way.
The interactive map, which was cobbled together by Kalev Leetaru, an analyst at the George Washington University Center for Cyber and Homeland Security, shows that Americans have established a rather irrational pattern of interests overseas.
Based on Google data from across the U.S. from January to June of this year, Afghanistan, where our military remains entangled in its longest war in history, ranked No. 68 among nations cited in searches. In comparison, Iceland came in at No. 52.
In Syria, where U.S. forces have launched about 10,000 air raids against ISIS and our ground troops become increasingly tangled in the fight against terrorism amidst the Syrian civil war, interest among Americans as expressed by Google searches ranks 57th worldwide. In comparison, Peru ranked No. 38.
In Ukraine, where Russia’s Vladimir Putin continues his military aggression, the ranking of U.S. interests is No. 71. In comparison, the Google Trends map shows Sweden is 51st.
And some of the rankings just defy explanation. Nigeria comes in at No. 28 but neighboring Niger is No. 154.
Overall, professor Leetaru sums up the findings this way: “As you can see right away, Americans simply aren’t searching for information about Africa or central Asia very often. There’s a lot of curiosity about Latin America (except for Suriname) and South Asia (except for Bhutan and Papua New Guinea). The U.S. is quite interested in Western and Central Europe, less interested in Southern Europe, and scarcely interested at all in Eastern Europe, especially the Baltic nations — despite the growing news coverage of Russia’s threat to the region.”
As has been pointed out in numerous studies, Americans are notoriously disinterested in worldwide events. This phenomenon has skewed our politics for generations.
I would submit that as the Democratic Party drifts further left, as evidenced by the broad support for Sen. Bernie Sanders for president and now Sen. Elizabeth Warren for vice president, the party has become disengaged from the big picture.
Health care, the minimum wage and college affordability serve as bread-and-butter issues for the Dems in 2016 but every four years we see the same flaw in presidential campaigns – foreign policy issues are overlooked when stumping for votes yet they dominate every presidency.
In fact, overseas matters are often overshadowed by silly, superficial matters that, in retrospect, had nothing to do with the next four years of the presidency (remember the manufactured controversy over the Barack and Michelle Obama fist bump?). And who can forget 2012 GOP candidate – and brief frontrunner — Herman Cain making a joke about the fact that he couldn’t distinguish the “’Stans” of central Asia, such as Afghanistan vs. Kazakhstan vs. Uzbekistan?
The president with the lightest load on foreign policy matters in recent history was Bill Clinton, yet he still mounted an air war in Kosovo, sent troops to the Balkans, intervened in Haiti and bombed Iraq.
Let’s hope that his wife, and Donald Trump, take a broad view of the presidency that extends beyond Iceland and Nigeria.
