Chavez friends are few

By OTHER VIEWS / Washington Post
Published July 9, 2007

The latest Global Attitudes survey by the Pew Foundation contains a lot of bad news for the United States, but there was one relative bright spot in Latin America: Venezuela. According to Pew, 56 percent of Venezuelans say they have a favorable view of the United States, a higher number than in Britain or Canada. Seventy-one percent say they like U.S. television and movies and a stratospheric 84 percent feel positively about Americans.

The numbers cast an interesting light on the foreign policy of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who describes the United States as an evil empire and President Bush as "the devil, " and who just completed a tour of three countries he sees as close allies in a global anti-American alliance: Russia, Iran and Belarus.

According to Pew, 81 percent of Venezuelans oppose Iran's acquiring a nuclear weapon, but Chavez is looking beyond his country, hoping to become the leader of global opposition to the United States. As the Pew survey shows, there's plenty of it out there, but Chavez is not the beneficiary. In only three of the 47 countries surveyed by Pew does he inspire confidence in 50 percent or more of those questioned: Venezuela, Mali and Ivory Coast. The answer to the question of whom Venezuela's president represents emerges from the data: No one, other than himself.

[Last modified July 9, 2007, 00:08:55]