The United States, Bush and Indonesia: Bitter memories, new eggshells

For policy makers in Washington, one of the most alarming findings of the 2003 Pew Global Attitudes survey was the degree of antipathy that the United States the Bush administration’s “war on terror” had fuelled across the world. The greatest swings were recorded in Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, but in Asia by far the sharpest fall was in Indonesia, where the approval rating for the United States plummeted from 75 per cent in 2000 to only 15 per cent in mid-2003 (PRC 2003).