The poll, conducted by YouGov for Monday Morning, assesses what the general public thinks about security, peace and threats in nine different countries: the US, the UK, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

The results suggest most people do not believe the world is becoming safer. But there are a number of major differences between some of the countries, particularly between the Western world and the Arab nations surveyed. Between 10 and 20 per cent of the Western population think that the world will be a safer place in ten years, compared to only about 10 per cent of the Arab countries (see figure 1). Germans and Danes are the most optimistic – about 20 per cent believe in a safer world.

    “It is not surprising that people don’t think the world is becoming safer. We live in a culture of fear. There is no evidence to indicate that the world is less safe, but people are experiencing it that way because of this general climate of fear,” says professor J. Peter Burgess at the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO).

Ståle Ulriksen, a researcher at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) disagrees. He thinks people have every reason to be pessimistic about the future.
    “There is a growing threat of war and superpower rivalry, so their pessimism is real enough.” he says.

But Ulriksen points out that people will always be fearful about something, whether it is nuclear weapons, the ozone layer or terror. In his opinion, much of the fear is exaggerated.

Monday Morning’s survey also shows that people the world over believe that fundamental inequalities and problems such as hunger and lack of health care must be solved, if the world is to become a safer place:

• Basic needs: Those surveyed agree that the key to a safer world lies above all in covering basic needs such as water, food, health care and shelter.
• Education: Access to education is ranked in second place, after basic needs, as the issue that will matter most.
• Obama’s list of priorities: Obama’s top priorities should be international terrorism, poverty, the conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the relationship with the Muslim world (see figure 3).
• Not the UN: Most people do not consider the UN an important part of the solution. People’s priority list for Obama places strengthening of the UN at the low end of the scale.

An unstable world and new alliances

To find out how safe people perceive the world to be today, we asked participants to rate the degree, on a scale from 1 to 6. 1 is very unsafe, 6 is very safe. The results show that Danes and Norwegians experience the world to be safest, with scores of 3.70 and 3.60, while the US and the UK experience the global situation as least safe, with scores of 3.15 and 3.18, respectively (figure 1). Women feel far more unsafe in today’s world than men. They are also more pessimistic in regard to the future.

Ulriksen at Nupi does not believe people’s insecurity about the future to be unfounded. The world has become a less safe place, a trend that is likely to increase. This is due to the disintegration of old power structures, and a change in the global balance of power. Eight years ago, the US was at the height of its power. Most people thought the US to be the greatest power ever. After the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a major financial crisis, nobody holds this belief any longer.
    “New superpowers like India and China are on the way up. We are witnessing a shift in alliances. The UN has been weakened, based on a system that is difficult to implement in today’s multipolar world. The big question is whether international institutions can deal with these developments. The old system was predictable, because we understood its workings. Today there is more uncertainty, making the situation in world less secure,” he says.

The system of global governance, created and developed by the victorious Western nations after the Second World War, is neither adapted, nor is it tailored, to the current geopolitical situation. The US has been the dominant player within this system, whose support for international organisations was never designed to handle today’s challenges. The system worked as long as leading member states were homogenous and shared common values. The emergence of new superpowers seeking influence has paralysed a number of these organisations.
    “We have a weakened UN, a Western bulwark based on Western values. New superpowers like India and China are now demanding more leverage. But we do not know what sorts of values they will attach importance to. It creates uncertainty,” says Ulriksen.

He also points out the need for effective market mechanisms. Global stability is entirely dependent upon well-functioning markets that can deliver enough energy, oil and minerals to cover the needs of the world’s largest nations.
    “A battle for resources will quickly lead us back into a traditional geopolitical conflict,” he says.

Ulriksen also believes that disarmament agreements have become weakened over the past 20 years. The proliferation of nuclear weapons is a greater problem now than it was before.
    “Europe still has its treaties on conventional arms, but no one is interested in them any longer. They are not maintained, and there is little knowledge about the area. This is a problem with regard to global safety,” says Ulriksen.

Stephen M. Walt, a leading professor of international relations at Harvard University, says it is impossible to know whether the world will be more or less peaceful ten years from now. But it is worth noting, says Walt, that the overall level of global violence has been declining since the early 90s. “Violence and war will not disappear, but there are some reasons to be a bit more hopeful,” he says.

Walt also mitigates the notion of America’s stabilising role, pointing out that the US has started a number of wars over the past two decades. “I believe it would be destabilising if the US became too weak, but a bit less dominance and hubris would probably be a good thing,” he says.

We live in a culture of fear

International terrorism and conflicts between the Muslim and Western worlds is perceived to be the single greatest threat by the US and the European countries(figure 2). The two greatest threats listed by the Arab nations included in the survey are nuclear weapons and/or weapons of mass destruction and poverty.
    “The danger from terrorism is almost always exaggerated. It is a serious problem, to be sure, but it actually threatens far fewer people than hunger, pollution, infectious disease or even automobile accidents,” Walt says.

But terrorism’s fangs have caught us by the neck. It perfectly suits our fascination with evil.
    “Terror has all the ingredients of illusory fear. We do not know where it comes from, we do not know who is behind it. It can strike at any time, and it strikes blindly,” adds Burgess.

He points out several reasons for the emergence of this culture of fear. Much of it has to do with our information society, and the fact that the world is more connected than before. “We now have access to information we did not previously have. We know more about things we didn’t know anything about before, whether it be pandemics, climate change or terrorism. We have knowledge that we don’t really need, and this makes us more anxious than before,” he says.

In addition, there are strong forces that play on these fears – be it political, financial or industrial – that exploit people’s fear for their own gain. “The threat of terrorism, for example, was used as a political tool by President Bush, and he used it for all it was worth,» says Burgess.

There is also much money to be earned through fear. Security is a huge industry, both in Europe and the US. Previously the state alone was responsible for people’s safety. This is no longer the case, with private international security services becoming more widespread, offering us both services and products we didn’t know we needed. This provides “proof” of all the potential dangers existing out there, explains Burgess.

What Obama should do

“The Western world has a clear message to Obama when it comes to following up his own peace initiatives, and prove himself a worthy recipient of the Peace Prize: the fight against terrorism must receive top priority if the world is to become a safer place. Next on the list are: the fight against poverty; solving the conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan; and taking measures to improve the relationship with the Muslim world (fig. 3).

While the West believes Obama should give priority to terrorism, the Arab countries are more concerned with the conflict in the Middle East. Walt points out that these problems are closely intertwined. Israel’s attempt to colonise the West Bank and deny Palestinians a state of their own is one of the primary motivations for groups like Al Qaeda. “Addressing the Israel-Palestine conflict should be part of our counter-terrorism strategy, rather than being seen as a separate issue. It is also an issue of international justice, which makes it one of those rare cases where moral and strategic interests are aligned,” he says.

The world’s population does not have much faith in the UN’s ability to bring about change. A strengthened UN lies at the bottom of the respondent’s priority list for Obama, especially among Americans. But neither the UK, the Nordic countries nor the Arab nations place the UN high on their list of priorities.

Walt says that the UN can provide an important forum, an institution member-states can use to advance their interests. But it has little independent capability of its own, and cannot force its members to agree or co-operate when they do not wish to.

When it comes to Obama, the world should curb its expectations, Walt adds: “Citizens around the world should have an equally realistic view of President Obama. He is intelligent, committed, and a gifted politician, but he is not a miracle worker and he cannot force others to do his bidding. There are no ‘magic buttons’ to press in international diplomacy. The keys to success are power, patience, empathy, and the ability to persuade.”

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Stig Nøra (stig@mandagmorgen.no)
Sveinung Engeland (sveinung@mandagmorgen.no)