{"id":316970,"date":"2026-06-08T12:00:50","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T11:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=316970"},"modified":"2026-06-02T17:16:31","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T16:16:31","slug":"around-the-world-global-solidarity-and-cooperation-are-remarkably-popular","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2026\/06\/around-the-world-global-solidarity-and-cooperation-are-remarkably-popular\/","title":{"rendered":"Around the World, Global Solidarity and Cooperation are Remarkably Popular"},"content":{"rendered":"

1 Jun 2026 – <\/em>One of the curious ironies of our time is that, although many politicians spout heated nationalist rhetoric, rail against foreign nations, and belittle international cooperation, this approach to international affairs is not at all what most people want.<\/p>\n

The climate of aggressive nationalism is clear enough.\u00a0 In nations around the globe, demagogues (usually of a rightwing variety) whip up xenophobia, preach superpatriotism, demand vast military buildups, and\u2015if holding public office\u2015often launch invasions of other nations under the banner of restoring an allegedly glorious national past.<\/p>\n

But what is often overlooked is that, across the planet, most people favor a very different way of engaging with the world.\u00a0 In late 2025, Focaldata, a major research company commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation, conducted a landmark survey of 36,405 people across 34 countries.\u00a0 The resulting report, Demanding Results: Global Views on International Cooperation<\/em><\/a>, revealed that 55 percent of people worldwide \u201cbelieve their country should cooperate on global challenges even if it means compromising on national interests.\u201d\u00a0 If international cooperation was proven to solve global problems, public support jumped to 75 percent.\u00a0 Respondents viewed such cooperation as essential for food and water security, jobs, health, trade, and climate.<\/p>\n

Other opinion surveys confirm the widespread nature of internationalist sentiment.\u00a0 An Ipsos poll<\/a> conducted between February and April 2026 found a substantial increase over the previous year in support for global solidarity and cooperation, with net disagreement shifting to net agreement.\u00a0 Among the more than 22,000 adults in the 31 countries surveyed, nearly two-thirds now supported the claim that, \u201cfor certain problems, like environmental pollution, international bodies should have the right to enforce solutions.\u201d\u00a0 Some 42 percent (a plurality) agreed with the idea that \u201cmy taxes should go towards solving global problems.\u201d\u00a0 And nearly four out of ten respondents (a plurality) endorsed the statement:\u00a0 \u201cI consider myself more a world citizen than a citizen of the country I live in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another measure of the worldwide support for international cooperation is provided by polling on public attitudes toward international organizations.\u00a0 The Rockefeller Foundation-Focaldata study<\/a> reported that public trust was strong for the United Nations (58 percent) and the World Health Organization (60 percent), although weaker for international financial institutions.\u00a0 The global popularity of the United Nations was also attested to by a Pew Research Center survey<\/a> that appeared in September 2025.\u00a0 Covering 31,938 adults in 25 countries, it found that a median of 61 percent of adults had a favorable view of the world organization, while only 32 percent had an unfavorable one.<\/p>\n

Even proposals for new, avant garde global institutions have attracted more public support than opposition.\u00a0 Commissioned by Democracy Without Borders, Nira Data conducted a global survey<\/a> in September 2025 of public attitudes toward the election of a citizen-elected world parliament to handle global issues.\u00a0 The survey, released in January 2026, drew upon 117,000 people in 101 countries that held 90 percent of the world\u2019s population.\u00a0 The finding was that 40 percent of respondents approved of the world parliament idea, while only 27 percent opposed it.<\/p>\n

But what about the United States?\u00a0 Surely in this flag-waving nation, engulfed in the rabid \u201cAmerica First\u201d rhetoric of the Trump administration and its MAGA acolytes, we might expect that the ideals of global solidarity and cooperation would be supported by no more than a small minority.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not the case at all.<\/p>\n

One of the most striking findings of the Rockefeller Foundation-Focaldata survey<\/a> is that 61 percent of U.S. respondents believed that the United States should cooperate on global challenges even it meant compromising on some national interests.<\/p>\n

When it came to the United Nations, the Pew Research Center report<\/a> revealed that 57 percent of Americans held a positive view of the world organization, as compared to 41 percent with a negative one.\u00a0 Moreover, it found that positive views of the United Nations had increased by 5 percent over the preceding year.<\/p>\n

A study by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs<\/a>, issued in September 2025, reported an even more favorable public attitude toward the United Nations.\u00a0 Two-thirds of the Americans surveyed, it noted, said that the United States should be more willing to make decisions within the framework of the United Nations, even if this meant that the country would sometimes have to go along with a policy that was not its first choice.<\/p>\n

Admittedly, opinion surveys found that the level of support for international cooperation varied significantly from country to country.\u00a0 Thus, for example, the backing for international cooperation<\/a> when that meant compromising on some national interests was greater in India (81 percent) and South Korea (73 percent), the countries highest on the scale, than in Argentina (41 percent) and Japan (34 percent), the countries at the bottom of the scale.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, there was often a political dimension to worldwide public attitudes toward foreign affairs.\u00a0 According to the Pew Research Center<\/a>, \u201cpeople who place themselves on the left of the ideological spectrum are more likely than those on the right to have a positive view of the UN.\u201d<\/p>\n

This political division was particularly wide in the United States, where, as the Pew report maintained, \u201c81% of liberals\u2015versus 34% of conservatives\u2015have a favorable opinion\u201d of the United Nations.\u00a0 When it came to the issue of support for cooperation with other nations, the surveys by Rockefeller-Focaldata<\/a> and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs<\/a> both found substantial differences between the attitudes of Democrats (quite positive) and Republicans (far more negative).<\/p>\n

Even so, in most countries, including the United States, support for international solidarity and cooperation is very substantial, and growing.\u00a0 Consequently, political activists and politicians shouldn\u2019t be reluctant to speak out for them.\u00a0 Indeed, given the popularity of this internationalist approach to global affairs, it might even prove a winning political issue.<\/p>\n

___________________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Lawrence S. Wittner (<\/em>https:\/\/www.lawrenceswittner.com\/<\/em><\/a> ) is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY\/Albany and the author of <\/em>Confronting the Bomb<\/em><\/a> (Stanford University Press).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1 Jun 2026 – One of the curious ironies of our time is that, although many politicians spout heated nationalist rhetoric, rail against foreign nations, and belittle international cooperation, this approach to international affairs is not at all what most people want.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":79666,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[206],"tags":[272,2962,1639,1880,517],"class_list":["post-316970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coops-cooperation-sharing","tag-cooperation","tag-nationalism","tag-right-politics","tag-sharing","tag-solidarity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316970"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":316971,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316970\/revisions\/316971"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}