Which countries does Obama talk about most and does it matter?

Posted By Stephen M. Walt Thursday, July 15, 2010 - 2:00 PM Share

Steve Clemons had an interesting post up on his blog the other day, with the intriguing title "Obama's Map: Which States are Hot and Which are Not?" Using a new search tool at the Washington Post website, Steve and his assistant scanned all of President Obama's major speeches, interviews, and policy statements and counted the number of times different countries were mentioned. It's not a comprehensive survey of all 192 countries, as Clemons searched on G20 members, some "states of interest" like Iran, and states highlighted in FP's own Failed States Index.

Clemons's list made me wonder: What if you compared the number of times Obama mentioned a country against its population or GDP? This is an admittedly crude way of seeing which states might be getting disproportionate attention, at least relative to the number of people involved or their overall clout. It wouldn't surprise us if Obama (or any other president) mentioned China or Japan or Brazil a lot, but it is potentially revealing when a state with a small population or a modest economy looms large in presidential rhetoric.

So I had my assistant -- the indispensable Katie Naeve -- divide the number of times Obama mentioned a country by its population (in millions) and its GDP (in billions). (We used data from the CIA World Factbook and the World Bank's World Development Indicators, and the ratios given below are rounded off). As one would expect,  you end up with rather different rank-orderings:

No. of Obama Mentions

Mentions/Pop. (millions)

Mentions/GDP (billions)

Afghanistan (70)

Palestine (4.32)

Afghanistan (6.59)

China (58)

Israel (2.60)

Zimbabwe (6.25)

Iraq (54)

Afghanistan (2.41)

Haiti (2.36)

India (46)

Iraq (1.76)

Palestine (1.42)

Iran (43)

Haiti (1.72)

Somalia (0.89)

Pakistan (35)

Congo (0.83)

Guinea (0.79)

Russia (28)

North Korea (0.80)

Iraq (0.51)

Germany (25)

Canada (0.69)

North Korea (0.48)

Mexico (25)

Iran (0.60)

Congo (0.28)

South Korea (25)

Somalia (0.56)

Pakistan (0.21)

Canada (23)

South Korea (0.51)

Niger (0.19)

Israel (19)

South Africa (0.35)

Kenya (0.16)

North Korea (19)

Guinea (0.31)

Yemen (0.11)

France (17)

Germany (0.30)

Israel (0.09)

Haiti (17)

Australia (0.28)

South Africa (0.06)

Japan (17)

France (0.27)

Syria (0.05)

Palestine (17)

Saudi Arabia (0.24)

Iran (0.05)

South Africa (17)

Mexico (0.24)

Cote d’Ivoire (0.04)

Brazil (16)

Pakistan (0.21)

Ethiopia (0.04)

UK (8)

Russia (0.20)

Sudan (0.04)

Australia (6)

Cuba (0.18)

South Korea (0.03)

Indonesia (6)

Zimbabwe (0.16)

Mexico (0.02)

Saudi Arabia (6)

Syria (0.15)

Cuba (0.02)

Italy (5)

Japan (0.13)

Burma (0.02)

Kenya (5)

Yemen (0.13)

Russia (0.02)

Somalia (5)

UK (0.13)

Canada (0.02)

Turkey (5)

Kenya (0.13)

India (0.01)

Congo (3)

Italy (0.08)

China (0.01)

Guinea (3)

Brazil (0.08)

Saudi Arabia (0.01)

Syria (3)

Niger (0.07)

Indonesia (0.01)

Yemen (3)

Turkey (0.07)

Brazil (0.01)

Argentina (2)

Argentina (0.05)

Nigeria (0.01)

Cuba (2)

Cote d'Ivoire (0.05)

Germany (0.01)

Nigeria (2)

Sudan (0.05)

Turkey (0.01)

Sudan (2)

China (0.04)

Argentina (0.01)

Zimbabwe (2)

India (0.04)

France (0.01)

Burma (1)

Venezuela (0.04)

Australia (0.01)

Cote d’Ivoire (1)

Indonesia (0.03)

Japan (0.00)

Ethiopia (1)

Burma (0.02)

Venezuela (0.00)

Niger (1)

Nigeria (0.01)

UK (0.00)

Venezuela (1)

Ethiopia (0.01)

Italy (0.00)

Cent. African Republic (0)

Cent. African Republic (0.00)

Cent. African Republic (0.00)

Chad (0)

Chad (0.00)

Chad (0.00)

The results are interesting, if not especially surprising. First, once you control for population or GDP, the skewed nature of presidential attention becomes really obvious. China ranks right with Iraq in terms of absolute mentions, for example, but Iraq gets 1.76 mentions per million people and China only .04 per million. Second,  it obviously matters if you are a country where the United States is at war: hence Afghanistan and Iraq rank high on all three lists. Third, the U.S. preoccupation with Israel-Palestine is clearly reflected here: any U.S. president has to devote enormous attention to a very small number of people for reasons that I presumably don't have to explain again.  Fourth, suffering a major national disaster -- as Haiti did -- will raise a country's salience, even if the population is small and poor.

The other rather obvious lesson one might draw from this is two-fold: 1) Presidents don't have complete control over their agendas; and 2) Obama is spending most of his time talking about problem-areas rather than success stories. Big, stable, and prosperous countries don't get as much attention for the simple reason that they don't need that much attention; it's the poor, weak, conflict-prone, and intractable ones that keep demanding Obama's time. 

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

EXPLORE:DIPLOMACY, DISASTERS, OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, U.S. FOREIGN POLICY, WINNERS & LOSERS
 
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DEPETRIS@WORDPRESS.COM

7:21 PM ET

July 15, 2010

Somalia pretty low on the list

The only thing I would add to this analysis is that Somalia will probably be mentioned much more by the President, thanks to Al'Shabab's connection to the terrorist attack in Uganda last weekend. In fact, I find it quite amazing how Somalia was only mentioned five times by President Obama, given the enormous difficulties that country has been facing for the past three decades; poverty, child malnourishment, widespread unemployment, militia violence, and a government that is nonexistent (the list goes on and on). But once terrorism is involved, Somalia quickly jumps on the White House's docket.

To me, this list just highlights and reaffirms how important the issue of terrorism has become over the past decade. Chad, the Central African Republic, and Ethiopia are grappling with the same problems as Somalia in terms of GDP, employment, and development, but because terrorism is either contained or nonexistent in those areas, all three countries get one mention between them.

By the way, what's up with Venezuela? Just one mention in public? And what about Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, and Columbia? With the exception of Brazil, Argentina (and to a lesser extent) Mexico, and Cuba, the Western Hemisphere doesn't seem to be that much of a priority (big surprise there).

 

DEPETRIS@WORDPRESS.COM

7:21 PM ET

July 15, 2010

http://www.depetris.wordpress

http://www.depetris.wordpress.com

 

JANBEKSTER

10:42 PM ET

July 15, 2010

No It Doesn't matter.

I don't think it really matters Prof.Walt, with President Obama mentions or doens't mention countries. Ultimately it is the interests of those whom he represnts {or those whom he thinks that he represents}, or[ those who he thinks he represnts their best interests] is what counts at the end of the day. Statistics, and citations are interesting, but this is a game as your good self knows, which has nothing to do with deeds or actions. But what else can be written about under the circumstances, if we all say what we believe.
khairi janbek/paris.france

 

BIDHAAN

4:15 PM ET

July 16, 2010

Somaliland the new state in africa

The streets of Hargeisa, Somaliland’s ramshackle and dusty capital, are a carnival. I am here in the north-west of what is still officially Somalia as part of a team of international observers, invited by Somaliland’s electoral commission, for the final week of the de facto state’s presidential election, to (they hope) verify the process, and, if so, help strengthen Somaliland’s long campaign for official recognition.

Somalilanders, manacled to the profoundly failed state in the south, crave recognition, and all the advantages—such as multilateral assistance—it brings. But in the African Union (AU), they lack allies. Beyond the AU, Morocco fears what it could mean for its own claim over Western Sahara. Still, while pursuing the distant dream, Somalilanders have got on with state-building. This second presidential election (the first was in 2003, followed by a parliamentary election in 2005) is the latest stage of a democratic experiment as Athenian as it gets these days, that the world has largely failed to notice.

Many of my fellow observers—59 of us, from 16 countries, including a fair swathe of diaspora Somalilanders—believe deeply in what Somaliland is trying to do. Me, I’m also curious. This is Somalia, after all. Dinner-party conversation-starters sorted for months. But the stakes are high, with long delays in holding the poll, originally set for 2008, sharpening tensions. And there is a chill from the south, where al-Shabaab are no fans of the idea of a democratic secessionist state. Disruption of the election would be a hot ticket, an incident involving foreigners—election observers perhaps—better still.

 

DAVID IN DC

4:39 PM ET

July 16, 2010

Thought experiment

Steve says Obama spoke about Israel-Palestine because of "the Lobby".

To whom do you think Steve would point if Obama didn't speak about Israel-Palestine?

Just asking.

 

NICOLAS19

8:29 AM ET

July 19, 2010

useless data

Obama wouldn't give two damns about Haiti if there hadn't been an earthquake there. Fine collection of data, but really doesn't have any news value: if there would be a devastating disaster in, say, Madagascar, it would be at the top of the agenda regardless of GDP, population or anything else.

 

Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.

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