Sorting Some Nations As Friends Or Enemies

One needn’t venture far into the Great White North to discover that Canadians have soured on the U.S. in the past few years. And it turns out that the feeling is mutual. A Harris Poll asked Americans to categorize 25 countries in one of four ways: a close ally of the U.S., friendly but not a close ally, not friendly but not an enemy, or unfriendly and an enemy of the U.S. The “close ally” vote for Canada was regularly above 60 percent (and sometimes above 70 percent) during the 1990s and early 2000s.