There's really no way to sugarcoat it: The rest of world believes that the United States is the country that poses the greatest threat to world peace, beating out all challengers by a wide margin.
This is the conclusion of a massive world opinion poll conducted by Win/Gallup International and released at the close of 2013. The poll, which was first conducted in 1977, asked over 66,000 thousand people across 65 countries this year a variety of questions about the world, including which country they would most like to call home, whether or not the world is becoming a generally better place and which country poses the greatest threat to world peace.
The U.S. was voted the biggest threat by far, garnering 24 percent of the vote. Pakistan was a very distant second with 8 percent, followed by China (6 percent) and Afghanistan (5 percent).
Perhaps not surprisingly, Americans had a slightly different view of the international troublemakers, naming Iran the top threat. Yet while Afghanistan garnered the second-most votes among American respondents, they also voted the U.S. among the most threatening nations -- in an unenviable veritable tie for third place with North Korea.
Interestingly, the U.S. was also the country to which people around the world would most like to move, if given the opportunity. Also, close to 50 percent of respondents expressed optimism about the future, reporting that they are more positive about 2014 than they were for 2013.
“Despite an unstable economic situation, our happiness index is extremely high all over the world except in Europe," Jean-Marc Leger, President of WIN/Gallup International Association, said in a statement. "Moreover people think that 2014 will be better than 2013. Optimism is back in the world.”