LibriumArcana.Games

The Chicago Council on Global Affairs has released its latest biannual survey of American attitudes about foreign policy, titled, “Foreign Policy in the Age of Retrenchment.” You can access the full report here. (Full disclosure: I’m on the foreign policy advisory board that consulted with and provided feedback to the survey team.)

The report is based on a large survey (N> 2100) of Americans that was conducted in May — before the recent unpleasantness in various trouble spots in the world. I’m reasonably familiar with public opinion polling on foreign policy. That said, after going over the report, here are the 10 findings that genuinely surprised me:

10) Americans are keener on sanctions than you would think. Americans are rather cautious about the use of ground troops as an instrument of statecraft. Not so with sanctions. “Two in three Americans (65%, up 3 percentage points since 2012) consider sanctions at least somewhat effective in achieving US foreign policy goals” (p. 38).

9) The war in Afghanistan is now about as unpopular as the war in Iraq. Given that the war in Afghanistan was a response to an attack on American soil, this was surprising to me. As it turns out, this mostly has to do with the fact that the Afghanistan conflict has plummeted in popularity among Republicans; only 34 percent of them think the war was worth fighting, whereas 40 percent of them still think Operation Iraqi Freedom was worth it. Among Democrats and independents, Iraq still remains the more unpopular conflict — but it’s surprisingly close.

8) Americans really don’t like Iran . . . The American public isn’t keen on too many uses of military force, but stopping Iran’s nuclear program is an exception for 59 percent of respondents. On a barometer measure from 0 to 100 in terms of favorability, Iran scored only a 27 (North Korea did the worst, with a 23).


7) . . . And yet, Americans also are pretty ambivalent about Israel. Some folks like to claim that powerful interest groups have somehow hoodwinked the American public into being predisposed toward defending Israel. It’s certainly true that the barometer reading of Israel is 59, which is favorable. That said, what’s surprising is how limited that support really is. Consider:

64 percent of Americans say they prefer not to take sides in the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
53 percent of Americans oppose sending U.S. troops to defend Israel if it is attacked by one of its neighbors.
More Americans prefer cutting economic and military aid to Israel than increasing it (although the plurality is fine with the status quo).
Don’t get me wrong, Americans like Israel some — just not quite as much as has often been averred inside the Beltway.

6) The American people don’t give a flying fig about multilateral support. The Chicago Council conducted a survey experiment to see whether multilateral support would affect public attitudes for deploying U.S. troops. In the past, multilateral support of one kind or another usually primes respondents to look more favorably toward intervention. The Chicago Council’s finding?

On a wide range of possible situations where military force might be used — including in Syria, defending South Korea, ensuring the oil supply, Russia invading the rest of Ukraine, and others — there are no discernible differences in views among Americans toward the use of U.S. troops when multilateral action is not specified, as part of a coalition of like-minded allies, or as part of a U.N. Security Council authorized military mission (p. 31).

This is a highly atypical, and definitely worthy of some follow-up.

5) Immigration is not as much of a hot-button issue as it used to be. In 1994, 72 percent of Americans thought “reducing illegal immigration” was a very important foreign policy goal. Despite the best efforts of some, that number is down to 47 percent in 2014.

4) Globalization has never been viewed so positively by Americans. Another data point about the resilience of the ideas undergirding the open global economy:

Two out of three Americans say that globalization is mostly a good thing (65 percent vs. 34 percent), the highest recorded percentage to feel this way since the question was first asked in 1998 (p. 36).

3) Americans are pretty confident about American power. There have been many polls in which Americans have exaggerated Chinese power relative to the United States. This one didn’t:

On a scale from zero to 10, with 10 being the most influential, the public gives the United States a mean rating of 8.6, compared with 7.4 for China (figure 1.3). And in a decade, the public still expects the United States to have greater influence, even as China narrows the gap (8.2 for United States vs. 7.6 for China) (p. 9).

2) In May, a super-majority of Americans opposed the strategy that President Obama will now be pursuing in Syria.

The public continues to oppose the United States providing arms and supplies to antigovernment groups in Syria (70 percent, vs. 25 percent). It is likely that this opposition is based on a desire to stay out of civil wars and internal political change.

Now to be fair, ISIL would count as an “antigovernment group in Syria,” so maybe this was about the way the question was framed. I suspect, however, that the Chicago Council’s analysis is correct. Given that Americans paid a lot of attention to the recent beheadings of two American journalists, and given Obama’s volte-face on this issue, the polling numbers now will look different. Still, it’s worth remembering.

1) There’s a strong bipartisan consensus on American foreign policy. The dirtiest secret in all of American politics:

Republicans and Democrats are generally on the same side when it comes to foreign policy, although to varying degrees. Majorities of supporters in both parties share similar concerns about top threats facing the country. They differ little in their preferred approaches toward China, Iran and Syria (except that Democrats are more willing to accept Syrian refugees into the United States). The sharpest differences between Democrats and Republicans are on the issue of immigration and on U.S. policy in the Middle East. In most cases, Republicans are more supportive of the use of force, while Democrats are more likely to favor peacekeeping missions. Independents generally tend to fall somewhere in between the views of Democrats and Republicans (p. 14).

Not as funny as David Letterman, I’ll grant you. But interesting all the same.