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The Politics of Strategic Adjustment: Ideas, Institutions, and Interests
Peter Trubowitz, Emily O. Goldman, and Edward Rhodes (ed.)
1999
6. The Social Foundations of Strategic Adjustment
Miroslav Nincic, University of California at Davis
Roger Rose, Benedictine University
Gerard Gorski, University of California at Davis
If the purpose of grand strategy is to marshal and employ a nation’s resources in the manner most conducive to its security objectives, then strategic adjustment is the business of redefining security objectives when established ends no longer bear a compelling relation to evolving circumstances, and of altering the relations between ends and means, resources and security needs, when changing conditions make these relations obsolete. As grand strategy is a reflection of national needs and values, on the one hand, and of international circumstances, on the other, an understanding of the shape that strategy assumes must be attentive to both domestic and external forces.
The end of the Cold War marks the first truly significant transition for postwar U.S. foreign policy, with implications as substantial as those that attended the beginning of the Cold War and the decisive abandonment of isolationism in the mid-1940s. Forced to find new guidelines for its foreign and military policy, the nation currently finds itself in a situation with no clear parallels in its experience. While the United States no longer confronts a serious challenge to its physical security or fundamental values, in contrast to its isolationist period it retains massive power acquired to deal with the Communist threat, as well as a conception of itself as the international community’s leader in the pursuit of fundamental common objectives. Having dispensed with the concerns that dominated its policy during nearly half a century, it has not yet articulated a new sense of priorities, a firm conception of its place within the international community, or of the instruments, including military tools, of national policy appropriate to the new circumstances.
Recent reviews of U.S. military force structure provide the first wave of thinking on how military resources and planning should be adjusted to post- Cold War circumstances. 1 Their common feature is the recognition that international circumstances no longer provide a reliable guide to strategic planning, implying that, in the absence of clearly etched external priorities, societal pressures may play a significant role in guiding U.S. strategic adjustment. The significance of the domestic setting to national strategy is not a recent revelation. In addition to his dictum that armed force should be used with due regard to the political purposes it is intended to serve, Clausewitz drew attention to the societal forces upon which military success ultimately rests—especially in his comparison of the wars of the French Revolution with those of Frederick the Great. 2 More recently, Michael Howard, writing on “The Forgotten Dimension of Strategy,” 3 emphasized the dependence of military planning on its social underpinnings (the “forgotten dimension”), especially on the attitudes of the people upon whose “commitment and readiness for self-denial” the efficacy of its logistical, operational, and technological dimensions ultimately depend.
Pressures come from various political institutions and segments of society. While one could examine the role of interest groups or bureaucratic and institutional politics, this essay focuses on aggregate public preferences relevant to strategic adjustment, since the legitimacy of democratic policy ultimately requires the active support, or at least the passive acquiescence, of the national public. 4 While popular opinion plays some role in virtually all modern nations, its effect is strongest in systems where tenure of the top political office depends on the public’s good will and where, even between elections, anticipated public responses govern so many presidential policy choices. 5 On many issues, the general public rarely does more than set the broad boundaries in which leaders conduct policy; on others, however, its strictures are more sharply defined. In either case, political leaders violate these boundaries at considerable political risk, and, on those exceptional occasions when foreign policy issues are highly salient, as when Americans are sent to fight on foreign shores, democratic public opinion must be, and generally is, monitored and consulted on a continuous basis. 6 Accordingly, we will examine the extent to which public view and preferences may help mold the process of strategic adjustment. Unlike the other contributions to this volume, which seek to shed light on the lessons of history, we will examine the guidelines that certain socio-psychological processes, when applied to the analysis of public opinion, may provide to U.S. leaders.
The Forms and Nature of Public Influence
The influence of social forces on strategic policy decisions can be felt in at least three ways. To begin with, strategic needs are tethered to political goals which, in turn, are rooted in the interests and preferences of relevant social actors. Beyond immediate threats to national survival, the definition of political, and hence strategic, goals will vary according to constellations of social forces and preferences, and strategic adjustment must be alert to these constellations. Second, because new strategic ends, like the old ones, imply material and other costs, the concurrence of those who are called upon to foot the bill is a necessary part of strategic calculations, while society’s “commitment and readiness for self-denial” depend on the public’s political priorities. Finally, the extent and the nature of military operations depend on societal acquiescence with the methods involved, since certain military options may be precluded by societal ideas, rooted in culture and ethics, of what is proper and acceptable; and means considered appropriate under one set of security challenges may appear unsuited to other circumstances.
Much of the empirical work on the form and nature of public influence concludes that foreign and national security policy is closely responsive to popular sentiment. A study conducted in the early 1970s comparing public preferences revealed by polling data on several national issues with actual policies, concluded that the degree of congruence on foreign policy matters was roughly comparable to that encountered for domestic issues. 7 Another study found that the correlation between public opinion and government policy was even more pronounced in the case of foreign policy. 8 Both studies sought only to establish a correlation between public opinion and policy, leaving open the issue of causal direction. More recent research has compared policy changes with opinion shifts at various points in time, establishing that, for foreign as well as domestic affairs, opinion shifted before policy changed in the majority of cases. 9 On a subject of particular relevance to strategic adjustment, Bruce Russett has inquired whether governmental decisions on levels of military spending followed or preceded shifting public views on whether increases were necessary. He found that the statistically strongest relation linked popular attitudes in a given year and changes in actual spending in the subsequent year. 10
Since some scholars argue that the public’s view is primarily a function of elite discourse and media coverage, 11 it is worth asking how malleable public priorities may be to influence from above. Research has shown that, the greater a citizen’s political awareness, the more likely that person is to adopt elite and media views, especially when elites are united in their position. 12 When elites are divided along partisan or ideological lines, politically attentive citizens tend to align their views with those elites that share their broad values.
It is not surprising that the attentive public takes its cues from elites to whom its members are philosophically or socially proximate. But this also implies that the views of the poorly informed and politically inattentive majority are not easily molded from above, especially when, as is currently the case, there is considerable division within elite opinion itself. Under the circumstances, political leaders are wise to view the attitudes of the general public as relatively settled parameters, at least in the short- to medium-term. Furthermore, electoral considerations and the impact of mass opinion upon a president’s congressional support suggest that, at least in the broad outlines of presidential foreign policy, the opinion of the general public matters very much. 13
The specific impact of public priorities depends on the respective influence of societal and international pressures upon the formulation of national strategy. 14 The more serious the external threat, and the greater its clarity, the less do domestic social and political calculations dominate the thinking of policymakers. The greater the threat, the more the imperative of domestic solidarity asserts itself. Moreover, the clearer the cues provided by the international environment, the slighter the domestic dissension concerning their interpretation. Thus, threat and clarity imply an ability to focus strategic planning almost exclusively on the external world. It is not that strategic policy is any less a resultant of various vectors of domestic societal interest and preference, it is just that most of the relevant vectors point in the same direction, and decisionmakers are spared the effort of groping for the outlines of a domestic consensus. But when there is uncertainty about security threats and objectives, about the acceptable tradeoffs between wholly or partially incompatible goals, and about the proper relation of means to ends, a prior task of strategic adjustment is to devise the outlines of the necessary societal consensus. This is the position at which the United States currently finds itself.
The challenge, then, is to establish what guidance the U.S. public may offer its policymakers as they strive to design a national strategy for the post- Cold War era. The question guiding our inquiry is whether the general public provides its policymakers with clear and consistent cues, and whether there is an understandable and predictable structure to these cues. More particularly, we ask: do specific military and political preferences displayed by Americans follow from their more general principles and priorities? In other words, are these preferences governed by a discernible pattern of “vertical constraints”? 15 For example, vertical constraints would be operating if a person’s support for local expenditure on public schools were predictable from that person’s overall feelings about the value of education. During the Cold War years it may well be that the average American’s attitudes on foreign policy and defense issues followed from more general attitudes toward communism, or about the primacy of national security. Correspondingly and in the wake of the Cold War’s demise, it is important to ask whether a new structure of vertical constraints has emerged, one that might allow decisionmakers to anticipate specific positions from a grasp of general postures.
It may also be that certain overarching psychological inclinations, having little or nothing to do with the logic of vertical constraints, impart a predictability to popular stances on specific issues, providing policymakers with guideposts to what may or may not be popularly acceptable in the post-Cold War era. In particular, we will explore whether a dominant tendency to loss aversion—i.e., to weigh losses to acquired positions more heavily than comparable gains in the form of new positions—may also provide policymakers with clues useful in designing acceptable international security postures.
What we ultimately find is that, while the governed desire to keep their government on a short leash on matters of foreign and defense policy, they provide it with very little guidance about the specific ends that these policies should serve. Although the desire for a meaningful level of international involvement has not markedly decreased since the end of the Cold War, the public’s foreign policy priorities in concrete applications are hard to infer from its overall policy predilections, contrary to what a belief in vertical constraints would suggest. Its attitudes toward military force are predictable to some degree on the basis of whether the goal is to expand or protect U.S. interests (an implication of loss aversion). Yet, even here, as we shall see, specific policy implications remain murky. A fairly tentative, case-by-case, and low cost approach to the nation’s foreign and security goals may be what the domestic setting is more prone to encourage.
Before turning to the current period, it is useful to review the way in which the Cold War projected itself on the public’s thinking, creating a consistent pattern of support for an activist, largely unilateral, and security- oriented grand strategy.
The Pattern of Cold War Preferences
At the height of the Cold War, the magnitude of the Soviet threat, the fundamental national values against which it seemed directed, and the monolithic character of the adversary bloc established a temporary, but stable, national consensus regarding the nature of the peril and the level of the necessary response. Though public pressure retained the ability to check policy, the agreement between government and governed on these matters meant that it rarely wished to do so. This was a time when a majority of Americans considered foreign affairs, the Communist threat especially, as the most important problem facing the nation, and there was little dissension on the need for toughness. According to a Gallup survey in 1946, 62 percent of the public opposed the notion of arms control with the Soviet Union. 16 A poll conducted two years later revealed that 34 percent of the respondents to the question “What policy do you think we should be following toward Russia?” thought that the U.S. should either prepare to fight or go to war. 17 Support for defense spending was correspondingly high. When asked, in 1951, whether the U.S. defense program should be reduced if the Korean war were brought to an end, only 12 percent of the public concurred, while a massive 82 percent opposed reductions. 18 Finally, public support for the use of force by the U.S. abroad was high and remained vigorous, particularly when measured in terms associated with Cold War objectives. In September 1950, 66 percent of the public expressed support for defending other countries against communism “like we did in Korea.” Even though support for this notion declined somewhat as the war progressed, it never fell below 45 percent; remarkably, once the war was over public support for this idea rebounded to over 50 percent. 19
By 1960, Cold War thinking was virtually unchallenged in popular politics. The presidential election campaign of that year reflected this consensus. Both Nixon and Kennedy were ardent cold warriors and spent a significant portion of the 1960 campaign attempting to “one-up” each other as the strongest, toughest, and most dedicated anti-Communist. 20 The campaign rhetoric apparently struck a responsive chord among the public, for, by election day, 63 percent agreed strongly that “the United States should keep soldiers overseas where they can help countries that are against Communism” (up from 55 percent in 1958 and 49 percent in 1956). 21 This foreshadowed a general preoccupation with the Cold War, driven by events of the next few years. 22 When Gallup inquired in 1960 and 1961 about the most important problem facing the nation, the response was so overwhelmingly colored by concerns for foreign affairs that the pollster chose, uncharacteristically, not to report percentages in its annual yearbook. Subsequently, in 1962 and 1963 the percentages naming foreign affairs averaged over 60 percent.
Reflecting the popular mood, Congress was loath to question presidential initiatives in foreign policy, especially on matters of national security. The concept of “Two Presidencies” was coined, to distinguish a domestic presidency, girded by the usual forms of democratic control, and a foreign-policy presidency within which the Chief Executive enjoyed surprising autonomy. 23 As Senator William Fulbright maintained at the time, “The price of democratic survival in a world of aggressive totalitarianism is to give up some of the democratic luxuries of the past.” 24
Still, the period of consensus represented a relatively brief chapter in U.S. political history. By the late 1960s, the Vietnam debacle had demonstrated to many Americans that their government could not always be relied upon to define the national interest appropriately, or to pursue it effectively. In addition, by weakening the perceptions of threat upon which the Cold War consensus rested, the détente of the late sixties and early seventies produced a greater plurality of societal perspectives on foreign and defense policy.
Figure 6.1
To examine whether these were changes of degree, rather than of fundamental substance, we consider public attitudes toward the Soviet Union as an indicator of Cold War sentiment. Figure 6.1 displays three series of data points bearing on the issue. The longest, spanning the period from 1953 to 1990 represents general negative perceptions of the USSR 25 Two others are more particular but less complete. One charts the public’s assessment of the U.S./ Soviet relationship; 26 the other indicates how the public has viewed Soviet intentions. 27 Each of these measures exhibit considerable fluctuation after the period of U.S./Soviet détente during the early 1970s, at times tilting significantly in the direction of the old Cold War consensus. Also in evidence is the marked decline of all indicators as the Cold War wound to a close and the Soviet Union dissolved. Accordingly, the first major and unambiguous shift in the nature and perception of external threat coincides with the end of the Cold War.
The General View: Internationalism After the Cold War
Since the Cold War witnessed a shift from traditional isolationism to vigorous internationalism, one may ask whether the process operates symmetrically: whether a retreat to isolationism has followed the disappearance of direct Cold War-related threats to the United States. This has been the fear of policymakers and commentators. In 1993, political commentator Ben Wattenberg cautioned against America’s habit of “playing ostrich when danger recedes,” a tendency that has “led to tragedy, both American and global.” 28 Following the 1994 midterm elections, George Bush warned against the rising influence of isolationism, urging Americans to resist “that faulted sirens’ call.” 29 Similarly, former Chairman of the House International Relations Committee Lee Hamilton worried that “the public is, at best, ambivalent about an active U.S. role in the world...This makes it much more difficult for the President to conduct U.S. foreign policy during this time of transition.” 30
Figure 6.2
The concerns of pundits notwithstanding, the data provide only very limited evidence of resurgent isolationism; the more accurate characterization of public sentiment is one of qualified internationalism. Examining, in Figure 6.2, responses to the question “Do you think it will be best for the future of the country if we take an active part in world affairs or if we stay out of world affairs?” 31 we find that the percentage preferring the former to the latter alternative was not very different in 1994 than in the mid-1940s. On average, over the entire period, only 25 to 30 percent expressed a preference for staying out, and the range of variation in this sentiment has been slight. The extent of current isolationism seems no greater than during the late 1970s and early 1980s, which is somewhat surprising, since that period was characterized by increased U.S.-Soviet tension, and since the public was generally supportive of increased defense spending. If anything, this indicates that internationalism and perception of external peril do not necessarily go hand in hand, suggesting, in turn, that a return to isolationism need not be a consequence of the Soviet Union’s collapse.
Two other measures of opinion on an isolationist-internationalist continuum are provided by the Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press. 32 While both suggest that isolationism has gained ground with respect to the pre-détente period, they reveal no substantial change since the mid- seventies.
Figure 6.3
Measure 1 is based on public responses to the following statement: “The US should mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own.” As Figure 6.3 demonstrates, the percent concurring with this view in 1995 is a little more than twice as high as it was in 1964 and about what it was in 1976. A rejection of the isolationist position did coincide with the worsening of U.S.-Soviet relations during the late 1970s and early 1980s, but the overall trend in this measure is a rather slow gradual return to the level of the mid-seventies. Absent is any indication of a precipitous increase in isolationist sentiment following the end of the Cold War.
Measure 2 involves public reactions to the statement “We should not think so much in international terms but concentrate more on our own national problems and building up our strength and prosperity here at home.” Although the two trend-lines trace a roughly comparable trajectory, the level of apparent isolationism is much greater in the second case than in the first. Measure 1 implies that about 2 in 5 Americans have opted for isolationism after the Cold War; Measure 2 implies that the figure is nearly twice as high!
The discrepancy, although large, may result from the wording of the two statements: the first refers to international involvement in an absolute sense, with no reference to its domestic consequences; the second implies a necessary tradeoff between internationalism and an ability to address pressing domestic problems. This suggests that isolationism is apt to be greatest when people believe that international challenges can be met only at the expense of domestic needs, and that support for foreign involvement may hinge on the extent to which these costs are perceived as: (a) slight in absolute terms, and/or (b) being shared with other nations.
Our view of the public finds additional support in recent scholarship. In a study, covering the 1947 to 1991 period, Alvin Richman found that the Cold War’s demise brought no significant change in public attitudes toward involvement in world affairs. 33 Examining 13 trend measures of U.S. internationalist sentiment, he detected no meaningful difference for six; five of the measures actually showed an increase in internationalism, while only two reflected a decline. Revisiting this question three years later, Richman updated and reconceptualized his examination. While this produced a more nuanced discussion, his basic conclusions remain unchanged. 34 In the more recent work Richman identifies four dimensions (factors) of internationalist sentiment derived from his examination of the October 1994 Chicago Council on Foreign Relations Survey. He argues that opinions vary separately across each of these dimensions, and while changes along one of them, “global altruism” can be read as a decline in internationalist sentiment, shifts in the other three suggest, instead, adjustments of substantive and regional priorities. Moreover, Richman finds, as we do, that for the most part general measures of internationalism have remained relatively constant.
All in all, then, it appears that internationalism has not so much been replaced by staunch isolationism as tempered by a concern with the domestic opportunity costs of international activism. The lack of strong isolationist sentiment may be natural, since the nation as a whole has become increasingly aware of the extent of international interdependence and of the futility of insulating U.S. interests from external influences and developments. Nevertheless, concern with the costs of involvement may have limited the public’s appetite for foreign engagements to those that do not carry meaningful domestic costs or to those that enhance the domestic economic and social agenda; and if popular thinking on foreign policy is indeed vertically constrained, some guidelines for strategic adjustment may be inferred from general priorities and preferences.
Figure 6.4
The Emerging Structure of Priorities: Domestic Priorities and Foreign Policy Objectives
A common feeling, consistent with observations on internationalism, is that, in the post-Cold War era, external goals are defined by domestic needs, and that the rank ordering of these goals reflects the structure of domestic priorities. For example, Andrew Kohut, Director of the Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press, observed in his 1993 testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee that “The public wants a foreign policy agenda that serves its domestic agenda.” 35 This preference could certainly be inferred from what the average American defines as the most important national problem, and by observing the respective movements of domestic and international concerns (as shown in Figure 6.4). The graph traces the percentage of the public that identified foreign and defense issues as the nation’s most important problem. As one can see, throughout the 1950s and 1960s foreign policy ranked even with, and often higher than, domestic policy concerns. 36 But since the Vietnam War, foreign policy problems consistently track far below domestic issues in the public’s mind, except in times of immediate foreign policy crises like the Iran Hostage Crisis (1979) and the Persian Gulf War (1991).
Table 6.1: Public Support for Various U.S. Foreign Policy Goals (Percentage of public agreeing that objective is “very important”)
| Year | 1994 | 1990 | 1986 | 1982 | 1979 | Mean |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mainly Protective | ||||||
| Protecting U.S. Jobs | (1) 83 | (1) 65 | (1) 78 | (1) 77 | (1) 78 | 76 |
| Securing Energy Supplies | (2) 62 | (3) 61 | (2) 69 | (2) 70 | (1) 78 | 68 |
| Protecting U.S. Business Interests | (3) 52 | (2) 63 | (8) 43 | (8) 44 | (7) 45 | 49 |
| Containing Communism | — | (7) 56 | (4) 57 | (4) 59 | (4) 60 | 58 |
| Defending Allies' Security | (5) 41 | (3) 61 | (5) 56 | (5) 50 | (5) 50 | 52 |
| Matching Soviet Military Power | — | (7) 56 | (6) 53 | (6) 49 | — | 53 |
| Protecting Weaker Nations from Aggression | (8) 24 | (6) 57 | (11) 32 | (11) 34 | (9) 34 | 36 |
| Mean | 56 | |||||
| Mainly Promotive | ||||||
| Strengthen United Nations | (4) 51 | (10) 44 | (7) 46 | (7) 48 | (6) 47 | 47 |
| Protect & Defend Human Rights | (6) 34 | (5) 58 | (9) 42 | (9) 43 | (8) 39 | 43 |
| World-wide Arms Control | — | (9) 53 | (2) 69 | (3) 64 | (3) 64 | 63 |
| Improve Living Standards Abroad | (9) 22 | (11) 41 | (10) 37 | (10) 35 | (10) 35 | 34 |
| Promote Democracy Abroad | (6) 34 | (12) 28 | (12) 30 | (12) 29 | (11) 26 | 29 |
| Mean | 43 | |||||
Source: Chicago Council of Foreign Relations
Note: Number in parentheses indicate rank-ordering of objective within the survey.
One would anticipate, along with Kohut, that an altered sense of national challenges, where domestic problems have superseded international problems in the hierarchy of popular concerns, should now cause a good foreign policy to be defined as one that advances important domestic needs. This is what effective vertical constraints would lead us to expect, and this is substantially what surveys by the Chicago Council of Foreign Relations (CCFR) reveal in Table 6.1. 37
In each of the five surveys, the two highest ranking foreign policy goals have involved objectives directly related to domestic needs: protecting U.S. jobs and securing adequate energy supplies (in 1990, protecting U.S. business interests), objectives with a pronounced “bread and butter” content. Interestingly, the support for these objectives may not even be associated with post-Cold War priorities. The 1978 and 1982 surveys, conducted in the throes of a new chill in U.S.-Soviet relations and amid heightened security anxieties, reveal that the public deemed domestic goals as more important than containing communism, defending our allies’ security, and matching Soviet military power. It is quite possible that identical surveys conducted between the late-1940s and early 1960s would have reflected a greater relative concern for Cold War objectives, but it is hard to escape the conclusion that, more recently and especially since the Soviet Union’s collapse, the measure of a good foreign policy, from the perspective of the average American is how well it promotes domestic prosperity and well-being. 38
While distinctions based on the substance of the goals pursued—on the assumption that general objectives shape specific priorities—are valuable, a classification of foreign policy objectives based on the notion of loss-aversion is revealing as well. In this regard, it is useful to distinguish between two broad categories of foreign policy goals: those protecting objectives that the United States had pretty much attained, and those involving the pursuit of ends that are, as yet, unattained. The first will be termed protective, the second promotive. 39 The expectation is that the public’s responses to loss and gain respectively may, in addition to vertical constraints, provide a basis for structuring foreign policy attitudes. A close examination of the results of the CCFR surveys confirms the hypothesis (table 6.1).
We have distinguished, among the survey questions, those in which the wording would qualify the associated goals as “promotive” from those which would be properly be classified as “protective.” The explanation, consonant with the premises of prospect theory, is that the latter would evoke significantly more popular enthusiasm than the former. 40 The data support the hypothesis. We have computed the mean values for response considering the foreign policy objective “very important” in the rightmost column. As can be seen, the mean support score for the protective goals is 56, for promotive goals is 43. The dominance of protective over promotive goals is evident throughout the surveys. Protecting that which we have attained seems a more worthy objective to most Americans than attaining new goals.
Accordingly, the public appears to want a foreign policy pragmatically related to its domestic concerns, and one that is essentially protective rather than promotive. In and of themselves, these desiderata do not seem fully compatible with a role of vigorous international leadership. Nevertheless a look at the even more restricted set on military and national security goals furnishes further insight into the American public’s ability to provide its leaders with cues as to which sorts of policies are likely to be most acceptable in terms of societal preferences.
Figure 6.5
The Absence of Security Threats
External threats provide the context for force postures and military activities, and one may ask what purpose armed force serves from the public’s viewpoint if there is no compelling foreign peril. In this regard, the impact of the Cold War’s demise cannot be overstated. In 1946, 69 percent of the population anticipated finding itself in another war within twenty-five years; 41 by 1993, 87 percent of the public was entirely or fairly satisfied with the nation’s military security. 42 Indeed, as William Schneider observes, “sometime during the 1980s, people started to consider non-military issues a more serious threat to our national security than military issues.” 43 Looking ahead to Figure 6.5 provides additional evidence that the importance of an external peril has diminished, as it displays the decline in public concern with the Soviet threat.
When queried about external threats to the United States, the public appears hard-pressed to name an overriding peril, and none dominates popular concerns. Predictably, when asked to identify the greatest threat to the international order (rather than directly to the United States), the public’s views are likewise fragmented.
Table 6.2: Public's View of Top Dangers to World Stability (Percentage of Respondent's First Choice)
| Nationalism and Ethnic Hatreds | 27% |
| Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction | 24% |
| Environmental Pollution | 18% |
| Religious Fanaticism | 11% |
| Population Growth | 10% |
| International Trade Conflicts | 7% |
Source: Times Mirror, 1993.
Times-Mirror asked the public to identify the greatest threat to world stability, but no single peril was mentioned by a majority, or even a strong plurality of the respondents, as their first choice, as indicated in Table 6.2. Just over a quarter of the public identified interethnic hostility, and just under one quarter chose the (logically unrelated) problem of nuclear proliferation. The third choice (18 percent) was environmental pollution, while remaining opinion was divided between three other (and, again, largely unrelated) issues.
Table 6.3: Threats to Vital U.S. Interests (Percentage of Respondents who Consider Items as “Critical Threat”)
| Possibility of Unfriendly Countries Becoming Nuclear Powers | 72% |
| Large Numbers of Immigrants and Refugees Coming to the U.S. | 72% |
| International Terrorism | 69% |
| Economic Competition from Japan | 62% |
| The Development of China as a World Power | 57% |
| Possible Expansion of Islamic Fundamentalism | 33% |
| The Military Power of Russia | 32% |
| Economic Competition from Europe | 27% |
Source: Chicago Council of Foreign Relations, 1995.
The Chicago Council on Foreign Relations’ 1995 poll, reveals a greater number of people identifying a “critical threat” to U.S. interests, but, again, with no dominant threat. In fact, examining Table 6.3, we observe that more than 50 percent of the respondents considered any of five more or less unrelated threats “critical” in this sense. This suggests that there is no vertically structured thinking in this area. Moreover, the second and fourth ranked threat have little connection to security as it is traditionally conceived, and no logical connection to military force.
The Public and Military Power
The implications for strategic adjustment of a public that is, with the possible exception of nuclear proliferation, unable to identify a compelling common threat, are substantial, since this undermines national willingness to bear many of the costs of military power. These implications are apparent for three issues pivotal to strategic adjustment: (a) military spending; (b) multilateralism and burden-sharing, and (c) the use of force abroad.
Military Spending
Under the new international circumstances, it is not surprising that there should be limited enthusiasm for expanding military budgets, and examination of figure 6.5 reveals a strong inverse relationship between the public’s sense of external threats and its support for defense spending. 44
While only about one out of six Americans reckoned that the United States was spending too much on defense in the mid-1960s, since the early 1970s almost twice that number has felt that too much is lavished on defense. More recently, that percentage has increased from an average of 29 percent in the eighties, to more that 40 percent for every year of this decade.
Having paid the bill for the Cold War, the public displays little sympathy for extensive defense spending without a major threat to arm against. This does not mean that military spending is likely to decrease, in either real or nominal terms; but it does indicate that little real growth in defense outlays can be realistically expected in the foreseeable future. And it means that major new missions and weapons systems are likely to be purchased at the expense of existing programs. With regard to the size of the U.S. military, 58 percent of the public is willing to support a military force large enough to fight a war the size of the 1991 Gulf War. However, it is skeptical of the need for a force capable of fighting two regional wars simultaneously. 45
Burden-sharing
In the wake of the Cold War, the public displays little attachment to pursuing security objectives unilaterally. Not surprisingly, it is unwilling to shoulder the costs of major international military operations whenever security objectives can be said to concern others as well. Further, most Americans favor having U.S. allies assume more of the responsibilities. Ninety percent of the public agreed that other countries should pay a share of the costs of intervention (even when the question suggests that outside support may “compromise our moral leadership and make us seem too mercenary). 46 ” With regard to the United Nations, a Times Mirror poll portrays a public sympathetic to some notion of “multilateral” internationalism, and support for the statement “The United States should cooperate fully with the United Nations” has remained consistently above 60 percent since the mid-1980s. 47 Moreover, while some conservative policymakers disparage the idea of strengthening the United Nations, 57 percent of the public believes strengthening the UN would not interfere with the ability of the U.S. to pursue its interests. 48 In fact, strengthening the UN appears, according to one survey, to include contributing troops to UN efforts to defend other UN members from attack. 49
Generally, the public overwhelmingly supports maintaining existing alliance commitments and, whenever possible, calling upon others to act jointly with the U.S. And, despite the demise of its original mission, 61 percent of Americans felt, in early 1997, that NATO should be maintained. 50
Finally a series of polls on possible use of force in the Korean Peninsula and Saudi Arabia, two areas the U.S. has long pledged to defend on its own, show that the public supports using force in those areas only if the UN or U.S. allies also participate; 68 percent and 76 percent of the public supports joint military action to defend Saudi Arabia and South Korea, respectively, from attack. However, when the same poll asks respondents who favor these joint military operations if they would support unilateral action by the U.S., support drops to 44 percent for Saudi Arabia and 31 percent for South Korea. 51
In sum, continued support for the U.S. resort to force abroad implies that the costs and responsibilities be shared with other nations.
Table 6.4: Justifications for Military Intervention (Percentage Respondents Agreeing with Item)
| U.S. Under Direct Military Attack | 94% |
| To Prevent Large Numbers from Starving to Death | 67% |
| Important U.S. Economic Needs Are at Stake | 60% |
| One Nation Destroying Another by Killing People/Driving Them from Their Homes | 57% |
| To Guarantee Democratically Elected Leaders Can Govern | 47% |
Source: Wall Street Journal/NBC, 1993.
Justifications for Resort to Force
Do public preferences indicate to what specific purposes military power should be applied? One might assume, by the logic of vertical constraints, that the specific ends the public feels should be addressed through armed force are directly implied by its sense of leading national priorities. But this is not entirely so. Table 6.4 displays the result of a 1993 poll on justifications for military intervention.
Interestingly, and quite contrary to what the public’s domestic priorities would lead us to anticipate, economic interests do not head the list. After the need to fend off direct threats to American lives, the humanitarian objective of preventing mass starvation is regarded as the strongest justification for military intervention. This is followed by guaranteeing peace and security in important regions. Neither of the latter two were high on the general lists of foreign policy priorities. Economic interests rank only fourth here. (The only ranking that is expected in terms of more general priorities involves the promotion of democracy which, again, is at the bottom of the list.) Clearly, this is not the order of justifications for resort to force that the more general preferences would predict.
It is noteworthy that humanitarian goals, although they have no direct bearing on U.S. domestic needs, win the approbation of a majority of Americans. For example, fully 71 percent of those asked said they would favor sending U.S. troops “to save lives and help distribute food in countries where people are starving, but where U.S. national security is not involved,” while only 22 percent were opposed. 52 In early 1994, a majority (59 percent) of respondents disagreed with the statement that “the US needs to be involved in Bosnia in order to protect its own interests.” Nevertheless, a plurality of respondents concurred with the feeling that “the US has a moral obligation to stop Serbian attacks on Sarajevo.” 53 Again, in June 1995, 63 percent of the respondents in a USA Today-CNN Poll estimated that the United States need not be involved in Bosnia “to protect US interests,” although an identical percentage felt that the United States does have “a moral obligation to protect Bosnian civilians from Serbian attacks.”
The public likewise failed to endorse domestic reasons for involvement in the most significant military action in recent years—the Gulf War. Despite President Bush’s several attempts to justify the 1991 Persian Gulf War in terms of the economic consequences for the U.S. if major oil fields fell into Iraqi hands, the public seems not to have considered economic imperatives a sound rationale for military action. A few weeks before Operation Desert Storm was launched, most citizens felt that the goal of maintaining U.S. oil supplies would not justify armed intervention (though 62 percent endorsed military force to serve notice on Iraq and other potential aggressors that such behavior does not go unpunished.) 54 Probably taking his cue from the polls, the President began stressing the normative principle of nonaggression as a justification for U.S. military action.
Though some cases of promoting peace and thwarting aggression matter enough to most Americans to justify resort to force, the situation is very different when it comes to shaping the domestic politics of other nations. For example, in the same Harris survey that showed a strong majority in favor of using troops to help starving people, only 48 percent favored sending American troops to “help restore order and save lives in war-torn countries where effective government has broken down.” 55 Similarly, before U.S. forces were dispatched to Haiti, a majority of Americans opposed the idea of sending U.S. troops to Haiti to “restore the elected government.” 56 (Although, in another poll, 69 percent of the public was willing to support the Haiti intervention if the issue was to prevent the illegal immigration that might follow from a failure to restore democracy). 57 These findings are consistent with Bruce Jentleson’s conclusions, based on popular attitudes toward a number of U.S. military interventions, that the U.S. public is more likely to endorse the use of force when the objective is to deal with another country’s external behavior than when the purpose is to change its domestic order. 58
Figure 6.6
The Costs of Military Intervention
We must distinguish support for the mere prospect of intervention from the attitudes that emerge once that prospective intervention has become a reality. While endorsement of intervention in the abstract may be based largely on the issues at stake, attitudes toward an intervention that is underway are at least as likely to be governed by its costs. For example, although most Americans initially supported the intervention in Somalia, enthusiasm quickly waned after the first U.S. casualties were reported. If many Americans felt that the U.S. had a “moral obligation” to stop Serbian attacks on Sarajevo, they endorsed only the most costless and riskless forms of achieving this (going as far as air strikes, but not the dispatching of U.S. ground troops).
The U.S. experiences in Korea and Vietnam demonstrated a clear link between decline in approval for the wars and their costs, especially their human toll, 59 and the overwhelming enthusiasm for the Gulf War must, in large part, be explained by the relatively small number of American casualties it claimed. In fact, some notion of how dependent approval of the war was on casualty levels is acquired when the link between support and hypothetical casualty levels is examined. The Los Angeles Times in January 1991 explored whether the public’s perception of success in the war with Iraq would be influenced by the number of U.S. soldiers killed. The relationship between costs and support emerges clearly in Figure 6.6. 60
Figure 6.7
And, in a mission more similar to Somalia than to the Gulf War, Americans are again, as shown in Figure 6.7, cost sensitive toward U.S. casualties in the case of Bosnia. 61
The relevance of costs also extends to the economic realm. According to a Time/CNN poll conducted a few days before the start of the Gulf War, two-thirds of the public declared that Kuwait was worth fighting for. Attitudes shifted, though, when the issue of economic costs was explicitly introduced. A five to four negative answer was evoked when the following question pointed out economic costs: “Going to war against Iraq will cost this country billions of dollars. Given our current economic problems, do you think going to war against Iraq is worth the billions of dollars in costs?” 62
In sum, military intervention that does not adequately consider public sensitivity to U.S. costs is likely to create pressures for a resolution of the involvement that may be at variance with its political objectives or, at least, with guiding conceptions of the proper relation of means to ends. In this regard, the current interest of defense planners in the technology of nonlethal conflict, within the context of a potential Revolution in Military Affairs, may have considerable implications—since, in the absence of significant human costs, the public constraints on national decisionmakers with regard to military involvements are likely to be considerably looser than ever before. 63
The Hazards of Inferring Specific Preferences from General Priorities
As we have seen, vertical constraints operate clearly with regard to some issues and, at other times, especially with the use of force, appear sporadically, if at all. We started with most general principle: the commitment to internationalism, and while we found continuing support for international involvement, it appears domestically driven and cost-sensitive. A more general examination of the public’s foreign policy priorities revealed that they were substantially tethered to domestic concerns. Moreover, when asked about military spending and burden-sharing, the public again shows an alertness to domestic needs and a corresponding sensitivity to costs.
The public’s apparent priorities may also account for the emphasis placed by both post-Cold War presidents on job-creation as a leading foreign policy objective. Evidence of a link to domestic priorities is found in President Clinton’s claim, in his report entitled A National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement, that his approach to strategy is: “premised on the belief that the line between our domestic and foreign policies has increasingly disappeared—that we must revitalize our economy if we are to sustain our military forces, foreign initiatives and global influence, and that we must engage actively abroad if we are to open foreign markets and create jobs for our people.” 64
At the same time, and surprisingly, public willingness to commit troops abroad seems largely unrelated to the more general domestic priorities. When it comes to looking at public support for specific decisions, the principle of restraint and domestic economic health does not trump humanitarian issues as often as we would expect. Further, it cannot be assumed that foreign policy and security decisions will be rewarded by the public to the extent that they reflect its domestic priorities, even in the less threatening, less crisis-prone realm of diplomacy. We have seen that the public claims to place job promotion at the pinnacle of its foreign policy objectives, while ranking the support of human rights abroad very low. Accordingly, when a presidential choice must be made between the two, one expects jobs to be favored. This was the case when President Clinton opted, in May 1994, to maintain China’s Most Favored Nation status despite its shoddy human rights record. But this does not appear to be what most Americans really wanted. A few months before the President’s decision, the public was asked whether we should “maintain good relations with China despite disagreements we might have with its human rights policies, or should we demand that China improve its human rights policies if it wants to continue to enjoy its current trade status with the United States?” Less than one-third (29 percent) of the respondents opted for unconditional trade relations, while nearly two-thirds (65 percent) favored an insistence on human rights. 65
The discrepancy between public sentiment on general preferences and specific decisions, therefore, needs clarification, and at least three reasons account for the occasional slippage between general priorities and specific preferences. To begin with, if the specific case involves a concrete foreign country, it invokes thoughts about that nation and society. Depending on how an event and its participants are portrayed, the standards of evaluation the public applies to the concrete case may get modified. Secondly, the particular policy will usually involve consideration not just of the foreign policy end, but also of the means by which it is pursued. This adds additional complexity to popular thinking, since certain means are, culturally or ethically, considered more suited to some ends than others. The “blood for oil” theme resonated ill with most Americans during the Gulf War (armed force seemed more appropriate to loftier objectives); and the notion of granting inducements to terrorists (“arms for hostages”) in dealings with Iran seemed wrong to many, since bad behavior, in the public mind, is supposed to be punished, not rewarded. Last, as our references to war casualties suggest, the specific case draws public attention to the policy’s costs, and cost-benefit calculations may not lead to the same conclusions about the policy’s desirability as mere evaluation of the objective involved. But the discrepancy between endorsement of general objectives and support for the specifics of their implementation suggests limits to the extent to which a consistent national strategy can be devised in the post-Cold War era.
Conclusions
It bears reiterating that the country’s leaders do not shape strategic adjustment exclusively, or even predominantly, around shifts in public preferences. Indeed, as Captain Ed Smith’s contribution to this volume shows, the Navy’s From the Sea review was a response to the collapse of the Cold War and the Soviet Union, the growth in global interdependence, and the pace of technological change. The public’s role was indirect. Still, as we argued in the beginning of this essay, at least a passive public acquiescence is required for major changes in national policy, and no significant commitment of economic or human resources can be contemplated in the face of popular opposition.
Consequently, the most important questions asked in the Department of Defense’s Bottom Up Review—How do we structure our armed forces for the future? How much defense is enough under the new circumstances? What, now, is the major purpose of military force?—must be answered with the public in mind. At the same time, when foreign threats seem neither clear nor pressing, the rules guiding popular thinking on political-military issues are poorly understood. Unfortunately, our own examination provides, at most, partial help in this regard. Three conclusions have a particularly significant bearing on the issue of strategic adjustment.
The first is that, while there are general objectives that seem more important than others, and while protective goals dominate those of a promotive nature, it is not easy to predict support for concrete policies from general public priorities, contrary to what the theory of “vertical constraints” on the public’s political thinking may have led us to expect. The emphasis on domestic (especially economic) goals is not always present in specific cases, while an interest in general humanitarian and world order goals sometimes makes an unexpected appearance. Moreover, public views are quite fragmented with regard to potential external threats.
Slippage in vertical constraints from the general principles to the specific may be understandable, at least in the short term. A search for consistent policy requires an effort by policymakers to mobilize support by framing policies appropriately, by generating supportive media coverage, and by rallying important segments of the political establishment. At the same time, leaders have a limited ability to impose consistency. For example, they can only move the public to support humanitarian objectives as long as the costs remain low and, in several recent cases, popular feelings about specific actions have not proven to be malleable. There has never been great enthusiasm for interventions that seek to promote internal political change. 66
Second, and related to the above, the public is not inclined to accept significant costs for foreign policy goals. There is no sign the public will change its preference for modest levels of defense spending, and, unlike the late 1970s, no major threat appears on the horizon that could alter popular sentiment. Major new military programs are unlikely to evoke much popular enthusiasm, and international goals are more likely to be supported if pursued multilaterally than unilaterally. The costs of actual military intervention, if greater than the public is willing to bear, create pressures to redirect the intervention away from its original goals, possibly at the expense of U.S. credibility.
Third, and related to the first two observations, there is little in the structure of public preferences to indicate the outlines of a “Grand” strategy—in the sense of a comprehensive long-term blueprint directed at a limited set of stable, dominant goals. A strategy of flexible and incremental adjustment to changing international realities, assuming modest public cost-tolerance, may be all that is realistically feasible, at least to the extent that public moods are taken as a guide. Moreover, as elites have shown considerable inertia in their thinking on many defense and security issues, it is unlikely that many clear policy signals have been transmitted from the pinnacle of U.S. society to its base. 67 Thus, if the process of U.S. strategic adjustment has not progressed very far since the end of the Cold War, the lack of societal guidance, as well as the ambiguity of international challenges, must provide the explanation.
At a more general level, it seems that the most appropriate characterization of the popular mind is one of “principled pragmatism,” encouraging a world vision closer to that of William James and John Dewey than of Machiavelli and Morgenthau. 68 Nevertheless, in the absence of compelling systemic imperatives and as the costs of the policy begin to mount, the pragmatism rather than the principles are likely to dominate.
The implications of public opinion should be placed in proper political context, since foreign policy’s domestic setting encompasses other social entities as well—economic groups, single-agenda lobbies, political parties, and bureaucratic interests. As various domestic forces are often groping to identify their own foreign policy and security objectives, and since the priorities of different segments and levels of society need not be compatible, strategic adjustment cannot proceed in a smooth and uncomplicated manner. In particular, the lack of a public consensus on basic international challenges and security objectives deprives the political process of a substratum of agreement that might otherwise limit the scope for dissension among other politically relevant social entities. Additionally, the growing salience of economic objectives suggests that foreign policy debates may be increasingly connected to the interests of lobbies and specific congressional constituencies, with shifting coalitions waging short-term battles over specific policy goals or economically consequential military programs. Under the circumstances, the conduct of grand strategy may well simply come to resemble domestic politics, i.e., “politics as usual.”
None of this is especially lamentable. Under post-Cold War international circumstances, it is natural that the aggregation of policy preferences should reflect the rough and tumble of democratic politics, and that it should be guided largely by domestic needs. As George Kennan accurately pointed out, the national interest “is not a detached interest in our international environment pursued for its own sake, independent of our aspirations and problems here at home. It does not signify things we would like to see happen in the outside world primarily for the sake of the outside world... It is the function of our duty to ourselves in our domestic problems.” 69
Endnotes
Note 1: See Les Aspin, Report on the Bottom Up Review (Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Defense, October 1993); Dov Zakheim and Jeffrey M. Ranney, “Matching Defense Strategies to Resources,” International Security, 18 (Summer 1993), 51&-;78; and Secretary of Defense, Base Force Plan, Annual Report to the President and the Congress (Washington D.C.: GPO, February 1992). Back.
Note 2: Karl von Clausewitz, On War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976). Back.
Note 3: In Michael Howard ed., The Causes of War and Other Essays (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 101–15. Back.
Note 4: We emphasize that our focus here is on public opinion in the aggregate. We do not disaggregate in our discussion even though we recognize that opinions on foreign policy and security issues vary across recognized constituent groups. (Examinations across race, gender, and or age can be particularly illuminating.) In practical terms policymakers must present foreign and security policies, particularly in their most general forms, as public goods. This notwithstanding we believe it reasonable, appropriate, and prudent for policymakers to be attentive to public opinion as a collective. See Miroslav Nincic, Democracy and Foreign Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), chapter 1; also: Benjamin I. Page and Robert Y. Shapiro, The Rational Public (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), chapters 1, 5, 6, 10. Back.
Note 5: In this sense, Theodore J. Lowi refers to the “plebiscitary presidency,” in The Personal President: Power Invested, Promise Unfulfilled (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), chapters 2 and 3. See also, Samuel Kernell Going Public: New Strategies of Presidential Leadership, (Washington D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1986). Back.
Note 6: For example, the Carter administration’s decision to forgo building the neutron bomb provides a case where a specific weapons decision became highly salient to the attentive public. The public’s strong discomfort with the weapon, along with strong public condemnation in Europe, brought a halt to its development. Back.
Note 7: Robert Weissberg, Public Opinion and Popular Government (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1976), 19–20. Back.
Note 8: Alan D. Monroe, “Consistency Between Public Preferences and National Policy Decisions,” American Politics Quarterly, 7 (January 1979), 3–19. Back.
Note 9: Benjamin I. Page and Robert Y. Shapiro, “Effects of Public Opinion on Policy,” American Political Science Review, 7 (March 1983), 175–90. Back.
Note 10: Bruce M. Russett, “Democracy, Public Opinion, and Nuclear Weapons,” in Philip Tetlock et. al., eds., Behavior, Society, and Nuclear War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). Back.
Note 11: See, for example, Benjamin Ginsberg, The Captive Public (New York: Basic Books, 1986). Back.
Note 12: See John R. Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992). For a specific application to public opinion during the Gulf War, see John R. Zaller, “Elite Leadership of Mass Opinion,” in Taken By Storm: the Media, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy, eds. W. Lance Bennett and David L. Paletz, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 186–209. Back.
Note 13: See George Edwards, At the Margin: Presidential Leadership of Congress (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989). Back.
Note 14: For a discussion of the relation between values and interests in U.S. foreign policy, see Miroslav Nincic, Gerard Gorski, and Roger Rose, “Values, Interests, and Foreign Policy Objectives,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, New York City, September 1– 4, 1994. Back.
Note 15: See Jon Hurwitz and Mark Peffley, “How are Foreign Policy Attitudes Structured? A Hierarchical Model,” American Political Science Review, 81 (December 1987). See also Pamela Johnston Conover and Stanely Feldman, “How People Organize their Political World,” American Journal of Political Science, 28 (February 1984); and Robert E. Lane, Political Ideology (New York: Free Press, 1962). Back.
Note 16: The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 1935–1971 (New York: Random House, 1972), 566. Back.
Note 17: Another 22 percent advocated “be firm, no appeasement.” Only two percent suggested “get together, work things out.” Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 1935– 1971, 721. Back.
Note 18: Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 1935–1971, 923. Back.
Note 19: In the years 1950–1956 NORC asked “If Communist armies attack any other countries in the world, do you think the United States should stay out of it, or should we help defend the countries like we did in Korea?” For ten polls taken during this period, on average 51% of the respondents said the U.S. should “help defend.” Each of three polls taken in 1952 and 1953 record the lowest level of support at 45%. See John E. Mueller, War Presidents and Public Opinion (Lanham: University Press, 1985), 111. Back.
Note 20: See Christopher Matthews, Kennedy and Nixon (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), 150–69. Back.
Note 21: NES data as cited in Page and Shapiro (1992), 227. Back.
Note 22: Those events being: the Soviet downing of a U.S. U-2, the Berlin Blockade, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Back.
Note 23: Aaron Wildavsky, “The Two Presidencies,” Transaction 4 (December 1966). Back.
Note 24: J. William Fulbright, “Congress and Foreign Policy,” United States Commission on the Organization of Government for the Conduct of Foreign Policy,” Congress and Executive-Legislative Relations 5 (June 1975), 58. Back.
Note 25: Data points represent total percentages of negative responses on a 10 point “scalometer.” Data are drawn from Gallup surveys, except for the years 1974, 1975, 1977, 1985–1988, where NORC data are used. Only in 1982 and 1983 are data available from both organizations. 1982 values are the same, 74%. 1983 values are Gallup, 84% and NORC 74%, Figure 6.1 shows the average. When more than one Gallup data point for a given year is available Figure 6.2 shows an average for that year. Gallup asked: “Here is an interesting experiment. You will notice that the 10 boxes on this card go from the highest position of ‘plus five’ –or something you like very much– all the way down to the lowest position of ‘minus five’– or something you dislike very much. Please tell me how far up the scale or how far down the scale you would rate... Russia.” In one of two polls in 1973, and in 1980–1987 Gallup posed the question using “Soviet Union.” NORC used only a slightly different question: “You will notice that the 10 boxes on this card go from the highest position of ‘plus five’ for a country you like very much, to the lowest position of ‘minus five’ for a country you dislike very much. Please tell me how far up the scale or how far down the scale you would rate the following countries...Russia. Back.
Note 26: Data points for the series marked “Unfriendly/Enemy” represent the total percentage of respondents who labeled Russia as unfriendly or an enemy and are drawn from Harris surveys. Back.
Note 27: Data points for the series marked “Seeks world domination” represent the total percentage of respondents who choose responses “C” and “D” to the following question: “In your opinion, which of the following best describes Russia’s primary objective in world affairs?
These data are from Roper as quoted in Alvin Richman, “Changing American Attitudes toward the Soviet Union,” Public Opinion Quarterly 55 (Spring 1991), 135–48. Back.
Note 28: “As the Dust Settles a Troubling Medley,” Washington Times, July 1, 1993. Back.
Note 29: “Bush Warns U.S. Against the Rise of Isolationism,” Los Angeles Times, November 24, 1994. Back.
Note 30: Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives, Hearings on Public Attitudes Toward American Foreign Policy, July 27, 1994. Back.
Note 31: Data are drawn from Gallup and NORC as quoted in Richman, “Changing American Attitudes toward the Soviet Union” “American Support for International Involvement,” Public Opinion Quarterly 57 (Summer 1993), 264– 76. 1994 data are taken from The Gallup Yearbook When more than one data point per year is available figure 6.2 shows an average. Back.
Note 32: America’s Place in the World, Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press, November 1993. Times Mirror commissioned Gallup surveys on these questions in 1993 and 1995. Additional trend data represent other Gallup sources as quoted by Times Mirror. Back.
Note 33: “American Support for International Involvement,” Public Opinion Quarterly 57 (Summer 1993), 264–76. Back.
Note 34: Alvin Richman, “American Support for International Involvement: General and Specific Components of Post-Cold War Changes,” Public Opinion Quarterly 60 (Summer 1996), 305–21. Back.
Note 35: Hearings on Public Attitudes Toward American Foreign Policy, 6 Back.
Note 36: For a discussion of Gallup’s Most Important Problem data series, see John Smith, “The Polls: America’s Most Important Problems Part I: National and International,” Public Opinion Quarterly 49 (Summer 1985), 264–74.
It is entirely reasonable, as John Mueller argues, that the average citizen should value domestic concerns far above international ones. Indeed, absent a compelling and immediate threat, it is unreasonable to expect people to value distant concerns more than issues closer to their physical and emotional lives. See his “Fifteen Propositions about American Foreign Policy and Public Opinion in an Era Free of Compelling Threats,” paper prepared for National Convention of the International Studies Association, San Diego, April 16– 20, 1996. Back.
Note 37: For discussions of each of the CCFR surveys, see John E. Reilly in Foreign Policy, various years. The results are not limited to the CCFR surveys. Similar findings have been reported by the Times Mirror group in 1993 and 1995. Back.
Note 38: In 1995, for example, 64 percent of Americans favored the use of U.S. military and drug enforcement advisers in foreign countries to deal with drug traffickers. The Gallup Monthly, December 1995, 19. Back.
Note 39: This distinction was first made in Miroslav Nincic, “Loss Aversion and the Domestic Context of Military Intervention,” Political Research Quarterly, 50 (March 1994), 97–121. Back.
Note 40: For a description of these premises, see Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, “Prospect Theory: an Analysis of Decision Under Risk,” Econometrica 47 (March 1979), 263–91, as well as Jack Levy, “An Introduction to Prospect Theory,” in Avoiding Losses/Taking Risks: Prospect Theory and International Conflict, ed. Barbara Farnham (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 7–22. Back.
Note 41: Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 1935–1971, 566. Back.
Note 42: Gallup Poll Yearbook 1993, 223. Back.
Note 43: “The Old Politics and the New World Order,” in Eagle in a New World eds. Kenneth Oye, Robert Lieber, and Donald Rothchild (New York: Harper Collins, 1992), 55. Back.
Note 44: Data for “Russia/USSR seeks world domination” and “Russia Unfriendly/Enemy” are a subset of those used in Figure 6.1 above. Data for “Spending too much on defense” are drawn from Gallup, Roper, and NORC as quoted in Thomas Hartley and Bruce Russet, “Public Opinion and the Common Defense: Who Governs Military Spending in the United States,” American Political Science Review 86 (December 1992), 905–16. Data for the years 1991– 1993 are drawn from America’s Place in the World, Times Mirror 1993, and Gallup Yearbook(s) 1994–1995. Question wording is as follows:
Gallup and Times Mirror: “There is much discussion as to the amount of money the government in Washington should spend for national defense and military purposes. How do you feel about this: Do you think we are spending too little, too much, or about the right amount?” or an alternate version “Do you think that we should expand our spending on national defense, keep it about the same or cut back?”
Roper: “Turning now to business of the country—we are faced with many problems in this country, none of which can be solved easily or inexpensively. I’m going to name some of these problems, and for each one I’d like you to tell me whether you think we’re spending too much money on it, too little money, or about the right amount. Are we spending too much, too little or about the right amount on....the military, armaments and defense?”
NORC: “We are faced with many problems in this country, none of which can be solved easily or inexpensively. I’m going to name some of these problems, and for each one I’d like you to tell me whether you think we’re spending too much money, too little, or about the right amount....military, armaments and defense?” Back.
Note 45: See Americans on Defense Spending Survey, Dec. 16, 1995. Of the sub- sample who support a force size adequate to fight another Gulf War, only 38% support a force size large enough for two regional wars. Back.
Note 46: Americans Talk Issues, “Survey 28,” June 21, 1995, and “Americans on Defense Spending Survey,” Dec. 16, 1995. Back.
Note 47: Richman, “American Support for International Involvement.” Increased support for action via the United Nations has not extended to a public willingness to have U.S. troops serve under non-U.S. United Nations commanders. Back.
Note 48: Americans on Defense Spending Survey, Dec. 16, 1995. 37 percent agreed with the notion that a stronger UN means “U.S. could become entangled in a system that would inhibit it from full freedom of action to pursue its interests.” Back.
Note 49: Sixty-nine percent agreed with the statement the U.S. should contribute troops. Americans Defense Spending Survey, Dec. 16, 1995. The question offered was: “Some say the U.S. should contribute its military forces to such UN efforts because then potential aggressors will know that aggression will not succeed. Others say the U.S. should not contribute troops to such efforts because American Troops may be put at risk in operations that are not directly related to U.S. interests. Do you think the U.S. should or should not contribute troops to UN efforts to help defend UN members if they are attacked?” Back.
Note 50: “Public Indifferent about NATO Expansion,” Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. Jan. 9–12, 1997.
According to The Gallup Poll Monthly, 70 percent of people supported maintaining NATO in January 1994, (p. 38).
When asked if the U.S. should spend only enough on defense to do its share, only 52 percent of the public agrees. This suggest there is still substantial support (45 percent in the survey) for aiding allies. “Americans on Defense Spending, Survey” Dec. 16, 1996.
One further point on alliances. There is no longer much reluctance to see both Germany and Japan contribute troops to the use of force in places like the Persian Gulf. 63 percent and 70 percent favor having Japan and Germany, respectively, contribute forces. “Americans on Defense Spending Survey,” Dec. 16, 1996. Back.
Note 51: “Americans on Defense Spending Survey,” Dec. 16, 1995. Back.
Note 52: The Harris Poll, December 10, 1992. Back.
Note 53: The Gallup Poll Monthly, July 1994. Back.
Note 54: The Harris Poll, September 16, 1990, 2. Back.
Note 55: The Harris Survey, December 10, 1992, 3. Back.
Note 56: Harris Poll, September 22, 1994, 4. Back.
Note 57: “Opinion Outlook,” National Journal, October 30, 1993, 2616. Back.
Note 58: Bruce Jentleson, “The Pretty Prudent Public,” International Studies Quarterly 36 (March 1992), 49–73. Back.
Note 59: John Mueller, War, Presidents, and Public Opinion (New York: Wiley, 1972), and Donna J. Nincic and Miroslav Nincic, “Commitment to Military Intervention: The Democratic Government as Economic Investor,” Journal of Peace Research, 32 (November 1995), 413–26. Back.
Note 60: The Los Angeles Times question asked: “Assuming Iraq leaves Kuwait would you consider the war with Iraq a success if 500 American troops died, or not?... “ (If respondents answer yes, the questioner moves to the next level of troops killed. The response of “no troops killed” was volunteered by respondents.) Full text in Mueller, Public Opinion and the Gulf War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994) 235. Back.
Note 61: The Gallup question asked: “Suppose you knew that if the United States sent US troops to Bosnia as part of an international peacekeeping force, that no American soldiers would be killed. With this in mind, would you favor or oppose sending US troops to Bosnia?” Question asked of a quarter of the survey sample, with each quarter being given a different level of troops killed. Back.
Note 62: Time/CNN, January 1991. It is habitually assumed that increasing disenchantment with a war leads the U.S. public to want to cut its costs and withdraw from the ill-judged military venture. Not only have many Americans thus interpreted the relation between costs and commitment, but U.S. adversaries have as well. For example, Saddam Hussein threatened to turn the Kuwait into a “killing field” for U.S. soldiers, hoping that the threat would either dissuade U.S. intervention or, if the intervention did occur, that massive loss of American lives would rapidly undermine domestic support for the war and cause an early U.S. withdrawal. Similarly, Radovan Karadzic, leader of the Bosnian Serbs, has warned NATO and the United States that they would be unable to bear the casualties that intervention in the Bosnian war would entail for them. Back.
Note 63: See John Alexander, “Non-Lethal Weapons & the Future of War,” Los Alamos National Lab, LA-UR 95–699. Back.
Note 64: President William J. Clinton, A National Security Strategy and Engagement and Enlargement, (Washington D.C.: GPO, 1994), 1 Back.
Note 65: NBC-Wall Street Journal. Reported in National Journal, “Opinion Outlook,” January 1, 1994, 42. Back.
Note 66: See Jentleson, note 58, above. Back.
Note 67: Bruce Russett, Thomas Hartley, and Shoon Murray, “The End of the Cold War, Attitude Change, and the Politics of Defense Spending,” PS, 27 (March 1994), 17–21. Back.
Note 68: Miroslav Nincic, Democracy and Foreign Policy: the Fallacy of Political Realism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 168–70. Back.
Note 69: George F. Kennan, “Lectures on Foreign Policy,” Illinois Law Review 45 (1951), 723. Back.
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