American leaders and the American public share similar ways of looking at U.S. foreign policy, even though they may differ sharply on the priorities they assign to various goals and policies such as providing economic aid, using U.S. troops, and protecting U.S. jobs. What are the implications of these similarities and differences?
Since leaders and the public are united on the need for the United States to give highest priority to nuclear arms nonproliferation and counterterrorism objectives, policies dealing with these issues should continue to receive widespread support throughout our society. However, the much lower public support on other issues such as economic assistance, trade, and immigration will continue to constrain U.S. policy initiatives.
The two groups are also far from united on conditions calling for the use of U.S. military force. While a clear majority of the public (59 percent) approves the United States having "the right" to use military force to help defend another country under attack, fewer than half support using U.S. troops to defend specific friendly countries such as South Korea, Israel, and Taiwan. Leaders make sharper distinctions than the public about where the U.S. should commit its military forces, being much more willing to use them to defend such allies and friends as South Korea, Israel, and Taiwan, and much less willing to use force against foreign drug traffickers and threats to America's oil supplies. Although majorities of both leaders and the public approved the use of troops in five of the ten cases tested and shown in Figure 3, only in the eventuality of Pakistan requesting U.S. help against "a radical Islamic revolution" did similar proportions of the two groups favor committing U.S. forces.
Finally, it ought to be noted that on some foreign policy issues the Republican-Democratic division among U.S. leaders (sometimes extending to the public) in the 2004 Chicago Council of Foreign Relations surveys was greater than the leaders-public split, and therefore a greater barrier to achieving foreign policy consensus. For example, U.S. leaders and the public as a whole gave similar ratings to the foreign policy goal of "strengthening the U.N.," which was rated very or somewhat important by 82 percent of leaders and 81 percent of the public. But, this consensus masked a sharp division on this issue among the leaders, with 95 percent of Democrats finding it important versus 52 percent of Republican leaders, and a smaller division within the public (89 percent of Democrats versus 63 percent of Republicans). These partisan divisions hold important implications for future foreign policy initiatives and bear further investigation.
Alvin Richman is a senior public opinion analyst in the Office of Research at the U.S. Department of State. All views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of the U.S. government or the Department of State. The writer is indebted to David Nolle in the State Department's Office of Research and Eloise Malone at the Naval Academy for their work in identifying the several factor analytic groups that best represent the wealth of data contained in the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations surveys.
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