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"Go it Alone" Won't Go with the American Public
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Abstract
Recent U.S. foreign policy has widely been seen as having a unilateralist, “go it
alone” tendency. Three decades worth of national surveys by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, supplemented by other survey data gathered since the invasion of Iraq, indicate that large majorities of ordinary Americans prefer quite a different foreign policy: one that relies chiefly on cooperative, multilateral, and diplomatic methods.
Majorities of citizens favor cooperation and joint decision making with allies,
especially European countries; having widespread diplomatic relations, even with official enemy states like Iran and Cuba; pursuing diplomatic methods (as well as, and perhaps in preference to, military methods) in the struggle against terrorism; and dealing even-handedly with Israel and the Palestinians, including establishing a Palestinian state. Most Americans hold the United Nations in very high esteem and favor strengthening it by a variety of means, including a standing UN peacekeeping force and a small direct tax on international transactions. Most favor a strong UN role in the reconstruction of Iraq. Most Americans back a number of international treaties and agreements that have been rejected by U.S. officials, including the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the treaty to ban land mines, the Kyoto agreement on global warming, and the International Criminal Court.
The public’s preferences for cooperative policies have generally been quite stable
over time. They tend to fit together coherently in support of what can be called “global governance,” in which a network of international treaties and institutions are used to encourage the collective provision of global public goods. At the individual level, these preferences tend to reflect “purposive belief systems” in which people’s policy preferences are linked to logically related goals and perceptions of threats.
The concluding section of the paper asks how the foreign policy of a democratic
country could get out of harmony with the wishes of its citizens. It suggests that the reasons may lie in non-democratic features of U.S. elections, including the crucial roles of political party activists and money givers; the relatively low salience of some of these foreign policy issues; the success of public officials’ rhetoric at persuading citizens that their wishes are not in fact being flouted; and the willingness of many citizens to acquiesce in policies they dislike, unless and until major negative results begin to appear.
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2
Abstract
Recent U.S. foreign policy has widely been seen as having a unilateralist, “go it
alone” tendency. Three decades worth of national surveys by the Chicago Council on
Foreign Relations, supplemented by other survey data gathered since the invasion of Iraq,
indicate that large majorities of ordinary Americans prefer quite a different foreign
policy: one that relies chiefly on cooperative, multilateral, and diplomatic methods.
Majorities of citizens favor cooperation and joint decision making with allies,
especially European countries; having widespread diplomatic relations, even with official
enemy states like Iran and Cuba; pursuing diplomatic methods (as well as, and perhaps in
preference to, military methods) in the struggle against terrorism; and dealing even-
handedly with Israel and the Palestinians, including establishing a Palestinian state. Most
Americans hold the United Nations in very high esteem and favor strengthening it by a
variety of means, including a standing UN peacekeeping force and a small direct tax on
international transactions. Most favor a strong UN role in the reconstruction of Iraq.
Most Americans back a number of international treaties and agreements that have been
rejected by U.S. officials, including the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the
treaty to ban land mines, the Kyoto agreement on global warming, and the International
Criminal Court.
The public’s preferences for cooperative policies have generally been quite stable
over time. They tend to fit together coherently in support of what can be called “global
governance,” in which a network of international treaties and institutions are used to
encourage the collective provision of global public goods. At the individual level, these
preferences tend to reflect “purposive belief systems” in which people’s policy
preferences are linked to logically related goals and perceptions of threats.
The concluding section of the paper asks how the foreign policy of a democratic
country could get out of harmony with the wishes of its citizens. It suggests that the
reasons may lie in non-democratic features of U.S. elections, including the crucial roles
of political party activists and money givers; the relatively low salience of some of these
foreign policy issues; the success of public officials’ rhetoric at persuading citizens that
their wishes are not in fact being flouted; and the willingness of many citizens to
acquiesce in policies they dislike, unless and until major negative results begin to appear.
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