The Eurasia Group Foundation (EGF) released their annual survey of American public opinion on U.S. foreign policy and the U.S. role in the world. The report, Rethinking American Strength, includes a number of notable findings that show the public is broadly supportive of international engagement but also wary of new conflicts. My colleague Kelley Vlahos and I spoke with Caroline Gray from EGF this week on the podcast about some of their findings, but because time was limited we weren’t able to discuss everything the survey covered. There were a few other results that I think deserve a bit more attention.
One of their most interesting findings was that Americans that took the survey expressed less support for defending Taiwan than in the previous year. According to last year’s survey, 42% answered yes when asked if the U.S. should defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack. That was about the same level of support that other surveys have found in the last few years, so it was interesting that this year’s survey found that this number had gone down to 34%.
The survey question had changed to include a reference to the likely costs of defending Taiwan: “If China and Taiwan go to war, considering the high cost and likely casualties, do you think the United States should commit American servicemembers to help defend Taiwan?” As the EGF report notes, the changed wording may account for the drop in support, but that may also tell us something. When Americans are asked about hypothetical military options, they are often more supportive when there is no explanation of what those options require and what risks they may entail. Polling on no-fly zones is a famous example of this. There is often broad support for a no-fly zone at first, but that depends heavily on the respondents not understanding what is necessary to establish and maintain a no-fly zone in an ongoing conflict. Some Americans may support the idea of coming to Taiwan’s defense until they are told about the potential costs that it would involve and then have second thoughts.
A separate poll conducted for the German Marshall Fund suggests that public support for actually sending troops to fight for Taiwan is much lower than we think. Their survey found no interest in sending arms or troops in the event of a Chinese invasion:
Overall, there is very little appetite for involvement beyond diplomatic measures and sanctions. The share of respondents who want their country to send arms or troops to Taiwan is highest in the United States, but it is small (8% and 7% respectively).
It may be understandable that European publics have no interest in sending their forces to fight for Taiwan, but it is remarkable that American support is apparently this low. If the GMF findings are at all representative of what Americans think about this question that poses a major political problem for anyone proposing that the U.S. go to war for Taiwan. What both the EGF and GMF surveys point to is that the public is quite reluctant to support military options in Taiwan, especially when they involve direct costs to the United States.
The policy debate in Washington has raced far ahead of what the public is prepared to support, and I don’t believe policymakers appreciate how big the gap is between themselves and the public. If the U.S. were to go to war for Taiwan, the public would have to be squarely behind doing that. Not only would Congress need to vote for the war, but the public would need to be on board for the duration. The costs would be high and it would be difficult to sustain support for such a war even if it started out as a majority position. If public support for intervention is in the low 30s or possibly even in the single digits, there is little chance that public support for the war would survive the start of direct conflict.
There were a few other results from the EGF survey that are worth mentioning. Some of them also show a gap between what policymakers generally support and what the public wants. On the question of continued arms sales to Saudi Arabia, there is overwhelming opposition to continuing these sales. 34% strongly disagree with the statement that there should be continued arms sales to the kingdom and 34% somewhat disagree. Only 30% of survey-takers agreed with the statement. That may not come as such a surprise since Americans generally have a poor opinion of Saudi Arabia and view it unfavorably. The more striking result was the response to a similar question about arms sales to Israel.
Most respondents agreed that the U.S. should continue selling arms to Israel, but that amounted to just 52%. 47% disagreed with the statement, including 21% that disagreed strongly. That shows that the public is almost evenly split on a question where there is virtual unanimity in Congress. Democratic respondents are more likely to disagree with continued arms sales than independents and Republicans, but 45% of independents also oppose continued arms sales and even 33% of Republicans say the same. Nearly half the country doesn’t agree with one of the core aspects of the current U.S.-Israel relationship, but there is almost no one in Congress that represents anything close to this position.
On a more discouraging note, the result on the question about economic sanctions showed that a lot of Americans have confidence in the efficacy of sanctions. When asked if they “believe economic sanctions are an effective US foreign policy tool,” a plurality said they didn’t know, but 40% still said yes. That is a small decline from the previous year when 46% said yes, but it still dwarfs the 14% saying no. Opponents still have a long way to go in getting the message across that broad sanctions are destructive and generally ineffective.
That said, there are some encouraging results in the breakdown by age. Confidence in sanctions as an effective tool is greatest among the oldest respondents, and it is significantly lower among younger Americans. There are not many Americans convinced that sanctions are ineffective in any age group, but in the two youngest cohorts there is much more uncertainty about sanctions’ efficacy. Perhaps that is because younger Americans have seen U.S. sanctions spread all around the world without any successes to show for it, or perhaps it reflects our lack of confidence in any U.S. foreign policy tools, but that suggests that many younger Americans may be open to acknowledging that broad sanctions aren’t effective and should not be used.
The public is broadly in favor of negotiating with adversaries “to try to avoid military confrontation” even when they are “human rights abusers, dictators, or home to terrorist organizations.” 65% agree that the U.S. should negotiate with such adversaries, while just 35% reject negotiations outright even if it would avoid confrontation. That is a useful reminder that the conventional hawkish view that treats engagement as an unacceptable reward is not at all representative of what most Americans want from their government. Most Americans take the reasonable view that the U.S. should negotiate directly with adversaries to avoid conflict, and presumably they take this position because they recognize that the alternatives to direct negotiations are worse.