Public Opinion, War, and The Military

Public Opinion, War, and The Military. The relationship between American public opinion and foreign affairs, particularly the military dimension, can be divided into three aspects. Those aspects are the public's attention—or inattention—to international affairs; the way Americans evaluate and react to wars and international affairs; and the degree to which wars have lingered in the public mind after they are over. Since extensive public opinion polling data are only available for the period since the mid‐1930s, the focus is primarily on that era.

Attention.

Because of its size and wealth, the United States has been for most of its history an important country, and in the last century at least, a great power by most conventional standards. At the same time, its peculiar geographical position—bordered by militarily weak neighbors, situated in a hemisphere that has seen remarkably little international war (though much revolution and civil war), and separated from militarily significant countries by two vast oceans—has often allowed it the luxury of standing back from clashes that have engulfed other countries.

The American public, not surprisingly, has reflected this reality and has not been inclined to spend much time worrying about foreign and international matters unless there appears to be a clear, present, and direct threat. Moreover, once international problems involving the United States appear to be resolved, the public can turn back to domestic matters with a virtuosity that is impressive.

This can been seen clearly in the results generated by the poll question, “What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?, which has been asked with considerable regularity since the mid‐1930s. In the 1930s, domestic concerns dominated international ones even as war dangers grew in Europe and Asia, and this changed only when war actually broke out in Europe in 1939. International concerns dropped precipitously again at the end of World War II in 1945 but came to dominate domestic concerns two years later when the Cold War became fully activated. Attention escalated again during the Korean War in the early 1950s and during various Cold War crises of the 1950s and early 1960s. But when tensions mellowed in mid‐1963 with the Soviet‐U.S. detente surrounding the signing of the Partial Test Ban Treaty, public attention to foreign affairs again dropped substantially. By 1966, the Vietnam War came to dominate the public's concerns, but there was some decline in attention by the 1970s as American casualty rates dropped and as U.S. troops began to be withdrawn. Few foreign events have been able to capture the public's sustained attention since. Indeed, at no time since the Tet Offensive in early 1968—not even during the Persian Gulf War of 1991—have foreign policy issues outweighed domestic ones in the public's priorities.

Although the media are often given great credit for setting the political agenda, the chief determinant of public concern has usually been the often overwhelming weight and drama of the events themselves. Beyond this, the principal American actor has been the president—who is, after all, in charge of U.S. foreign policy. In particular, when the president orders American troops into action abroad, there is often a “rally ’round the flag” effect. Americans also seem to be influenced by other prominent members of the political leadership. However, even the president's impact can be limited: after the Gulf War, it was clearly to George Bush's electoral advantage to keep the war and foreign policy as lively political issues during his reelection campaign. But despite his efforts and despite the advantage of his enormous postwar popularity, the public abruptly shifted its agenda, wanting now to focus on the sagging economy. The media might be seen in all this not so much as agenda‐setters but rather as purveyors or entrepreneurs of tantalizing information. If they give an issue big play, it may arrest attention for awhile, but this is no guarantee the issue will take hold. Like any business enterprise, the media follow up on those items that stimulate their customer's interest. In that very important sense, the media do not set the agenda; ultimately the public does.

It is often argued that the public is particularly likely to respond to pictures in our television age: the so‐called CNN effect. But this suggests that people are so unimaginative that they only react when they see something visualized. Yet in December 1941, Americans were outraged at and mobilized over the attack on Pearl Harbor weeks—or even months—before they saw pictures of that event. Moreover, the Vietnam War was not noticeably more unpopular than the Korean War for the period when the wars were comparable in American casualties, despite the fact that the later war is often seen to be a “television war” while the earlier one was fought during the medium's infancy. And, although the deluge of pictures of horrors during the Bosnian Crisis in the 1990s may have influenced some editorial writers and columnists, there was remarkably little public demand to send American troops to fix the problem. On those rare occasions when pictures have—or seem to have—an impact, people espy the CNN effect. When pictures have no impact, they fail to notice.

Evaluation.

In general, the American public seems to apply a fairly reasonable, commonsensical standard of benefit and cost when evaluating foreign affairs and the participation of its citizens in war. Potential American casualties loom as particularly important in its evaluation.

After Pearl Harbor, the public had no difficulty accepting the necessity, and the costs, of confronting the threats presented by Japan and Germany. And after World War II, most Americans came to accept international communism as a threat and were willing to accept increased defense spending and to enter the wars in Korea and Vietnam as part of a perceived necessity to confront that threat. However, as these wars progressed, reevaluation continued, and misgivings mounted about the wisdom of the conflicts—something that appears primarily to have been a function of the accumulating American casualties.

It seems unlikely that there has been an essential change of standards since the end of the Cold War. There is a clear public reluctance to risk lives to police small, distant, perennially troubled and unthreatening places. But this reluctance does not seem to signal a new isolationist impulse. Americans were willing, at least at the outset, to send troops to risk death in Korea and Vietnam; but that was because they subscribed to the notion that communism was a threat that needed to be stopped wherever it was advancing. Polls from the time make it clear that the public had no interest in losing American lives simply to help the South Koreans or South Vietnamese. Thus, an unwillingness to send Americans to die for purposes that are essentially humanitarian rather than for national defense is hardly new.

Although there is an overwhelming political demand that casualties be extremely low when American troops are sent to deal with a problem that does not seem to be vital or direct, there seems to be little problem about keeping occupying forces in place as long as they are not being killed. There was small public or political support for sending U.S. troops to Haiti in 1994, but almost no protest arose about keeping them there—as long as there were no casualties.

Americans place a high value on the lives of their countrymen, yet their reaction when Americans are killed varies considerably. After Pearl Harbor, the outraged call for revenge against the attackers was overwhelming. At other times, the public has shown a willingness to abandon an overextended or untenable position after American lives have been lost. It accepted, with little regret, the decision to withdraw policing troops from Lebanon in 1983 after a terrorist bomb killed over 200 U.S. Marines, and the killing of 18 U.S. Rangers in a single incident in Somalia in 1993 led to demands for withdrawal, not calls to revenge the humiliation. Unlike the problems in the Pacific War in 1941, the situations in Lebanon and Somalia did not present a wider threat to American interests, and the public was quite willing to support measures to cut losses and leave.

Although Americans are extremely sensitive to U.S. casualties, they seem to be remarkably insensitive to casualties suffered by foreigners, including essentially uninvolved civilians. The Gulf War furnishes an extreme example. Polls make clear there was little animosity toward the Iraqi people, yet this did not translate into much sympathy within the American public for well‐publicized civilian casualties caused by bombing attacks. Images of the “highway of death” and reports at the end of the war that as many as 100,000 Iraqis may have been killed scarcely dampened the enthusiasm of postwar celebrations.

Long‐Range Impact.

The degree to which wars have a long‐range impact on opinion varies. Some wars continue to linger in the public consciousness, some vanish almost immediately, some linger and then disappear, and some diminish for awhile but then become revived in memory. Neither the scope nor the objective historical importance of a war seems precisely to determine its long‐range impact on opinion.

The best example of an international event that continued uninterruptedly to live in memory long after it was over is undoubtedly World War II. It was, of course, a massive affair, affecting all strata of society, and it continued—and continues—to affect popular perceptions. (On the domestic side, something comparable could probably be said for the Great Depression—an event that had a long, lingering impact.)

The Gulf War seems prototypical of international events that subsequently disappear from public memory. At the time, the gulf crisis often seemed all‐consumingly important: on the eve of the war, half of the American people said they thought about the crisis at least once an hour. But when it was over, it quickly lapsed from public recall. In this, opinion may appropriately be reflecting historical judgment: from the standpoint of world history, that war may well prove to have been quite a minor event. However, the Cold War and its concomitant nuclear fears cannot so easily be dismissed as historical sideshows. Yet the Cold War seems already to be picking up a patina of quaintness as it recedes from memory, and few seem any more able to recall the fear nuclear weapons once inspired as they were brandished by glowering Cold War contestants.

Wars can have a lingering impact in their immediate aftermath, but then fade from view. Cases in point are the Korean War and the much earlier War of 1812. Korea, the most costly war since 1945, essentially crystallized the Cold War, and it importantly affected public perceptions throughout the 1950s. A century earlier, the War of 1812 ended rather inconclusively, but the Republicans, who had begun it, were able to fashion an appealing myth that the war had been a glorious triumph, something that subsequently helped them and destroyed the opposition Federalist Party. Yet, both these wars, despite their contemporary importance and their resonance in the immediate postwar period, eventually sagged from the public consciousness and both, interestingly enough, have inspired books with titles proclaiming them to be “forgotten” conflicts.

Finally, some wars are neglected for awhile and then come back to haunt the public consciousness. The Vietnam War was the great nonissue of the 1976 election campaign conducted a year after it was over, and it was neglected in most public memory for several years: Americans, it seemed, did not want to think about it. Yet by the 1980s, Vietnam had became a haunting event in the American consciousness, and it seems likely to remain one for a long time. Something similar happened with the Civil War—probably the most important event in American history. For years after that conflict, as Gerald Linderman observes, there was considerable desire to forget it. But after some twenty years, the building of War memorials and monuments—and of myths—began, and the war has no doubt become the most popularly memorable event in American history.
[See also Bombing of Civilians; Haiti, U.S. Military Involvement in; Isolationism; Middle East, U.S. Military Involvement in the.]

Bibliography

Hadley Cantril and Associates, Gauging Public Opinion, 1944.
James Rosenau, ed., Domestic Sources of Foreign Policy, 1967.
Milton J. Rosenberg,, Sidney Verba,, and and Philip E. Converse , Vietnam and the Silent Majority, 1970.
John Mueller , War, Presidents and Public Opinion, 1973.
Daniel C. Hallin , The “Uncensored War”: The Media and Vietnam, 1986.
Gerald Linderman , Embattled Courage, 1987.
Bruce Russett , Controlling the Sword: The Democratic Governance of National Security, 1990.
Eugene Wittkopf , Faces of Internationalism: American Public Opinion and Foreign Policy, 1990.
Benjamin I. Page and and Robert Y. Shapiro , The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in American Policy Preferences, 1992.
John Mueller , Policy and Opinion in the Gulf War, 1994.

John Mueller