FOREIGN POLICY

Constraining the Colossus

Richard Sobel
Shorenstein Fellow 1996

In a world of apparently poll-driven politics, it may reassure citizens and policymakers alike to discover that public opinion constrains — but does not set — U.S. foreign policy. From the Vietnam War and the Contra-funding controversy to
the Gulf War and the Bosnia crisis, among the myriad factors in the foreign policy process, decision makers are generally aware of public attitudes, are limited in the options they may take by these attitudes, but do not typically establish policy based on public opinion or polls.

The watershed Vietnam War is particularly fascinating because public attitudes both expressed in polls and manifest in protest demonstrations affected policy across the Johnson and Nixon administrations. Looking at events from before the U.S. escalation in 1965, reveals that the initial conservative support that both drove the war policy and worried President Lyndon Johnson eroded after the early years. As public opinion turned against the war, decision makers had fewer options. Extending a war inherited from President John F. Kennedy and his predecessors, Johnson had to begin de-escalating in 1968; President Richard Nixon began “Vietnamizing” the war the following year by starting to bring home U.S. troops. Eventually, despite escalations like the Cambodia invasion in spring 1970, he had — under public and congressional pressure — to withdraw all U.S. forces soon after the Paris Peace Accords in early 1973.

Again, during the post-Vietnam era, public disapproval limited the amount of aid the Reagan administration could provide to the Nicaraguan Contras. While opposition among the American public didn’t prevent U.S. funding of the Contras, it kept the amount relatively low. Ironically, Reagan’s appeals to anti-Communism, unbeknownst to his pollster, actually moved support in the direction of his policies (at least until the Iran-Contra scandal broke), but it never reached majority levels. Reagan’s staff monitored polls, not to set Contra policy — the basic principles on which he entered office with — but rather to find the best way to try to “sell” his policy to the American public.

The Gulf War, occurring during an era of a dissipating post-Vietnam syndrome and amidst rising public willingness to act multilaterally, saw a successfully assembled coalition send more than half a million troops to the Middle East after Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990. While the majority of Americans ultimately supported the air and ground wars in early 1991, during the fall and winter lead-ups to the fighting, the public and leaders were divided between support
for military action and giving economic sanctions more time to work. A declining U.S. economy and potentially eroding public support concerned decision makers in the earlier Bush administration.

Candidate Bill Clinton criticized Bush not about the Gulf but on Bosnia, where the Bush administration had essentially limited its activities to humanitarian relief. While each administration responded to its perception of public opinion polls, there was in actuality more public support than recognized, especially for multilateral intervention. In fact, misreading of the polls and deep concern for declining support if there were American casualties kept the United States from aggressive action until the middle 1990s, even as ethnic cleansing proceeded. Clinton too was seen as poll driven, yet he used polling more to sell than make his earlier policy of nonintervention and ultimately to enhance support for the NATO air strikes in the summer 1995 intervention.

Certain individuals in these interventions have noted that public attitudes played a relatively minor role in their decision making, though they monitored public sentiment to be sure. The elder Bush’s defense secretary, Dick Cheney, when out of office and presumably out of politics, expressed concerns for public opinion, as well as willingness to act even if there were congressional opposition. Former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara has recently spoken frequently about the popular forces affecting the historic decisions in which he was involved.

It is perhaps reassuring to both citizens and policymakers that democracy works in the foreign policy realm and that polls typically don’t drive policy. Hearing directly from the decision makers about how they did or did not factor public attitudes into their decisions provides insights into a complex and little understood part of the policy process. Opinion’s ongoing constraint — but not setting — of intervention policy suggests an essential and enhanceable role for popular sentiment in U.S. foreign and global affairs.

Richard Sobel’s recent book, The Impact of Public Opinion on U.S. Foreign Policy Since Vietnam: Constraining the Colossus (Oxford University Press, 2001) reports on the public’s influence on the views of the government officials who made the major intervention decisions of the last generation.