Beyond the water's edge: public opinion, foreign policy, and the post-Cold War presidency

ABSTRACT

Whether a president serves as an architect or a general contractor in the conduct of foreign policy is, at least in part, contingent upon the contours of existing public opinion. Though the public is more supportive of an activist foreign policy than is often assumed, public opinion during most of the post-Cold War era has nevertheless discouraged presidents from devising a broad, architectural foreign policy. Prior to September 11, when the public weighed in on foreign affairs, they had considerable influence; but public attention to, and interest in, international relations during most of the post-Cold War era has been sporadic and its effect on policy has often been contradictory. The events of September 11, 2001 dramatically altered the public opinion context, creating conditions receptive to a broader, more coherent foreign policy vision. To date, however, no such vision has emerged.

INTRODUCTION

In trying to understand the forces at work in the creation of U.S. foreign policy, the international relations literature would have us consider three levels of analysis. (1) At the first level are factors from the international system, including the structure of the system, the operation of international organizations, and the actions/reactions of other countries. At the second level are domestic factors, such as the nature of the political system, the interactions between the executive and legislative branches, the workings of the bureaucracy, and the influence of public opinion, special interest groups, and the media. The third level is the level of the individual, and includes such factors as the beliefs, values, and perceptions and misperceptions of the individual decision makers. While each American foreign policy will be influenced to varying degrees by factors from any of these three levels, during the Cold War era, the competition with the Soviet Union provided a dominant context or paradigm that guided much of U.S. foreign policy. For example, while there were sound economic reasons for assisting in the reconstruction and redevelopment of Western Europe and Japan after World War II, there was also a very important security rationale: not only would we create strong markets for our goods and trading partners in these countries, but their economic vitality would help them resist communism and assist us in countering Soviet expansionism.

With the end of the Cold War, this strong international system-level influence on U.S. foreign policy disappeared, allowing a greater role for domestic-level factors to affect American policy. For example, we have seen Congress take a more active role in trying to shape American foreign policy during the 1990s, with many "pet projects" of members of Congress being elevated into U.S. foreign policy. Included here would be the efforts of members of the Senate and House of Representatives to revamp the finances of the United Nations (UN), to hold U.S. dues to the UN hostage to cutting American funding of international agencies that might in turn fund abortions in other countries, and the efforts of some Senators and Representatives to revoke China's enjoyment of normal trade relations with the U.S. due to its human rights situation. Congress also forced the president to accept automatic sanctions against foreign countries (and companies) in pursuit of a number of different goals: investing in Cuba (the 1996 Helms-Burton Act), investing in Iran and Libya (the 1996 D'Amato-Kennedy Act), and the testing of nuclear weapons (the 1994 Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act directed against India and Pakistan).

With this rising influence of domestic factors on American foreign policy in the post-Cold War era, the purpose of this article is to assess the continuing role of the president in making such policy. In particular, the editors of the volume have asked the contributors to consider whether the president should be viewed as an "architect" of foreign policy or as a "general contractor." We are limiting our consideration to the administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Narrowing our focus even further, we consider how public opinion shapes (and is shaped by) U.S. foreign policy decision-making. Overall, we make four central arguments:

1. For the public to play a constructive role in foreign policy, they need a reasonably coherent vision of the goals and role of the U.S. in international affairs. The classic works on public opinion and foreign policy found a public greatly lacking in knowledge, interest, and involvement. (2) Later works have revised this assessment, but the fact remains that the public is better at making "big picture" decisions with limited information than evaluating specific policy decisions requiring greater attentiveness and involvement. (3) The general contractor model requires more citizen interest and knowledge of foreign affairs than they are likely to have, except perhaps in the midst of a crisis. While not every president needs to be an architect, we need the vision of one periodically--especially following major reconfigurations of the international system. Subsequent presidents can then serve as general contractors to implement and manage U.S. foreign policy based on this vision.

2. Presidents are constrained by existing public opinion in terms of their ability to act as architects. Perhaps put differently, it serves no one's interest if a president designs a foreign policy house that the public does not buy. Nor does it make any sense to build a beautifully designed house without first assuring that the foundation is on solid ground. Foreign policy in the Clinton and Bush White Houses has fallen considerably short of architecture, but the inability of these presidents to design a foreign policy vision reflects not only on the administrations in question, but also on the context in which they have served (and continue to serve).

3. Over the last several decades, public opinion has become a more important, but also a more erratic influence on foreign policy decision-making. Without architects designing foreign policy--and with a public only sporadically interested in foreign affairs--the impact of public opinion on foreign policy is at once more powerful and less predictable than in the past.

4. The events of September 11, 2001 provided a unique opportunity for the Bush administration to create a relatively enduring foreign policy structure. In the wake of the terrorist attacks, U.S. citizens were more attentive to international affairs and more supportive of an activist foreign policy. Although President Bush has sought to design a new foreign policy around anti-terrorism, no clear and coherent vision has emerged, in part because he has tied to it the new doctrine of pre-emptive attacks against countries developing weapons of mass destruction. As a result, while there are clear differences in the Bush administration's approach to foreign affairs, U.S. foreign policy continues in the ad hoc fashion characteristic of the Clinton administration.

Before we make the case for these arguments, we begin by reconsidering the models themselves, and, in particular, how well the Clinton and Bush administrations fit into this theoretical framework. In concluding, we then consider the possibilities for foreign policy architecture in the world today.

ARCHITECTS, CONTRACTORS, AND THE WEEKEND HANDYMAN

Neither the Clinton nor the Bush presidency really fits the mold of an architect of foreign policy. Clinton made an effort in this direction early in his administration as he enunciated a new, post-Cold War grand strategy for the United States based on the enlargement of "market democracies," but the Clinton administration soon became bogged down in efforts to manage erupting ethnic conflicts and the peacekeeping missions created to alleviate these crises. Instead, President Clinton better resembles a general contractor working with a set of incomplete house drawings: he knows roughly how the house is supposed to look, and he manages the various groups of other countries and domestic constituencies to try to move in that direction while simultaneously coping with problems that arise.

The Clinton administration believed very much in pursuing a multilateral approach to American foreign policy, as is evident from their attempts to create or strengthen international economic institutions (e.g., NAFTA, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum, the World Trade Organization (WTO)) as well as to address international security issues through multilateral agreements (e.g., the permanent extension of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), and the signing of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty). The Clinton administration also strove to bring various parties together to promote peaceful resolutions to several international conflicts, including in the former Yugoslavia, the Middle East, and Northern Ireland. While lacking the vision to create a new world order, President Clinton demonstrated an interest in and ability to work with other parties to bring some degree of order to the world.

By contrast, President Bush has seemed to better resemble a "weekend handyman." Whereas Clinton was the consummate multilateralist, Bush's inclinations are toward unilateralism: having the U.S. take care of business by itself, except when it needs help. The weekend handyman does not have a grand vision for building the home, but instead knows that some repairs are necessary, and works away by himself to take care of these issues. Only on the really big jobs will the weekend handyman seek the help of others, but even then he will try to do as much as possible himself. Much ink has been printed concerning President Bush's unilateralist approach to foreign policy. The tragic events of September 11, 2001 and the president's creation of a coalition of nations to fight the global war on terrorism seemed to have moved the Bush administration toward a more multilateralist approach--and toward the general contractor model. Similarly, President Bush forged a "coalition of the willing" for the war against Iraq. Nevertheless, despite NATO's first-ever invocation of the collective defense clause of its treaty, the U.S. pursued the initial campaign in Afghanistan largely on its own, with only minimal assistance from NATO and its other allies. The war to rid Iraq and the world of Saddam Hussein was fought primarily by the U.S. and the British, despite the presence of more than 35 other countries in the "coalition of the willing." Moreover, in December 2001, President Bush announced the U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty in order to begin construction on sites for the national missile defense system--a move seen by many observers as the quintessential unilateralist security policy.

Within this framework, it is worth noting that presidents--whether a general contractor or a weekend handyman--are not merely reactive on foreign policy. Foreign policy issues may arise as the result of international crises or due to the so-called "CNN effect," but they may also arise because a president decides to take the initiative on an issue. In terms of the framework here, the president can decide to renovate the living room or add on a garage. We have seen both post-Cold War presidents take such initiatives: President Clinton with his elevation of the APEC Forum meetings to the head-of-state level and his decision to expand NATO; President Bush with his decision to build a national missile defense system and abrogate the ABM Treaty, as well as his decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. As in the domestic arena, presidents have a remarkable ability to use the bully pulpit to set the political agenda, and both presidents examined here have successfully done so to achieve foreign policy initiatives.

That neither Bill Clinton nor George W. Bush have been architects should not be surprising, but it should be of concern. There have not been many presidents in the last few decades that would fit the architect model; Richard Nixon and perhaps Ronald Reagan are the only candidates. Yet, with the end of the Cold War and the overarching paradigm for U.S. foreign policy that it provided, we sorely need a president who can fashion and enunciate a coherent design for America's role and policy in the world today. Such a vision would tie into and clarify the values of the American people as they relate to U.S. foreign policy. This vision would also provide the basic guidelines by which the American public can evaluate specific policies and initiatives to determine their level of support, and could be used by a president to motivate popular support for these policies.

While not architects, both presidents have made an attempt to provide the missing architectural vision. For President Clinton, as mentioned above, it was the short-lived doctrine of enlarging "the world's free community of market democracies." (4) President Bush has sought to use the war on terrorism to provide a simple vision for his foreign policy: as he stated in his September 20, 2001 address to Congress, "[t]his is the world's fight," and "[e]ither you are with us or you are with the terrorists." (5) In his 2002 State of the Union Address, Bush sought to extend this vision to include confronting "the world's most dangerous regimes" that are developing weapons of mass destruction with which to threaten the U.S. (the "axis of evil," consisting of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea), as well as to gain support for economic policies and renewed civic volunteerism on his domestic agenda. (6) However, the extreme simplicity of the vision has severely weakened it; unable to cope with the complexities of the international scene, this vision has been compromised in the mountains of Kashmir and challenged in the occupied West Bank. An architect can conceptualize how the different parts of the home will fit together structurally and aesthetically, but the weekend handyman focuses more narrowly on the task at hand without fully comprehending these connections.

Our interest here is to evaluate and analyze the role that public opinion has played in presidential decision making on foreign policy. Drawing on the notions of the general contractor and the weekend handyman, two general possibilities emerge. For the general contractor, public opinion is one of the groups to be managed and shepherded in the efforts to construct or repair the house. The general contractor will pay attention to this factor, sometimes trying to lead it, other times following it, and, at least occasionally, being constrained by it. Strong public reaction to the American casualties in Somalia in 1993, for example, constrained President Clinton from more actively seeking to end the genocide committed in Rwanda in 1994. (7) And his reading of the American public being against military casualties constrained him to implement a bombing campaign against Slobodan Milosevic in spring 1999 with no threat of invasion for weeks after it was clear that bombing alone would not end the Serbian atrocities in Kosovo. (8)

The weekend handyman will be less attentive to public opinion, but will draw on it as necessary. In particular, the weekend handyman will try to use public opinion to legitimize foreign policy decisions already taken, and toward that end will seek to lead and shape it if required. He will sometimes feel constrained by public opinion, but only if the opinion is a strong one. During summer 2002, President Bush and his foreign policy aides began making the case to the American people that Saddam Hussein needed to be dethroned in Iraq, and that the United States might take military action to accomplish this goal. Despite White House denials, it was widely assumed that the decision to remove Hussein had already been made, and that these efforts to justify the impending conflict were intended to shape public opinion in the direction the administration had already chosen to go. (9) Other significant foreign policy decisions by the Bush administration, such as the decisions to abrogate the ABM Treaty and to remove the United States from the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, seem to have been made with little heed to public opinion.

These approaches to the role of public opinion in presidential foreign policymaking accord with the conceptual framework provided by Douglas Foyle. In Counting the Public In, Foyle argues that public opinion can play an important role in foreign policy decisions if the president believes that it should play an important role. (10) Whether a president tries to be more of a general contractor or a weekend handyman will depend on their beliefs regarding the proper making and management of foreign policy, including how much influence Congress, international allies and friends, and the general public should have in deciding U.S. policy. For example, Foyle classifies President Clinton as a "delegate" style president because he actively sought public support both in crafting the administration's foreign policy and throughout its implementation. Ronald Reagan, in contrast, is classified by Foyle as a "guardian," because public opinion played a much smaller role both in the crafting and the conduct of the Reagan administration's foreign policy. (11)

Yet, as Foyle also acknowledges, the role that public opinion plays in foreign policy decision-making depends upon context. In his model, Foyle focuses on whether the decision is being made in a crisis situation or whether there is time for careful deliberation. (12) Drawing from ideas on the role of public opinion in the domestic political context, presidents may also be more or less inclined to seek public support in a particular instance depending on how important a given issue is to them politically and how salient it is to the public. In some instances, presidents may attempt to lead public opinion, in others they may circumvent public opinion by conducting foreign affairs by deception (a la the Iran-Contra scandal), and in some instances they may defer to public preferences. (13) Even a president who minimizes the importance of public opinion in crafting their administration's foreign policy might defer to majority sentiments on issues that are viewed as peripheral to the administration's overall policy objectives. Overall, a president's predisposition to consider public opinion clearly influences presidential decision-making, but so too does the context in which individual foreign policy decisions are made. In what follows, we consider the context and contours of public opinion in the post-Cold War era with an eye to how public opinion influences and, sometimes, constrains presidential decision making in foreign affairs.

ON FOREIGN POLICY ARCHITECTURE AND PUBLIC OPINION: OR WHY GEORGE W. BUSH IS NO ARCHITECT

We begin with a simple assumption: If a president is to conduct foreign policy as an architect, s/he must have the support of the American public behind the central objectives of U.S. policy. This is not to suggest that presidents need public support on specific initiatives, they clearly do not. But the public must support the overarching goals of U.S. foreign policy, which must in turn be clearly articulated. The Reagan administration, for example, hardly courted public support for its foreign policy initiatives, but could count on more diffuse support in the form of anti-Soviet and anti-communist attitudes. The Clinton administration, in contrast, had to actively build public support for its specific initiatives, in large part because the broader goals of U.S. foreign policy in the post-Cold War era were neither clearly articulated nor widely recognized.

As these examples illustrate, context clearly influences the extent to which a president can act as an architect or a general contractor. U.S. foreign policy most closely resembled an architectural vision during the Cold War when both elites and the mass public shared a consensus on the central aims of U.S. foreign policy. That consensus began to fall apart during the Vietnam War, and was then shattered with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union. Rebuilding a consensus has been difficult in part because there has been so much uncertainty in the international system. The system moved from bipolarity to unipolarity with the collapse of the Soviet superpower, but there is much disagreement as to whether this unipolarity will be a lasting structure, or a more transitory one on our way to some form of multipolarity. (14) We have also seen a rise in the importance of non-state actors--international organizations, multinational corporations, drug cartels and terrorist networks, and transnational non-governmental organizations--that have challenged the traditional dominance of the sovereign states in the international arena. Finally, we have seen the breakup of several states in Eurasia (most prominently the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia) as well as severe challenges to several states in Africa based on ethnic conflicts.

With so much flux, the central objectives of U.S. foreign policy during the post-Cold War era--particularly prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks--have been less clearly defined. Not surprisingly, during this period there has been little consensus, at either the elite level or the level of the mass public, regarding the central objectives of U.S. policy. For the public, the collapse of the Soviet Union meant that international affairs not only became less ordered and less predictable, but also less salient among a host of concerns and issues that the public cares about. In the Chicago Council of Foreign Relations' quadrennial surveys on foreign affairs, no foreign policy issue made the top ten biggest problems facing the United States in 1994 or 1998, and in 1998 the top response to the question asking the chief foreign policy problem facing our country was "Don't know." Moreover, the number of respondents claiming to be "very interested" in foreign news dropped from 36 percent in 1990 to only 29 percent in 1998. (15) These attitudes led James Lindsay to characterize the American public as "apathetic" when it comes to foreign affairs. (16)

Among political elites as well, foreign affairs took a back seat to other issues. Lindsay describes how the public's apathy toward international affairs has led politicians to neglect foreign policy in favor of more politically valuable domestic concerns, so much so that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and House International Relations Committee had trouble recruiting members. (17) Moreover, even when international affairs have forced themselves onto the radar screen, the politics of foreign policy had become considerably more partisan and polarized. (18) Whereas Cold War presidents found more freedom in the conduct of foreign policy, the post-Cold War presidents have found not only that foreign and domestic affairs are increasingly intertwined, but that the politics of foreign affairs has become virtually indistinguishable from domestic politics.

As a result, the pathologies of American pluralism--so dominant in domestic politics--have become a fixture in foreign policy decision-making as well. The broad majority of Americans support what might be broadly classified as liberal internationalism, yet politics in the post-Cold War era has moved foreign policy in a unilateralist direction, with pressures toward isolationism. Whether this is the result of elites misreading public sentiments or of the vocal minority defeating an apathetic majority has been the subject of considerable debate. (19) Regardless, both sides locate the root cause of this discrepancy between public sentiments and public policy in some distortion of representative or pluralistic democracy. As I.M. Destler observes, groups most supportive of liberal internationalism have generally been oriented toward specific causes (environmentalism and human rights). In their support of such causes, they have targeted government as an enemy of progress, thus increasing public distrust of political institutions and making it more difficult to articulate a broader vision of U.S. foreign policy based on the very principles of liberal internationalism they endorse. (20) Moreover, as is so often the case in American politics, the intensity of public support (or opposition) matters at least as much as its breadth. The majority of Americans may support liberal internationalism, but the majority has also been also fairly characterized--particularly prior to 9/11--as apathetic. The combination of this general public apathy and the highly partisan nature of the foreign policy decision making process led President Clinton to find himself regularly challenged by Congress on foreign policy issues, including over Kosovo and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, despite public support of these initiatives. (21) Perhaps only the upsurge of patriotism following the attacks of 9/11 saved President Bush from similar confrontations. In such a context, presidents will find it difficult to formulate coherent foreign policies on specific issues, never mind a well-articulated design for America's role in the world.

Overall, public opinion, which has been frequently misread by elites as isolationist, (22) has nevertheless discouraged presidents from acting as architects. Public opinion surveys have regularly indicated a strong commitment to an active U.S. role in international affairs, and despite rather drastic changes in the international system, public support for an activist foreign policy has not waned during the post-Cold War era (see Figure 1). (23) At any given point over the last thirty years, roughly 60 percent of the public has believed that the United States should play an active part in world affairs, while less than a third has preferred that the country stay out of international affairs.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Yet, if the public is largely supportive of an activist foreign policy, there are clear limits to that support. For one, as in most areas of public opinion, there are often considerable differences in public support as one moves from the abstract--"should the U.S. take an active role in international affairs"--to the more specific--"should the United States invade Iraq?" Questions about specific policies are more volatile and more sensitive to short-term changes in context. For example, as editorial and international criticisms of a potential U.S. invasion mounted, public support for an invasion of Iraq--though still gamering majority support--declined significantly toward the end of 2002 through the early spring of 2003 (See Figure 2). Once hostilities began, support for the war increased dramatically and remained strong throughout the endurance of "major" combat.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

Questions about the war arose again after major combat was declared by the president to have ended, in light of a rising number of U.S. fatalities resulting from guerilla tactics carded out by what was presumably the remnants of Saddam Hussein's Baathist Party and admissions by the Bush administration that a statement in the 2003 State of the Union Address regarding Saddam Hussein's nuclear capabilities should have been vetted from the speech. The result was a sharp decline in support for the President Bush's handling of the war and in the belief that "the situation in Iraq was worth going to war over" (See Figure 3). (24)

[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]

Likewise, in September 1994, public approval of President Clinton's handling of the Haiti crisis jumped from 36 to 55 percent following a televised address on the issue. (25) And a few weeks into Kosovo campaign in spring 1999, Andrew Kohut warned American political leaders to be very cautious interpreting the surveys on public opinion regarding this conflict: great variation in the results of several polls indicated that the American public was not yet sure what to think. (26)

Steven Kull and Clay Ramsey have argued that widely held perceptions that the public shies away from military casualties are more myth than reality. (27) Rather than wincing at conflict when American lives are lost abroad, they contend, public opinion generally supports more assertive and more militaristic responses to American casualties. In the aftermath of 9/11, for example, not only did over seventy percent of the public favor invading Iraq, roughly comparable support existed for invading Sudan and Somalia (and presumably, for that matter, any other country thought to be supporting terrorist organizations). (28) While the public may have a higher tolerance for casualties and may be less isolationist than is commonly believed, they are not particularly fond of international engagements without clearly defined missions and international support. The Chicago Council on Foreign Relations refers to this limited support of an activist foreign policy as "guarded engagement." (29) First and foremost, this means that the public prefers that U.S. international engagements be motivated primarily by the pursuit and protection of U.S. interests. Second, while the public recognizes that the United States needs to be engaged in world affairs, it rejects the idea that the United States should be the world's policeman. Other countries should pay their fair share. Practically, this translates into greater support for multilateral (as opposed to unilateral) action, and a general disinclination to committing U.S. ground troops overseas." (30)

For example, surveys indicated that public support for military action against Iraq was highly contingent upon multilateral support. According to the 2002 Chicago Council on Foreign Relations survey, only twenty percent of U.S. citizens believe that "[t]he U.S. should invade Iraq even if we have to go it alone," while 65 percent favor such an invasion if it has the support of the UN and U.S. allies. (31) Moreover, 61 percent of U.S. citizens believe that the "most important lesson of September 11" was that the "U.S. needs to work more closely with other countries to fight terrorism," while only 34 percent believe that the most important lesson was that the "U.S. needs to act on its own."

The one possible exception to a general opposition to the use of American ground troops overseas--even before the Word Trade Center attacks--involved international terrorism, where a majority of the public not only supported air strikes on terrorist camps (74%) and using ground troops (57%), but also the assassination of individual terrorist leaders (54%). (32) As one would suspect, support for these military options has increased significantly in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, with a near consensual support for air strikes against terrorist training camps (87%) and attacks using ground troops (84%), and two-thirds support for assassinating individual terrorist leaders. (See Figure 4).

Since 9/11, the possibility of the nation's first CEO president designing foreign policy on the pillars of anti-terrorism has created what is perhaps an illusion of architecture, but any analogies to the Cold War consensus on containment are, at best, premature. U.S. anticommunist sentiments conveniently manifested themselves in the Soviet Union--and occasionally China, though for a variety of reasons China never served as the central foil of American economic and political belief systems. Terrorism--and by extension a foreign policy crafted around eliminating or reducing terrorist activity--is not nearly as easy to define as the Cold War policy of containment. (33) This is true at least in part because it cannot be tied to a single state, and is often conducted by non-state actors who may not claim responsibility for their actions.

Terrorism is also less an ideology than it is a means to a political end. As such, though terrorism may serve as the central enemy of contemporary American foreign policy, the parameters of such a foreign policy will necessarily be poorly defined. Put differently, what constitutes terrorism is largely in the eyes of the beholder, so much so that, using the rhetoric of the Bush administration, the Israelis can conduct war against Palestinian "terrorists" in a manner detrimental to U.S. interests in the Middle East, and India can conduct a war against "terrorists" based in Kashmir that brings them to the brink of nuclear war with Pakistan--even while Pakistan supports these same people as "freedom fighters."

President Bush's effort at architectural design has become even less stable as he has tried to merge the anti-terrorism campaign with opposition to "rogue" states that pursue weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Certainly, concerns that economically desperate North Korea might sell such weapons or their components to terrorists are valid. Nevertheless, the White House is apparently discounting the negative consequences that focusing on rogue states would have on the global war against terrorism. First, several of these rogue states are Muslim (Iraq, Iran, and Syria), and further preemptive strikes will only provoke more Muslims to join the ranks of the terrorists challenging the United States. Second, unilateral U.S. decisions to preemptively remove WMD threats will weaken the international coalition necessary to fight the global war on terrorism. Evidence of this potential was seen in the severe strains that emerged between the U.S. and NATO allies France and Germany over the war in Iraq. Third, the Bush administration's desire to continue pushing tax cuts while ballooning defense spending to cope with the putative threats from rogue states and to preemptively attack Iraq will leave very few funds for the non-military efforts that are crucial to combat terrorism. (34) Moreover, U.S. efforts to combat both terrorists and rogue states are leading to an expansion of America's military presence around the globe. Since fall 2001, the U.S. military has overthrown regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, has established facilities in Africa, Central Asia, and the Middle East, and is engaging in "nation building" in Afghanistan and Iraq (in addition to Bosnia and Kosovo) with Liberia possibly being added in July 2003. In addition, we have strengthened military cooperation with several existing allies. Despite candidate Bush's eschewing of a global policing role for the United States, President Bush has moved the country in that direction as a result of his foreign policy. The consequences are likely to be growing international animosity to the perceived American "neoimperialism" and domestic unhappiness as U.S. citizens are asked to bear the increasing financial and personnel burdens of this policy.

Yet, if terrorism does not appear to be sufficient as the cornerstone of a new foreign policy architecture, and if George Bush does not appear to be an architect, the post-9/11 context nevertheless provided a unique opportunity for a president to articulate a broader vision of the U.S. role in the post-Cold War World. In the wake of the attacks, terrorism was widely cited as the number one problem confronting the United States, far surpassing domestic issues. (35) Support for an active U.S. role in world affairs also increased substantially, as did interest in news about U.S. foreign policy and international relations. (36) According the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations 2002 study, 42 percent of survey respondents indicated that they were "very interested" in news about other countries, and 62 percent in news about U.S. relations with other countries. This is the highest level of interest since the Council on Foreign Relations began its quadrennial surveys in 1974.

Overall, there is a clear consensus on the need to fight a war on terrorism, but outside of retribution for the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a broader consensus on the means and ends of that war have proven elusive. It will continue to prove elusive if the Bush administration opts to "go it alone," while defending U.S. actions in language that evokes images of the United States as the world's policeman (even if it is of the "Dirty Harry" variety). To the extent that the Cold War may serve as an analogy, it is the post-Vietnam Cold War in which the consensus underlying U.S. foreign policy was being challenged--instead of the pre-Vietnam War era in which the consensus was largely accepted. We may now be on the upside of the curve building toward a consensus, but we are clearly not there yet.

BUILDING A FOREIGN POLICY CONSENSUS: ARCHITECT WANTED

Given the instability of the international system, the polarized process of foreign policymaking, and the relative disinterest of the American public in foreign affairs, it has been difficult for Presidents Clinton and Bush to act as foreign policy architects. Constructing a coherent design for the goals and role of the United States in the world today requires a consensus that appears elusive--particularly since the political elites have misread the public on several key aspects of their opinion. Still, drawing on the many surveys reported over the last decade or so, it is possible to configure a minimum level of consensus.

First, Americans believe that the United States should play a leadership role in the world. This does not mean that it should be the world's policeman, but an internationally active United States can better pursue its international interests. Moreover, events in other countries can affect Americans and their interests. For those who had not fully appreciated this fact previously, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 brought the message home.

Second, Americans prefer multilateralism to unilateralism. They believe it is better and more efficient to cooperate with other countries to achieve our goals than it is to work against them. It is also more cost-effective, since our partners can share the burden. While U.S. citizens overwhelming supported the invasion of Iraq, it is unclear how willing they will be shoulder the burden of occupying and rebuilding Iraq without significant assistance from other nations.

Third, Americans generally support the promotion of democracy, market-based economies, and free trade, although other values may take priority in some cases, and the promotion of these values has to be placed within the context of U.S. national interest. These are the core values of the United States, and their adoption by other societies is viewed as a positive development.

Fourth, Americans believe that international terrorism needs to be confronted. While this attitude has been accentuated by the attacks of 9/11, terrorism was also one of the top foreign policy problems in the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations' 1998 survey.

Building from these points of public consensus, a president cum architect can design a foreign policy strategy that will guide the U.S. role over the next many years. While elaborating such a vision is beyond the scope of this paper, any such design will need to accommodate the following issues.

* First and foremost, the new strategy will have to address the issue of U.S. power. America is the lone superpower in the world today, and this position brings us special influence, but also will lead other countries to call upon us in times of need. When and where will the United States intervene, and using what means? Under what conditions will the United States commit its military forces? And while the United States will try to work in cooperative fashion with other countries, the president will need to enunciate the goals and interests for which s/he would be willing to act unilaterally.

* Second, the new strategy will have to address how broadly the president is willing to define American interests. In part, this will mean the extent to which our interests will be predicated on the interests of other countries. It also includes the extent to which our interests extend beyond security and economics to humanitarian and environmental concerns.

* Third, the new strategy will need to elaborate U.S. relationships with other major states, particularly the European Union and its members, Russia, China, and Japan. While none of these actors represents--nor will they represent in the foreseeable future--a superpower rival to us, they do have the capacity to greatly assist or hinder our efforts, and thus deserve American attention. This strategy must also address U.S. relations with the countries of the Middle East.

* Fourth, this strategy will have to provide a means to cope with international terrorism and the threat from weapons of mass destruction. How the president decides to answer these two threats will depend heavily on how the previous three issues are addressed.

Enunciating this new design for the architecture of American foreign policy will not be easy or risk-free. The partisanship of the policy process and the relative disinterest of the public will make the costs of failure rather high. But the rewards of success could also be great. George W. Bush may have bad the best opportunity to design and announce this new vision for American foreign policy in the year following September 11, 2001. The interest of the American public was again piqued, and the patriotism that bloomed across the country extended to the halls of Congress, where partisanship was squelched for many months to show American unity and resolve in facing this new threat. Moreover, countries around the world felt sympathy for the U.S. that could have been parlayed into a new international resolve to address important global issues. However, when historians look back at this presidency, they may very well claim that this unique opportunity was squandered on the road to Baghdad.

Figure 4: Percentage Favoring Military Action to Combat
International Terorism.

                                                1998   2002

U.S. Air Strikes                                 74     87
Attacks by U.S. Ground Troops                    57     84
Assassination of Individual Terrorist Leaders    57     66

Source: Council on Foreign Relations and the German
Marshall Fund, Worldviews 2002.

Note: Table made from bar graph.

NOTES

(1) For two classic examples of the levels of analysis approach, see Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State, and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959); and Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Prineceton: Princeton University Press, 1976), especially chapter 1.

(2) See e.g., Gabriel A. Almond, The American People and Foreign Policy, (New York: Praegar, 1950); Walter Lippman, Public Opinion, (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1922); James N. Rosenau, Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: An Operational Formulation, (New York: Random House, 1961); Philip E. Converse, "The Nature of Belief Systems in the Mass Public," in Ideology and Discontent, ed. David Apter (New York: Free Press, 1964).

(3) See, e.g., Ole R. Holsti, Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996); Ole R. Holsti, "Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: Challenges to the Almond-Lippman Consensus," International Studies Quarterly 36 (1992): 439-66; John Hurwitz and Mark Peffley, "How are Foreign Policy Attitudes Structured? A Hierarchical Model," American Political Science Review 81 (1987): 1099-1120; John H. Aldrich, John L. Sullivan, and Eugene Borgida, "Foreign Policy and Issue Voting: Do Presidential Candidates Waltz Before a Blind Audience?" American Political Science Review 83 (1989): 123-141; Eugene R. Wittkopf, "The Structure of Foreign Policy Attitudes: An Alternative View," Social Science Quarterly 62 (1981): 108-123.

(4) See Thomas L. Friedman, "U.S. Vision of Foreign Policy Reversed," The New York Times, September 22, 1993, p. A13.

(5) Text of President George W. Bush's address to Congress, in Washington Post, September 21, p. A24.

(6) Amy Goldstein and Mike Allen, "Bush Vows to Defeat Terror, Recession," Washington Post, January 30, 2002, p. A1.

(7) Douglas Jehl, "Did U.S. Err on Rwanda?" New York Times, July 23, 1994, p. 1; Anthony Lewis, "World Without Power," New York Times, July 25, 1994, p. A15.

(8) For example, see John F. Harris and Bradley Graham, "Clinton is Reassessing Sufficiency of Air War," Washington Post, June 3, 1999, p. A01.

(9) Elisabeth Bumiller and David E. Sanger, "Threat of Terror is Shaping the Focus of Bush Presidency," New York Times, September 11, 2002, p. A1, report the decision was made in principle in fall 2001.

(10) See Douglas C. Foyle, Counting the Public In: Presidents, Public Opinion, and Foreign Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). Foyle argues that the decision context also matters, and interacts with the president's beliefs on the role of public opinion.

(11) Foyle, pp. 197-199

(12) Foyle, pp. 15-17.

(13) David Skidmore. "Between Leadership and Retreat: The President, Foreign Policy, and Domestic Opinion." International Studies Notes, June 1999. Vols. 24/2:1-14 (USA), research note.

(14) For a sample of this debate, see Charles Krauthammer, "The Unipolar Moment," Foreign Affairs: America and the World, vol. 70, no. 1, 1990-91, pp. 23-33; Christopher Layne, "The Unipolar Illusion," International Security, vol. 17, no. 4, Spring 1993, pp. 5-51; and Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, American Primacy in Perspective," Foreign Affairs, vol. 81, no. 4, July/August 2002, pp. 20-33.

(15) See Worldviews 2002: U.S. 9/11 Key Findings Topline Data, available from the Chicago Council of Foreign Relations at www.ccfr.org; and John E. Reilly, "Americans and the World: A Survey at Century's End," Foreign Policy, Spring 1999, pp. 97-114. As a comparison, in 1982, 1986, and 1990 the number of foreign policy issues listed within the top problems facing the U.S. ranged from 3 to 4.

(16) James M. Lindsay, "The New Apathy," Foreign Affairs, vol. 79, no. 5, September/October 2000, pp. 2-8.

(17) Lindsay, "The New Apathy."

(18) I.M. Destler, "The Reasonable Public and the Polarized Policy Process," in The Real and the Ideal: Essays on International Relations in Honor of Richard H. Ullman, eds. Anthony Lake and David Ochmanek, (Boulder, CO: Rowman & Littlefield).

(19) Destler, "The Reasonable Public;" Lindsay, "The New Apathy."

(20) Destler, "The Reasonable Public."

(21) Lindsay, "The New Apathy."

(22) Steven Kull & I.M. Destler, Misreading the Public: The Myth of a New Isolationism (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institute Press, 1999).

(23) The data used to create this chart were obtained from Richard Sobel, The Impact of Public Opinion on U.S. Foreign Policy Since Vietnam, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). The original data were obtained from various sources including Gallup, Harris, the Washington Post, the National Opinion Research Center's General Social Survey, the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, the Program on International Policy Attitudes, Princeton Survey Research Associates, Market Opinion Research, and ABC News. For a more complete description, see Sobel, pgs. 46-47.

(24) The specific question wording was as follows: "All in all, do you think the situation in Iraq was worth going to war over or not?"

(25) "Clinton's poll ratings soar as troops invade," The Independent (London), September 21, 1994, p. 16.

(26) Andrew Kohut, "Beware of Polls on the War," New York Times, April 8, 1999, p. A27.

(27) Steven Kull and Clay Ramsey, "The Myth of the Reactive Public: American Public Attitudes on Military Fatalities in the Post-Cold War Era," in Public Opinion and the International Use of Force, eds. Philip Everts and Pierangelo Isernia (London: Routlege, 2001). Kull and Ramsey contend that continued public support depends less on the articulation of national interest than perceptions regarding the likely success of the action.

(28) "Americans favor force in Iraq, Somalia, Sudan and ...," The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, January 9-13, 2002. N=1201.

(29) John E. Reilly, "American Public Opinion and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1999." (Chicago, IL: Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, 1999).

(30) This may appear to contradict the Kull and Ramsey argument that the public prefers more militarist responses to American casualties, but the general disinclination involves the initial deployment of troops overseas.

(31) The data for this section of the analysis were taken from the Worldviews 2002 Survey, a joint project of the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations and The German Marshal Fund of the United States. The key findings on U.S. public opinion are reported in "A World Transformed: Foreign Policy Attitudes of the U.S. Public After September 11" and can be found the Chicago Council for Foreign Relations web page--www.ccfr.org.

(32) Ibid.

(33) Admittedly, this point is overstated. The Cold War consensus was less consensual than is often assumed, see e.g. Eugene Wittkopf and James M. McCormack, "The Cold War Consensus: Did It Exist?" Polity, 22 (1990): 627-654; and the specific application of containment was based on practical as well ideological considerations.

(34) For a discussion of these military vs. non-military approaches, see Joseph S. Nye, Jr., "U.S. Power and Strategy After Iraq," Foreign Affairs, vol. 82, no. 4, July/August, 2003, pp. 60-73.

(35) "A World Transformed."

(36) Though see "Public News Habits Little Changed by September 11," The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, May 26-April 12, N=3002, for evidence that media attention has been significantly changed by September 11. According to this study, the increase in interest has occurred primarily among the "attentive public."

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