CHAPTER 6

 

Public Opinion and the
Making of Wartime Strategies

Nadia Schadlow

The symbols of public opinion, in times of moderate security, are subject to check and comparison and argument. They come and go, coalesce and are forgotten, never organizing perfectly the emotion of the whole group. There is, after all, just one human activity left in which whole populations accomplish the union sacrée. It occurs in those middle phases of a war when fear, pugnacity, and hatred have secured complete dominion of the spirit, either to crush every other instinct or to enlist it, and before weariness is felt.

—Walter Lippman, Public Opinion

American public opinion is at once impassioned and changeable. It is much less of a constraint on the making of wartime strategies than political leaders might think. The relationship between inconstant public opinion and the shaping of wartime strategies is an uneasy one, complicated by differences in knowledge, interpretation, and historical appreciation as well as competing interests. There is no straightforward empirical answer to the question of the degree to which the American public influences political leaders in the development of wartime strategies. But the data suggest that it is an interactive relationship, open to the influence of compelling leaders and shaped by convincing explanations and the course of events. The making of strategy in wartime requires of leaders clear thinking, detailed and historical knowledge of the situation, clear objectives, and a willingness to commit and sustain the military, political, and economic resources required to overcome enemies and achieve successful outcomes. As Carl von Clausewitz observed, “Everything in strategy is very simple, but that does not mean that everything is very easy. Once it has been determined from the political considerations what a war is meant to achieve and what it can achieve it is easy to chart its course. But great strength of character, as well as great lucidity and firmness of mind, is required in order to follow through steadily, to carry out the plan, and not be thrown off course by thousands of diversions. . . . It takes more strength of will to make an important decision in strategy than in tactics.”[1]

The purpose of this paper is to offer three considerations when thinking about this issue. First, America’s “strategic culture” matters. In a democracy, the culture, history, and experiences of a nation inform and shape public opinion in wartime. Second, the public’s view of what constitutes war influences its support for, or opposition to, wartime strategy. Is war regarded simply as the dropping of bombs and the conduct of raids, or does it adhere to the Clausewitzian view that war is a continuation of politics by other means, whereby a strategy should focus upon prospects for achieving sustainable goals? Does the public expect the war to end quickly, perhaps after key enemy leaders are killed, or does it anticipate that political consolidation will be required? Differences among the public—as well as among civil and military leaders—over the nature of war and anticipated costs and consequences influence public support for strategic goals. Third, and perhaps most important of all, is the factor of civilian and military leadership. Leaders’ ability to demonstrate what Clausewitz described as “great lucidity and firmness of mind” is essential to reconciling public opinion and the steadfastness required to make and sustain wartime strategy. It is leadership that “captures” and articulates a nation’s strategic culture, explains to citizens the true nature and character of war, inspires support required to pursue victory, and sustains the scale and duration of the national commitment necessary to consolidate military gains and, ultimately, achieve political goals.

These three factors may not satisfy pollsters or political scientists who track the course of public opinion in wartime. Nor will they necessarily satisfy historians who focus on discrete periods in history and attempt to explain the complex causality of events in war. Nonetheless, a discussion of these factors can help interpret polling data while shedding light on how the American public influences wartime strategies and the degree to which leadership may shape the public’s views. Polls on the subject of national security and war suggest that while public opinion may be considered a constraint on security policy and strategy, it not immutable: it is responsive to evolving strategic culture, to shifts in the public’s perception of war, and to the ability of leaders to galvanize its citizens in support of war efforts.

Strategic Culture

Walter Russell Meade’s Special Providence described four traditions in American society which have shaped the way that the public and political leaders have thought about foreign policy, the use of force. In a reaction to what Meade called “simplistic” poles of isolationism and moralism that often define American opinion on foreign policy, he developed four schools of thought that correct the tendency to assume that citizens “proceed out of a single, unified word view . . . [rather than] a balance of contrasting, competing voices and values . . . a symphony.”[2] Meade decried the tendency among top diplomatic and political leaders to dismiss, “wholesale” the country’s foreign policy traditions and the tendency to reduce this tradition to a “legacy of moralism and isolationism.”[3] Meade’s four schools of thought capture the range of popular reactions to past and recent wars, contribute to an understanding of American strategic culture, and may offer a useful framework for interpreting the survey data that is a basis for this volume.

First, the Hamiltonian school put economics first and foremost. It sought the promotion of the American enterprise at home and abroad and supported the rights of American merchants and investors. Today, this tradition sees free trade and the preservation of free trade as critical. Indeed, as the YouGov poll demonstrates, the public believes that the economy should be the president’s top priority by a substantial margin (29 percent more than the next priority, which is the budget deficit) (CM1T 2).[4] In extrapolating from this tradition, there are many examples in American history where leaders invoked freedom of the seas as part of a rationale for war. One is after the Revolutionary War, as American commercial shipping (no longer under Britain’s protection) came under attack in the Mediterranean from the Barbary pirates of North Africa. In response, Congress passed the Naval Act of 1794, which reestablished the U.S. Navy and authorized the construction of six frigates to defend American interests. Another is when, in his weekly fireside chats during World War II, President Roosevelt eloquently explained to the American public that the United States “must fight at these vast distances to protect our supply lines and our lines of communication with our allies—protect these lines from the enemies who are bending every ounce of their strength, striving against time, to cut them.” He deliberately challenged those who thought that we could “pull our warships and our planes and our merchant ships into our own home waters and concentrate solely on last ditch defense,” and believed that perceptions of geographic separation from security problems overseas was likely to remain important in sustaining public support for wartime strategies.[5]

Second, the Wilsonian tradition (which, Meade points out, was shaped even before World War I by American missionaries) maintained that the United States had a practical and moral duty to spread its values throughout the world. For Wilsonians, American interests required other countries to accept basic American values and conduct their foreign and domestic affairs accordingly. During World War II, Franklin Delano Roosevelt consistently explained that “freedom of person and security of property anywhere in the world depend upon the security of the rights and obligations of liberty and justice everywhere in the world.”[6] Third, the Jeffersonian school sought to protect American democracy but to avoid imposing American values on other countries. Meade argued that George Kennan was a Jeffersonian and that containment was designed to preserve the American system but avoid a direct confrontation with the Soviet Union. Most recently, seeking to explain America’s more limited involvement in the Middle East, President Obama has emphasized that America would “defend this nation and uphold the values” that we stand for but that the role of American forces would be markedly limited.[7] The YouGov poll reflects this impulse in American politics: 69 percent of respondents want to decrease slightly, or decrease a lot, spending on foreign aid; 68 percent want to decrease assistance to foreign militaries; and 67 percent oppose returning to a draft (CM1T 6, 15, 36). The fourth, Jacksonian, tradition represented a populist culture of “honor, independence, courage, and military pride,” that later translated into “unwavering popular support for the bloody and dangerous Cold War.”[8] Today, the American public’s support for the pursuit of “total victory” (55.8 percent of those polled) and the use of quick and massive force (58.5 percent), as opposed to gradual escalation, evokes this Jacksonian tradition (CM1T 79). So too does the overwhelming public support for increasing or maintaining spending levels on military pay, operations and training, construction, weapons procurement, and the war operations budget (CM1T 10–14).

These traditions shape American strategic culture and how Americans think about war and the necessary steps required in war. They are not, however, mutually exclusive. Rather, views about decisions to deploy forces derive from dynamic combinations of these traditions. One example is America’s deployment of troops to Somalia in 1992. At that time, as thousands of Somalis were starving, President George H. W. Bush emphasized the limitations of the United States, explaining that he understood that the “the United States alone cannot right the world’s wrongs,” but that humanitarian requirements often required US involvement. At the same time, conscious of long-term commitments, he rejected the idea that the politics of Somalia would need to be changed and maintained that American troops would not seek to influence Somalia’s political crisis and would not allow themselves to become targets in that country’s tribal wars. At the time, his approach was supported by the American public, with some polls reporting that over 70 percent of the public supported the humanitarian intervention.[9] This separation of the use of force from political outcomes was not new and appears to be reflected in the American public’s view that force, when used, should be determined by military rather than political goals (in the current data set, 61.5 percent of respondents stated that nonmilitary people getting too involved in purely military affairs hurts military effectiveness) (CM2T 79). Such a distinction, however, proved to be shortsighted and impossible to maintain. Politics, in war, tend to be insistent. Ten months after the initial intervention, following the death of eighteen American soldiers, the new Clinton administration announced its decision to withdraw American soldiers from Somalia. Interestingly, polling results at the time were mixed. Two polls, conducted by ABC News and CNN/USA Today in the hours just after the deaths were reported, found that between 37 percent and 43 percent supported immediate withdrawal of the troops, though most respondents wanted more involvement in Somalia, at least over the short term.[10] An ABC poll at the time showed 75 percent favored going after Somali warlord Aideed with a “major military attack” if the American prisoners were not released through negotiations[11]—suggesting that Meade’s tough Jacksonian tradition was at play.

More recently, on the eve of the US intervention in Afghanistan, the Wilsonian and Jeffersonian traditions seemed to be at play. President George W. Bush later recounted that he was “sensitive to the [accusations] that this was a religious war and that somehow the United States would be the conqueror” but explained that there was a “human condition we must worry about in times of war.”[12] The debate over the subsequent US intervention in Iraq also reflected, fundamentally, several strategic cultural traditions at play: the Wilsonian tradition of exporting American values and the Jacksonian tradition of containing our enemies abroad. Overall, Meade’s description of these four traditions succeed in covering the range of explanations leaders use to justify interventions abroad and illuminate the role of strategic culture in determining whether publics will support and sustain a wartime strategy over time in light of the costs and sacrifices associated with that strategy.

The Nature and Character of War

The people are discontented, but it is with the feeble and oppressive mode of conducting the war, not with the war itself.

—George Washington, letter to John Laurens, 1781

In October 2000, presidential candidate George W. Bush rejected the concept of nation building as well as the suggestion that the United States military should take the lead in reconstructing failed states. A year later, against the backdrop of early US combat successes in Afghanistan, President Bush reaffirmed that US forces would not stay, since they “did not do police work.”[13] Years later, reflecting on the war and his experiences, Bush wrote in his memoir that Afghanistan was “the ultimate nation building mission” and that the United States, having liberated the country from a “primitive dictatorship, had the moral obligation to leave behind something better.”

Indeed, some five years after the US intervention, with the support of the Bush administration, tens of thousands of American and allied troops as well as US interagency “provincial reconstruction teams” were working in Iraq and Afghanistan to rebuild the economies and governments of both countries—efforts that were seen, often reluctantly, as essential to the consolidation of military gains. In 2008, the much heralded counterinsurgency manual described how U.S. Army and Marine Corps forces would conduct operations to defeat insurgencies and achieve sustainable political outcomes. And in 2009, a Department of Defense directive put postconflict “stability operations” on par with combat operations. Experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq had revealed that in most conflicts, stability tasks such as support to governance and the development of indigenous security forces were not optional—rather they were integral parts of war.[14] Policy officials then had to explain this to the American people.

Civilian and military views about what constitutes war shapes the public’s understanding of the character of war. That understanding, in turn, influences the degree to which the public will support particular courses of action or underwrite the levels of risk and resources associated with those courses of action. The degree to which the public understands what strategy entails—the ways and means needed to achieve a set of objectives—is essential to generating and sustaining public support. Knowledge and agreement on “ways and means” is inconsistent and variable among civilian leaders and military officials—and thus changeable among the public as well. For instance, respondents asked to guess the number of people serving in all five branches of the military on average were wrong by a count of over five million people (CM1T 58). Estimates of numbers in specific branches of the military, such as the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, were incorrect by hundreds of thousands of people (CM1T 56–57).[15]

Public confusion over strategy often stems, in part, from disagreements between civilian policymakers and military leaders concerning the character of war—what constitutes war and what kind of military forces may be necessary at a given time. To what degree then are leaders treating as a constraint something that is in their power to effect? It is up to leaders to explain the character of war, drawing upon history and experience. Does war require the commitment of ground forces? Can strategic objectives be accomplished through airpower alone? What does it take to win a war and to achieve goals that are consistent with US interests? If the military is involved in nonmilitary tasks, during a war, what does this mean? What is part of the military profession and what is not? The prevailing views of the character of war affect the public’s willingness to support a particular course of action. Polls suggest that the public does think about what constitutes war and how wars should be fought, but the degree to which such views have been drawn out remain unclear. Over 55 percent (55.8 percent) believed that military forces should be used only in pursuit of the goal of total ­victory—but total victory was not defined. What would that have meant in Desert Storm in 1991 or in April of 2003 in Iraq? Over 58 percent (58.5 percent) believed that the use of force in foreign interventions should be applied “quickly and massively” as opposed to gradually escalating forces—perhaps a lessons-learned effect from Vietnam? And while, as noted earlier, close to 63 percent of those polled said that “military rather than political goals” should determine the use of the military (CM2T 79, 80), during the Gulf War in 1991, when George H. W. Bush made the decision to deploy American ground troops to force Saddam Hussein out of Iraq, around 80 percent of the American public supported this step—and about this percentage also supported “see[ing] to it that Saddam Hussein is forced from power.”[16]

During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there was consistent disagreement among military and civilian leaders over the kinds of wars being fought—which complicated messages to the public. Some two years into the war in Iraq, top civilian leaders—such as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld—were still reluctant to call the unfolding conflict an insurgency, which in turn affected explanations of what the war would require of the nation. When Rumsfeld’s view did change, he believed that the insurgency would be put down by the Iraqi people and not by coalition forces. Although in 2005 civilian leaders still argued that hat the insurgency was in its “last throes,” top military commanders were actively fighting insurgents throughout the country.[17] Such differences had implications for the resources and troops devoted to supporting a particular strategy—and for how civil and military leaders would explain the strategy to the American people.

Similarly, during the 2009 time period, there was consistent disagreement between military and political leaders over the nature of the war in Afghanistan. Top civilian advisors in the Obama White House argued against the resources required to undertake a long-term counterinsurgency strategy to defeat the Taliban and argued against military leaders, such as “Petraeus and his ilk,” who were advancing the view that 40,000 additional troops would be needed in Afghanistan.[18] Moreover, the Obama administration’s stance was that they would need “the support of the American people.”[19] With this mindset, the White House appeared to be led by the American public. An alternative approach could have been to explain to the American people the risks of a smaller Afghan surge. As explained by General Petraeus at the time, with a smaller surge “you would see spots on the map that we control—and that the Afghan government controls—slowly recede.”[20] The civilian explanation of the strategy was that the bulk of the war effort would require the United States to “target, train and transfer,” which was a different set of requirements than one based on a fully resourced counterinsurgency strategy.

It is hard to say which explanations would have resonated more among the American public since the data suggests that the public’s confidence in the accuracy of the military’s picture of how the war in Afghanistan was unfolding was not high: around 54 percent believed that the military’s information was “somewhat inaccurate” (31 percent) or “very inaccurate” (23 percent), while some 26 percent believed that it was accurate—with 20 percent undecided (CM1T 37). To further complicate matters, the public also lacks confidence in the knowledge that political leaders have of the modern military, with over 51 percent believing that political leaders were “not very knowledgeable” or “not knowledgeable at all” about the military (CM2T 15). This reinforces the changeable nature of public opinion.

One example of the problems that stem from a different baseline of knowledge of military matters occurred during the summer of 2009, when President Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates debated and disagreed on key numbers for the Afghan surge. This was a disagreement driven in part by a lack of understanding of what the range of numbers included. When Secretary Gates explained that the military had assumed that the 5,000 “enablers” would be in addition to combat troops and were not part of the additional 21,000 troops that the military had requested, President Obama angrily asserted that this was “mission creep” and that the public and Congress would not differentiate among types of troops and only look at final numbers deployed.[21]

Inconsistency in civilian and military leaders’ views about the character of war and the strategy necessary to accomplish wartime objectives ultimately play out in the public domain and affect the public’s views about and support for the war effort. Who defines the character of war may matter. The polling data indicates that in the making of policy the public (52 percent) believes that the military shares its values but that the political leadership does not, suggesting that the discussions of the character of war by the military may have more resonance among the public (CM2T 16). The data suggests that the public trusts the military when it explains what a strategy requires in order to achieve a particular end state.

The problem of explaining the character of wars—especially what is required to defeat particular enemies or threats—has been complicated in recent years due to a lack of clarity and consensus concerning the nature of those threats. As part of the first Triangle Study over fifteen years ago, the military historian Russell Weigley explained that at the end of the cold war there was essentially a consensus on the external threat posed by the USSR, which in turn helped to unify civil-military relations. He wrote that the Civil War and the world wars created pressures for “civil-military harmony in defense of common national interests” and helped the “civilian government [bestow] on the military resources sufficient to win overwhelming victories.”[22] There is simply no comparison today to the 1950 National Security Council’s paper “United States Objectives and Programs for National Security” (sometimes known as NSC-68) and today’s National Security Strategy.[23] NSC-68 referred to the “hostile design” of the Soviet Union and to Moscow’s “fanatic faith” which was antithetical to that of the United States and drove the USSR “to impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world.”[24] The current strategy document uses the word “threats” in much more diffuse terms, to include everything from climate change to general “terrorism,” and it barely mentions, in any depth, the nature of specific regional threats or countries. Perhaps this reflects the public’s disinterest—more believe in the need to increase or maintain spending on space travel (54 percent) than foreign aid (31 percent) (CM1T 6, 7). Indeed, today there are significant disagreements over defining the character of one specific enemy—­violent radical Islamists such as the Islamic State and al Qaeda—who are responsible for disorder and violence throughout the Middle East as well as attacks in the West. A lack of clarity over who these enemies are and what goals they are pursuing complicates the development of strategy and leaders’ ability to explain wartime strategy to the public.

The ambiguity surrounding the “kind of war” necessary to defeat radical insurgents in Iraq, the Taliban groups in Afghanistan, and the violent radical Islamists represented by groups such as ISIS today, has been a consistent feature of the post-9/11 landscape. Instead of dis­cussions to clarify who US forces were fighting and how the United States intended to apply national power to defeat those enemies and achieve sustainable outcomes, public debate focused on the means—such as the numbers of troops committed. For example, during the war in Iraq there was continuous debate over means and resources but little discussion of the elements of the strategy, such as, how to move Iraq’s increasingly polarized communities toward political accommodation; how to build capable and legitimate Iraqi security forces; how to reduce insurgent freedom of movement; and how to restore security and order in key areas to create a patchwork of safe zones until the Iraq government and security forces were strong enough to maintain order. Absent an understanding of strategy and clear evidence that the situation in Iraq in 2006 was deteriorating rapidly, American public support for the war waned. The data suggests that the experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan incurred doubts among the public that modern wars are winnable (only 19 percent think so). On the other hand, the public was willing to consider that modern wars were winnable if the right type of decisions were taken, with 45 percent believing that it was either military or civilian decision making that created obstacles to winning (CM1T 45).[25] This is important because, again, it reinforces the point that the quality of the explanations given by leaders matter.

Even if the public has doubts about strategy and manifests a lack of support for military operations, that support is not static and can change based on events and how threats are perceived over time. For example, polls from early 2014 show that attitudes toward the use of military force in Syria changed significantly over the course of the conflict. In September 2013, when a deal to disarm Syria’s chemical weapons was struck, 62 percent of Americans opposed the use of military force while only 20 percent supported it. Today, when asked whether they support the use of military force against ISIS militants in Syria, the situation is reversed. Some 63 percent of Americans now support the use of military force in Syria, compared to only 16 percent who oppose it.[26]

In early 2014, similar debates concerning the appropriate types of operations against ISIS focused primarily on means employed rather than the character of the conflict and the strategy necessary to achieve the objective of defeating that organization and its associated radical Islamist movement. For example, President Obama has made it clear that US forces will not be required on the ground, thus rejecting means that may prove essential to an effective strategy. Means are eclipsing ends even in presidential requests to Congress for the authorization to use military force (AUMF).[27] President Obama’s February 2014 AUMF placed restrictions on the use of ground forces as well as the duration of military operations against ISIS. The focus on the means employed in war in the 2014 authorization contrasts with broad authorities contained in the 2001 authorization, which allowed for “all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons” he [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.” Today’s more narrow focus on means such as air strikes; support for the training of local forces; “assistance” to various opposition groups; humanitarian assistance to groups displaced by ISIS and other groups; and efforts to cut off funding to radical groups may prevent the public from understanding the stakes associated with war as well as how the means employed will achieve wartime objectives.[28] As the Golby, Cohn, and Feaver chapter in this volume notes, nonveterans “are supportive of more wide-ranging use [of force], but favor greater restrictions on force levels and how they are employed.” However, some of the YouGov data may contradict this finding, as 58.5 percent of respondents agreed that the use of force in foreign interventions should be applied quickly and massively rather than by gradual escalation (CM2T 79). By explicitly rejecting the use of ground forces the president is advancing a specific view of the nature of war—a form of war that can be conducted from afar, primarily through targeting with the use of technology. This view of war does not encompass the problem of how to consolidate political gains or how to reestablish the basic security and order necessary to advance progress in other political and economic domains. The military actions contemplated, therefore, are likely to prove inconsistent with the stated objective—the defeat of ISIS. That inconsistency, over time, will likely lead the American public to lose faith in the effort as it becomes impossible to see how military operations are contributing to outcomes worthy of the investment in blood and treasure.

Leadership: The Persuasion Pulpit

[Lincoln] made efforts at all times to modify and change public opinion and to climb to the Presidential heights; he toiled and struggled in this line as scarcely any man ever did.

—William H. Herndon, letter to Jesse W. Weik, 1891

Foreign policy does not rank high on the list of the American public’s priorities. The YouGov poll shows that when asked about their top priorities, only 1 percent named terrorism or Afghanistan (CM1T 2). Indeed, as noted previously, more Americans valued the importance of the space program. Having said that, the YouGov poll does not include all foreign policy issues. A 2014 Gallup poll found that 4 percent of Americans list foreign aid/focus overseas as the most important problem the United States faces. This is significant in comparison to the 20 percent who rate unemployment as the top problem.[29] Yet polls also suggest that the public, if convinced both of the threat and the effectiveness of the strategies to remove the threat, has shown a willingness to support significant change and investments overtime. Walter Lippmann’s 1922 book Public Opinion emphasized leaders’ roles in shaping public opinion and his observation from that book remains relevant: American public opinion is changeable and is receptive to strong and clearly articulated statements by political and military leaders. Although the term “bully pulpit” has been at times used to refer to the power of the presidency,[30] a more accurate phrase might be “persuasion pulpit,” whereby a president and his team explains its strategy to the American public and thus persuade the public of a necessary course of action.

Given the public’s relative lack of knowledge when it comes to foreign affairs or the details of a conflict (how many Americans could name the main Taliban groups fighting in Afghanistan or describe the nature of Pakistan’s support for these groups?), it is necessary for leaders to explain and persuade. During World War II, FDR played a central role in shaping public opinion about what the war would entail. He used his fireside chats to explain his strategy in detail, encouraging the listening public to get out their maps as he summarized the course of military campaigns, highlighted progress, and provided his rationale for ongoing actions and next steps in those campaigns. Although the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States fully into the war, the president had already, over the course of the previous year, implemented a series of actions to strengthen the United Kingdom and had convinced the American public to support a strategy that prioritized the European over the Pacific theater.

In August 2009, President Obama sought to bolster American support for additional troops in Afghanistan. He explained that the “insurgency in Afghanistan didn’t just happen overnight” and that we would not defeat it overnight. He explained that this would not be “quick, nor easy. But we must never forget: This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people.”[31]

It is difficult to determine linkages—with certainty or clear causality—between the public’s view of a conflict and a leader’s decision to pursue particular strategies in wartime. Different leaders will respond to public opinion in different ways. Consider, for instance, the dramatic shifts in policy during World War I and World War II. Consider also the consistency with which America pursued a grand strategy toward the Soviet Union during the cold war. To prevail during that long war, America had to overcome its fear of entangling alliances, sustain a military presence in Europe, and maintain a large peacetime army—all of which represented significant breaks with American traditions. Different leaders respond to different pressures. Some scholars have called Abraham Lincoln a man who was “never above the fray of political conflicts” and a “prodigious political manipulator.”[32] Winston Churchill famously said, “there is no public opinion, just published opinion,” and many maintain that Churchill put party politics behind his determination to pursue victory during the war. In contrast to leading the public in a certain direction, during the Vietnam War President Lyndon Johnson was very conscious of missteps in the war that could cost him an election win. In January 1964, President Johnson was thinking of the November election. He wanted to be seen as a moderate candidate and this affected his support for particular wartime strategy—supporting Defense Secretary Robert McNamara’s concept of “graduated pressure.”[33] And President Obama’s presumption of war weariness among the American public seemed to underpin his decision to “end the war” in Iraq by the complete withdrawal of US troops there, as well as his preference for “limited engagements,” such as the bombings in Libya.[34] The president seemed cognizant that 51.3 percent of YouGov respondents strongly or somewhat opposed continued military involvement in Afghanistan beyond 2014 while only 34.4 percent strongly or somewhat supported it (CM2T 72).

Other variables are likely to influence public thinking about the course of a war and its views about appropriate responses. These might include the state of the economy at a particular time; memories and interpretations of previous wars; recent events that depict Americans as victims or as perpetrators of crimes; the tenor of media coverage; and more. Recent polls regarding the public’s views about the threat posed by ISIS reveal how quickly public support can spike (or drop). Recent surveys have shown that some 86 percent of the public believe that ISIS poses an “immediate and serious threat,” a “somewhat serious threat,” or a “minor threat” to the United States and that most support military action against the terrorist group.[35] In September 2010, only 3 percent of Americans named terrorism as the most important problem facing the country.[36] And of course, public opinion changes as events unfold. A March 2003 Pew Research Center poll indicated that 72 percent of US adults supported the decision to attack Iraq; by February 2008, another Pew poll had found that 58 percent believed it was the wrong decision.[37]

The evidence suggests that Americans seek strong civilian leadership but that they are also open to alternative arguments or viewpoints. Shortly after President Obama’s statement that he did not have a strategy for dealing with ISIS, support for his administration dropped. A Rasmussen poll reported in early September 2014 that voters were “very worried that President Obama doesn’t have a strategy for dealing with the problem.” At the same time, the same poll showed that just 33 percent of likely US voters thought the current level of US involvement around the globe was “about right.” How many of those polled could articulate the nature of this involvement or the level of troops around the world? Would these voters likely make the connection between their desire to deploy airpower or drones with the need to actually have individuals on the ground to direct targets? Despite such concerns, the American public supports a president’s final decisions on matters of strategy. The polling data suggests that if a president makes a policy decision on wars, over 72 percent of the public believes that the military has a responsibility to support that policy (CM1T 74). In this vein, some 64 percent said their decisions were affected only a “little” or “not at all” if the military supported continued involvement in Afghanistan beyond 2014 (CM1T 73). Around the same number (63 percent) said that if the president decided to withdraw completely from Afghanistan the military had a responsibility to support the policy, even if the military had concerns to the contrary.

But this data is tempered too by the fact that public and elites think civilian leaders are not knowledgeable about the military. As noted previously, more than half of the public believes that civilian leaders are “not very” or “not knowledgeable” about the military, with elites sharing that general proportion (CM1T 15). Furthermore, while 51.9 percent of YouGov respondents believe that the military leaders share the same values as the American people, only 10.9 percent believe the same of political leaders (CM2T 16, 17). This suggests that the public is likely to have greater skepticism of civilian leaders who make decisions about war. At a much more micro level the various levels of trust the public has in military or civilian officials may affect the kind of behavior the public will accept—or not—during wartime. For instance, the survey results suggest that while the American public is considerate of cultural sensitivities (for example, offending other cultures) they were uncertain about the degree to which transgressions in this area should be punished: some 50 percent did not agree that a military person should go to jail for doing something like burning the Koran; while 23 percent were unsure and 26.1 percent agreed that jail was warranted. By the same token, some 40 percent agreed with jail if an “international incident” were caused, while more than a majority—some 68 percent—believed that a “military person” should be allowed to express “upsetting ideas in public.” Clearly, in any specific situation the degree to which incidents on the ground—at the tactical level—may or may not have broader strategic effects in a war would need to be explained and assessed by civilian and military leaders. In addition, the public wants to hear different viewpoints and to ensure that actors are permitted to express such considerations. Over 61 percent believed that even if the president decides to withdraw from Afghanistan, for instance, the military would have a responsibility to make its views heard before Congress; similarly, about half of the public (50.4 percent) believed that the military has a responsibility to educate the public about its concerns (with 33 percent saying no and some 16 percent undecided) (CM1T 76, 78).

Public opinion can be inconsistent or shift based on different types of information. For instance, regarding Iran’s nuclear program, over 68 percent of those polled believed that Iran’s nuclear program posed an “immediate and serious” or a “somewhat serious” threat to the United States (CM1T 69). Over 46 percent believed that the United States was “very likely” or “somewhat likely” to succeed at eliminating Iraq’s nuclear weapons, but only 33.7 percent believed that military strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites would reduce the threat from Iran and 28 percent were unsure (CM1T 71). It is reasonable to assume, however, that these views would shift depending upon leaders’ assessments of Iran’s nuclear program as well as other sources of knowledge about the program. As the public considered American strikes against Iran, was it aware that some critical components of Iran’s nuclear program are located deep underground, in a facility called Fordow, which most experts doubt could be penetrated by the most accurate and powerful of America’s conventional “bunker busting” weapons? Moreover, regarding the seriousness of the threat, few are likely to realize that, once Iranians are able to enrich uranium to a level of 20 percent (which is what is needed for so-called “peaceful” nuclear programs), it only takes about three to twelve months to enrich uranium to 90 percent—which is what is necessary for use in nuclear warheads.[38] This kind of detailed information is likely to change public opinion and influence public support for a particular course of action.

Similarly, events can impact the views of the public. As the intensity of fighting in eastern Ukraine between government forces and Russian-backed rebels grew, the public became more supportive of sending arms to the Ukrainian government and increasing sanctions on Russia. While as of early February 2015 more still opposed (53 percent) than favored (41 percent) the United States sending arms and military supplies to the Ukrainian government, support for arming Ukraine had gone up eleven points since April 2014.[39]

Given that there is low support for sustained involvement around the world—around 69 percent believe that the United States should decrease slightly (25 percent) or a lot (44 percent) its foreign aid ­budget—civil and military leaders must persuade the public of the links between American foreign aid and US interests. In addition, they need to provide information as well. How many of those polled know that the US foreign aid budget is about 1 percent of its Federal spending?

According to a 2013 Kaiser Family Foundation survey, misperceptions persist about the size of US foreign aid and how aid is directed. On average, Americans think 28 percent of the federal budget is spent on foreign aid, when it is actually about 1 percent.[40]

Conclusions

The relationship between public opinion and the making of strategy during wartime encompasses many of the specific issues explored in the Triangle Institute Study’s previous examination of civil-military relations as well as in the current volume. The public responds to and has opinions about the military as a domestic entity as well as an instrument of American power abroad, as a representative of the American people (themselves), and as an embodiment of American history and values. The public response to its elected civilian leaders is more diffuse and dependent on a range of specific domestic issues, including how civilian actors are perceived, their qualities of leadership, and their domestic and international policies. In wartime, the public’s view of both entities becomes intertwined and specific civil-military relationships are taken apart and scrutinized as decisions to use force are made. The data from the current survey suggests that public views change based on specific incidents, explanations, levels of trust in leaders, as well as a broader view of America’s role in the world. All of these factors are very much amenable to shaping by US civil and military leaders and this shaping and explaining are all required to execute a specific strategy. Strategy is the overarching glue that brings the public together with civil and military leaders to make sense of the disorder and violence that is war. As Richard Betts has observed, “Strategy is the essential ingredient for making war either politically effective or morally tenable. It is the link between military means and political ends, the scheme for how to make one produce the other. Without strategy, there is no rationale for how force will achieve purposes worth the price in blood and treasure.”[41]

The making and articulation of strategy has, for a range of reasons that are beyond the scope of this paper, become dissatisfying and disappointing. The British military historian Hew Strachan observed that throughout the cold war the idea of “total war” required active public participation and underpinned the stability of the international order. With the end of the cold war, and with America’s so-called “wars of choice,” Strachan writes that the United States has “recast limited war” and distanced itself from “lessons of the past.”[42] Smaller, seemingly ad hoc wars may make it more difficult for the public to understand the rationale for the use of force and to sustain their commitment to seeing wars through to a favorable conclusion. In addition, as Weigley pointed out in his chapter for the Triangle Study volume, the “harmonious conditions” which characterized World War II (even if there was dissension behind the scenes) meant there was no “public military disagreement with the civilian leadership” during the course of that war.[43] The implication is that a unified front on strategy made is much easier for a public to support that strategy.

Today the situation is markedly different, with much dissention among civilian and military leaders over the nature of the threats to US interests. With different threats emanating from Russia and China to the Middle East, the disputed lessons of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and budgetary pressures, more is required of civil and military leaders to bring the public on board—to understand the complexity of the disorder, to establish linkages between events in one part of the world to another in order to steer away from the isolationism that Meade said was exaggerated but is still a present theme in America’s strategic culture. Strategy implies an attempt to exert agency over a problem. Leaders who are effective at crafting and executing strategy will, therefore, be more likely to overcome the self-limiting tendency to be bound by public resistance that does not exist. If their strategy is sound and the stakes are clear to the American public, they will also be more effective at generating and sustaining public support for military efforts despite the costs in blood and treasure.

The degree to which the public is informed could in turn influence the degree or nature of the public’s influence over the making of wartime strategy. Information changes public opinion and while it is incumbent upon the public to stay informed, it is incumbent upon political and military leaders to provide full information. Both sides are involved. The survey information revealed that the public had more trust in the knowledge of military leaders on military matters (half of those surveyed believed that political leaders were not very knowledgeable or not “knowledgeable at all” about the modern military) (CM2T 15). This then suggests that the public might be less willing to believe arguments made by civilian leaders about the requirements of holding territory or beating back enemy threats (for example, ISIS today). On the other hand, the survey makes clear that the public believes that the military needs to carry out orders and policies, even when considered unwise.

Future surveys might consider the question of how the public gets its information about wars and about the individuals most likely to be trusted. In addition, they might provide more granularity to explore, for instance, whether economic pressures or particular events impact public attitudes. A reasonable assumption would be that they do. Questions to determine the level of the public’s knowledge about an ongoing war are important in determining how informed the public is about the war that they are seeking to influence. For example, is the public able to name particular enemies? Surely during World War II the majority of Americans—even children, perhaps—could name the Japanese and the Germans as primary enemies. It is much less likely that the public could do so today (or at least not in more than general terms). Could the public, during World War II, articulate the beliefs held by the Nazis? Could they do so today, vis-à-vis the various Taliban or ISIS groups? Do political leaders speak to the public with a sense that the public understands the contours of a particular war, or do they assume little knowledge?

Perhaps the one generalization that can be made from the often inconsistent views illustrated in the current data is that civil-military relationships and strong civil-military leadership seem to effect both the development of strategy and the public’s support for it. Overall, we are not that far from the Triangle study’s findings over fifteen years ago that the American public will support military operations if it understands the approach and thinks that a particular approach is working. The public is willing to show faith in America’s leaders, but the White House and the Pentagon must communicate clearly and consistently about the strategy—and its requirements—necessary to uphold the strategic interests of the United States in wartime.

Notes

1. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, edited and translated by Peter Paret and Michael Howard, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976, reprint 1989, p. 178.

2. Walter Russell Meade, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World, New York: Routledge, 2002, p. 54.

3. Ibid., pp. 6–7.

4. References to the YouGov data by question number appear in parentheses throughout this essay with the abbreviations CM1T and CM2T indicating the 2013 and 2014 surveys, respectively. The complete results are available at http://www.hoover.org/warriors-and-citizens-crosstabs-1 (CM1T) and http://www.hoover.org/warriors-and-citizens-crosstabs-2 (CM2T).

5. Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Fireside Chat 20: On the Progress of the War,” transcript, February 23, 1942, http://millercenter.org/president/fdroosevelt/speeches/speech-3326.

6. Ibid.

7. Barack Obama, “Statement by the President on ISIL,” September 10, 2014, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/09/10/statement-president-isil-1.

8. Meade, Special Providence, p. 87.

9. Matt Lait, “The Times Poll: O.C. Residents Strongly Back US Role in Somalia,” December 10, 1992, Los Angeles Times, http://articles.latimes.com/1992-12-10/news/mn-2495_1_times-poll.

10. Cited in Steven Kull, “Misreading the Public Mood,” Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, available at http://www.policyattitudes.org/misreadoped.html.

11. Robert Young Pelton, “Black Hawk Down Redux? Another Famine, Another War: What Did America Learn from 1993?” Somalia Report, July 21, 2011, http://www.somaliareport.com/index.php/post/1196/Black_Hawk_Down_Redux.

12. George W. Bush quoted in Robert Woodward, Bush at War, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002, p. 131.

13. Ibid., p. 310.

14. U.S. Dept. of Defense, Instruction Number 3000.05: Stability Operations, September 16, 2009, http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/300005p.pdf. U.S. Army and Marine Corps, The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, foreword by David H. Petraeus, James F. Amos, and John A. Nagl, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. See also Nadia Schadlow, “War and the Art of Governance,” Parameters, vol. 33, no. 3, Autumn 2003, pp. 85–94.

15. U.S. Dept. of Defense, “Personnel,” https://www.dmdc.osd.mil/appj/dwp/dwp_reports.jsp.

16. Reported in Adam Clymer, “War in the Gulf: Public Opinion; Poll Finds Deep Backing While Optimism Fades,” New York Times, January 22, 1991, http://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/22/us/war-in-the-gulf-public-opinion-poll-finds-deep-backing-while-optimism-fades.html.

17. For Vice President Richard Cheney’s comments during this period, see “Iraq Insurgency in ‘Last Throes,’ Cheney Says,” CNN.com, June 20, 2005, http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/05/30/cheney.iraq. On the emerging ­counterinsurgency battles, see Jonathan Finer, “Among Insurgents in Iraq, Few Foreigners Are Found,” Washington Post, November 17, 2005, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/16/AR2005111602519.html.

18. Tom Donilon quoted in Bob Woodward, Obama’s Wars, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010, p. 297.

19. Woodward, Obama’s Wars, p. 298.

20. Woodward, Obama’s Wars, p. 299.

21. Robert M. Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, p. 362.

22. Russell F. Weigley, “The American Civil-Military Culture Gap: A Historical Perspective, Colonial Times to the Present,” in Peter D. Feaver and Richard H. Kohn, eds., Soldiers and Civilians: The Civil-Military Gap and American National Security, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001, pp. 216–217.

23. National Security Strategy, May 2010, http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/national_security_strategy.pdf.

24. “A Report to the National Security Council - NSC 68,” April 12, 1950, President’s Secretary’s File, Truman Papers, available at https://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/coldwar/documents/pdf/10-1.pdf.

25. Eleven percent polled said modern wars were winnable but the military had not figured out how to win them; 34 percent said the problem was due to civilian decision making.

26. Peter Moore, “One Year Later Americans Back Military Action in Syria,” YouGov, August 29, 2014, https://today.yougov.com/news/2014/08/29/military-action-syria.

27. The 2014/2015 text of the Authority for the Use of Military Force against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant Act was introduced on June 16, 2015 and is available at https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/s1587/text. The 2001 “Text of Authorization for Use of Military Force” is available at https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/107/sjres23/text/enr. In addition, see testimony of General Jim Mattis (Ret.) to the House Intelligence Committee on September 18, 2014, available at http://www.businessinsider.com/mattis-testimony-isis-2014.

28. Barack Obama, “Statement by the President on ISIL,” September 10, 2014, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/09/10/statement-president-isil-1.

29. Rebecca Riffkin, “Jobs, Government, and Economy Remain Top U.S. Problems,” May 19, 2014, Gallup, http://www.gallup.com/poll/169289/jobs-government-economy-remain-top-problems.aspx.

30. President Theodore Roosevelt reportedly coined the phrase to describe the power of the presidential office to shape public sentiment and mobilize actions. Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Bully Pulpit, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013, p. xi.

31. Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention,” August 17, 2009, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-at-the-veterans-of-foreign-wars-convention.

32. Quoted in Kenneth L. Deutsch and Joseph R. Fornieri, http://abrahamlincolnsclassroom.org/abraham-lincoln-in-depth/abraham-lincoln-and-public-opinion.

33. See discussion in H. R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, New York: HarperCollins, 1997, pp. 62–63, 70.

34. See, for example, Office of the Press Secretary, “Remarks by President Obama and the Presidents of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia,” August 30, 2013, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/08/30/remarks-president-obama-and-presidents-estonia-lithuania-and-latvia.

35. “YouGov/Economist Poll,” September 20–22, 2014, http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/0pgcgrpbx9/econToplines.pdf. See also Rasmussen Reports, “73% Worry about Obama’s Lack of Strategy for ISIS,” September 2, 2014, http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/september_2014/73_worry_about_obama_s_lack_of_strategy_for_isis. This shift occurred in other countries as well, such as the United Kingdom, where British support for confronting ISIS went from over 36 percent to over 57 percent after the second beheading by ISIS. See also Alexandra Jaffe, “Poll: Most Disapprove of Obama Handling of ISIS,” CNN, February 17, 2015, http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/16/politics/cnn-poll-isis-obama-approval.

36. Mark Preston, “CNN Poll Finds Majority of Americans Alarmed by ISIS,” September 8, 2014, http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/08/politics/cnn-poll-isis.

37. Pew Research Center, “Public Confidence in War Effort Falters but Support for War Holds Steady,” March 25, 2003, http://www.people-press.org/2003/03/25/public-confidence-in-war-effort-falters.

38. Valerie Lincy and Gary Milhollin, “Iran’s Nuclear Timetable,” August 31, 2015, Iran Watch, http://www.iranwatch.org/our-publications/articles-reports/irans-nuclear-timetable.

39. Pew Research Center, “Increased Public Support for the U.S. Arming Ukraine,” February 23, 2015, http://www.people-press.org/2015/02/23/increased-public-support-for-the-u-s-arming-ukraine.

40. Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, 2013 Survey of Americans on the US Role in Global Health, November 7, 2013, http://kff.org/global-health-policy/poll-finding/2013-survey-of-americans-on-the-u-s-role-in-global-health.

41. Richard K. Betts, “Is Strategy an Illusion?” International Security, vol. 25, no. 2, Fall 2000, p. 5.

42. Hew Strachan, “The Strategic Consequences of the World War,” American Interest, vol. 9, July/August 2014, p. 51.

43. Weigley, p. 237.