The US Public and American Foreign Policy

Andrew Johnstone, Helen Laville, Andrew Johnstone, Helen Laville

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780415522809
• eBook ISBN: 9781136954207
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Though often overlooked, public opinion has always played a significant role in the development and promotion of US foreign policy and this work seeks to comprehensively assess the impact and nature of that opinion through a collection of historical and contemporary essays.

The volume evaluates the role of organizations and movements that look to represent public opinion, and assesses the nature of their relationship with the government. The contributors utilize a number of different approaches to examine this impact, including polling data, assessments of the role of the media, and the wider consideration of ideas and ideology, moving on to examine the specific role played by the public in the policy making and policy promotion process.

Engaging with new questions as well as approaching old questions from a new angle, the work argues that whilst the roles change, and the extent of influence varies, the power of the public to both initiate and constrain foreign policy clearly exists and should not be underestimated. This work will be of great interest to all those with an interest in American foreign policy, American politics and American history.

1
Introduction

Andrew Johnstone and Helen Laville

The relationship between public opinion and the development of US foreign policy has always been a contested one. The very principle of public involvement in foreign policy has been hotly debated. On one side range the advocates of the elite control of foreign policy, those who argue that the complex work of international relations and the advancement of the long-stem strategy interest of the United States should not be subject to the whims, passions and unreasoned positions of the general public. Alexis de Tocqueville warned that democracy and a stable foreign policy were mutually exclusive terrains, asserting, “Foreign Politics demand scarcely any of those qualities which a democracy possesses.” De Tocqueville argued that democracies “obey the impulse of passion rather than the suggestions of prudence” and were driven to “abandon a mature design for the gratification of a momentary caprice.”¹ The concern over the danger of allowing the unreasonable and overly emotional influence of public opinion on foreign relations has persisted well into the twentieth century. In his 1922 study on public opinion Walter Lippmann lambasted the influence of the public in foreign policy whilst diplomat/historian George Kennan sought to avoid the short-term “emotionalism and subjectivity” which made public opinion “a poor and inadequate guide for national action.”² Set against this position are those who have sought to disprove the assumption of the over-emotional and unreasonable position of public opinion and have instead sought to define their position as “rational” and “sensible.”³

While theorists have struggled with the ideological debate on the rationality of public opinion, and the advisability of the public’s involvement in foreign relations, historians have long recognized and sought to assess the influence of the public opinion in the making of US foreign policy. Historian Melvin Small, for example, has insisted that consideration of the role of public opinion is fundamental to understanding the construction of US foreign policy, arguing “one cannot understand American diplomatic history without understanding the central role of public opinion in that history.”⁴ While it may be a challenging task for the historian to understand the exact nature of that role, the need for such an understanding has seen a large body of literature on the subject since the end of World War II.⁵

This scholarship has addressed a number of complex and challenging questions. Even the seemingly simple issue of what public opinion is has led to differing answers, though there is a degree of consensus. There are clearly a number of American “publics,” with an elite public of opinion makers at the top. Just beneath the elite is an attentive public, representing up to a quarter of all Americans, which displays an educated awareness of international issues. Below that is the mass or general public, representing some 75 percent of the population.⁶ There are also a number of different ways in which those publics can be represented in Washington. Public opinion can be transmitted through polls, the media, and through organized citizens’ or interest groups and identity based organizations. In addition, opinion is transmitted to the presidency through Congress. Recent historians and commentators have criticized the excessive influence of interest groups in determining American foreign policy. In particular, the role of ethnic lobbies has come in for detailed scrutiny with critics suggesting that such groups have sought, and in some cases gained, undue influence on US foreign policy.⁷ Yet criticism of the influence of public opinion only reinforces its significance.

The most vexing questions, however, remain about the role and impact of the public in the policy-making process. What role does the American public play in the policy forming and policy promotion process? How can historians assess the impact of the public, and the weight given to public opinion by different presidents and policy makers? Does the public have the power to create policy, or merely constrain it? To what extent can presidents lead (or even manipulate) public opinion to their own ends? On these issues, despite some excellent research on individual periods and issues, much work still needs to be done.

However, despite a handful of monographs and articles, the last two decades have seen the study of public opinion as an influence on US foreign relations fall from favor. There are a number of possible explanations for this, including the broader trend among historians toward social and cultural history that has led to the de-emphasis of top-down political history. More significantly, within the specific field of American foreign relations history, there has been a move away from domestic influences toward internationalization. This shift, placing the US in a more global context, has gone a long way to addressing criticisms that the history of American foreign relations (or diplomatic history) is methodologically unsophisticated and excessively US-centric. Yet while the development of a new international history, with its utilization of numerous international archives, is to be applauded, it has led to the relative neglect of internal domestic factors.⁸

In the volume that does more than any other to define the state of the field, Michael Hogan and Thomas Paterson’s Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations, there is no chapter on the influence of public opinion. To highlight how the theme has been passed over, it should be noted that the first edition of the book in 1991 did contain a chapter on public opinion, yet this was omitted from the second edition in 2004 despite its greatly expanded size. Commenting on that omission in his 2008 Presidential Address to the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, Thomas Schwartz argued that “explaining the history of American foreign relations without carefully examining public opinion and domestic politics was a bit like explaining the functioning of a car without discussing the internal combustion engine.”⁹

Other historians have noticed the neglect on domestic politics in a broader sense. In his recent response to an assessment of the state of the field, Fredrik Logevall highlighted the lack of attention paid to domestic politics, and while his primary concern is party politics, he concedes that “public opinion, the media, and ethnic and other special interest groups have been similarly overlooked.”¹⁰ This is not to say that other approaches do not matter. However, to neglect domestic politics broadly, and public opinion specifically, overlooks a crucial determining factor behind US foreign policy. Indeed, the democratic nature of the American political system makes public opinion particularly relevant in the United States.

Despite the difficulties in assessing exactly how public opinion impacts on foreign policy, its relevance has been evident on numerous occasions through American history. Public opinion has clearly been influential in American wars; whether debating the aftermath of World War I, entry into World War II, or the conduct and execution of the Vietnam War. Yet the public’s interest in American foreign policy is not confined to wars and conflicts. Throughout the nation’s history, differing segments of society have organized to represent the public, in order to promote a particular foreign policy outlook. Whether they represent a particular ethnic group, religious affiliation, or gender, Americans have sought to influence their nation’s place in the world.

The real impact of the public on US foreign policy lies somewhere between the claim that public opinion has too much influence on American foreign policy, and the implication in the current historiography that it has little or none at all. The challenge for historians, and the purpose of this volume, is to assess the impact and nature of that opinion more effectively.

The chapters in this volume have two broad aims. First, they aim to assess the impact that the public has had on US foreign policy. Through a focus on specific events, identity groups or ethnic lobbies, the question of the effect and influence of the public is analyzed. Despite the methodological challenges in making such assessments, consideration of public opinion is largely redundant without any such appraisal. The contributions utilize a number of different approaches to the question of impact. These include the use of polling data, the assessment of personal and organizational relationships between members of the public and the government, assessments of the role of the media, and the wider consideration of ideas and ideology.¹¹

The second aim is to examine the specific role played by the public in the policy making and policy promotion process. The particular focus here is on the role of organizations and movements that look to represent public opinion, and an assessment of the nature of their relationship with the government. These organizations include private groups devoted primarily to international affairs, but also labor, religious and women’s organizations. While this type of approach has previously been utilized to study elite opinion, such an approach can be utilized to study all types of organizations and ad hoc collectives representing a “mass” or “general” public of millions of Americans.¹²

A focus on the public’s role offers an alternative method for evaluating public opinion, and one that offers fewer methodological difficulties than the challenge of assessing impact. As a result, it offers diplomatic historians a path back to the study of public opinion, answering Ralph Levering’s plea to “provide the broad perspective and the effective use of nonquantitative sources that often are missing in the political science literature.”¹³ Taken together, the consideration of both role and impact provides a deeper overall understanding of what public opinion is, how it is represented to the government, and how it translates into actual policy.

The chapters in this book represent case studies that address the relationship between the public and US foreign policy during the “American Century”– from 1898 and the Spanish-American War to the beginning of the twenty-first century and the war in Iraq. Not only did the late nineteenth century mark the point at which the United States became a world (and imperial) power, but it also marked a period of increased democratization. By the outbreak of World War I in Europe, American politicians were increasingly sensitive to public views due to progressive era reforms such as the direct election of Senators. The concurrent expansion of a mass media that increasingly claimed to represent the public only added to the need for accountability in foreign affairs as well as domestic. While the public’s interest in foreign affairs has not been constant over the subsequent decades, it has always been considerable.

The impact of public opinion on foreign policy has been considered as being of particular importance at times of threatened or actual war. Whilst the interest of the American people in foreign relations may have been, at best, tepid during peacetime, the demands of war or the threat of war have sharpened minds and focused interest. The first section of this book, featuring chapters by Joseph Smith, Andrew Johnstone and Andrew Priest, considers the impact of public opinion on foreign policy when the United States has been in the shadow of war. A common theme running through each of these chapters is the extent to which public opinion acted to limit or constrain presidential action in a time of war. The role of the “yellow press” in influencing government attitudes on the eve of the Spanish-American War is well documented. However, in his chapter, Joseph Smith emphasizes the role of the press and public opinion in influencing the McKinley Administration during and after the conflict, with particular reference to the treatment of the US Army. In doing so, he further challenges John Hay’s perception of the conflict as a “splendid little war,” and emphasizes the sensitivity of President McKinley to the forces of public opinion.

Whilst Smith’s chapter examines and qualifies public support for war in the 1890s, Andrew Johnstone’s examines the organization of public opinion on the eve of World War II. In the absence of a direct threat, many Americans were keen to stay out of world affairs altogether, making any effort to claim public support for intervention in the war problematic. In his chapter on internationalist organizations in the years immediately prior to Pearl Harbor, Johnstone examines two private citizens’ groups fighting against the tide of non-interventionist sentiment. The Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies promoted maximum aid to Britain (and eventually the USSR); Fight for Freedom went further in arguing that the conflict was America’s to fight as early as the spring of 1941. Despite being led by elites, both groups went out of their way to secure popular support from every possible sector of society in order to establish their democratic credibility with the Roosevelt Administration, Congress and the public at large.

Whilst public distaste for US involvement in war has been credited with delaying US entry into World War II, it has equally been seen as a major factor in demanding US exit from a later war. The impact of public opinion on President Lyndon Johnson’s policy toward Vietnam is the focus of Andrew Priest’s chapter. The role of public opinion during the Vietnam War is a subject of much historiographical controversy. Priest argues that the American public never turned against the war itself. Instead they turned against Johnson’s specific policies for fighting it. Rather ironically, the strong desire for public support that led to secrecy over the conduct of the war was, in the end, the President’s undoing.

The second section of this book, while still clearly concerned with the impact of public opinion, is equally concerned with addressing the role that the public (or publics) play in the direction of US foreign policy. The chapters in this section, by Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, Andrew Preston and Helen Laville address specific interest groups which have made efforts to direct US foreign policy in accordance with their particular group interest or ideological outlook. Through the analysis of specific ideological organizations or looser coalitions of ideas, these chapters focus more specifically on how public opinion is represented, and its role in the policy making and policy promotion process. If the chapters on wartime foreign policy analyze the perceived limiting power of public opinion, the publics addressed in the following chapters were more interested in positively facilitating or promoting a specific policy, course of action,...

Table of contents

• Routledge Studies in US Foreign Policy
• Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• Section One The public and war
• Section Two Public interests and ideology
• Section Three Interests and ethnicity
• Section Four The public and the war on terror
• Bibliography
• Index