Survey Says The Chicago Council's new report might have answers as to what Americans want when it comes to Syria, Afghanistan, and Ukraine. The only problem is, it asked the wrong questions.
BY Stephen M. Walt
Foreign Policy - SEPTEMBER 26, 2014
What do the American people want from U.S. foreign policy? If you're a die-hard neoconservative, a committed liberal interventionist, or somebody who thinks the solution to most global problems should be Made-in-America, then you're probably worried that the American people are becoming disenchanted with the costly and mostly unsuccessful foreign policy of the past couple of decades. But if you seek reassurance and would enjoy reading a "glass half-full" analysis of that issue, then I commend to you the Chicago Council on Global Affairs' recent survey of U.S. public opinion, titled "Foreign Policy in the Age of Retrenchment." It is important to recognize that a key mission of the Chicago Council, like that of many other nonpartisan membership organizations, is "educating the public" about contemporary global issues. The purpose of such education, of course, is to encourage greater U.S. engagement in world affairs and to counter any tendency toward "isolationism." The people who support the organization -- and especially some of its biggest donors -- also tend to be committed internationalists who support using American power to advance various foreign-policy goals. Chicago Council President Ivo Daalder (a co-author of the report) is a card-carrying liberal internationalist who was a prominent advocate of NATO expansion and has repeatedly proposed creating a global "league of democracies." Back in 2012, he hailed the toppling of Libya's Muammar al-Qaddafi as a great victory for NATO and as a "model intervention" (sadly, this so-called victory actually spawned a dangerous failed state). Neither the Chicago Council nor its current leaders are likely to be anything about enthusiastic about active U.S. leadership on the world stage.
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