Again, the just-coincidental timing of this poll ... (Think "China.")
Clinton Foreign Policy Ranked High
By DAVID BRISCOE
.c The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Americans favor a strong national defense and aggressive
action against terrorists, but most oppose any use of U.S. ground troops to
protect allies, a new survey suggests.
The poll conducted by the Gallup Organization for the Chicago Council on
Foreign Relations supports ``the guarded engagement of a largely satisfied
superpower,'' said council president John Rielly. He gave high marks on
foreign affairs to both President Clinton and Congress.
In the survey, 84 percent listed terrorism as the most critical threat to the
United States, up 15 points from the last survey. To fight terrorists, 74
percent favored U.S. air strikes, and 57 percent favored the use of U.S.
ground troops.
In contrast, 68 percent oppose sending troops if China should invade Taiwan,
66 percent in case of a North Korean invasion of South Korea or a Russian
invasion of Poland, and 56 percent oppose if Arabs invade Israel. Opposition
drops to 48 percent if it's Iraq invading Saudi Arabia.
For the first time since 1978, however, those favoring increased defense
spending exceeded the number who want cutbacks. Similar polls have been
conducted every four years since 1974
Support for foreign aid continued a slow slide. Only 13 percent now favor
increased spending for economic aid to other countries, and 48 percent want
more cuts.
The new survey underscores general satisfaction with the U.S. role abroad by
ranking Clinton No. 1 among postwar U.S. presidents for foreign policy
success, up from eighth place in the middle of his first term.
Congress also got improved marks, with 43 percent saying its role in foreign
policy is about right. That's the highest number for Congress since the
surveys began.
Rielly said approval of Clinton parallels an absence of major foreign policy
problems cited by those surveyed. When asked to list the two or three biggest
foreign policy problems facing the country, the most common response among the
public, at 21 percent, was: ``I don't know.'' That was followed by terrorism,
12 percent; the world economy, 11 percent; balance of payments, 10 percent;
and the Middle East situation, 8 percent.
Richard Haas, foreign policy director for the Brookings Institution, who
participated on a panel to mark the survey's release, challenged the
assessment of Clinton. He said it reflects Americans' prosperity more than
real achievement abroad.
``The American people feel content with the world as it is, but history has a
different standard,'' he said. Clinton, he said, has missed opportunities to
provide leadership in the post-Cold War world.
Clinton soared past Presidents Kennedy, Nixon, Truman, Eisenhower, Reagan,
Bush and Carter, ranked in that order in 1994, to top the poll of presidents
with ``very successful'' foreign policy performance since World War II. Only
Presidents Ford and Johnson trailed Clinton in the 1994 poll.
Gallup interviewed 1,507 men and women in October and November. The margin of
error was plus or minus 3 percentage points. Separately, the pollsters
interviewed 379 policy leaders, including members of Congress, administration
officials, international business figures and members of the news media.
A report on the survey was published Monday in the journal Foreign Policy.
