WASHINGTON - The price of oil and other
international economic issues are rapidly taking
center stage among the dominant foreign policy
concerns of the US public, which has also become
increasingly skeptical about the effectiveness of
military action to further Washington's interests
abroad, according to a major new survey released
on Wednesday by the influential Foreign Affairs
journal.
While a plurality of 29% of
respondents, when asked to identify the top
foreign policy problem faced by the US, named the
five-year-old Iraq war last October, only 19% did
so late last month when the latest edition of
semi-annual "Confidence in US Foreign
Policy Index" was carried
out.
Over the same six-month period, the
number of respondents who named the economy as the
top foreign policy challenge rose from a mere 3%
to 11%, edging out "terrorism" for second place,
according to the survey, a project overseen by the
non-partisan "Public Agenda" since the Index's
inception in 2005.
Moreover, seven out of
10 respondents said they worried "a lot" about the
rise in energy costs, a 16-point jump from last
October that eclipsed the 56% who said they
worried "a lot" about the impact of the Iraq war.
The number of those who worry "a lot" that
the US may owe too much money to foreign countries
also jumped sharply over the last six months, from
31% to 40%, highlighting the degree to which
economic concerns have risen to the top of the
public agenda in the run-up to November's national
elections.
At the same time, the latest
survey showed a marked increase in the gap between
the percentage of respondents who believe the US
government should put more emphasis on diplomatic
and economic foreign policy tools in fighting
terrorism and those who believe that it should put
more emphasis on "military efforts".
In
the latest survey, 69% of respondents chose the
first option, compared to only 23% who chose the
latter. Just six months ago, the gap was 65%-28%.
"If you look broadly across the Index,
there's not much public support for the use of
military force on any issue," noted retired
Admiral Bob Inman, a former deputy director of the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who serves on
Public Agenda's board of directors.
In
that respect, presumptive Republican presidential
candidate Senator John McCain, who has taken
markedly more hawkish positions on the Middle
East, Russia, and China than either of the two
remaining Democratic candidates, Senators Barack
Obama and Hillary Clinton, could be particularly
vulnerable in the upcoming elections, according to
Daniel Yankelovich, a veteran pollster who chairs
Public Agenda.
"I think the candidates'
positions on foreign policy haven't communicated
yet throughout the electorate," Yankelovich said.
"When they do ... the hawkishness of McCain will
work against him [so long as] the Democrats find a
way of countering his position."
Indeed, a
large plurality of 47% of respondents said that
Washington should use diplomacy to try and
establish better relations with Iran - up from 35%
six months ago while 28% said it should seek the
imposition of international economic sanctions to
press Iran to freeze its nuclear program, and
another 11% said the US need not do anything at
all.
By contrast, only 12% of respondents
said the US should either threaten or actually
take military action against Tehran, down from 19%
of respondents who took that position just six
months ago.
In addition, seven out of 10
respondents agreed with the assertion that "to
resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the US
and Israel will have to work with unfriendly
countries in the Middle East, such as Syria".
The Index, the latest edition of which
addressed some 110 foreign policy-related
questions to more than 1,000 adults, has sought,
among other things, to identify what foreign
policy issues provoke the most concern in the
general public and whether that concern has
reached a "tipping point" that could result in
major political consequences.
In the
October 2006 survey, Yankelovich found that public
dissatisfaction with President George W Bush's
performance in Iraq had reached such a "tipping
point". The mid-term elections the following
month, in which Democrats won control of both
houses of Congress, appeared to bear out his
thesis.
In the latest survey, Yankelovich
said the issue of oil prices and uncertainty about
future energy sources appears to be reaching such
a point, outpacing any other concern by a wide
margin.
Not only did seven in 10
respondents say they worry "a lot" about energy
costs, but six in 10 said that reducing energy
dependence on foreign oil would strengthen US
national security "a great deal", the highest
percentage since the Index was launched. Only 19%
of respondents gave the Bush administration grades
of A or B in addressing the problem, while 53%
rated its performance as D or worse.
"The
public's concerns about energy policy aren't
limited to rising gas prices," said Yankelovich.
"Americans are connecting energy policy to
national security issues in ways that they didn't
just a few years ago." Moreover, he noted, 39% of
respondents said they worry "a lot" about global
warming, up from 32% two years ago.
The
decline in the percentage of respondents who worry
"a lot" about the Iraq war may be due more to the
relative decline in news coverage of the war over
the last six months, particularly as higher energy
prices and other negative economic developments
have displaced it in the headlines, according to
both Inman and Yankelovich. "The press is not
covering it as much as before, but the basic
attitude [toward the war] is the same," said
Yankelovich.
Indeed, 65% of respondents
said they believe the US should withdraw all its
troops from Iraq either "immediately" (21%) or
over the next 12 months (44%), compared to 67%
(19% and 48%), respectively, six months ago.
Overall, the public is slightly less
anxious about foreign policy than it was a year
ago when the Index's "Anxiety Indicator" reached a
record high of 137 out of a possible 200.
The indicator, which is based on answers
to five key questions, now stands at 132 - the
composite score of the 84% of respondents who said
they are worried about the way things are going
for the US in world affairs; the 74% who believe
that the world is "becoming more dangerous" for
the country; the 69% who believe the US is not
doing a "good job as a leader in creating a more
peaceful and prosperous world"; the 64% who
believe the rest of the world has a negative
impression of the US; and the 65% who believe US
relations with the rest of the world are on the
"wrong track".
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