The Impact of the American Citizenry on Foreign Policy
Throughout history, the influence of the American people on the government’s foreign policy decisions has ranged from clearly guiding the policies to being manipulated by the policies being offered to the people to support. This inconsistent influence is most often impacted by which president is in office and how they choose to use their broad foreign policy-making powers. In that sense, the American citizenry does not explicitly guide how the United States handles foreign policy, instead its impact is reliant on reacting to how American foreign policy is being represented by the government and popular media.
The extent of which the American citizenry holds influence over the leadership’s decisions in foreign policy seems to be reliant on a relationship between the government and the public that values either trust or delegation from its president. With the delegate model of foreign policy, the president places its trust in the people to help guide them into making the appropriate decision based on public opinion on the matter. This is most clearly shown through Bill Clinton’s presidency, where he favored intervention in Somalia but was unable to have military intervention in Kosovo after negative, casualty-induced results from the intervention in Somalia turned the American citizenry against the use of military force. In general, the American public prefers foreign policy situations in which the United States is viewed favorably or has the favorable position. When the position changes, the American public reacts to this in a negative way. In the case of Somalia, “Public support began to wane when the missions switched from humanitarian orientations to intervention orientations.” (Aldrich et al. 2006) As the United States was dealt casualties during the intervention with Somalia, public support for the conflict became considerably less prominent due to the framing of the situation changing – from the United States being seen as a hero the United States becoming more of a victim. Clinton’s perceived reliance on the delegate model in order to guide intervention in foreign policy is what caused the U.S. to withdraw from humanitarian intervention in Somalia and prevented the U.S. from pursuing humanitarian intervention in areas such as Kosovo or Rwanda later on during his presidency.
The transition from the Clinton years to the Bush years showed the change from a delegate model to more of a trustee model of foreign policy decision making. That trustee model places less importance on the American public’s influence and more on the foreign policy elite that hold power in the government. The Bush administration largely used the 9/11 attacks as a justification for a war with Iraq. Due to the misperceptions being presented to the mass public by the media and by the government itself, the American public believed that Saddam Hussein had connections to al Qaeda and that Iraq had possession of weapons of mass destruction, despite evidence that these two beliefs were not particularly true. The tactic Bush was taking advantage after the 9/11 attacks was the rally around the flag effect. By the mass public being more focused on displaying patriotism for the country in the wake of the horrendous attacks, the Bush Administration was able to manipulate the American public’s opinions into supporting a war that was being framed as a retaliation against Saddam Hussein’s connections to al Qaeda and his nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. It can also be seen as a diversionary war tactic that caused the public to pledge support for a war that did not clearly show any necessity in being initiated.
Despite the American citizenry’s vulnerability in being manipulated by either the government or the media due to the overall lack of knowledge in foreign affairs, it is not as if the public in entirely incapable of guiding American foreign policy. The clearest example of this is the broad, vocal disapproval of the Vietnam War. As time went on, the increasing unpopularity of this war led to an increasing disapproval of the Johnson presidency. This caused the eventual withdrawal of troops in Vietnam despite no clear victory being obtained. Another example would be how the decreasing popularity for a war in Iraq led to eventual of withdrawal of troops from Iraq by President Obama in 2011. A consistent theme seems to be that the support for a particular war tends to decrease the longer the war is being fought. However, the rise of the CNN effect can cause the American public to be overly reliant on a system of gaining information about an issue that can be directly manipulated by either the media itself or the federal government through these media outlets. The media readily gives foreign policy elite and other government officials the platform to clearly present their arguments for various foreign policy issues to the American people. This aspect, combined with how an issue can be framed through media coverage, can easily impact how the general and attentive public is receptive to foreign policy.
Despite the capabilities of the American citizenry to formulate coherent opinions in regards to American foreign policy, they are not usually given the opportunity to do so. Such opportunities to influence foreign policy is typically manipulated by the interest of the current administration in order to enact a desired foreign policy goal. Whether the American citizenry is receptive to these desired goals is dependent on whether or not the government is able to effectively frame their goal in a way that generates a positive opinion from the public. The lack of a positive reception to a manipulation from the government is perhaps one of the best ways the American public is able to effectively guide foreign policy.