Public Opinion | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

The nature of American democracy has created an inextricable link between public opinion and foreign policy. From the earliest days of the republic, the makers of foreign policy have found their ability to make war constrained by public opinion, and the public has often found itself the target of myriad groups seeking to manipulate its views for or against war.

In the run-up to war with Spain in 1898, public opinion exercised a decisive influence. The yellow press biased public opinion against Spain, as did the publication of the de Lôme letter, an intercepted correspondence by the Spanish Minister ridiculing President William McKinley, and the destruction of the USS Maine in the harbor at Havana, Cuba, with the loss of 266 lives. The heady mixture of indignation and outrage created by these incidents overwhelmed McKinley and forced him to bow to congressional pressure for $50 million in military appropriations and the issuance of an ultimatum that left Madrid little choice but to declare war on the United States on April 24, 1898.

During World War I, America's next major military confrontation, public opinion once again played a major, if very different role. Considerable support among German and Irish Americans for the Triple Alliance, for example, influenced President Woodrow Wilson's early policy of neutrality. Although support for Germany and its allies gradually narrowed throughout 1915 and 1916 following tragedies such as the sinking of the British passenger ship Lusitania, considerable opposition to intervention continued among Progressives of both parties, who rallied to weaken the Wilson administration's military preparedness campaign.

As public opinion slowly shifted to favor the Triple Entente and the government pursued limited preparedness, the nation drifted inexorably to war with the Triple Alliance. In the winter of 1917, a series of events, eerily similar to those of the winter of 1898, unleashed a flood of nationalism and indignation that galvanized the majority of Americans against Germany and swept aside the final barriers to U.S. intervention. On February 1, 1917, Germany violated a pledge to end attacks on civilian ships and resumed unrestricted submarine warfare. Later that month, British authorities passed on an intercepted telegram from German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmerman to the German Embassy in Mexico City, instructing the ambassador to arrange for a German-Mexican military alliance against the United States. With the public now supporting war against Germany, Wilson easily overcame congressional opposition to entering the conflict. On April 4 and 6, the Senate and then the House overwhelmingly approved a declaration of war.

In the aftermath of American intervention in Europe, the nation turned inward as Americans sought to escape foreign entanglements. This isolationist impulse contributed to the Senate's rejection of the Versailles Treaty and America's decision to reject membership in the new League of Nations. Isolationism, however, did not prevent an active role in disarmament and Asian affairs. During the 1921–1922 Washington Conference, the United States led the way in reducing naval arms spending and securing an agreement among the great powers respect to Chinese sovereignty and to aid in that country's development. Along with limited isolation from world affairs, Americans increasingly embraced pacifism during the interwar period. This desire to banish war forever found its clearest expression in 1928, when the United States and France led sixty-two nations to "renounce … [war] as an instrument of national policy"(Patterson, et al., 124). Reflecting the nation's prevailing antiwar sentiment, the Senate approved the Kellogg-Briand Pact outlawing war by a vote of 85 to 1.

After 1935, when the Gallup organization unveiled the first modern public opinion poll, public opinion began to influence critical foreign policy issues ever more clearly. Public opinion in the 1930s opposed involvement that could lead to war and isolationists used polls to push four neutrality acts through Congress between 1935 and 1939 and to block aggressive aid to China and the use of economic sanctions against Japan after the onset of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937.

But if polling data restrained President Franklin Delano Roosevelt from pursuing a more assertive foreign policy, it did allow the administration to embark on a vast preparedness program prior to December 1941. In 1939, the president secured over $500 million in appropriations for the army and additional money for the new Civilian Pilot Training Program, which was designed to increase the number of aviators. Between May and October 1940, as Germany struck west, bringing France to its knees and preparing for an invasion of England, the president secured some $17 billion for the armed forces, of which the army gained $8 billion, enough money to equip over 1.2 million men by October 1941.

Like the Nazi victories in Europe, the Japanese decision to join the Axis Alliance on September 27, 1940, galvanized public opinion against Japan and paved the way for an American deterrence policy that included increased economic sanctions and the redeployment of American forces to Hawaii and the Philippines. By autumn 1941, however, as the president sought a way to avoid war with Japan, opinion polls supported an uncompromising American position, including the maintenance of a full trade embargo, which helped bring about war in the Pacific. The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, followed by Germany's declaration of war against the United States, swept away the last remnants of isolationism and mobilized public opinion in support of war.

As Americans looked forward to the postwar world, they continued to influence the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. Internationalism replaced isolationism and pacifism, and when President Truman moved to resurrect Wilson's vision of cooperative diplomacy he did so with the public's overwhelming approval. With a vast popular mandate, the Senate embraced internationalism when it approved the United Nations Charter on July 28, 1945, by a vote of 89 to 2.

Public opinion has not always facilitated a wise or even consistent foreign policy. Upsurges of nationalism, isolationism, and pacifism have often swept aside the voice of reason, but in a democracy the people will always have their say. From decisions made on election day to the expression of personal opinion about the government's most solemn obligation—the maintenance of peace and the defense of the nation in war—the people will continue, as they have since the dawn of the republic, to influence the conduct of American foreign policy.

Journalism, Spanish American War; Journalism, World War I; Journalism, World War II

Bagby, Wesley M. America's International Relations since World War I. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Dallek, Robert. Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.

LaFeber, Walter. The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860–1898. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1963.

Link, William A., and Link, William S. American Epoch: A History of the United States Since 1900. New York: McGraw Hill, 1993.

May, Ernest R. Imperial Democracy: The Emergence of America as a Great Power. New York: Harcourt, 1961.

O'Neill, William L. A Democracy at War: America's Fight at Home and Abroad in World War II. New York: Free Press, 1993.

Patterson, Thomas, et. al. American Foreign Relations: A History since 1895. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.

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