After the Bin Laden op, what is the impact? Not on terrorism. Merged thread

[jmm99]

either 2013 or 2017. My crystal ball ain't accurate enough for either year - sorry

Rasmussen has been doing a series of pollings which now has boiled down to, Americans Are Reluctant to Defend Any of These Allies (Wednesday, April 27, 2011). Here is a summary graphic of the results:

Defend or Not.jpg

I can't come up with any consistent rationale which might explain these results.

The real crossover point (40-40-20) is Denmark; but Japan (43-44-13) gets the first heaveho in the chart.

Anyone ?

Astan = 30-54-16 - not a surprise to me.

Regards

Mike

[carl]

I think the poll is largely meaningless. If you polled Americans in 1800, 1850, 1900, 1950, 2000 or any year you'd care to choose the results would be the same. The question has no context so most people will default to "none of my business" unless they've heard of the place or been there. How else can you explain such little regard for New Zealand.

When there is context things are different.

[jmm99]

from Carl
If you polled Americans in 1800, 1850, 1900, 1950, 2000 or any year you'd care to choose the results would be the same

Prove it by polls from 1800, 1850, 1900, 1950, 2000 or any year you'd care to choose. Obvious hyperbole.

from Carl
The question has no context so most people will default to "none of my business" unless they've heard of the place or been there.

The question does have context as polls go:

National Survey of 1,000 Adults
Conducted April 22-23, 2011, 2011
By Rasmussen Reports

1* Sometimes, when a country is attacked, the United States provides military assistance to help defend that country. Now, I’m going to read you a short list of countries. For each, please tell me if the United States should offer military assistance to defend that country if it is attacked?

Belgium

Brazil

Bulgaria

Chile

New Zealand

Nicaragua

Peru

Portugal

Thailand

NOTE: Margin of Sampling Error, +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence

Some of the apparent inconsistency in the results may well be due to people not knowing spit about geography. I do buy that as a factor. Moreover, based on many prior polls (Rasmussen and others), what one could call the "foreign policy elite" (CFR, etc.) are much more interventionistic than the flew-over masses.

BTW: what context would you add to the poll question to make it "meaningful" ?

Regards

Mike

[carl]

Exegeration (sic) for effect. The point remains the same. Americans are historically isolationist. I don't have to prove anything, it ain't a courtroom. Merely my opinion which has a historical basis I think.

The question may have context as far as polls go but that is more an indictment of polls than an endorsement of the question. The question has no historical or political context, immediate or long term, without that, it is meaningless.

Perhaps one reason the foreign policy elites are more interventionist is they may follow these things more closely thereby giving them some context to work with right off the bat. (I can't believe you've manuvered (sic) me into a position where I would defend those guys. My life is over.)

Some useful context might be a scenario seeking to simulate multi-year sequence of events that led to our defending South Korea or South Vietnam or intervening in Cuba in 1898 or Kuwait or any number of times a people who have tended to be isolationist, aren't. If you would construct a scenario sort of like that and then let people think about it some rather than saying here is a 50 word hypothetical, you have 10 seconds to answer, then the results might be meaningful. But then your results would be skewed by the details of the question. The whole concept is meaningless.

[Ken White]

I think the poll is largely meaningless. If you polled Americans in 1800, 1850, 1900, 1950, 2000 or any year you'd care to choose the results would be the same. The question has no context so most people will default to "none of my business" unless they've heard of the place or been there. How else can you explain such little regard for New Zealand.

Aside from the fact that some of those nations didn't exist in most of the earlier years cited, results would likely differ for Great Britain in 1800, Canada in 1850, Germany in 1900 (much less in 1917 or 1944, two years one might name... ). As for New Zealand, it's simply a function of location. For the bulk of nations, the responses are about about the anglosphere and western solidarity plus historic ties. As is true of any poll, it's a snapshot, answered by some people while others like me just hang up the phone when the Pollsters call...

When there is context things are different.

Not much.

[Steve Blair]

Aside from the fact that some of those nations didn't exist in most of the earlier years cited, results would likely differ for Great Britain in 1800, Canada in 1850, Germany in 1900 (much less in 1917 or 1944, two years one might name... ). As for New Zealand, it's simply a function of location. For the bulk of nations, the responses are about about the anglosphere and western solidarity plus historic ties. As is true of any poll, it's a snapshot, answered by some people while others like me just hang up the phone when the Pollsters call...

And don't forget that this great sample was composed of 1000 people. So the opinion passed off as coming from "the flew-over masses" is in fact only 1000 of those flown over, and there's no real definition of just where that small sample actually lives (or when they were called...I suspect that 1000 folks who were watching Jerry Springer in the morning might have a different perspective than 1000 folks who happened to be watching CNN/Fox talking heads in the evening).

Sorry...but I'm not a big fan of polls. The pollsters (who have a vested interest in appearing as Oracle-like as possible) are too reluctant to reveal things like refusal rates, sample locations, and so on. Cute for sound-bites, but fairly meaningless otherwise.

[Dayuhan]

I can't come up with any consistent rationale which might explain these results.

The real crossover point (40-40-20) is Denmark; but Japan (43-44-13) gets the first heaveho in the chart.

Anyone ?

Astan = 30-54-16 - not a surprise to me.

What struck me about that is that 20% said eithe "no" or "unsure" to defending Canada, and over 20% said "yes" or "unsure" to the rather absurd notion of defending North Korea.

From this I assume that there's a portion of Americans that disapprove of any defense of a foreign country, a portion that automatically approves, and a portion that is fundamentally undecided.

In between I have no explanations, but 'd be interested to see a survey of general positive-negative impressions of the same list of countries and put them side by side. I suspect you'd see that it correlates less with any perceived strategic desirability than with a general like/dislike scale. It need not be added that many of the respondents would likely have only very rudimentary knowledge about many of the countries on the list. If we excluded results from individuals who couldn't find the country in question on a map or name the country most likely to invade the country to be defended, we might get fairly different results.