Making Sense of the World: U.S. Foreign Policy and Our Global Role

By Priscilla Lewis

What kind of country do we want to be in the world? This basic question is now the focus of widespread concern and debate in the United States.  At stake is the fundamental legitimacy of U.S. foreign policy. As poll after poll indicates, our foreign policy enjoys neither the broad support and confidence of the American public nor the trust and respect of nations and publics outside of the United States.

This crisis of legitimacy is not just a matter of disagreement with recent policy decisions or resentment of America's wealth and power. Here at home, the public has become doubtful about our ability to achieve any of our goals abroad. Internationally, the predominant view is that the United States is an irresponsible global actor with a "mostly negative" influence on the world. While the values and ideas for world order that the United States promoted after World War II are still admired in many countries, there is a widespread belief that the United States itself can no longer be trusted to act reasonably, fairly, effectively, or even legally in pursuit of its objectives.

Public dissatisfaction with America's position in the world has reached unprecedented levels. The hunger for a change of direction is evident in our language—in the complaint that our foreign policy is off course or going nowhere, for example, and in candidates' promises to get us back on track. Far less evident is whether people's dismay over the role we're currently playing in the world will translate into sustained public support for a significant shift in the content, tone, and style of U.S. foreign policy.

Imagine that we have in our minds something like a picture of the world and our place in it. We rely on familiar, broadly shared ideas and story lines—a conceptual map—to negotiate this complex terrain, to think through problems and reach conclusions about how best to proceed. Our mental maps are durable, but not immutable. And ultimately, no new vision for America's global role can unify us or enjoy sustained support unless it is broadly consistent with how people come to understand and orient themselves in the world.

So when it comes to building public will for major policy change, the question is whether our understanding of the world and how it works allows us to travel in a new direction. And if not, how leaders and educators might help us to conceive of the world in a way that enables us to take a different path.

As Rockefeller Brothers Fund president Stephen Heintz makes clear in his annual review essay (page 14), it is imperative that we move toward a new vision of America's global role that reflects the profound interconnectedness of our own security and well-being with the security and well-being of others and with the health of the planet. We need to embark on a new course of action that inspires Americans with innovative strategies for meeting today's foreign policy challenges and that surprises and engages the world with a new U.S. commitment to constructive, collaborative leadership on shared global problems. Fortunately, there's much in today's public thinking that suggests a readiness to turn in this new direction,  but there are also beliefs and assumptions that could prevent the forging of public consensus around a real change of course.

Here's a look at what recent opinion research (see A Note about Sources, page 11) tells us about how Americans are making sense of a complicated world—and at some reflections on what this implies for creating movement toward a new U.S. foreign policy and a more just, sustainable, and peaceful global community.

Familiar Signposts Guide Public Thinking about How to Be Part of an Interdependent World.

If we are encouraged to see the world as an interconnected place, where threats and opportunities span borders and continents, we readily grasp the need for cooperation, mutual respect, and consideration of the common good. You don't have to be a policy expert to follow this logic. In fact, the public shares with mainstream and progressive policy experts many of the same big ideas about how to solve problems and lead effectively in an interdependent world. Such principles have long been in the background of national debate about foreign policy. Today, they've moved to the foreground; these principles have what many foreign policy debates are really "about" in people's minds. In other words, the dramatic failure of our current policy approach—unilateral, overly reliant on military force, dismissive of international institutions and agreements—has called fresh attention to these familiar ideas about smart problem solving and sound decision making. People are listening with interest now to arguments based on common sense and shared values, not ideology and "either/or" choices.

The reinvigoration of broadly shared ideas about responsible global engagement helps put us on the path toward a new vision of America's role in the world. But in other respects, our recent experience has complicated the prospects for movement in a new direction. 

Americans still want the United States to be active in the world, but with our lens on global engagement narrowed to the war in Iraq and the military dimensions of the struggle against terrorism, many Americans are expressing new ambivalence about the whole idea of global engagement. This trend is especially marked among groups that traditionally have been the strongest supporters of U.S. involvement in global problem solving, like Democrats and self-identified progressives.

The challenge for those who would advance a new vision of America's global role is to prevent public dissatisfaction with the current state of U.S. global engagement from turning into a preference for disengagement, rather than for a different kind of engagement. This requires enlarging people's understanding of what can be achieved—and why it should be achieved—through the responsible use of U.S. power and influence abroad. Making everything about Iraq or connecting every issue to terrorism and security, for example, can inadvertently reinforce the equation of global engagement with military engagement. It's also more important than ever to remind people that we live in an interdependent world, where everyone benefits from increased stability and sustainable prosperity, and no one escapes the consequences of conflict and environmental degradation. Maintaining this open view of the world is key to building support for a more constructive, comprehensive, and farsighted foreign policy.

Can we reach our destination? There's growing public skepticism about the possibility of taking effective action in the world.

Americans seem to be losing confidence in all kinds of foreign policy solutions and are increasingly skeptical about the government's competence. We believe there's a role for us to play as individuals in addressing global challenges like climate change, but we want to see government and business do their share—and increasingly, we don't trust their willingness or ability to take effective action, even in the face of serious threats.

How to counter cynicism and disempowerment? Proponents of change will have to give the public reasons to believe that their new goals for U.S. global engagement are attainable and smart.  And as difficult as this is for policy critics, advocates of change need to tell a positive story about government, or at least a positive story about what we can do—together with our government and the business sector—to turn things around.

What Does It Mean to Lead the Way? Our Model of Global Leadership Has Evolved, but Not Completely.

Public thinking on U.S. global leadership is evolving toward notions of shared leadership and partnership with international institutions. Honesty and the ability to communicate are now considered vitally important leadership traits; toughness and swagger are no longer so highly valued.

But while we're drawn to shared leadership, we don't necessarily know or believe that effective multilateral strategies exist for dealing with many global problems. Most people think the United States has been "doing it all," so when we hear about a problem like the genocide in Darfur, we're likely to assume that the United States is being asked to handle this challenge alone as well. Nor are Americans quite ready to give up being the world's military superpower. People understand the world as an interdependent place, but the public does not yet see us living in a truly multipolar world.

Although people are still coming to grips with the idea of a new global distribution of power, they are ready for a conversation about how we use our power. The more people appreciate the shared nature of today's big challenges, and the more concretely they grasp how much we have accomplished and can accomplish when we work with other nations, the more firmly entrenched their preference for shared leadership will become—and the less likely they will be to imagine the United States bearing the costs of global problem solving alone.

How Do We Get There from Here? The Public Embraces Some Big Policy Changes in Principle but Isn't Sure How to Put Them into Practice.

The public likes some of the alternative policy ideas that are being advanced today but remains uncertain about how to implement them. Support for using all the tools in the policy toolbox is higher than ever. Most people no longer believe our military alone can do much to solve complex security challenges, but strategies like global development and democracy promotion remain abstractions for most people. While Americans embrace the idea that everyone's safer if the world is a more peaceful and stable place, we're not persuaded that democratization contributes to global stability (we do think democracy makes life better within a country), and we don't believe reducing poverty is an important way to reduce terrorism (though we think helping people in poor countries is the right thing to do).

"Getting from here to there" is also a challenge when it comes to the public's longing for a restoration of America's moral authority. For all of the attention to America's faltering image abroad, the national debate has not yet produced a useful framework for public thinking about how to address it. By far the most frequently discussed explanations for the loss of global goodwill are Iraq and the U.S.–led "war on terrorism." These issues are rarely linked to a broader array of opportunities for the kind of positive, collaborative U.S. leadership that would change perceptions of us abroad.

On the question of energy, too, it's difficult for people to see the connections. We all agree it's a priority, but the many different ways of thinking about it—Is it about cost? security?  the environment? the economy? our lifestyles?—have yet to coalesce. The fact that these different problem definitions don't necessarily point to the same solutions (if dependence on Middle East oil is the problem, then why not drill for more oil here?) makes it harder to come to consensus on what to do.

Each of these instances demonstrates the need for proponents of more farsighted and constructive U.S. policies to help us connect the dots and see the big picture. When people understand how diverse strategies fit together in an integrated approach, support for the whole vision as well as its parts should be easier to generate.

Will We Be Sidetracked by Fear? Fear Changes the Way People Think—and It's a Powerful Political Tool.

We've seen it repeatedly in the years since September 11 and will surely see it again: those who oppose any serious reorientation of U.S. foreign policy are prepared to play the fear card relentlessly. Unfortunately, the future is also likely to hold some real-world events that stimulate public fear. When fear shapes public thinking, the national debate on America's role in the world becomes dangerously constrained and distorted. In fact, scientific research has demonstrated that reminders of one's mortality trigger disdain for other races, religions, and nations; heighten the attraction of military policy options and encourage greater tolerance of civil liberties violations; and increase allegiance to traditional mores—regardless of people's political affiliations or previous policy preferences.

Unless proponents of a new kind of U.S. global engagement figure out how to counter and replace the "fear frame," it will be difficult to build sustained support for big shifts in the direction of U.S. foreign policy—or to defend those shifts in the face of whatever crises might arise. There's a lot to learn about this leadership and communications challenge. In the meantime, the public needs to hear more about the possibility of solutions; we need to hear more voices that convey realistic confidence in our ability to handle even the most dire threats to our security—using all the tools available to us, working in concert with other nations, and respecting our core values.

Researchers have reported intriguing findings about the power of certain ways of thinking to counter fear's distorting influence on our policy preferences. Appeals to rationality, for example, apparently help us resist being sidetracked by fear. Reminding us of our common humanity—that the things we have in common far outweigh our differences—has the same effect. In other words, when we understand and orient ourselves in the world differently, we instinctively take a different course.

So that's the challenge. The public is disposed to prefer an approach to foreign policy that emphasizes cooperation and farsighted problem solving; that connects the dots on critical global challenges and gets lasting results; that meets Americans' needs while also contributing to the creation of a better, safer world. We're open to calls for unity on basic questions about who we are and what kind of country we want to be in the world. The task for advocates and leaders who advance a new vision of U.S. global engagement is to offer a way of thinking about the United States in the global arena that makes a change of course both possible and inevitable in the public's mind.

A Note about Sources

The reports listed below serve as the primary sources for this essay. They are based on an analysis of over 200 recent polls and focus groups undertaken in 2007 for the U.S. in the World Initiative by Public Knowledge, LLC.

• "How Are Americans Making Sense of Security?" commissioned by U.S. in the World.
• "Team Player, Not Lone Ranger," commissioned by the Stanley Foundation.
• "Facets of American Leadership," commissioned by the Stanley Foundation.
• "Principle versus Practice," commissioned by the Human Rights Center of the University of California, Berkeley.

In addition, the essay is informed by the ongoing work of the U.S. in the World Initiative, including regular scans of opinion research and consultations with advocates, research experts, and grassroots leaders working on a variety of foreign policy issues. U.S. in the World was incubated at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund in 2004-2005 and is now a project of Demos.

Priscilla Lewis is director of the U.S. in the World Initiative.

This feature is from the 2007 Annual Review.