“Don’t Tread on Me”: Public Opinion and Foreign Policy in the Eighties

Abstract

Public opinion on national security issues has proven to be extraordinarily changeable. At the beginning of the 1970s it turned extremely on such matters as reduction of the American defense budget and the defense of United States's overseas allies. Indeed it reached a level of dovishness unprecedented since the early days of the cold war, inspiring some of us to write articles with grandiloquent titles like The Revolt of the Masses and The Americans' Retreat from World Power.' Coming as it did after a period of stability at a moderately hawkish level from the early 1950s well into the 1960s, and following the wrenching tragedy of Vietnam, it looked for a time as though public opinion might well stabilize on a new and relatively dovish consensus, forcing a sharp and long-lasting reduction in the American military establishment and alliance commitments. Furthermore, many Americans, including elite professionals, admitted to having changed their minds about preferred security policies and elaborated what appeared to be convincing reasons