Are We Seeing A Paradigm Shift On US Public Opinion And Foreign/Defense Policy?

Why The US Might Never Be Going Back To What It Was After 1947

Hi All

Apologies, I started writing a short piece on some polling data, and it turned into something a little more substantial. I hope all the different data slides are ok—they just started getting added and I did not know when to stop.

There has been a great deal of discussion in the last few weeks about whether Trump has “pivoted” on foreign policy, and is reverting into a more traditionalist, pro-NATO, even pro-Ukraine president. Certain European voices even seem to be celebrating this as some kind of victory, which is somewhat desperate.

The reality of the change that we are seeing in the US in relation to the public and its view of foreign and defense policies might be greater than simply Trump (though he has been instrumental in crystallizing the change). What I mean by that is that this change was probably going to happen regardless, but Trump has sped up the process and arguably made it more extreme.

The other thing to take from this is that other countries should not bank on the US reverting to the post 1945 consensus. We are probably entering a new era which will see the US public being more skeptical of foreign affairs.