How the War in Ukraine Changed American Attitudes to Foreign Policy
A Q&A with Ivo Daalder on the latest survey of Americans’ attitudes toward the world from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
Allied.
Photographer: Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images
Polling is an inexact science. Indeed, if you made a list of the most inexact sciences, it might be very near the top. Nonetheless, pollsters persist. Last week, I had a discussion with Denis Volkov, who directs the Levada Center in Moscow, and carries out his polling in daunting circumstances in President Vladimir Putin’s Russia. This week, I talked to someone whose operation isn’t as dangerous, but is hardly simple. Ivo Daalder is president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, which for decades — and initially at the suggestion of Henry Kissinger — has surveyed Americans on an issue Americans are famous for not caring about: foreign policy. The full results of the 2022 survey will be released later this month, but Daalder and I took an early look at some of the results. Here is a lightly edited transcript of our discussion:
Tobin Harshaw: You conduct a poll of American public opinion on foreign policy, and yet we know from other polls that the American public doesn’t have much of an opinion on foreign policy. Are you worried about a lack of knowledge on the part of your respondents?