Reciprocity

HOW TO BUILD STABLE PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR THE UN
August 31, 1995

by Daniel Yankelovich

It is important, both for the success of United States foreign policy and for the future of the UN that American support for the UN be strong, stable and enduring. For the United States, the ability of the UN to share the burden of maintaining peace in the world meets a major objective of the American people. And for the UN, the material and moral support of the United States is indispensable. Ideally, public support should be strong enough to withstand occasional failures, setbacks and less than perfect performance.

A review of 50 years of public opinion shows that public attitudes fall far short of the support the UN needs. There does exist a strong favorable predisposition toward the UN among the public, and at times public support has reached high peaks of enthusiasm. But the kind of enduring, invulnerable, rock-solid public support the UN needs to fulfill its promise is lacking.

In my talk, I address three questions:

1. What is the nature of public attitudes toward the UN over the past half century?

2. What are the prospects for strengthening them significantly?

3. What is the most effective strategy for doing so?

1. History of Attitudes

There are several striking features of the history of American public attitudes toward the UN. One is the presence of a persistent favorable predisposition toward it as an institution:

A majority of Americans give considerably better ratings to the UN than to the United States Congress or Court system. (Times-Mirror, June 1995)
Over many decades, a sizable majority, between 60% and 70%, of the public has felt that we should cooperate with the UN. Only once, when Americans were in the grips of the post-Vietnam blues, did this majority-level support waver, only to recover shortly thereafter.

A major contributing cause of the public's generally favorable attitude is the UN's many far-reaching social, economic and humanitarian activities:

Seven out of ten Americans rate the UN as good or excellent in "promoting communication and understanding between countries." (ATI17, 1991).
By 4:1 margins Americans support giving more money to the UN to help it "control narcotics trafficking and abuse" (53% to 12%), "improve and protect the environment" (51% to 12%), "help increase world food production" (45% to 12%) and "provide relief to victims of disaster" (40% to 11%). (Roper, March 1992).
By better than 6:1 margins, Americans would give more money to the UN to "stop disease and improve healthcare around the world" (50% to 8%). (Times-Mirror June 1995).
In line with the general trend in the United States, however, Americans these days are keeping a tighter grip on their pocketbooks. Support for giving the UN more money for such worthy activities as helping poorer countries to develop their economies, improving and protecting the environment, and providing relief for victims of disaster have all eroded sharply over the past six years. (Times-Mirror, June 1995).

Another striking feature of public attitudes toward the UN is the extraordinarily wide range of fluctuations they reveal.

In the 1950s and 1960s, public attitudes favored the UN by 2:1 margins. Then in the 1970s and 1980s they plunged to sharply lower levels, totally reversing the two to one favorable margins to two to one unfavorable margins (e.g., 28% to 54% in August 1985). Then during the Gulf War, the process reversed itself yet again. The highest point of public approval on record came in 1991, with an overwhelming 6:1 favorable margin (78%: 13%).

What accounts for these extremes in fluctuation? They are much more extreme than the support ratings Americans give for other institutions such as the judiciary, the medical system, the school system, the Congress, etc. They resemble the fluctuations in approval ratings for American presidents -- and for a similar reason. They are reflecting not the public's approval of the UN as an institution but the public's views of how well the UN is doing on specific tasks. When the UN is seen as performing well, as in the Gulf War, it is given high marks. When it is seen as performing poorly, as in Somalia, it is given low marks. Public attitudes suggest that UN performance is judged mainly on how well it does on specific peace and security issues rather than on its social, humanitarian and economic activities. (More than two out of five Americans (42%) who have a favorable opinion of the UN give it low marks for performance.)

A third striking feature of public attitudes is that the public's evaluations of the UN's effectiveness are much less positive than its support for the concept of the UN as an institution, especially in the all-important domains of peace and security.

Presently, fewer Americans credit the UN with doing a good or excellent job (42%) than criticize it for fair or poor performance (46%). (Times-Mirror, June 1995).
Americans who think the UN is doing a good job has dropped sharply in the past four years, from 67% to 42%. (CBS/NYTimes poll).
In general, with only a few exceptions such as the Gulf war, the UN's performance was rated more highly in the 1950s and 1960s than in subsequent decades.

2. Prospects for Strengthening Public Attitudes

What are the prospects for improving public attitudes?

They are not encouraging in the short term (for the next two to five years), but are excellent within a longer time perspective.

Why short-term prospects are poor:

The Bosnia effect: the enormous difficulty of achieving clear-cut success and being seen as performing with excellence in that part of the world.
The élan and momentum of the prevailing conservative political philosophy in the United States which encourages the tendency to be inward looking and suspicious of all international organizations that might encroach on United States autonomy.
The preoccupation of Americans with domestic affairs and the tendency to see international issues as an unwelcome distraction.
For the American public the appeal of the UN is largely idealistic, especially in its humanitarian functions. These humanitarian activities are highly valued when the United States is feeling affluent and comfortable. But when Americans feel, as they now do, besieged, frustrated and beset from all sides by domestic concerns, this idealistic appeal conflicts with perceived self-interest, and ever-larger numbers of Americans have come to feel that we cannot afford the idealism.

None of these are trivial considerations. They explain why the prospects for short-term improvement are not good. But once we take a longer time perspective, the outlook brightens sharply.

Why long-term prospects are excellent

I am assuming optimistically that within five years or so the Bosnian problem will have receded or at least lost its capacity to do damage to the UN's reputation. Five years is a long enough time for expectations to adjust to reality, and for the UN to address the fundamental contradictions that the Bosnian experience has revealed, namely, that the UN's humanitarian mission can conflict explosively with its role in safeguarding international security. The UN cannot simultaneously adopt both an enforcement role and that of traditional neutral peacekeeper without losing the consent of the contending parties.

Based on current polling data, I am also assuming that the élan of political conservatism in the United States will moderate within the next five years, since on many issues it is too far to the right of the American political mainstream to maintain its current momentum.

Once these temporary negatives are out of the way, the UN will have a better chance to reinforce the strong commitment Americans feel toward internationalism and the responsibilities of American leadership in the world.

The American public reached judgment many years ago on the importance of an enduring commitment to internationalism. It would be a mistake of the first order to misinterpret the current preoccupation of Americans with domestic problems as a sign of isolationism.

At present, Americans are preoccupied with two nagging problems. One is an economy that has grown lopsided in recent years, resulting in prosperity and good times for the minority of Americans who have a good college education, are computer literate and possess the skills valued in our technological global economy, but also resulting in wage stagnation and even downward mobility for the majority of working Americans. Most dual earner households, now the norm in today's economy, are suffering from burnout and fatigue, with little time to devote to child rearing and the enjoyment of life.

The second problem that preoccupies the public is a growing conviction that our nation's social morality is deteriorating. An overwhelming 87% of the public have come to feel that crime, drugs, disorder in the schools, the growing numbers of children born to teenagers out of wedlock, the coldness and impersonality of public transactions and the diminution of respect and civility in daily life -- all these are worrisome signs to Americans of something gone terribly wrong with our nation's social mores.

A lopsided economy and an erosion in the moral bonds that hold our society together -- these are such fundamental concerns that it is small wonder Americans do not wish to be distracted from coping with them by foreign entanglements.

But just beneath the surface of the public's nagging concern with these issues lies the firm and settled conviction that it would be a disaster for Americans to retreat into isolationism, and that our nation has leadership responsibilities toward the international community in which Americans take considerable pride.

The main reason I am optimistic about long-term prospects for building stronger public support for the UN is that the UN holds the key, potentially, to resolving one of America's most vexing conflicts. Americans believe, correctly in my view, that our domestic concerns are so serious that they deserve our undivided attention. At the same time, however, the more thoughtful elements of the public and leadership realize that we ignore threats to international security at our peril. As the world's only military superpower, we are sooner or later drawn into important clashes of force around the world.

If we have no coherent policy for dealing with these threats, they become far more distracting than if we confront them with policies that make sense and enjoy the support of the American people.

The way average Americans formulate this conflict is to say, "We don't want the United States to be the world's policeman, and yet, we know there has to be one. How can the United States exercise leadership in the world, and yet share the responsibility for maintaining peace and order?"

One of the most stable themes in American public opinion is that the United States should work closely with other nations to stop aggression. In the most recent tracking, this conviction is held by 89% of the public, with a derisory one percent holding a contrary view. Over the past half-century, most Americans have been convinced that the United States should cooperate with the UN. For most of the past half century, the margins expressing support for cooperation have been hefty, reaching five to one proportions in 1991, and standing today at a healthy two to one margin (62% to 30%).

My main point here is this: At present, Americans support the UN mainly for its idealistic appeal. They assume, however, that this appeal comes, at least to some extent, at the expense of American self-interest. If Americans were to become convinced that support for the UN served America's interests as well as its idealistic aspirations, then public support would solidify and grow far stronger.

I believe it is in the profound self-interest of the United States that the UN, with appropriate American support, assume the role of world's policeman as average Americans conceive that role. This is the role that the public feels the UN was established to fill 50 years ago.

If the public became convinced that the UN is evolving to fill that role, then the present conflict between idealism and self-interest will evaporate. People will come to see their idealism and self interest aligned in the UN, in partnership with the United States. The public will grow increasingly conscious of the reality that the UN is so indispensable to American self-interest that if it didn't exist, it would have to be reinvented in one form or another.

3. A Strategy for Strengthening Public Support

A strategy to deepen public support is implicit in these observations. It is to enter into a dialogue with the American public on why it will serve America's self interest to strengthen the UN's ability to carry out the "world policeman" role. The UN's idealistic appeal is strong enough to win moderate support for some of its activities. But it is not strong enough to win full-hearted and enduring support when the public is asked to make sacrifices. This kind of support can only be won when people believe the UN can serve the self-interest and the idealism of the United States at the same time. Enhancing the UN's ability to carry out its peace and security mission is the only strategy that will eventually improve the public's perception of the UN's performance in a role that advances America's interests as well expressing its idealistic aspirations. In a recent OECD conference in Paris, I learned that Japan was the only nation in the industrialized world that actually increased its level of financial support this past year for helping developing nations. The reason was clear. The Japanese people perceive, correctly, that Japan's policy of development aid helps the Japanese economy as well as serving idealistic purposes. I am neither defending nor criticizing Japan's policy, but simply pointing out what is possible to do when idealism and self-interest coincide.

To accomplish this goal, the UN would have to resolve the "chicken-and-egg" dilemma: it probably is not possible to reform the UN and give it added resources without greater public support, but at the same time, the UN cannot hope to gain greater public support until and unless the UN's capabilities are strengthened and it is perceived to be well-managed and efficient. From a practical point of view, which strategy should come first?

Is it better to reform the UN, and then prove this fact to the American people?

Or is it better to build public support first, and then reform the UN to make it a more effective instrument for peace and security?

In my view, one should start with building public support. In the present political climate, without robust public support it will prove difficult if not impossible for the UN to strengthen the capabilities it needs to prevent, reduce or resolve deadly conflict, or even to streamline operations so that they are more cost-effective. I believe such public support can be won. The good will is there. Americans are positively predisposed. Presented skillfully, the prospect of a more effective UN will appeal to people's common sense, especially if certain delicate issues are managed with sensitivity.

It is important that the debate about changes needed in the UN should be conducted as a dialogue at the grass roots level in the United States and not be confined to Congress, the press and foreign policy elites. The reasons go to the heart of the matter:

Americans are mistrustful of elite thinking, especially foreign policy elites. A top down debate that excludes the general public will have little influence and may even boomerang against the UN.
Elites are more ideological than the public. Even the press is inclined to take either a highly moralistic or a cynical realpolitik point of view. The public is more moderate, more pragmatic and more practical.
The public is more idealistic than the leadership. The promise of the UN's peace and security role exerts an influence on the public that it does not on leadership. Leadership knows all the reasons it can't be done, so it does not bring the required hope, energy and blind faith that the public at its best is capable of generating.
The necessary changes in the UN will require sacrifice from the American people. When sacrifice is called for, people will insist on having a say. The old American slogan was, "No taxation without representation." The new American slogan is, "No sacrifice without a say."

For these and other reasons, the strategy requires a long time perspective. It calls for a multiyear debate at the community level, involving the general public, the local media and community leaders. Debates should be organized around the issues that are most sensitive to the public, such as who is to command UN troops that include American soldiers and under what conditions United States troops are to be put into harm's way.

It is also important to present proposed UN reforms to the public in ways that people can relate to their personal experience. When Franklin Roosevelt was confronted with the problem of winning public support for sending 50 American destroyers to Britain during the Battle of Britain before the United States had entered the war, he hesitated long and hard, knowing of the intense resistance he would encounter from a nation divided by fierce isolationist passions. To give the concept common sense appeal for average Americans, he hit on the simple device of comparing the act to lending your neighbor a hose when his house is on fire. This imagery translated an abstract and controversial policy into an act of simple neighborliness that people could relate to their own world.

How long under ordinary circumstances will it take for the public and the political leadership to accept and act on the reality that it serves the self-interest as well as the idealism of the American people to strengthen the peacekeeping functions of the UN?

The question is difficult to answer because circumstances are never predictable. All manner of events can intervene to slow the process or set it back. It took more than a century and a Civil War for the United States to abolish slavery, even when large-scale political sentiment was opposed to it. For decades, thoughtfu1 Americans have known that our health care system needs basic reform, but we have not yet arrived at a politically acceptable formula to make the changes. The desirability of a common European currency has long been recognized, but it hasn't happened yet, and it may not happen for a long time. Here in the United States our education system, the trade union movement, the operations of government, the legal profession, the crimina1 justice system -- these and many other institutions suffer from flaws that are generally recognized and acknowledged without leading to change.

The implication is clear. Even when people are aware of a problem and know what changes are desirable, the process of making the changes can drag out over many decades.

Is there any way to accelerate the process? Can a timetable for actions that might drag out for three or four decades are drastically reduced to, say, a five to ten year time frame? The answer to this question is critical to shaping an effective strategy.

In the light of more than 40 years of working with public opinion, I believe that the timetable for winning public support can, with the right program and leadership, be compressed into a five to ten year time frame.

Winning public support is of course only one aspect of change. Internal constraints within the UN itself and its complex web of relationships to all the other member nations have decisive importance. Also, gaining strong public support from the world's remaining superpower is the most elusive aspect of a strategy for change. Leaders who are adept at navigating their way skillfully through the politics of the UN may be less sure-footed in wooing the support of the American people. Nonetheless, even with all of these qualifications, the task is feasible to accomplish -- and highly desirable.

Let me conclude by sharing with you three lessons I have absorbed over the years about wooing public opinion.

The first is that enduring public judgment evolves through stages, each with its own special requirements. You cannot skip the stages and simply say to people, "It is in America's self interest to give greater support to the UN in carrying out the role of world policeman, and here are the reasons why."

In my last two books, Coming to Public Judgment and Beyond the Beltway -- Engaging the Public in US Foreign Policy, I describe the various stages through which public opinion evolves on any issue in its journey from ignorant, superficial raw opinion to considered judgment. Let me recap them briefly.

People start by becoming aware of a problem. This is the first stage.

If the problem is seen as important, they then develop a feeling of urgency to take action. This is the second stage.

In this impatient frame of mind they seize upon whatever courses of action leaders have proposed. This is the next stage.

As they wrestle with these proposals for action, their emotional resistances such as wishful thinking and fear of change spring to the fore. There then follows a stage of delay and procrastination that can last for years or even decades as people try to avoid the painful process of confronting reality.

It is only when they have lived through this resistance stage that they are finally ready to consider rational choices and their pros and cons. This is the fifth stage.

Eventually people reach a preliminary stage of cognitive resolution, followed by the moral and emotional resolution characteristic of considered judgment. These are the final stages of the journey.

This complex series of stages is sometimes referred to as the "deliberative process." But the term conjures up a misleading image of calm rational contemplation. The process of moving from raw opinion to judgment is far more stormy and emotional, ridden with contradictions, conflicts and intense feelings. But for enduring public support, going through all seven stages is necessary and unavoidable. To substitute "public education campaigns" that merely impart information is to guarantee that public support will be thin and unreliable, melting away at the first sign of trouble.

The more closely I have studied the process of how people reach judgment, the more convinced I have become that leaders cannot win the solid and enduring support of the public without a good understanding of what these stages are, where in the multi-stage process the public stands at any one time, and how to assist the public, when it is stuck at a particular stage, to move onto the next one.

The second lesson I have learned is that it is always necessary for leaders to understand how to confront the emotional resistances people have developed toward solutions that may appeal to them on purely rational grounds. In their minds Americans may agree with certain UN reforms, but in their hearts resist giving up any shred of autonomy or sovereignty, particularly if they suspect bad faith, ill will or poor performance. To ignore this emotional resistance is to guarantee failure. Fortunately, emotional resistance is not an insurmountable obstacle. The fact that people feel an emotional resistance doesn't mean they are incapable of confronting it and transcending it. It does mean that people need both the time and the opportunity to deal with it out in the open, and to weigh compromises and solutions that address their deepest concerns.

The third and final lesson is that forty plus years of immersion in public opinion has deepened my faith in democracy. I am less cynical than journalists are about the public's lack of knowledge, and I am more receptive to the wisdom of the public voice than I was when I entered the field of public opinion as a young man. I had received my training at elite universities that, unfortunately, imbue their students with a conviction of superiority to the great mass of the public. It took me many years to understand that people reach judgments by a different route than experts -- less analytic, certainly less well-informed, less logically rigorous, but more often than not better grounded in reality.

It is my belief that sooner or later the American public will give the UN the support it needs to live up to the shining promise of its founding a half century ago. It will give that support for one reason and one reason only: it is the right thing to do. The main contribution that people like myself who are students of public opinion can make is to show leaders how to accelerate a process that, with luck, will happen anyway, sooner or later.