Americans generally unite in support of military interventions only when they perceive grave threats to their security. After Pearl Harbor, the American people embarked on war with an unprecedented degree of unity, one that was to last to the end of the war. The 9/11 attacks produced a groundswell of support for military intervention, which carried through the war in Afghanistan and the beginning of the war in Iraq, but eventually faded because of the scarcity of terrorist attacks after 9/11 and the difficulties encountered by American forces in suppressing Afghan and Iraqi insurgents.
The unpredictability of 9/11 serves as a reminder that a unifying crisis is always possible. In the near term, nevertheless, it appears unlikely that a prospective military intervention will be the result of a crisis as easy to connect to American security as Pearl Harbor or 9/11. More likely is the possibility that the prospective intervention will be tied to interests that are less obvious, as was true in such conflicts as the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Gulf War. Although the unhappy outcomes of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya will discourage the United States from a major intervention in the Middle East or Africa, a war in this category would be conceivable if it involved aggression by one of America’s great power rivals against an American ally, such as Russian aggression against a NATO country in Eastern Europe or Chinese aggression against Taiwan.
Sustaining support for interventions in situations lacking an obvious threat to the American homeland has always been difficult. Although public support is typically strong at the beginning of such an intervention, the human and material costs of a protracted conflict usually erode support and produce partisan bickering over management of the war. The shortcomings of recent U.S. interventions have made such a reaction all the more likely.
The current Ukraine crisis indicates a widespread popular aversion to direct intervention in a military conflict lacking clear relevance to U.S. national security, and a somewhat less prevalent aversion to aid to combatants. If Russia were to invade Estonia, or China were to invade Taiwan, large numbers of Americans would express the same doubts they are currently expressing about Ukraine. Why should the United States care about this distant struggle? Why can’t other nations deal with this problem? Won’t we risk a nuclear war by fighting a nuclear power?
Presidential leadership has the best track record of overcoming these sorts of doubts. Presidents can marshal majority support for an intervention, at least during the opening phases, by vigorously explaining the war to the American people, in the way that Franklin Roosevelt explained World War II or George W. Bush explained the invasion of Afghanistan. Other presidents have succeeded in sustaining support for wars less directly connected to American interests through robust salesmanship, as exemplified by Lincoln’s speeches during the Civil War and Richard Nixon’s during the Vietnam War. The current president, however, has been reluctant to demonstrate such leadership. In this regard, he resembles earlier presidents who failed to rally the country at a time of war, like Lyndon Johnson and Barack Obama.
Maintaining broad support is easier when the country is suffused with patriotic sentiment, which regrettably is not true today. Surveys indicate that patriotism among the Millennial Generation and Generation Z stands at historically low levels. Some of the blame belongs to educators, politicians, and parents who no longer view the promotion of patriotism as a central objective of education and politics. Multiculturalism and unfettered immigration have diluted the citizen’s sense of national identity and commitment to national solidarity. Short of a cataclysmic threat on the order of the 9/11 attacks, this fraying of the national fabric appears likely to continue.
