Distorted Priorities: US Foreign Policy edition

The Chicago Council on Foreign Policy released a depressing survey today:

🚨 NEW POLLING 🚨

Americans still see the Middle East as the region most important to US security interests (61%), even more so than when last asked in 2018 (when 50% named the Middle East).

No other region comes close.

Details here: https://t.co/YQpDU9dzli pic.twitter.com/NHQpPa3pGn

— The Chicago Council (@ChicagoCouncil) February 11, 2020

Americans are both right and wrong on this.  If you ask experts, I am pretty sure they will mostly argue that US foreign policy should be focused on Asia, particularly East Asia as China is not only rising in power but in assertiveness and, well, US allies in the region--South Korea and Japan--don't get along.*  With US dependence on Mideast oil a thing of the past (fracking ain't great, but it has given us this), one might think that the Mideast is not so important.  Indeed, Obama's planned pivot was less away from Europe and more about re-setting priorities from the Mideast to Asia.

But it makes sense that Americans think that the Mideast is the most important region because ... the US is acting like it is.  Iraq has consumed trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives.  Most of the forever wars are in the Mideast (Afghanistan is Mideast-adjacent and I would guess that many Americans would identify it as a Mideast country)--Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen.  The US has been "at war" with terrorism since 2001, and American leaders have defined that war as Islamist-related terrorism--Al Qaeda and now ISIS.  Of course, the reality is that more Americans have been killed by white supremacists and other forms of right wing extremism since 9/11 than by Islamist terrorism in the US. 

And if we move from actions to talk, well, I am sure a content analysis of US politicians would show far more references to Mideast countries than to European or Asian ones.  The focus of US foreign policy discussions has been on ISIS and Syria and Iraq, not China although that is changing a bit. 

So, my foreign policy friends shake their heads, but the American people are paying attention to what the US is doing and what its leaders are saying.  The restraint-ists (I am restraint-adjacent as I advocate for more humility and less intervention, but don't want the US to pull its troops out of Europe/East Asia) are right that the Mideast really is not that important to the US.  There are greater threats out there that are far more deserving of attention--climate change, China, and Russia's hacking of democracy here and there and everywhere. Alas, neither the American people nor its government are focused on the threats that can and are doing the most damage to the American people (and folks elsewhere). 








*  Ok, maybe not.