Your statement that Clinton will go down in history as the worst foreign policy president doesn't jibe with this:
MARCH 15, 16:53 EST
Clinton Foreign Policy Ranked High
By DAVID BRISCOE
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans favor a strong national defense and aggressive action against terrorists, but most oppose any use of U.S. ground troops to protect allies, a new survey suggests.
The poll conducted by the Gallup Organization for the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations supports ''the guarded engagement of a largely satisfied superpower,'' said council president John Rielly. He gave high marks on foreign affairs to both President Clinton and Congress.
In the survey, 84 percent listed terrorism as the most critical threat to the United States, up 15 points from the last survey. To fight terrorists, 74 percent favored U.S. air strikes, and 57 percent favored the use of U.S. ground troops.
In contrast, 68 percent oppose sending troops if China should invade Taiwan, 66 percent in case of a North Korean invasion of South Korea or a Russian invasion of Poland, and 56 percent oppose if Arabs invade Israel. Opposition drops to 48 percent if it's Iraq invading Saudi Arabia.
For the first time since 1978, however, those favoring increased defense spending exceeded the number who want cutbacks. Similar polls have been conducted every four years since 1974
Support for foreign aid continued a slow slide. Only 13 percent now favor increased spending for economic aid to other countries, and 48 percent want more cuts.
The new survey underscores general satisfaction with the U.S. role abroad by ranking Clinton No. 1 among postwar U.S. presidents for foreign policy success, up from eighth place in the middle of his first term.
Congress also got improved marks, with 43 percent saying its role in foreign policy is about right. That's the highest number for Congress since the surveys began.
Rielly said approval of Clinton parallels an absence of major foreign policy problems cited by those surveyed. When asked to list the two or three biggest foreign policy problems facing the country, the most common response among the public, at 21 percent, was: ''I don't know.'' That was followed by terrorism, 12 percent; the world economy, 11 percent; balance of payments, 10 percent; and the Middle East situation, 8 percent.
Richard Haas, foreign policy director for the Brookings Institution, who participated on a panel to mark the survey's release, challenged the assessment of Clinton. He said it reflects Americans' prosperity more than real achievement abroad.
''The American people feel content with the world as it is, but history has a different standard,'' he said. Clinton, he said, has missed opportunities to provide leadership in the post-Cold War world.
Clinton soared past Presidents Kennedy, Nixon, Truman, Eisenhower, Reagan, Bush and Carter, ranked in that order in 1994, to top the poll of presidents with ''very successful'' foreign policy performance since World War II. Only Presidents Ford and Johnson trailed Clinton in the 1994 poll.
Gallup interviewed 1,507 men and women in October and November. The margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points. Separately, the pollsters interviewed 379 policy leaders, including members of Congress, administration officials, international business figures and members of the news media.
A report on the survey was published Monday in the journal Foreign Policy.
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