The survey “Rethinking American Strength: What Divides (and Unites) Voting-Age Americans,” was released this week by the Eurasia Group Foundation. It posed over 40 foreign policy-related questions to more than 2,000 Americans of voting age.
Overall, support for moving more troops onto bases in allied countries such as Japan and South Korea, as well as increasing US naval presence in the Pacific Ocean, grew to 55.4%.
In two previous surveys, respondents were about evenly split but this year saw a five percentage point jump in support, likely due to China’s growing power and influence in the region.
Yet among the youngest age group, support for increasing troop levels in Asia was 43.5%, while 56.5% called for a decreased presence.
Those in favour of increasing troops agree that “China is an aggressive, expansionist power that could directly harm the US by interfering with international shipping lanes or threatening US military bases and overseas territories in Asia.”
Others argued that US military power is needed to stop Beijing from attempting to undermine democratic values around the globe, for example through debt-trap diplomacy or spreading its authoritarian capitalism.
Those in favour of decreasing troops, meanwhile, said that rich allies such as Japan and South Korea could defend themselves against China and that reducing American troop levels in Asia would ease the burden on US soldiers and taxpayers.
Especially popular among the younger respondents was the view that the presence of American troops creates a spiral of escalation in Asia and that China may feel the need to respond aggressively, thus creating an unnecessary risk of war.
“The young generation is surprisingly realist,” Mark Hannah, one of the authors of the report and a senior fellow at EGF, told Nikkei Asia.
He said the generational divide may be related to the “scepticism about the use of force to pursue idealistic aims” among the younger group.
“The 18 to 29-year-old group is the age group most keen to increase diplomatic engagement on things like human rights and climate change but they’re more pessimistic about the potential for domestic renewal, more likely to think America is not an exceptional nation, and in general less likely to support more coercive means,” he said.
“This might not be surprising when you consider they came of age during America’s unsuccessful regime-changing, democracy-promoting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and didn’t live through the Cold War triumph, let alone World War II, after which American military and economic power helped build an international order we have today.”
The generational divide appeared in other questions as well. The 18-29 age group hold, by far, the least positive views of drone strikes out of any age group, with 57% having a negative opinion compared to 16% of respondents aged 60 and older.
They also want to spend less on defence. Among the 18-29 group, 53.8% said the US should decrease defence spending, 33.3% said it should be maintained as is, and 12.9% called for an increase.
The way that the next generation of American leaders thinks will likely have major implications for America’s treaty allies in Asia, namely Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines and Thailand. Hannah noted that one of the reasons US president Joe Biden’s handling of the Ukraine war is popular is “because it encouraged European countries to take more responsibility for European security”.
Voters may seek similar burden-sharing in Asia. Of the respondents, 39.8% agreed that the US has responded well to Russia’s war in Ukraine, while 24.9% did not.
Meanwhile, survey respondents were not so certain whether the US should defend Taiwan if it went to war with China.
Respondents were asked: “If China and Taiwan go to war, considering the high cost and likely casualties, do you think the US should commit American servicemembers to help defend Taiwan?”
To this, 34% said “yes”, a more than eight percentage point drop from last year, when 42.2% said the US should defend Taiwan.
Those who said “no”, the US should not commit troops to defend Taiwan, grew to 23.9% from 16.2%
“In 2022, only one in three people think the US should defend Taiwan. Increasing Chinese military power, the visible costs of war in Ukraine, and inflationary pressures at home could contribute to these changing views,” the group said.