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Americans turning more isolationist, poll finds

By Steven Thomma / McClatchy

WASHINGTON - At the very moment President Obama is looking to thrust the United States ever more into global affairs, the American public is turning more isolationist and unilateralist than it has at any time in decades, a survey released yesterday said.

The Pew Research Center poll found that a plurality of Americans - 49 percent - think the United States should "mind its own business internationally" and leave it to other countries to fend for themselves.

It was the first time in more than 40 years of polling, Pew said, that the ranks of Americans with isolationist sentiment outnumbered those with a more international outlook.

"The U.S. public is turning decidedly inward," Pew said.

Americans are also growing more unilateralist, with 44 percent of those surveyed saying the United States "should go our own way in international matters, not worrying about whether other countries agree with us or not."

That was the highest percentage since the question was first asked in 1964.

The country also has grown pessimistic about U.S. clout in world affairs.

By a margin of 41 percent to 25 percent, Americans think the United States is playing a less important role in the world than 10 years ago. It was the first time since the 1970s - when the nation had withdrawn from Vietnam, been hurt by an Arab oil embargo, and seen its citizens held hostage in Iran - that a plurality of Americans thought their country was weaker than it had been a decade before.

The shift in sentiment comes after more than eight years of war in Afghanistan and almost seven in Iraq, and amid the worst economy since the Great Depression.

Just 32 percent of those surveyed favored increasing the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and only 46 percent said it was likely Afghanistan could withstand the threat posed by the Taliban.

The survey of 2,000 U.S. adults was taken Oct. 28-Nov. 8 - before Obama's Tuesday night speech on Afghanistan. It has an error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The public turn toward isolationism comes as Obama plans to escalate the U.S. role in Afghanistan with more troops and engages with other countries and international institutions on issues from climate change to the economy.

Next week, he will visit Denmark to attend an international climate-change conference, then Norway to accept the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Pew poll also found that a plurality of Americans, 44 percent, now say China is the world's top economic power; 27 percent say it is the United States. Nearly two years ago, 41 percent thought the U.S. was the No. 1 economic power, and 30 percent thought it was China.