By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

When it comes to military force, U.S. President Donald Trump has taken a starkly split stance. On the one hand, Trump is a self-professed skeptic of foreign entanglements. He has rapidly warmed relations with Russia in hopes of ending the war in Ukraine. His “America first” foreign policy is generally critical of military engagement abroad. And during the inaugural address, he said that his second presidency would be judged by “the wars we never get into.” On the other hand, Trump continuously flaunts American military might. His State Department declared that the United States would intervene if China attacked the territory, ships, or aircraft of the Philippines—a U.S. treaty ally. He has made flamboyant threats against Iran and North Korea. Since his election, Trump has also been bellicose toward U.S. friends, declaring that Canada “would make a great state” and that he would consider using the military to take Greenland and the Panama Canal.

On the surface, this combination of isolationism and belligerence might seem to reflect Trump’s general unpredictability, or even incoherence. The president, after all, is known for expressing views that contradict his broader stances. But it turns out that the American public is also quite willing to use force despite an apparent preference for withdrawal. The country has swung wildly in its hawkishness, from the isolationism of the 1930s to the belligerence of the early 1980s. But now, it has assumed a hedgehog-like posture, pulling back but still prickly. When asked whether they think Washington should play a larger or smaller role in the world, most Americans opt for a reduced footprint. But in a survey we conducted in July of ordinary Americans as well as of former U.S. policymakers, we found that clear majorities support attacking China if the People’s Liberation Army were to hit U.S. ships in the South China Sea. They were supportive irrespective of whether American troops were killed in the strikes. And the findings suggest that Americans would be willing to deploy U.S. troops against other U.S. adversaries, as well.

These findings do not mean that Americans are clamoring for war. Trump’s first term was generally marked by restraint when it came to new military conflicts, and there are many reasons to think that Washington will want to avoid conflict with its rivals in general—and Beijing in particular. But it does suggest that, should tensions flare in the South China Sea, elsewhere with China, or with other major adversaries, support for mobilizing U.S. ground forces may be far more likely than is generally assumed. Washington’s foreign policy is not always dictated by public opinion. But administrations do tend to be sensitive to public views about troop deployments, and so these findings suggest that war could well break out if adversaries attack American forces.

 

Of Two Minds

When asked directly, most Americans say that they want to pull back from the world. In a January 2025 New York Times poll, 60 percent of respondents said that they wanted the United States to pay less attention to problems overseas and concentrate “on problems here at home”—including 75 percent of Republicans (compared to 47 percent of Democrats). Only 38 percent of respondents wanted the United States “to be active in world affairs.” Similarly, a recent Chicago Council on Global Affairs poll found that only 17 percent of Americans thought that the United States’s wealth and strength mean that “it has a responsibility to take a leading role in world affairs.”

Yet there are signs that American views about their country’s international role are quite complicated. According to research by political scientist Jeffrey Friedman, U.S. voters almost always favor presidential candidates who are more aggressive than ones who are not. Friedman found that voters support hawkish policies even when they claim to want more dovish ones. In the 1990s, for example, Americans told pollsters that they opposed U.S. military intervention in the Balkans. But after President Bill Clinton began bombing Serbia, his approval ratings went up.

Still, it is one thing to bomb a much weaker adversary. It is quite another to go to war against a powerful one. To determine how Americans would feel about using force in that kind of situation, we conducted an experimental survey involving a potential clash in the South China Sea, the body of water that surrounds Taiwan, and the site of one-third of global shipping. It is perhaps the central site of contestation between Beijing and Washington, with both Chinese and U.S. warships routinely patrolling its waters. (It is also a place where the Trump administration wants to focus U.S. military power, unlike Europe.) In a survey supported by the Chicago Project on Security and Threats and carried out by NORC, we told 2,000 ordinary Americans and 700 former policymakers to imagine that China attacked a U.S. aircraft carrier off the coast of a U.S. treaty ally in the region. Half of the respondents were told that 250 U.S. sailors died in the attack, whereas the other half were told that no sailors were killed. We then asked them whether they would support Washington deploying additional forces to the region, and whether those additional forces should also be tasked with launching counterstrikes on Chinese naval and air assets.

In total, 51 percent supported a counterstrike when no sailors were killed. When sailors were killed, 57 percent endorsed a strike. Republicans were especially supportive of retaliating with force: 60 percent endorsed retaliation when no sailors were killed, and 67 percent did when deaths occurred. (The margin of error for our findings was three percentage points.) Notably, we conducted this survey when Joe Biden, a Democrat, was still president, suggesting that Republicans are hawkish—at least toward China—irrespective of who holds office. Democrats, on the other hand, were more cautious. They were equally divided, with 50 percent supporting a counterstrike if the Chinese attack resulted in no casualties. Support rose to 57 percent if U.S. soldiers were killed.

But Americans were not primarily motivated by seeking revenge for the deaths. Only 36 percent of respondents drawn from the general public said this was a very important factor in their decision. Instead, Americans seemed to care more about protecting the reputation of the United States. Among general republic respondents who supported a counterstrike against China following the deaths of U.S. sailors, 53 percent said that force was needed to maintain Washington’s international reputation, compared to only 16 percent of those who did not support a counterstrike. Among Republicans, 63 percent said that responding with force was needed to maintain the United States’ reputation. It is an open debate among international relations scholars exactly how much U.S. behavior in a crisis with China would affect the behavior of other rivals, such as Iran. But regardless of the actual effect, voters seem to think that cultivating a reputation for resolve matters.

 

Trigger Finger

Our findings have implications for other U.S. adversaries. Although we did not ask about Iran or Russia, it is likely that Americans would similarly back retaliation should those countries strike U.S. forces. The American public, after all, holds negative views of them: 81 percent of Americans view Iran unfavorably, and a 2024 poll indicated that a majority of Americans support using U.S. troops if Iran attacked Israel. Likewise, Pew Research polling shows that 86 percent of Americans view Russia unfavorably. That includes 88 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaners, despite Trump’s favorable language toward Moscow. A 2024 YouGov poll found that three times as many Republicans support defending an attacked NATO ally versus not defending it.

There are likely limits to this support. Context has always shaped the American public’s willingness to use force. People are more likely to be supportive if Washington is reacting to clear aggression, if the U.S. attack is likely to succeed, and if important U.S. interests are at stake. They have, by contrast, been consistently unwilling to support using force when these conditions were absent—which is part of why the United States did not interfere during the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, the 1965 and 1971 Indian-Pakistani wars, and the 1995 Rwanda genocide. It is also why the United States never became deeply involved in the Syrian civil war, limiting its intervention to stopping the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Americans’ willingness to use force against China, a nuclear-armed adversary, still raises the odds that Washington would retaliate if attacked by Beijing. That is especially true under Trump, a ravenous consumer of right-wing media who is attuned to the beliefs of Republicans. But it does not mean that conflict between the two countries is likely. As nuclear weapons states, China and the United States are still strongly motivated to avoid direct war. Neither wants a conflict that could end the world.

U.S. fighter jets on an aircraft carrier in Busan, South Korea, March 2025

History suggests that deterrence will hold. The United States made it through the entire Cold War without fighting its Soviet adversary. Beijing, meanwhile, has been chronically unwilling to confront the American military. In the 1950s Taiwan Strait Crisis, Chinese leader Mao Zedong ordered his troops to avoid attacking U.S. forces directly. China-backed down in 1995, when the United States pushed back against their belligerent missile tests, and remained calm in 1999 after the United States accidentally bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. China found a rapid diplomatic solution in 2001 after a midair collision with an American aircraft killed a Chinese fighter pilot.

The two countries are far more adversarial today than they were at the turn of the millennium. Yet even as its power has grown, Beijing still seems hesitant to flex its military might. Thus far, China has launched cyberattacks rather than airstrikes against Taiwan. It has rammed into Philippine vessels, but it has generally used non-lethal lasers and water cannons to repel Philippine ships. It is possible that a willingness to use force could even promote stability in U.S.-Chinese relations. By stating that it would support the Philippines, the Trump administration could push China to decide to temper its provocations, rather than test the president.

Yet Trump may be more likely to draw the United States into a war than people think. The president appears most interested in ending conflicts in pursuit of his much-desired Nobel Peace Prize. But he talks loudly. And if the United States is attacked, Americans are willing to let him wield a big stick.

 

 

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