Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977–1980, Volume XXX, Public Diplomacy

96. Paper Prepared in the Office of Research, United States Information Agency¹

Washington, October 12, 1977

Utilization of Opinion Research

by U.S. Foreign Affairs Agencies

Although American presidents beginning with Franklin Roosevelt have paid close attention to domestic public opinion only a few specific examples of the utilization of foreign opinions by the Federal government are available. For example, after Roosevelt found himself ahead of American opinion in his 1936 Chicago “Quarantine” speech he employed polls to be sure that his foreign policies were acceptable to the American public,² yet there is little direct evidence of how he or his successors may have utilized foreign opinion data in foreign policy formulation.

One of the earliest examples of such utilization was the survey of 221 French military and civilian and native leaders in North Africa undertaken under the guidance of Hadley Cantril before the Allied landings there in 1942, which resulted in a decision to use primarily American rather than mixed British-American forces in the initial invasion, and to emphasize in broadcasts to the area that the United States had no plans to annex or control the area after the war. On the other hand, a subsequent attempt to send trained researchers to ask systematic questions in neutral European capitals was frustrated by bureaucratic in-fighting.³

Lloyd Free states that “President Eisenhower was deeply interested in the opinions of people of other countries,” citing a rebuke Eisenhower gave to John Foster Dulles for ignoring public opinion as reported to the President by Free and Nelson Rockefeller, on the basis of USIA surveys. Free claims that one of his own surveys of Japanese attitudes “actually received consideration” at the NSC level.⁴ In 1956 Eisenhower sent USIA director Theodore C. Streibert a letter acknowledging receipt of USIA foreign public opinion roundups and asking that they be continued. In 1957 Rockefeller pleaded with Eisenhower to prevent discontinuation of such polls, threatened by budget cuts, citing “your previous expressions as to the value of these reports.”⁵

A leaked classified report based on USIA polls became an important factor in the 1960 election when, after a Kennedy aide had provided a copy to the New York Times, it was then used by the candidate to accuse Nixon of misleading the American public as to the degree of erosion in American standing abroad.⁶

Undoubtedly USIA and other reports on foreign public opinion have had some effect on the thinking of policymakers as part of their background information, but the fact is that there is little other specific evidence of the use of such reports as actually influencing major U.S. policies. We must rely chiefly on the fact that senior officials concerned with foreign affairs have expressed interest in reports commissioned by USIA as evidence of their usefulness.

In general, the information generated by opinion polling—as with any other research—is merely one of the elements considered in the decision-making process. The decision-maker must inevitably balance all factors in each situation and may arrive at valid decisions based on non-empirical considerations. For this reason, it is difficult to determine the extent to which any policy decision is indebted to a single informational input. On the other hand, there have been several instances when the potential contribution of opinion polling among foreign populations was completely overlooked or ignored, with disastrous consequences.

One of the classic cases of missed opportunities to use a survey in foreign policy decision-making was that of a poll of Cuban public opinion by the Institute for International Social Research which showed that a little more than a year after Castro had come to power “the prevailing mood of the great majority of Cubans in April and May 1960 was one of hope and optimism,” with 86 percent of the sample expressing support for Castro.⁷ In the change of administrations the survey, which had been widely distributed by USIA, got lost in the shuffle. After the Bay of Pigs fiasco Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. wrote to Free, who headed the Institute, saying he wished “we had had it earlier.”⁸

Similarly, a report by Free on opinion in the Dominican Republic, taken in 1962 and widely distributed within the Federal government, showed “how extremely pro-United States, anti-Communist, and anti-Castro the Dominican people were at the time.” Yet when the Dominican crisis arose three years later and the U.S. intervened the report was not initially considered. Only after it had been republished and sent to the White House by Free and Cantril was its information taken into consideration.⁹

The Johnson administration apparently did heed a USIA survey of South Vietnamese attitudes taken in 1964, which showed popular attitudes toward the war were “largely apathetic,” interested in ending the conflict but not in which side won, although there was a “degree of approval for the insurgents on the part of many.”¹⁰ This survey was influential in a decision taken a short time after its issuance to form a Joint U.S. Public Affairs Office (JUSPAO) an organization staffed by all U.S. agencies in Vietnam, and headed by a USIA officer, which greatly increased the American psychological effort in the area.

The Vietnam situation spawned other field research utilized in policy and program development. For example, a series of opinion surveys among villagers in South Vietnam, conducted during the period 1965–67 by Stanford Research Institute for the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Defense Department, is said to have directly influenced decisions on important military, security assistance, and civilian aid programs operated by the United States in the country.

U.S. domestic opinions are of increasing interest to the Department of State, which has a special unit (in the Office of Plans and Management of the Bureau of Public Affairs) to follow the results of polls dealing with foreign policy issues.¹¹ Currently Public Affairs is monitoring editorial and other expressed opinion together with polls and thus assisting policy spokesmen to put forth the most persuasive presentation on such controversial issues as the Panama Canal treaty. We are told informally that PA input has been influential in the two Chinas issue by pointing to strong public opposition to ditching the Nationalist regime and in the Arab-Israeli dispute by noting the divergence between public opinion as reported by pollsters and that alleged by lobbyists on the Hill. PA has recently reported public wariness about too close U.S. involvement in African affairs, interest in human rights violations abroad and misunderstandings of the SALT issues in ways which some of its people believe have influenced what policy makers have said and done.

What Can Be Done by USIA?

Although the statement of USIA mission issued by President Kennedy in 1963 specifically calls for the Agency to advise “the President, his representatives abroad, and the various departments and agencies on the implications of foreign opinion for present and contemplated United States policies, programs and official statements,” this function has never been given an equal priority with the other part of that Mission statement calling for USIA to influence public attitudes in other nations.¹² An Arthur D. Little Inc. study of USIA management in 1970¹³ made a strong recommendation that what it called the “sensing” function be greatly strengthened but no action was taken—rather, foreign public opinion research was reduced. The situation described by Free in 1965¹⁴ that there was “not only no systematic feed-in of psychological data; but no systematic marshalling of such data and bringing them to the attention of top policy-makers when the hour of decision arrives,” prevailed until very recently. Free noted that the instances of success he had cited came about because of the fortuitous existence of special channels to the top, not through the efforts of the bureaucracy, which he felt had little sense of significance of foreign public opinion. (Official and editorial opinion does get reported through channels by the Department of State, in USIA’s foreign media reaction reports, and by other agencies concerned with foreign affairs.)

Although Free hoped that a new generation of Foreign Service Officers would have different attitudes than their predecessors, the continuing experience of the Office of Research in the development and clearance of new projects indicates that understanding of and support for opinion surveys is still relatively scattered within the corps.

Free felt that “for public opinion research to develop its full potential it must go into matters deeper than ‛opinions.’ It must investigate ‛reality worlds’ in general and the assumptions, often latent or implicit, upon which attitudes and opinions are based.” And he felt that “for full meaningfulness, the findings must be interpreted against a broader background of social science data: studies of the power and influence structure in particular societies.”¹⁵

The only major change in the formal situation came about as a result of a provision of the 1975 Foreign Assistance Act requiring that “the President shall establish appropriate criteria to assess the commitment and progress of countries” toward foreign assistance objectives.¹⁶ This has caused AID to prepare a report to Congress which is essentially a blueprint for the application of various social science techniques to foreign aid policy development.¹⁷

In 1977 the Office of Research was able, thanks to the representations of USIA’s new Director and Deputy Director, to obtain closer working relationships with the National Security Council staff. As a result, we have developed plans for a series of opinion surveys in which not only are the issues defined by members of the policy staff, but options for use of the results are tentatively laid out. The indications to date of high-level interest in the results of these polls—which we have attempted to report in the fuller kind of context suggested by Lloyd Free—have been gratifying.

If USIA were to be given a new mandate for sensing foreign opinions of interest to U.S. Government policymakers and given the staff ceiling and funding to accompany that requirement, it still would have to consider some of the existing practical limitations on increasing its activities abroad. Competent, reliable contractors who can conduct surveys of public opinion for us exist in only some of the 115 countries in which we have operations. We could not quickly alter this situation, or hope for others to do so. Clearances for undertaking such surveys would need to be obtained from the Department of State, chiefs of American diplomatic missions abroad and (in many cases) the host governments concerned. In many countries this last is impossible to get. Even in countries where attitude surveys are accepted in general, mission clearance is often a problem. Ever since the “Camelot” debacle in Chile in 1967, many if not most of our ambassadors have been queasy about the possible consequences of U.S. Government-funded public opinion inquiries in the countries to which they are accredited.¹⁸ Frequently unconvinced of the merits or need of surveys of public opinions, and perhaps unaware of their impersonal character and legitimate standing, they tend to err on the side of caution, an attitude which in some cases may be susceptible to change by firm indications from their superiors of the importance of the results of such surveys. In addition, while the interviewing of respondents would be done by local contractors, designing studies, awarding contracts, analyzing responses and preparing reports on the results requires staff work in Washington, for which additional highly skilled professional personnel would be needed if present workloads were significantly increased.

Some of these obstacles to survey research can be overcome or circumvented. We have experimented with using small-group panel discussions or in-depth structured interviews of a relatively limited but carefully chosen group of informants to provide valuable insights related to USIA programming. In some cases these techniques could perhaps be used to get indirect evidence of views on major issues of foreign policy, even if they could not yield measures of public opinion. The example of the North African invasion survey is certainly worth repeating in other contexts.

We are also experimenting with getting views of people coming out of denied areas such as China and Eastern Europe, whether as emigres, refugees or temporary visitors, and with content analyses of published or broadcast materials to give us clues behind the superficial evidence of the words as they appear in newspapers or radio. And we draw upon scholars familiar with an area and the literature on it to pull together information not otherwise readily available. These techniques, too, are more successfully applied to the assessment or planning of USIA programming, but may prove worth pursuing for indications of foreign policy views as well.

Basically, however, the problem of organizing, staffing, and systematizing the Agency’s advisory function in response to a clearly articulated policy-making need is still to be worked out.

1. Source: National Archives, RG 306, Office of the Director, Executive Secretariat, Secretariat Staff, Correspondence Files, 1973–1980, Entry P–104, Box 141, 7704210–7704219. No classification marking. Engle sent a copy of the memorandum to Cohen under an October 12 memorandum. In it, Engle stated, “The attached paper summarizes what we have been able to pull together about government utilization of foreign affairs research. Leo Crespi has been a major source of information about past instances of utilization and Jim Halsema has done the basic work of pulling his and other information together in this paper.” (Ibid.)
2. Lloyd Free, “Public Opinion Research,” in International Communication and the New Diplomacy, Arthur S. Hoffman, ed., Bloomington. [Footnote is in the original. Published by Indiana University Press in 1968. Roosevelt delivered the “Quarantine” address on October 5, 1937, in Chicago. For the text, see The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1937 volume: The Constitution Prevails, pp. 406–411.]
3. Hadley Cantril, The Human Dimension: Experiences in Policy Research, New Brunswick chapter 13 “North African Landing”; James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Solider of Freedom, New York, p. 290. [Footnote is in the original. Rutgers University Press published The Human Dimension in 1967. The complete title of Burns’s biography is Roosevelt: The Solider of Freedom, 1940–1945. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970)]
4. Op. cit. [Footnote is in the original.]
5. Nelson A. Rockefeller to the President, letter dated June 13, 1957. USIA files contain other copies of letters of appreciation from senior personnel of foreign affairs agencies for such surveys, but again with no specific indication of how they were used. [Footnote is in the original.]
6. R.A. Levine, Foreign Policy and U.S. Presidential Elections, p. 278. [Footnote is in the original. Reference is to Robert A. Divine, Foreign Policy and U.S. Presidential Elections, 1952–1960. (New York: New Viewpoints, 1974)]
7. Cantril, op. cit., p. 3. [Footnote is in the original.]
8. Cantril, op. cit, p. 5; Theodore C. Sorensen, The Murrow Years: Hot Words in the Cold War, New York, p. 141. [Footnote is in the original.]
9. Cantril, op. cit. p. 15. [Footnote is in the original.]
10. USIA: Research and Reference Service, “Facts and Attitudes: Long An Province”, R–10–65, Washington, February 1965. [Footnote is in the original. For additional information about the study, see Foreign Relations, 1964–1968, vol. II, Vietnam, January–June 1965, Document 172.]
11. Reference is to the Public Opinion Analysis unit in PA/M, headed by Bernard Roscho.
12. Reference is to the January 25, 1963, memorandum from Kennedy to Murrow, printed in Foreign Relations, 1961–1963, vol. XXV, Organization of Foreign Policy; Information Policy; United Nations; Scientific Matters, Document 144.
13. Reference is to Improved Management Systems in the United States Information Agency. A Study Prepared by Arthur D. Little Inc., Washington, D.C., 1970. (Lois W. Roth, “Public Diplomacy and the Past: The Search for an American Style of Propaganda, 1952–1977,” The Fletcher Forum, Summer 1984, p. 396)
14. Lecture “The Role of Public Opinion in International Relations: the Contributions of Public Opinion Research,” prepared for delivery at the Edward R. Murrow Center of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Medford, Mass., November 1, 1965. [Footnote is in the original.]
15. Idem. [Footnote is in the original.]
16. The Foreign Assistance Act reference is in error; the International Development and Food Assistance Act (P.L. 94–161), which Ford signed into law on December 20, 1975, contained this provision.
17. Agency for International Development, Socio-Economic Performance Criteria for Development: A Report on the Assessment of Commitment and Progress. . . , Washington, February 1977. [Footnote is in the original.]
18. Reference is presumably to Project Camelot, an Army-sponsored research project undertaken by the Special Operations Research Office, designed to analyze political and international problems outside of the United States. On July 8, 1965, the Department of Defense announced the cancellation of the project. For additional information, see Foreign Relations, 1964–1968, vol. XXXI, South and Central America; Mexico, Documents 279–280.