Elite Opinion on Terrorism
The Center for American Progress has a new version available of its measure of elite opinion of the issue of global terrorism, The Terrorism Index. Among the many interesting findings are:
- A significantly less pessimistic view of the “war on terror,” with 21% of the experts now saying the U.S. is “winning” compared with only 6% last year. More generally, the percentage of experts saying that the world is becoming safer for the United States has increased from 2% to 15%. These are still very pessimistic assessments, but the change is dramatic.
- Basically, Iraq completely fell of the table in terms of expert concern, with zero experts believing that Iraq is the “single greatest threat” to U.S. security (down from 10% last year) or that Iraq is likely to become the next al Qaeda stronghold (down from 22%). The rapidity of this change is a bit unsettling and suggests a strong “echo chamber” effect within elite opinion.
- On the other hand, concern over Pakistan increased dramatically, with 51% of their respondents seeing it as the most likely future AQ stronghold.
- There was also very strong support for drawing down forces in Iraq and refocusing them on Afghanistan.
- 65% (!) of respondents were “unsure” about whether the United States should take military action to kill senior AQ leaders in Pakistan even if the Pakistani government refuses to give permission. This is really extraordinary. This is unquestionably one of the biggest foreign policy dilemmas the United States faces today and nearly two-thirds of experts are unable or unwilling to make a judgment one way or the other.
As always, this annual study is an interesting experiment, though what it really demonstrates is open for debate. Foreign policy experts ultimately form a small community — even across party lines — and it is likely that a certain degree of groupthink causes expert opinion to lag behind developments initially and then overshoot the significance of developments when change does occur.
