With the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang drawing to a close, the North Korean team will soon return home. As has been the case during previous Olympic Games, the 2018 Games have been hailed as an example of global cooperation and harmony. North Korea and South Korea marched together at the Opening Ceremony under the “unification flag” for the time since Turin in 2006. This year’s Opening Ceremony also saw South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, reaching to the seat above him to shake the hand of Kim Yo Jong, the sister of the North Korea leader.
However, despite the symbolic gestures of these Olympics, the tensions on the peninsula are not soon to thaw. A Gallup poll published on Monday indicates that 51 percent of Americans now consider North Korea to be the greatest enemy of the United States, a full 32 percent points ahead of second-place Russia.
North Korea, a nation which has starved its people, punished grandchildren for the transgressions of their grandparents, and severely mistreated citizens with disabilities, was a worthy target of President Trump’s anger during his First State of the Union address last month. Among the President’s guests during the speech were the parents of the late Otto Warmbier, the Ohio college student who was detained in North Korea and died shortly after being returned home in a comatose state. As the cameras turned to the grieving parents, they waved to thank the nation for its support.
If anything is going to make conflict with North Korea seem justified, it is the image of two teary-eyed parents bravely facing the country after enduring an unimaginable loss.
But how much support would there be for a potential military intervention in North Korea? Polls on the matter range, and fluctuate by the month in response to the degree of North Korea’s aggression. Fox and CNN polls taken in late summer found 51 percent and 50 percent support respectively for a military intervention against North Korea, should diplomacy fall short. According to one Gallup poll conducted in September, 58 percent of American adults (and 82 percent of Republicans) favor military action against North Korea if diplomacy were to fail.
Of course, public opinion, a politician’s best friend or worse enemy, can be a useful indicator of whether an administration, especially one concerned with re-election prospects, ought to pursue one course of action as opposed to another. For instance, it is perhaps unlikely the Iraq War would have been so decisively undertaken had greater than 70 percent of the public not approved of the conflict in March, 2003.
There is some historical precedent for this question when it comes to North Korea. President Truman was forced to fire General MacArthur, in part for the latter’s desire “to drop thirty to fifty atomic bombs on Manchuria and the mainland cities of China” during the Korean War.
Many Americans today may be happy that the politicians of the past listened to their intuitions, intelligence briefings, and the opinions of their advisors—and not simply the pulse of the nation. In 1946, 54 percent of poll respondents answered yes when asked if “the United Nations should be strengthened to make it a world government with the power to control the armed forces of all nations, including the U.S.” Only 24 percent said “No.”
In 2015, during President Obama’s second term, 59 percent of Americans suggested they would support the President “after the fact” if he decided to use nuclear weapons on Iran, even if it resulted in 2 million Iranian casualties as opposed to 20,000 American ones.
In this age of referenda and increasingly participatory democracy, a rule has seemed to develop: that which places citizens closer to the heart of decision-making is a good thing. Although most of the shifts towards greater participation in our democracy were no doubt positive, there is a reason that our Founders and many subsequent theorists have approached relying on “the voice of the people” with caution. They might have recalled the 1780 Gordon riots when a mob—approximately 50,000 strong—marched on the British Parliament in support of codified discrimination against Catholics. The mob would go on to burn the homes of many known Catholics and their churches. This incident provided significant fodder for concern about the dangers of masses of people being led astray to do harm.
At the heart of the issue today is the premise that our political decision-makers, in addition to having access to information we would never be allowed to see, spend their days, at least ideally, familiarizing themselves with these issues. Most of us, after all, have little time to study nuclear stockpiles and the global balance of power; we have to go grocery shopping after working day jobs that usually have very little to do with politics.
Public opinion is notoriously fickle, susceptible to different responses based on the phrasing of questions, and easily swayed by emotion and the influence of certain political leaders. But that’s not to say our elected officials and their advisors are always perfect judges of foreign affairs either—recall the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution or “weapons of mass destruction.” Perhaps a balance ought to be struck.
A military response to North Korea might indeed be warranted in the future; however, may that decision be made by those who most closely analyze the situation in concert with voters, some of whom potentially may be the very ones to participate in any intervention. But to base too much of any decision to go to war on the polls would be to indulge in a folly that leaders of the past have managed to avoid. Public opinion polls exist for a reason. Leaders ought to take into account the beliefs of the public. But to justify tough military decisions, especially those that can result in many casualties, on the pulse of the nation should always be met with extreme caution.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.