INTERVIEWER: What was the purpose of the recent report you found at the Center called "The Foreign Policy Gap"?

MR. KULL: Well, what we were trying to do was find out whether American policy makers have a correct perception of the attitudes in the American public. And what we found is that there is a significant gap between what policy makers think the public feels and what the American public actually feels.

Most centrally, we found that the American public is not nearly as isolationist as policy makers assume. There's an assumption that in the wake of the Cold War there's this feeling of wanting to disengage from the world, to withdraw from the world, to simply turn inward, but we didn't find that in the public itself. Basically, there has been no change since the end of the Cold War. The majority of Americans want to stay engaged in international affairs.

Now, there are some important differences, though, between the way things have been going and what the public wants. And those differences are things that can be perceived by policy makers as showing some change. Most centrally, Americans want the U.S. to move away from the role of being dominant world leader, of being the world policeman. And from the point of view of policy makers, that can easily be understood as, "Well, we want to simply disengage." But, in fact, what Americans are saying is that they want to move in the direction of a more cooperative type of engagement, they want to put more emphasis on working multilaterally, on working through the United Nations.

There's a strong feeling that the U.S. has been carrying more than its fair share in international efforts to maintain world order and, here again, this is something that can be misinterpreted as a pull toward disengagement. But, again, the emphasis is not on simply disengage but on other countries carrying their share, and then the feeling is that the U.S. would -- they would like to see the U.S. take a very active role in those multilateral efforts.

INTERVIEWER: Do policy makers misread the public when it comes to military spending at all?

MR. KULL: Well, this is somewhat complex, because if the question is simply, do you feel comfortable with the current level of defense spending, most Americans say they're fairly comfortable. But if you scratch the surface a bit you find that there is, underneath, some feeling that the U.S. is spending more than it should. Asking specifically, now, what level do you think the U.S. should be spending, the average respondent actually says that we should cut spending about 10 percent.

Now, in the most recent study that we did, we did also set up an exercise where we had respondents balance the budget. We said, "Okay, here's the discretionary budget and here are the twelve key areas of the discretionary budget," and include a whole variety of issues: education, transportation, and international spending on State Department, foreign aid, and so on, and defense was one of them. And we told the respondents, "Okay, the average taxpayer has $600.00 going to these twelve areas. Now, imagine that you have $600.00. How would you like to divide up these $600.00? And we're going to tell you now how much goes to each of these areas." And then they could divide up their money as they wished.

And under those circumstances, it turned out that defense spending was cut -- 80 percent cut defense spending and, on average, it was cut 42 percent. So, clearly, Americans don't fully understand how much goes to defense. Because in this budget exercise, when they found out how much actually went, as a proportion of the whole, then they cut it really very deeply.

INTERVIEWER: So then there is support for deeper cuts in military spending out there today?

MR. KULL: Well, it's complex. It's not something that's on the surface, it's not intensely felt. But if you probe into what their orientation is, what their values are -- another example is if the question is phrased in terms of, "How much do you want to spend relative to the spending of our potential enemies?" the majority of Americans say that they want to spend only as much as all our potential enemies combined, or as much as the strongest one. Only a very small portion -- less than 10 percent -- say that they want to spend twice as much as all of our enemies, potential enemies, combined. When, in fact, that is what we're currently spending. So here again, the factor of information is quite critical.

But even without that information, if you push Americans to say -- and I don't want to say that, the word "push," because that's not the question, the issue -- even without giving information, if the question is simply, "What do you think is the appropriate level for current spending," the average American says, "Well, let's cut it 10 percent." And most Americans don't think of that as a big deal, because they don't actually think defense spending is that large an item. So that's not really inconsistent with the general feeling that they're not really that uncomfortable with the current level of defense spending.

INTERVIEWER: Just specifically what do you find when you ask people, you know, how big is the military budget --

MR. KULL: We've never asked that question directly, because it's very hard for people to come up with an answer to it. They -- you know, how much is a billion, how much is a million, how much is a hundred billion -- those things get, you know, get very fuzzy. So all we can really determine is how they respond when they're posed with a trade-off situation, like in the budget exercise, and we see how they distribute, and if they distribute very differently from what they originally said --

[Phone interruption]

CAMERAMAN: Okay, rolling.

INTERVIEWER: Okay, so we were talking about once given the trade-offs.

MR. KULL: Yeah, in -- in a situation where respondents are given information about how much of the budget goes to defense and how much goes to other items, they clearly want to put less in defense and more in other items, and that makes it -- and these are the same individuals who previously said, "Well, it's not so -- it's not such a problem how much we're spending on defense." That shows us that they actually are assuming that it's significantly less than it in fact is.

Also, in focus groups when we have presented -- given information about the actual distribution of defense spending relative to other budget items, we've consistently got a very strong response of surprise that they didn't really understand that it was -- that so much of the budget went to defense.

INTERVIEWER: How do opinion shapers --

MR. KULL: There is one other thing, too, about the -- on the multilateral front.

One other area where we can see a real discrepancy between public thinking and our current orientation in defense spending is on the question of how much we should rely on other countries to play a critical role in fulfilling our defense obligations. Currently, our emphasis is on the U.S. having the capability to protect other countries without the help of allies, specifically right now we have the requirement to fulfill -- to defend two countries simultaneously, again, without the help of allies.

In the polls that we've done, this criterion is pretty much rejected by the public. The public feels that we should have the capability to protect ourself, of course, and to protect other countries, but the emphasis is that we should have that capability as part of a multilateral effort, that we should -- that's how much we should spend, that's how much capability we should have, and that's also how we should do it, that we should not make those commitments to do that unilaterally. And this is an important difference here again between the orientation in the policy making community and the public.

INTERVIEWER: You sort of answered this, but -- do Americans feel that there's a sense of overkill with respect to U.S. military planning at the Pentagon?

MR. KULL: There is a tendency to assume that the -- that in the Pentagon they engage in worst-case thinking more than they perhaps need to. And also in the question about whether there are any important threats that the U.S. is not currently addressing, an overwhelming majority feel that there are not, that there are not important threats that aren't currently being addressed.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. Under what conditions would the American public support reductions in military spending?

MR. KULL: Well, the -- one of the questions that we asked was, if the president and Congress were to decide to cut defense spending 10 or even 20 percent, would they feel comfortable with that. And a fairly strong majority said that they would. If these funds were redirected to education and job training and programs like that, then a very strong majority said they would.

A key element is whether or not there is some consensus among the leaders. They still pretty much need to take the cues from the leadership, and if the leadership says that it's okay, then it'll be okay. There's -- the idea that there's some feeling in the public that if policy -- can I re-state that?

The idea that the American leadership can go too far, that the public might have some reaction against cutting -- there's really no evidence for that.

INTERVIEWER: Um, did you --

MR. KULL: At the same time, though, it needs to be clear, though, that there isn't out there some strong demand. It's -- they're relatively sanguine about the situation, that that's based on some lack of information about what the real level of spending is and also a lack of information about how much our potential enemies are spending. And also lack of information about the current criterion, the current standards that are being applied to U.S. defense capabilities, and whenever -- when these questions are raised in principle, the -- but when it comes to multilateralism, when it comes to spending relative to potential enemies, when it comes to spending relative to other items of the budget, then it becomes clear that the orientation of the public is really quite different than the orientation of the -- our current policies.

INTERVIEWER: That was great. Would Americans be supportive of reducing military spending if America could retain a strong military or a strong defense of our country?

MR. KULL: Americans are very clear that they want to have a strong defense, and they embrace the idea that the United States needs to have a global military presence. So it's not that they're -- that they are looking for some radical change in American military strength. They do think America does need to be strong.

INTERVIEWER: Why do a majority of policy makers assume that the current level of -- that there is support for the current level of spending? Military spending.

MR. KULL: Well, if the question is simply asked, "Do you feel comfortable with the current level of defense spending, should we spend more, less, about the same?" then there is no strong feeling calling for the U.S. to cut spending. It's only when you probe a little bit deeper and ask about the underlying assumptions and try to get more -- a more complex kind of -- (unintelligible) way of saying it.

It's only when you go beyond this initial response that you find that there's, underneath, support in principle for a different kind of defense orientation, which leads to reductions in defense spending.

INTERVIEWER: Are Americans concerned at all about excessive military spending by Congress, policy makers in the Pentagon?

MR. KULL: There's a suspicion that we're -- that the Pentagon leads the U.S. government to spend more than it actually needs to spend. At the same time, there's a feeling that, "Well, we should maybe err on the side of spending too much rather than too little." Those seem like contradictory feelings, but if you can imagine having both of them.

The -- if there -- if the issue is ever posed in terms of threats to the United States, Americans want to spend as much as necessary to defend the United States. And if they're told that something is necessary on that front, then they tend to be responsive or they tend to move away from a kind of underlying orientation toward -- to reduce spending.

If the issue is posed in terms of the objectives that those capabilities are actually being developed for, which have to do with the U.S. presence in other parts of the world and defending countries to whom we've made military commitments to defend, then it becomes -- then it becomes more ambiguous, because the feeling in the public is that we should be doing -- fulfilling those commitments, together with other countries, not unilaterally. And many of the costs that are involved in the defense budget right now, particularly on the margin, have to do with capabilities that involve projecting power to fulfill those commitments, not to defending the United States itself.

INTERVIEWER: Many policy makers will state that military --

MR. KULL: To also clarify --

Americans are not interested in the idea of abandoning commitments to protect other countries. They're really quite clear about that. They simply want to fulfill those commitments in the context of a multilateral effort, and in that context they only want to spend as much as necessary to fulfill those comm -- those commitments in that framework.

INTERVIEWER: And how does that differ from the policy makers currently?

MR. KULL: Well, currently our commitments are to -- currently, our policy is to fulfill those capabilities, fulfill those commitments unilaterally. We presently have the requirement to fulfill -- to defend two countries simultaneously without the help of allies, and the public does not support having that level of defense preparation.

INTERVIEWER: Many policy makers say that military spending strengthens the economy by, you know, providing high-tech jobs for U.S. workers. Does the American public agree with this type of argument?

MR. KULL: That's a very interesting question. Because if you focus on those who call and write to Congress, Americans who organize themselves and become really the vocal public, that public is very concerned about losing jobs, about shutting down bases and so on. But in polls, when that question -- when that argument is presented, only a minority of Americans embraces it. The majority of Americans reject the argument that we should maintain defense spending so as to preserve jobs. A very strong majority feel that an alternative approach is better, which would be to use that money to retrain workers to go into some other line of work.

INTERVIEWER: Let's make sure I got -- What do you see as the most challenging aspect of polling the public about military spending issues? Defense issues.

MR. KULL: Well, what makes it somewhat complex is the lack of information about what the current level of spending is relative to other items in the budget.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. You --

MR. KULL: Another complexity is the lack of information about the level of spending and the level of defense capabilities in the countries that are our potential enemies.

INTERVIEWER: You mentioned earlier that the public takes its cues from policy makers. You know, is this a sort of a chicken and an egg thing, I mean, who is really getting messages from -- you know, when they're talking about foreign policy and defense issues? You --

MR. KULL: Well, the -- there is a part of the public that does seem to be quite influential, and that's those who call and write and attend townhall meetings. We call them the "squeaky public." And this squeaky public is often mistaken for the majority public. And among this squeaky public there does seem to be a tendency to favor less international engagement on the part of the U.S., less support for the United Nations, less support for foreign aid, and in some cases apparently more support for defense spending. And this -- if this public is mistaken for the majority public and is disproportionately influential.

INTERVIEWER: I just one question I have to back up. Are Americans worried about threats from the so-called "rogue states," that are out there?

MR. KULL: Yeah. They are. That's high on the list of potential threats. And whenever there's fear, there's -- that leads people to want to make some kind of response, and if leaders can make a connection between that fear and defense spending, then that will lead to greater support. There -- right now, the biggest fear is about terrorists, and in poll questions that ask, you know, "What foreign policy issues or security issues are you most concerned about?" terrorism tends to be right at -- up at the top of the list. And there is a tendency to feel that somehow defense spending addresses that fear. Because it's something you can do about it. There's always the desire to respond to perceived threats.

Most of the kind of spending that we're doing presently does not address the threat of terrorism, but if policy makers can make that link, that does tend to strengthen support for defense spending.

INTERVIEWER: In this program I'll probably try to explain what the policy -- who the policy makers are, as compared to the public. Can you do that for us?

MR. KULL: Who they are -- you mean define them?

INTERVIEWER: What's -- yeah, what's the definition of these policy makers, the opinion shapers, the elite.

MR. KULL: Yeah. Well, there's this - all these different ways to use the term. And we struggle with this one at times.

The -- gee, I'm not quite sure how to say that.

The -- there are several levels of the policy making community. One are what you might call the policy makers in the sense of those who really make decisions, and this includes, you know, of course, the highest levels of the executive branch and the influential members of Congress and, of course, ultimately, Congress itself. There are also very influential players in the high levels of the military. And then there's, beyond that, a broader policy community which includes people at other levels of government, policy analysts in think tanks and, of course, journalists, who play a critical role. And altogether you could call that the policy community. And the way that policy community thinks about the public is very potent. It's really more potent than the public itself.

INTERVIEWER: That was good.

MR. KULL: I don't know if that --

INTERVIEWER: Yeah. Yeah, that was good. Glenn, can you think of any --

CAMERAMAN Yeah, I have a couple of things. Just one, in your polling is there a different response from people depending on the phrase you use, like, "How do you feel about the Pentagon," versus, "How do you feel about our men and women in armed forces, or men and women in uniform." In other words, does the term you use to represent the Department of Defense affect people's opinions of the institution?

MR. KULL: The -- there is a positive attitude about the military itself. And I think that goes beyond just the men and women in the uniform, there's just a feeling that it's been successful and that -- in the Gulf War, and that -- and a feeling that it's -- they're good people who are committed to doing a good job. There is, it seems, based on a number of poll questions, a little more suspicion of the Pentagon. The assumption that at some high level the decisions are being made that will lead to higher levels of defense spending than is sometimes necessary. There's a feeling that the Pentagon tends to overplay threats a bit to the public. Was that --

INTERVIEWER: That's good.

CAMERAMAN I talked to you earlier about the Newsweek poll that mentioned how Americans feel, where Americans feel a threat coming from, is it external or internal.

MR. KULL: Oh, the threat. Okay.

INTERVIEWER: Have you come up with anything, or have you seen polls that talk to that issue? Where Americans see the threat coming from, is it an external threat, are they more worried about, you know, rogue states, are they more worried about internal issues here at home.

MR. KULL: Internal issues are like militia, Oklahoma city bombing, that kind of thing?

CAMERAMAN Yeah -- I mean, do those sort of concerns -- militias, internal state terrorism here -- are they more worried about that, as opposed to --

MR. KULL: Well, Americans are more concerned about domestic affairs in general than they are external affairs or foreign affairs. They're concerned about the economy or they're concerned about jobs or they're concerned about crime or they're concerned about education. Those are more salient to their mind than any kind of external threat. At the same time, though, they do see that the American economy is growing more interdependent with the world economy so that they see that it's in the U.S. interest to contribute to efforts to maintain world stability.

But as far as threats, I mean, I don't think -- I don't think they quite juxtapose it that way. It's sort of hard to -- are they concerned -- they're concerned about terrorists and internal, external, more or less -- I'm not sure -- I haven't seen data that really compares those two.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. Just go through the budget exercise and how --

MR. KULL: Try to do it more succinctly.

INTERVIEWER: Right.

MR. KULL: Most Americans, if you --

In response to the question, "Are we spending too much, too little, or about right on defense spending," most Americans center pretty much around the "About right" position. It tends to lean a little bit toward the feeling that we spend too much but generally they're fairly sanguine. And yet, if you probe a little bit deeper you find that that feeling is based on some misperception about how much we're actually spending. Because when we presented in another budget -- in an exercise where we were --

Maybe I should start from the beginning.

CAMERAMAN I need to change tapes.

(End of Side A.)

CAMERAMAN Okay, we're ready.

MR. KULL: So I'll start from the top?

When Americans are asked, "How do you feel about the current level of defense spending, are we spending too little, too much, or about right," they tend to center around that we're spending "About right." And yet that attitude seems to be based on some misunderstanding about how much U.S. is actually spending. Because when we, in another exercise, presented to them a breakout of the current budget, the current discretionary budget, and they could see how defense spending related to other elements of the budget and then asked them how they -- how they wanted that balance to be, they cut defense spending very deeply. On average, they cut it 42 percent. So, clearly, they -- this feeling that, "Oh, it's okay the way it is," is based on misunderstandings about how much is actually going to defense.

INTERVIEWER: That was great. That'll be perfect, because I was planning to use a chart that shows discretionary spending and --

MR. KULL: It does appear that with the end of the Cold War the willingness to cut defense seems to be increasing. There were exercises, these budget exercises done in 1989, in 1991, and then just recently in -- the one that we did. And in 1989 the average respondent cut defense spending 9 percent, in 1991 they cut defense spending 17 percent, and now, in 1996, they cut it 42 percent. So there seems to be a growing sense that defense is not as high a priority in spending.

INTERVIEWER: And yet defense spending seems to be going back up again.

MR. KULL: Or at least it's not -- it did go down some and then it's just kind of hit a plateau and not gone further.

INTERVIEWER: Well, they're talking about going up again.

The issue of multilateral involvement with the U.S. and that is, I hear reports here and there that U.S. support for United Nations peacekeeping is waning, and I was just wondering if you have -- what you have seen in surveys and polls that you've come across.

MR. KULL: American public pretty much supports the idea of the United Nations peacekeeping. Are we rolling?

INTERVIEWER: Yes.

MR. KULL: I'm sorry. American public pretty much supports the idea of United Nations peacekeeping. Consistently, about two-thirds say that they support the idea of contributing U.S. troops to peacekeeping operations, and this has been consistent for a number of years. Even shortly after the fatalities in Somalia in October of 1993, even then there was a poll taken in which 71 percent said that they support -- still supported contributing to the U.N. peacekeeping operations.

The U.N. in general is popular among the American public. More than 80 percent say they would like to see the United Nations strengthened, and it turns out they already think that the U.N. is far bigger than it is, far bigger budget than it really has, and when in this exercise we did where we had respondents balance the budget, on average they quadrupled spending on the United Nations and U.N. peacekeeping.

INTERVIEWER: What about spending -- our military spending relative to what our allies spend, and the issue of burden-sharing. You know, how do Americans feel about that?

MR. KULL: There is a feeling that other countries should be doing more. That the allies should do more and the countries that we defend should be doing more. And there is a feeling that if they did do more then the U.S. could spend less; in fact, the U.S. defense budget could be cut by as much as 25 percent or so if the countries that we help defend would carry more of their share of the burden.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. I think that's probably every question that I've got. Have we covered everything?

CAMERAMAN Okay --

MR. KULL: -- many American policy makers, when they speak to the public, emphasize this point that America has to be a strong leader in the world. Interestingly, among the public that argument is not particularly persuasive. It's been tested relative to other arguments, and this kind of argument is one of the least persuasive. There's a feeling right now that the U.S. is excessively playing the role of dominant world leader and world police man, and there's this desire for the U.S. to move into a role in relation to other countries where it's contributing its fair share to multilateral efforts, where it's playing a strong role, but it's not playing so much the dominant role.

And that's -- in some ways, you might say, well, the public isn't necessarily realistic about that because sometimes it's hard to bring about that kind of multilateral decision-making, but it's still the direction that the public wants to go and that they would like to see American defense spending be consistent with a movement in that direction.

INTERVIEWER: What about the public deferring to politicians and their judgment on levels of military spending or foreign policy issues like engagement around the world?

MR. KULL: Well, Americans have a strong sense of what their values are and what they think America's role in the world should be. When it comes to the question of whether we need a specific weapon system or that weapon system, they're not really in a position to make those judgments. So they tended to defer to the leadership on those questions. So if the leadership says, "Okay, we don't need that, we can cut," then they -- there's clear evidence that they'll go along with that.

If the leadership says, "Well, no, we need to -- we need this new weapon system," they tend to be dubious, but they also are -- find it difficult to simply say, "Well, we don't need it," because they're not the experts, how are they to know?

INTERVIEWER: Great. Thank you very much.

(End of proceedings as recorded.)