Poll results

US soldiers want fewer ‘nation building’ interventions, more attention at home - poll

After 15 years of wars, a majority of US service members are deeply skeptical about America’s foreign interventions. The US should focus on homeland defense and jobs instead of invading and “stabilizing” countries like Afghanistan or Iraq, a new poll shows.

Most active-duty members of the US military would prefer the government to refrain from overseas missions involving so-called nation-building, a number of costly and ambiguous efforts to reconstruct post-war countries, according to apoll run by the Military Times and Syracuse University's Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF). 

The survey, described by the Military Times as a first-of-its-kind study, included a question: “How do you view the US government’s continued involvement in nation-building efforts, establishing democracies in the Middle East and North Africa using US military and financial support?”

About 55 percent of service members said they “strongly oppose” or “somewhat oppose” those efforts, while 23 percent responded positively to an idea of carrying out such missions. The remaining 22 percent were either unsure or of no opinion on the issue.