Poll: Most Americans want to let the world solve its own problems

Most Americans want the rest of the world to love its own problems.
(Image credit: Matt Cowan/Getty Images for Stagecoach)

Most Americans would prefer a more restrained foreign policy and greater attention to solving issues here at home, according to new poll results from Pew Research Center.

Some 57 percent of respondents preferred having the U.S. "deal with its own problems" while letting other countries deal with theirs, while only 37 percent disagreed, saying America should help other nations solve their problems. Broken down along party lines, Democrats were almost evenly split on this question, while nearly two-thirds of Republicans favored dealing with America's own problems over trying to help abroad.

Partisan differences emerge on defense spending, too. While Republicans prefer a less activist foreign policy, they want higher defense spending. And though Democrats are more comfortable with intervention, they want to do it on the cheap.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.