… An interest in understanding Americans’ views on American diplomacy and diplomats – how they are selected and trained, what it is that they do – formed the basis of a new report, undertaken with the support of the Una Chapman Cox Foundation and conducted by the nonprofit RAND Corporation. The report details the results of two surveys in which a nationally representative sample of more than 2,000 American adults answered questionnaires in two successive years, 2020 and 2021. In between the surveys, we ran several focus group sessions that probed some of the survey questions more deeply.
What we found was that although public opinion toward American diplomats was generally favorable, regardless of personal political ideology, Americans have a limited understanding of how diplomats are selected, and how diplomacy interacts with other elements of America’s national security establishment. CONTINUED
Michael Pollard & Charles Ries (RAND), The Hill
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