Americas

Home page

Americas

Americans still view fighting terrorism as top foreign policy goal: survey

20 February 2013 18:13 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Americans still tag preventing terrorism as their country's top foreign policy priority, according to a Gallup poll released on Wednesday, APA reports quoting APA reports quoting Xinhua.

The survey came more than a decade after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington D.C. that killed nearly 3,000 people.

Eighty-eight percent of Americans ranked preventing international terror attacks as No. 1 on a list of nine foreign policy issues, followed by preventing the spread of nuclear weapons -- with 83 percent of respondents naming that issue as the second most important.

Americans ranked securing energy sources third on the list, followed by helping other countries develop, promoting favorable trade policies for the United States, and supporting democracy and human rights abroad.

The survey showed that Americans are most likely to say international issues having a direct impact on the United States should be very important foreign policy goals, rather than issues that do not directly impact Americans, Gallup said.

Americans give a lower priority to matters that involve the United States assisting other countries, and those preferences have been stable over the past 12 years, Gallup noted.

"That is not to say Americans are highly isolationist, as two- thirds or more believe a variety of actions designed to help out other countries are at least somewhat important for the United States to do," it added. "But on a relative basis, Americans show much more consensus on prioritizing foreign policy matters that have a more obvious effect on the United States."