Military Aid to Iceland? Most Americans Say Yes

The United States has military defense treaties with over 50 nations around the globe from obvious ones like the United Kingdom and Germany to less predictable ones like Costa Rica and Iceland. What do Americans think we should do if these countries are attacked?

Rasmussen Reports has been asking about a number of the major players in surveys for some time now, but periodically we’re going to run through the list of our lesser-known military commitments to see how Americans think the United States should respond.

In general, Americans are reluctant to embrace the defense commitments required by current treaties. Recent polling has shown that half of all voters believe the U.S. should withdraw troops from Japan and Western Europe.

In our previous surveying, a majority of adults has favored defending militarily only five of 18 countries regularly in the news – Canada, Great Britain, Israel, Germany and Mexico, in that order. 

Now we can add five more countries – Australia, the Netherlands, Norway, Iceland and Italy - to that list. However, only Australia gets a strong commitment from the American people. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

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The survey of 1,000 American Adults were conducted on January 30-31, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.