The observation that groups unify in the face of common threats is long-standing. At the level of the nation-state, this is called the “rally-'round-the-flag” phenomenon. In the case of the United States, the rally phenomenon is measured as a surge of public approval for the president when the nation is involved in an international crisis. Two hypotheses have been offered for why this surge of support occurs: (1) patriotism, as individuals respond to a threat by identifying with an in-group, in this case the nation and its president; and (2) opinion leadership, as the information environment changes because opposition leaders fall silent or support the president during a crisis and a portion of the public follows those elite partisan cues. Through three waves of scholarship, empirical evidence has cumulated about whether, when, why, and how much people rally in response to international crises (although much of the evidence is based on dynamics within the United States). The public’s reaction to a crisis is not automatic; sometimes public approval for the president goes up; other times the president’s approval ratings go down. A positive rally effect is associated with a variety of conditions, such as how prominently the event is reported, whether the White House actively frames the issue, the amount of criticism from opposition elites, and whether the country is at war or has recently concluded a war. The sizes of such rallies are variable, but on average, rallies in response to the deployment of force or international crises are small. Only wars (or other spectacular events like a large-scale terrorist attack) consistently provoke sizable rallies and these big events elicit an emotional reaction from citizens and a self-identification with the nation. Both hypotheses—patriotism and opinion leadership—are helpful in explaining why rallies occur and why they taper off over time. The “diversionary theory of war” or the “diversionary use of force” is, for obvious reasons, a companion literature to the scholarship on rally effects. The logic is simple: if the public rallies around its leader in the face of external threats, then the possibility exists that politicians will intentionally create crises or deploy military forces or start wars to enhance their own political fortunes. Scholars have spent much effort trying to locate patterns of diversionary behavior by American presidents and other world leaders with inconsistent and inconclusive results. But the cumulative findings from the rally-'round-the-flag scholarship show that leaders can’t expect much of a public rally from any but the most spectacular of international crises, such as full-scale war. These findings from the rally literature help to explain the lack of consistent empirical support for diversionary theory.

We use data from the Leadership Opinion Project (LOP), a panel survey of American opinion leaders which brackets the end of the Cold War, to investigate two interrelated questions about the structure of elites' foreign policy beliefs. We assess, first, whether the militant internationalism/cooperative internationalism scheme, developed primarily by Wittkopf (1981, 1990) and Holsti and Rosenau (1990), has continued relevance now that the USSR has collapsed; and second, whether Hurwitz and Peffley's (1987, 1990; see also Peffley and Hurwitz, 1992; Hurwitz, Peffley, and Seligson, 1993) domain‐specific, hierarchical model of mass belief structure can be applied to elitebelief systems. The evidence indicates that respondents' past stances toward military and cooperative ventures are highly predictive of their views once the Cold War ends. This continuity in leaders' postures toward international affairs, in itself, suggests that “enemy images” of the Soviet Union were less important within elite belief systems than Hurwitz and Peffley (1990; see also Peffley and Hurwitz, 1992) posited for the mass public. The starkest difference, however, between their findings for mass samples and our findings for a leadership sample centers on the importance of ideology in constraining foreign policy beliefs, and the close interconnection with domestic beliefs. Consequently, as we illustrate, predictable ideological divisions among opinion leaders persist in the post–Cold War era. In sum, our evidence demonstrates considerable continuity in elites' beliefs despite profound changes in the global system, and reaffirms the importance that ideology plays in structuring attitudes within elite belief systems.

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In the US context, scholars have demonstrated that public support for military intervention is influenced by the elite debate as presented in the national news media and that the volume of elite criticism reported is largely determined by opposition in Congress. Because the media “index” the debate among officials in Washington, a lively and comprehensive airing of the pros and cons of a military intervention often depends upon Congressional leaders taking an oppositional stance. But sometimes, American reporters will incorporate a surge of foreign leaders' critical views, even when Congressional leaders support administration policy or when they choose to remain silent due to strategic considerations. The question addressed by this article is whether such departures from traditional indexing behavior—which bring foreign views into media coverage in a significant manner—can be predicted based on the circumstances and journalists' incentives. The article also explores whether high‐visibility opposition by credible foreign leaders, in particular United Nations officials and European allies, can substitute for partisan cues from domestic leaders and invigorate a national debate in a manner that influences public opinion.

Throughout the Cold War, United States national security policy, and the public attitudes that supported it, seemed anchored in the great ideology and power rivalry with the Soviet Union. A basic component of that policy, the ups and downs of American military spending, was largely predictable by changes in the level of Soviet military spending and by public preferences, as expressed in opinion surveys, for increases or decreases in American military spending. Public beliefs about the appropriate level of military spending, moreover, appeared firmly rooted in a larger set of foreign policy beliefs. Attitudes toward the Soviet Union, toward the circumstances justifying the use of military force internationally, and toward cooperating with other countries were all part of a stable and well-defined system of beliefs. In turn, foreign policy attitudes frequently were predictable from a reasonably coherent set of attitudes toward domestic policy.The end of the Cold War brought remarkable changes in both policy and attitudes. The major anchoring point for the rivalry—the Soviet Union itself—has ceased to exist, and Russia no longer poses the same level or kind of military threat. Rationales for U.S. military spending, for the use of military force abroad, and for international cooperation have likewise changed. But in some respects they have not changed so greatly. These historic events present us with an extraordinary opportunity to study the structure of Americans' foreign policy beliefs and the dynamics of attitude change. They also provide a chance to speculate about how changed and stable attitudes may affect national security policy.