Americans are losing trust in the military, a new survey showed.
The Ronald Reagan Institute poll released Wednesday found that in less than three years, trust and confidence fell from 70% to 56%.
The February survey found young Americans are the most pessimistic about the military, with just 38% under the age of 30 having confidence. Among women, 51% had confidence, a drop of 16% since 2018; among men, the level was 63%, a drop of 11% from 2018.
Yet the military remained the most trusted of the seven institutions compared in the survey, which included law enforcement, Congress, the president, Supreme Court, public schools and news media.
''While the support of the military has fallen, it remains the most trusted institution by a large margin and a large majority of Americans do see a role for the military in responding to a wide range of domestic scenarios, from natural disasters ... to helping control the pandemic and even in cases where we're seeing domestic unrest in the form of protests, domestic terrorism, or engage an event of insurrection by U.S. citizens,'' Roger Zakheim, Washington director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, said about the decreases, Defense One reported.
He added that Americans "are experiencing a sense of pessimism … [in] almost every question either in confidence or trust, or reliance on an ally, for example,'' he said, the news outlet reported. ''The numbers are generally ticking down.”
The survey found levels dropped when it comes to law enforcement, with 39% saying they had trust compared with 50% in 2018. But confidence ticked up for the presidency — to 30% from 28% — and Congress — up to 10% from 5% in 2018.
The poll also found that an increasing number of Americans are more concerned about internal threats to the United States, such as domestic terrorism, as opposed to threats posed by other countries or groups.
But there’s somewhat of a partisan divide; the poll showed 69% of Democrats viewing internal threats as greater than or equal to external threats and 55% of Republicans saying the same.
The survey also showed 67% see China as an ''enemy''of the United States.
''We've seen an annual increase in concerns about China, but this year's survey shows that really, an increasing number of Americans believe that China poses the greatest threat to the United States,'' Zakheim said, noting 37% say China is the country posing the greatest threat to the United States compared with 21% three years ago.
One in five Americans also consider Russia an ally, down nine percentage points from the survey's findings in 2019, Defense One reported.
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