Most Americans Think Biden ‘Weak’ Commander-in-Chief Amid Growing Fears of WWIII

Last week, a YouGov survey found that 61 percent of Americans think a new world war is either “very likely” or “somewhat likely” to break out over the next 5-10 years. The worrying survey results come amid continued efforts by Washington and its allies to set Eastern Europe, the Middle East, as well as East and Southeast Asia on fire.

More than half of Americans believe President Joe Biden is a “weaker” commander-in-chief than his recent predecessors.

According to new polling of 1,114 likely voters by Rasmussen Reports, 53 percent of likely voters think Biden is “weaker” in his capacity as chief of the military than past presidents. Some 24 percent believe he is a “stronger” C-in-C. Another 20 percent believe he’s “about the same.”

The results mark a 10-point jump from polling by Rasmussen from May 2021, in which 43 percent of respondents said they thought Biden was “weaker” than other recent C-in-Cs, with 32 percent saying he was “stronger,” and 18 percent saying he was “about the same.”

More detailed polling by Rasmussen from October 2023 found that support for Biden as a military leader is particularly weak among Republicans and independents (just 15 and 20 percent of whom think he is stronger than his predecessors, respectively), with 51 percent of surveyed Democrats saying he is “stronger.”

Despite plans to spend a record $886 billion on defense in the current fiscal year, the United States military entered 2024 with its smallest active duty size since the Second World War, with personnel numbers expected to drop from 1.39 million last year to 1.28 million service members now as recruiters face difficulties enticing skeptical young people to join, and existing servicemen retire amid the military’s increasingly “woke” culture, conflicts surrounding vax mandates, and falling morale following decades of illegal US wars abroad.

Rasmussen’s polling comes in the wake of concerns voiced by Americans in a YouGov poll released last week that a new world war might be just around the corner. In a survey of 1,000 US adult citizens taken between early February and early March, 22 percent of those polled by YouGov said a new global conflagration is "very likely," with 39 percent saying it is "somewhat likely," and just 17 and five percent saying it is "not very likely" or "not at all likely," respectively.

Some 77 percent believe that if a new world war broke out, the US would inevitably be involved, with only six percent saying the US would not be involved. Meanwhile, 72 percent said they expect Russia to also be involved, and 69 percent said that China would be involved. Americans believe their country could ally alongside the UK (67 percent), Ukraine (58 percent), and Israel (58 percent) in the hypothetical conflict.

The poll also found that 45 percent of Americans believe their coalition would “win” in a conflict against both Russia and China. Only six percent of those polled said they would volunteer to fight, with nine percent saying they would fight if conscripted, 13 percent that they would refuse service, and 60 percent saying they don’t qualify. However, 16 percent said they would volunteer if the US itself was under threat of an imminent invasion.

Heightened concerns among Americans regarding the risks of a global war come amid efforts by hawkish neoliberal and neoconservative policymakers in Washington to fuel global crises – from the NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine to the conflict in the Middle East involving US ally Israel, to Washington’s increasingly aggressive efforts to hem China in in Asia.

Former president and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has warned repeatedly in recent months that President Biden’s policies, particularly in Ukraine, have put the world “on the brink of World War III.”

“The world is in tremendous danger. We’re in danger of possibly a World War III. And we have a man who’s absolutely the worst president in the history of our country – he can’t put two sentences together, he’s not going to be able to negotiate with Putin or Xi or Kim Jong Un of North Korea. Not going to be able to negotiate with anybody. All he knows how to do is drop bombs all over the place – meaningless bombs, except they kill a lot of people and cost a lot of money,” Trump said in February ahead of a Supreme Court ruling on his ability to appear on the ballot in Colorado for the 2024 presidential election.