There’s a popular observation among political commentators that Americans want a beneficial — but cheap — government. This is typically offered as a lament from those frustrated by the public’s unwillingness to accept basic math and embrace measures that would actually reduce the long-term debt. But it’s worth considering how this American tendency is contributing not only to the nation’s fiscal woes, but also to its current foreign policy challenges.

The current prevailing view in Washington is that Russian aggression in Ukraine and the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria have turned the public more hawkish and interventionist. And this view is backed up by a lot of recent polling. For instance, a Pew poll found a growing number of Americans who thought the United States was doing “too little” to solve international problems, while 54 percent said President Obama’s approach to foreign policy and national security was “not tough enough.”

A Wall Street Journal poll found that an overwhelming 74 percent of Americans favored at least air strikes against the Islamic State. But before seizing on this as evidence that Americans are now on the side of the uber-hawks, it’s telling that just 34 percent supported sending combat troops.

Another way of thinking about this is that Americans don’t like it when the bad guys are kicking the U.S. around on the world stage and the president doesn’t seem to have any sort of plan to do anything about it. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that, in actuality, they are willing to do whatever it takes to stop the bad guys.

Even at the most hawkish moment in modern U.S. history, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, there were limits to the sacrifices that Americans were willing to make.

President Bush anticipated this in his speech to a joint session of Congress following the attacks. He told the members of the military to be ready, but advised Americans to go back to their lives and keep the economy thriving. There was never a broader effort to mobilize the home front. And when he invaded Iraq and attempted to build a democracy there, he did so with a relatively small number of troops intending to leave a light footprint.

In time, Americans turned on the war and elected Obama on a pledge to end the conflict. The decision to withdraw troops from Iraq — blamed for creating the vacuum that led to the Islamic State — was overwhelmingly supported by the American public at the time, even among those who assumed it would turn into a safe haven for terrorists.

In a CNN/ORC poll taken in December 2011, around the time of the withdrawal, 54 percent said it was unlikely Iraq would “continue to have a democratic government that will not be overthrown by terrorists”; 60 percent said it was unlikely Iraqi security forces would “be able to ensure safety and security in Iraq without assistance from the United States” and 63 percent said it was unlikely Iraq would “be able to prevent terrorists from using the country as a base of operations for planning attacks against the United States.” Despite this pessimism, 78 percent of Americans in the same poll said they approved of the decision to withdraw. In addition, polls have consistently shown that Americans were more supportive of cuts to foreign aid and military spending than domestic entitlement programs.

When it comes to domestic policy, politicians running for office typically eschew the idea that any tradeoffs exist. They offer tax simplification proposals that promise to lower rates by getting rid of loopholes and deductions, but they don’t specify which ones. They make elaborate promises about new benefits they plan to offer, but are suddenly silenced when it comes to detailing the programs they plan to cut to offset the new spending.

A similar process happens on foreign policy. Non-interventionists, who trace every national security problem back to an earlier U.S. policy, offer a promised land where butting out of world affairs actually makes the nation safer. And those who advocate military interventions are often not up front about the financial and human commitment needed to sustain such campaigns, or of the potential consequences of action.

During his campaigns and his presidency, Obama has conveyed the idea that reduced military engagement and a friendlier posture toward other nations would keep the nation’s enemies at bay.

So it wasn’t surprising to see Obama try to thread the needle in his prime time speech on the Islamic State — seeking to fulfill Americans’ desire for action while promising he wouldn’t get too entangled in another foreign conflict.

The reality is that if Americans don’t want to bear the costs, they will have to tolerate a certain level of chaos in the world and the insecurity that comes along with it. On the other hand, if they want the U.S. to project strength and leadership abroad — and to aggressively respond to threats against American interests — there’s no way to do it on the cheap. ◆