Most Americans can’t find it on a map, according to this survey and an accompanying map:
If you think you can identify Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 on a map but not Ukraine, it’s time to watch less CNN.
— LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) April 7, 2014
Details on that survey:
About one in six (16 percent) Americans correctly located Ukraine, clicking somewhere within its borders. … However, the further our respondents thought that Ukraine was from its actual location, the more they wanted the U.S. to intervene militarily. Even controlling for a series of demographic characteristics and participants’ general foreign policy attitudes, we found that the less accurate our participants were, the more they wanted the U.S. to use force, the greater the threat they saw Russia as posing to U.S. interests, and the more they thought that using force would advance U.S. national security interests; all of these effects are statistically significant at a 95 percent confidence level.
These findings don’t surprise Larison:
It makes sense that ignorance about a country’s location and its importance to U.S. security would be associated with a preference for more aggressive policies. Those that know the least about the country and U.S. interests presumably would be more likely to accept arguments that exaggerate the threat to the U.S., especially if they are relying on news sources that sensationalize the events and hype the threat in order to attract an audience. Because these respondents have a poorer understanding of the most basic facts, the more likely they are to fall for alarmist demands for “action” and the less likely they are to have considered the considerable dangers and costs that a hard-line response would almost certainly entail.
But John Patty complains that the survey is being used to ridicule people who don’t deserve it:
There are a lot of clicks in Greenland, Canada, and Alaska. … clicking farther away from Ukraine means that you are, with some positive (and in this case, significant) probability clicking closer to the United States. So, suppose that the study said “those who think the Ukraine is located close to the US are more likely to support military intervention to stem Russian expansion?” Would that be surprising? Would that make you think voters are irrational?
The Dish 