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.”