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Abstract
Two areas of increasing concern to US security experts and scholars are the increasing polarization of US citizens, and the potential for China to influence the residents of other nations to the detriment of US national security. While there is significant study of interstate coercion in international relations, there are gaps on the use of coercion to weaken or dissolve a coalition, also known as a “wedge strategy.” Similarly, while there is substantial scholarship on the polarization of the US electorate, there is less on the specifics of affective polarization. Specifically, how it may impact public opinion on security policy. Using three survey experiments I test how affective polarization impacts US public opinion of a defense policy in response to an external threat, and how affective polarization influences public opinion on a domestic security policy in response to an internal threat. My third survey experiment is run in the Philippines. I test how Chinese coercive threats influence public support for allowing the US military to conduct combat operations in defense of Taiwan from Filipino territory. The results of this research indicate that while China holds little ability to influence Filipino public opinion with coercive threats during a crisis, US ability to build broad bipartisan support for security policy will indeed be impacted by affective polarization.