In less than ten years, some members of Gen Z—born roughly between 1997 and 2012—will be eligible to serve as president of the United States. Gen Z’s oldest members are already eligible to serve in the U.S. Congress. The youngest members of Gen Z will turn eighty years old in 2092—not too old to serve as president. This generation’s impact on policy will only grow, particularly as its members take over businesses, government positions, and other positions steering America’s place in the world. The mid twenty-first century will be their moment, and their beliefs and values will deeply shape U.S. domestic and foreign policy. Gen Z came to political consciousness amid the tumult of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the later years of America’s global war on terror, the pressures of great power competition with Russia and China, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war have marked their formative years. It is unsurprising then that Gen Z voices have already begun to impact America’s political discourse. These young people have protested on college campuses and cast their votes in three presidential elections in growing numbers. But what exactly do members of Gen Z agree on? How do they see the world around them, and America’s place in it? Gen Z is demographically and ideologically diverse, but unifying trends in its members’ beliefs reveal broader inclinations in the American public. With that comes insight into the likely trajectory of U.S. foreign policy in an evolving and turbulent global order. To answer these questions, researchers from the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace conducted a poll of Gen Z adults in early 2025.1 Our questions focused on fiercely debated foreign policy issues, from the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine to international actions to combat climate change. The responses revealed a broadly internationalist group, but one that prefers that the United States take a more modest role in the world compared with earlier generations. Like the rest of the country in 2025, Gen Z was polarized by party affiliation on several key policy issues. As might be expected, however, the polarization was much less on a few issues, such as climate change, which stands to have an outsized effect on their lives compared with older generations. We also polled them to ascertain their policy views on Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan and found significant differences along party lines and also with the broader U.S. public.
What Gen Z Thinks About U.S. Foreign Policy | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
