Military should only be used for external threats, more than half of Americans say

Survey finds 58% backing restricting armed forces to external threats amid Trump deployments to US cities

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More than half of Americans believe that the US government should only deploy armed troops in the event of external threats, according to a new survey.

The Reuters/Ipsos survey released on Wednesday found that 58% of Americans believe that the president should only send in armed forces to areas with external threats. Meanwhile, 25% said that they believed the US military could be used for other purposes and 18% said that they were not sure.