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Kettles of Hawks: Public Opinion on the Nuclear Taboo and Noncombatant Immunity in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Israel

[journal article]

Dill, Janina
Sagan, Scott D.
Valentino, Benjamin A.

Abstract

Recent scholarship has established that a majority of Americans will support the use of nuclear weapons and violate the principle of noncombatant immunity when American lives are on the line. Some scholars contend, however, that these hawkish American attitudes are an outlier and that other Western ... view more

Recent scholarship has established that a majority of Americans will support the use of nuclear weapons and violate the principle of noncombatant immunity when American lives are on the line. Some scholars contend, however, that these hawkish American attitudes are an outlier and that other Western democratic publics have more fully internalized the nuclear taboo, as well as the prohibition on deliberately killing civilians. To investigate cross-national attitudes on these important norms, we conducted a survey experiment of American, British, French, and Israeli citizens. We find that American attitudes are not exceptional. Rather, Israeli respondents display the most hawkish preferences; French and American citizens are roughly equally hawkish; and the British public is consistently the least supportive of nuclear use or targeting civilians. Categorical prohibitions - against nuclear use and targeting civilians - do little to shape public opinion in these four countries. Instead, public opinion in each state follows the same consequentialist logic: a majority or near majority of respondents are willing to support using nuclear weapons when they are more effective than conventional options, but support declines when collateral civilian deaths rise. Respondents’ preferences for compatriots over foreign civilians and respondents' retributiveness help explain individual-level variation in attitudes.... view less

Keywords
ISSP; United States of America; nuclear power; public opinion; France; Great Britain; Israel; warfare; ethics; morality; Western world; international comparison

Classification
Peace and Conflict Research, International Conflicts, Security Policy
Political Process, Elections, Political Sociology, Political Culture

Free Keywords
Atomwaffen; Atomwaffeneinsatz; Kriegsmoral; zivile Opfer; ISSP 2003

Document language
English

Publication Year
2022

Page/Pages
p. 1-31

Journal
Security Studies, 31 (2022) 1

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2022.2038663

ISSN
1556-1852

Status
Published Version; peer reviewed

Licence
Creative Commons - Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0


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© 2007 - 2025 Social Science Open Access Repository (SSOAR).
Based on DSpace, Copyright (c) 2002-2022, DuraSpace. All rights reserved.