Inconstant Care: Public Attitudes Towards Force Protection and Civilian Casualties in the United States, United Kingdom, and Israel
Author | Janina Dill,Scott D. Sagan,Benjamin Valentino |
DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00220027221119768 |
Published date | 01 April 2023 |
Date | 01 April 2023 |
Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Journal of Conflict Resolution
2023, Vol. 67(4) 587–616
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/00220027221119768
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Inconstant Care: Public
Attitudes Towards Force
Protection and Civilian
Casualties in the United
States, United Kingdom, and
Israel
Janina Dill
1
, Scott D. Sagan
2
, and Benjamin Valentino
3
Abstract
The choice between protecting friendly soldiers or foreign civilians is a critical strategic
dilemma faced in modern war. Prevailing theories suggest that casualties among both
groups depress war support in Western democratic societies. Yet we know little about
how ordinary citizens balance force protection and civilian casualty avoidance, and
whether public opinion differs across Western democracies. Using survey experi-
ments, we test three micro-foundations for what we call individuals’“harm-transfer
preferences:”self-interest, perception of soldiers’consent to risk-taking, and na-
tionalism. We find that respondents’perception of soldiers’consent and respondents’
nationalism explain individual-level variation in harm-transfer preferences. Moreover,
Israeli citizens are significantly more likely than American or British citizens to prefer
protecting friendly forces over avoiding foreign civilian casualties. This is associa ted
with higher levels of nationalism and the perceptions that soldiers do not consent to
risking their lives in Israel compared to the United States and the United Kingdom.
1
Oxford University, Oxford, UK
2
Stanford University, Stanford CA, USA
3
Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA
Corresponding Author:
Benjamin Valentino, Government, Dartmouth College, 6108 Silsby Hall, Hanover, NH 03755-3547, USA.
Email: benjamin.a.valentino@dartmouth.edu
Keywords
civilian casualties, public opinion, use of force, force protection, military recruitment
In 2019 and 2020, the U.S.-led international coalition in Afghanistan killed approx-
imately 1,000 civilians (United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan 2020;
United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan 2021). These deaths occurred
despite the fact that coalition members went to great lengths to reduce expected
“collateral damage”from attacks on military targets (Corn and Schoettler 2015;Dill
2015;Kahl 2007). Pre-planned air operations, as a result, rarely cause large numbers of
civilian deaths. Unplanned air strikes to protect friendly troops who have come under
enemy fire and ground engagements in populated areas, however, are much more likely
to claim civilian lives (Human Rights Watch 2008, 3f; Center for Civilians in Conflict
2019, 11 & 14; United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan 2020, 6). In these
urgent “troops in contact”situations, military decision-makers face two powerful, but
frequently divergent imperatives: protect friendly soldiers or spare foreign civilians.
Whether soldiers assume additional risks to reduce expected harm to civilians or
whether military decision-makers put foreign civilian lives on the line to minimize risk
to friendly forces partly determines who bears the human costs of war in places like Iraq
and Afghanistan. International law demands that soldiers take “constant care”to spare
civilians in war, but what this rule precisely requires is unclear and contested (Protocol
Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, Article 57 (a) (ii), 1977).
1
When Western democracies go to war, the choice between sparing friendly soldiers
or foreign civilians represents a critical strategic dilemma. In democratic societies,
friendly troop deaths depress war support. At the same time, foreign civilian casualties
can also be strategically costly.
2
Scholars have shown that in counterinsurgency op-
erations local civilian populations often punish counterinsurgent forces for “collateral
damage”by increasing support to the insurgents (Condra and Shapiro 2012;Felter and
Shapiro 2017;Lyall et al. 2013). In some circumstances, excessive foreign civilian
casualties also depress war support among democratic publics (Johns and Davies
2019). Since public opinion exerts a powerful effect on how democratic states wage war
(Tomz, Weeks, and Yarhi Milo 2020), understanding how ordinary citizens balance the
conflicting imperatives of force protection and civilian casualty avoidance is critical to
understanding the conduct of modern war.
The prevailing theory of military casualty aversion, dating back to Immanuel Kant,
suggests that the most important source of variation in casualty tolerance is regime type.
Kant argued that because democratic leaders are accountable to their citizens, de-
mocracies are less likely than autocracies to risk their soldiers’lives in war (Valentino,
Huth, and Croco 2010). The prevailing theory of attitudes towards civilian casualties
suggests that citizens in prosperous Western societies have internalized a norm de-
manding the protection of foreign civilians in war (Crawford 2013;Pinker 2011). Yet
there appears to be significant variation in attitudes towards the human costs of war
588 Journal of Conflict Resolution 67(4)
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