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

journals.sagepub.com/home/jcr

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)