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This article seeks to explain variations in public support for the deployment of military troops to Afghanistan by means of the strategic narratives employed by national governments. Focusing on the UK, Canada, the Netherlands and Denmark, we argue that strong narratives about the why-what-and-how of overseas military missions increase the likelihood of popular support, while weak story lines are likely to result in a souring public opinion environment. Contrary to most current studies of public opinion and the support for international missions, we thus emphasise the role played by political leaders in shaping public attitudes towards the projection of military power. Surely, politicians are affected by polls and the wishes of public opinion Á but popular attitudes are far from immune from political elites' attempts to rationalise the use of military force via strategic narratives.

In this article we broaden the conventional understanding of prestige and show that prestige-seeking played a major role in the Danish and Norwegian decisions to provide military support to post-Cold War US-led wars. Both countries made costly military contributions in the hope of increasing their standing and prestige in Washington. Both governments regarded prestige as a form of soft power, which they could later convert into access, influence, and US support. Our findings are far from trivial. They make a theoretical contribution by demonstrating that small powers understand and seek prestige in ways that differ fundamentally from the ways great powers do. They also help to explain why smaller US allies made costly contributions to the Balkan, Afghan, Iraq, and Libyan wars at a time when there was no direct threat to their national security and their security dependence on the United States was low. The high value that small US allies attach to their visibility and prestige in Washington suggests that it is far easier for the United States to obtain military support from smaller allies than Realist studies of burden-sharing and collective action problems would lead us to expect.

Much to their own surprise, successive Danish governments have succeeded in maintaining the highest level of public support among the nations contributing to the NATO mission in Afghanistan, while suffering the highest number of fatalities per capita. We explain this puzzle in a parsimonious fashion manner using a novel analytical framework derived from elite-competition theory, the event-driven school and the literature on strategic narratives. The Danish government initially built strong political and popular support by making a case for war that resonated with broadly shared pre-existing interests and values (national defence and support for democracy and human/ women's rights), and role conceptions (supporting NATO and US-led military operations as a responsible member of international society). Succeeding governments subsequently maintained a high level of political consensus on Afghanistan through a process of continuous consultation and consensus-building. The political elites supporting the mission then sustained the high level of public support by defining success in ways that did not involve 'winning' but focused instead on the attainment of realistic short-term, tactical objectives such as police training and building of schools, and by speaking with one voice to the media. This effectively reduced the Danish media to a conveyor belt passively transmitting the positive views of the political parties supporting the Afghanistan operation and the officers and soldiers carrying it out.

In this article, we argue that Realism recently has eschewed big and important questions of war and peace and that revived Classical Realism can help bring Realism back on track. Modern Realists tend to assume that states are either all status quo players or all revisionists, and the result is a slippery grasp of the sources and dynamics of international change. To revive Classical Realism, we examine three dominant sets of criticism. We notably return to the classical texts of Realism to show that the classics were in fact not reductionist: they did not reduce either systemic or national phenomena (third and second image theory) to human nature (first image). Classical Realists understood the many intricate and delicate connections between these levels, and it is modern era Realists who are reductionists because they reduce explanations to systemic phenomena. We show how Classical Realism can respond in strength to its critics and ask the kind of research questions that again will advance our understanding of international change.