Inconstant Care: Public Attitudes Towards Force Protection and Civilian Casualties in the United States, United Kingdom, and Israel

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 experiments, we test three micro-foundations for what we call individuals’ “harm-transfer preferences:” self-interest, perception of soldiers’ consent to risk-taking, and nationalism. 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 associated 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.

Public Support for Self-Defence in Taiwan: The Current State of Research

“…War support research has demonstrated that citizens do respond to civilian casualties by decreasing their support for military action (Dill, Sagan, and Valentino 2023). However, research by Johns and Davies (2019) with U.S. and U.K. respondents showed that citizens are much more sensitive to military than civilian casualties.…”