The ‘ultimate insurance’ or an ‘irrelevance’ for national security needs? Partisanship, foreign policy attitudes, and the gender gap in British public opinion towards nuclear weapons

Abstract

Only two European countries – France and the UK, both NATO members – have nuclear weapons, and leading politicians have called for the UK and EU to maintain close military and security links post-Brexit. In the context of the Trident renewal debate and the UK government's recently published integrated defence and security review, this article uses data from the new UK Security Survey to analyse attitudes towards the possession of nuclear weapons among the British public. It assesses three key theorical strands in the wider scholarly literature on public opinion and states’ use of military force: domestic political attitudes, foreign policy predispositions, and the ‘gender gap’. We find that all three theoretical perspectives contribute to the underpinnings of contemporary public opinion towards nuclear weapons. Support for the retention of Britain's nuclear deterrent is associated with being a Conservative Party supporter, favouring Brexit, endorsing superior military power worldwide as an important foreign policy goal, wanting to protect the transatlantic relationship, and with being male. The article makes a distinctive contribution to the growing subfield of research on public opinion and foreign policy, while the findings advance wider empirical understanding of contemporary citizen engagement in a key dimension of security policy.

From Moscow With a Mushroom Cloud? Russian Public Attitudes to the Use of Nuclear Weapons in a Conflict With NATO

“…Although we did not explicitly formulate any hypotheses regarding the socio-demographic factors, we wish to highlight an intriguing association between gender and the attitude toward military strikes in our study. Russian women are clearly more averse to any kind of proposed military strikes in the conflict, in line with earlier research on a “gender gap” in views on the use of military force in the West (Eichenberg 2016; Clements and Thomson 2022). Russian men seem to differentiate more between the two types of strikes: while they seem to be relatively supportive of conventional strikes, their disapproving views become much closer to those of Russian women in the nuclear domain – an interesting finding that, in our view, warrants further research.…”

“…Although we did not explicitly formulate any hypotheses regarding the sociodemographic factors, we wish to highlight an intriguing association between gender and the attitude toward military strikes in our study. Russian women are clearly more averse to any kind of proposed military strikes in the conflict, in line with earlier research on a "gender gap" in views on the use of military force in the West (Eichenberg 2016;Clements and Thomson 2022).…”

Gender and Generation Differences in Finnish Defence Policy Opinions 2000–2020

“…In Israel gender and age differences in attitudes towards peace and conflict have not been significant (Fielding & Penny, 2009). Recently, similar findings from the United Kingdom show that women have tended to be less supportive of the use of force and of increasing defence spending (Clements & Thomson, 2022).…”

Between role adaptation and contestation: the UK’s status as a nuclear weapon state after Brexit

“…Contestation particularly serves to highlight the 'Englishness' of the UK's status as a nuclear weapon state, and the role conceptions associated with it. As a study by Clements and Thomson (2021: 3) has highlighted, 'support [for] retaining Britain's nuclear deterrent is associated with supporting the Conservative Party, favouring Brexit, endorsing keeping superior military power worldwide as an important foreign policy goal, wanting to protect the 'special relationship' with the US, and with being male'. While their results do not offer a breakdown of regional differentiation, Scotland both rejected Brexit, and has historically low support for the Conservative Party.…”