How Leaders Promote War by Exploiting Our Core Concerns

Abstract

The pursuit of war is the most consequential of all decisions for a country’s leaders. Taking up arms brings with it the likelihood of death for thousands and a dramatically altered way of life for millions. While circumstances vary considerably from one violent conflict to another, from a psychological perspective there is surprising consistency in the public appeals that leaders use to garner support for their war agenda. My own research suggests that the selling of war often relies on appeals to five specific core concerns, revolving around issues of vulnerability, injustice, distrust, superiority, and helplessness. These five concerns are key lenses through which individuals, groups, and nations make sense of the world. For most of us, nothing is more important than providing security for the people we care about (vulnerability). We often react to perceived mistreatment with anger and resentment, and an urge to right wrongs and punish those we hold responsible (injustice). We tend to divide the world into those who are untrustworthy and those who are deserving of our trust (distrust). We frequently insist that we are better than others in important ways (superiority). And we strive to avoid feeling helpless, and to instead control what happens in our lives (helplessness). In abstract and oversimplified form, a leader’s standard call to arms—legitimizing the use of violence on a massive scale—looks like this: “Our nation is facing grave danger from outsiders. Terrible injustices have been perpetrated against us. Our trust in others has led only to betrayal. But we are a special people far greater than our enemies. And we will prevail in our efforts to defend ourselves and to secure our future.” Relying on examples from public speeches, in this essay the use of appeals to these five core concerns in a specific and tragic context is examined: the Bush administration’s promotion of the 2003 U.S. invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, as part of the “Global War on Terror.”