Nationalism, Threat, and Support for External Intervention: Evidence from Iraq

Abstract

What drives citizens’ attitudes toward external military intervention in a society experiencing armed conflict? From colonial Algeria to contemporary Afghanistan, conventional wisdom holds that nationalism is a critical source of opposition and resistance to such intervention. In contrast, we argue that the impact of nationalism on views of external intervention hinges on the strategic context facing the target nation. When the country’s principal threat is from the intervener itself, nationalism will indeed reduce support for outside intervention. But when the threat comes from elsewhere, nationalism will actually boost support for external intervention to defeat it. To investigate these dynamics, we use public opinion data from a unique survey fielded across Iraq in 2016 that includes questions about the military interventions against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant by both the US-led coalition and Iran, as well as a potential military intervention by Russia. The results are broadly consistent with our argument, showing that, unlike other factors such as sectarianism, nationalism pushes Iraqis to seek foreign military help from any quarter when deemed necessary for national survival.