Casualty Sensitivity Research Articles

Whose War is it Anyway? Explaining the Black-White Gap in Support for the Use of Force Abroad

Building on long-standing work on a “gender gap” in war support, this article documents a recurring “race gap” in which Black Americans display less enthusiasm for war than their White counterparts. We compile time-series data on public opinion during the Iraq War collected from over fifty national polls and successive waves of the Cooperative Congressional Election Study to assess potential explanations for the gap. We show that concerns about casualties best explain lower levels of support for war among Black Americans. Feelings of political alienation and preferences for domestic spending serve as more salient contributors to Black disapproval of war during the George W. Bush years. Meanwhile, having a family member in the military does not explain lower Black support for war. Black antiwar rhetoric suggests that our casualty sensitivity and alienation findings stem from linked fate attitudes and concerns about fairness and “justness” of the war effort among Black Americans.

Polarization, casualty sensitivity, and military operations: evidence from a survey experiment

Does political polarization impact decisions to go to war? This paper explores how differences in casualty sensitivity by political party in the USA may present different incentives to wartime leaders. Using three survey experiments, I assess the relationship between party, ideology, casualty sensitivity and support for war. Results indicate that conservatives are less likely to change their support in response to increases in casualties, while liberals are much more likely to be sensitive to casualties. Further, this result appears to be primarily attributable to ideology, as opposed to partisan preference, generating different incentives regarding war strategy by political party. As polarization increases, these trends are likely to become more pronounced, with significant implications for when and how states fight wars.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1057/s41311-022-00378-9.

The conditional effect of audiences on credibility

How do leaders signal their intentions during a crisis? Scholars point to audience costs, potential political punishment for bluffing during bargaining, to explain how accountable leaders communicate. However, the empirical support for audience costs is mixed. I argue that this apparent disconnect between theory and evidence is due to different ways that audiences can threaten to use their sanctioning power during a crisis. When determining whether to punish a leader for a failed coercive threat, their domestic supporters should balance concerns over consistency and policy outcomes. As such, accountable leaders’ ability to credibly communicate is not automatic, rather it depends on their supporters’ policy preferences. I apply this insight using casualty sensitivity as a conditioning policy preference. I expect, and find, that audiences only help a leader commit to fight when fighting is low-cost, and actually prevent commitment when fighting is high-cost. Using compellent threat data, I find that audiences have countervailing effects on credibility due to their preferences for leaders who are both consistent and avoid costly conflict. This conditional effect could explain prior mixed support for audience costs in observational data, as prior studies pool together instances where I find audiences have strong, but opposing, effects.

Casualty sensitivity in Japan: Information underlying certainty and uncertainty

Casualty sensitivity among the general public has long been studied and has obtained robust empirical support. Scholars have assumed that the general public receives confirmed information about the number of casualties in war; however, the public may receive uncertain casualty information. In some cases, they may obtain new information that changes their beliefs. To shed new light on how uncertainty and updating information on casualty numbers affect public attitudes toward the use of force, a two-stage survey experiment with 1657 respondents in Japan was conducted. Findings revealed that initial uncertain information on casualty numbers has a negative impact on public attitudes toward a peacekeeping operation. The two-stage experiment provides empirical evidence that while information updating from certainty to uncertainty on casualty numbers increases public anxiety, the effects of this information updating are not significant. In contrast, information on the number of casualties updating from uncertainty to certainty has a significant impact on public support for troop withdrawal.

Gender Difference in American Public Opinion on the Use of Military Force, 1982–2013

Recent scholarship indicates that gender correlates strongly with Americans' attitudes toward the use of military force. However, most of its evidence derives from the study of major wars, and the field needs more historical research to evaluate the evolution of gender difference over time. I redress these limitations by updating and extending my earlier (2003) analysis of public support for the use of force during the 1990s. I analyze 965 individual survey questions concerning the use of US military force in twenty-four historical episodes, beginning in 1982 with military aid to El Salvador and continuing through the recent wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. I find that substantial gender difference characterizes a large number of historical episodes and types of military action. Nonetheless, the magnitude of gender difference varies substantially; in many cases, a substantial percentage of women supports the use of force. The difference between men and women varies most with the salience and level of violence, and women are more sensitive to humanitarian concerns. Women display more sensitivity to casualties in some historical cases, but during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the casualty sensitivity of men gradually increased as the wars dragged on, and gender differences therefore decreased. Thus, I argue that scholars should turn their attention to studying individual-level differences between and among men and women in support for using military force. I also discuss the political and policy implications of the findings.

It’s only money

The sunk costs fallacy is an important concept in the academic and policy worlds. It has helped explain consequential national security decisions such as the escalation in Vietnam and the surges in Iraq and Afghanistan. While previous analysis of sunk costs in international relations has made no distinction between financial and human sunk costs, there is evidence in psychology that people treat human lives and financial costs differently. The consensus in the casualty sensitivity literature is that human sunk costs should lower support for a conflict, but there is as yet no evidence on whether financial costs operate in the same way. Using the Environmental Protection Agency’s value of a statistical life to equalize human and financial costs, we create survey experiments through Mechanical Turk and GfK/Knowledge Networks about a hypothetical US military intervention to test if financial and human costs have the same effects on public opinion. We find that public reaction to sunk costs is contingent on the type of costs incurred. Consistent with the growing ‘sunk costs skeptic’ literature we find no evidence that any sunk costs induce greater commitment to a mission. Where the US contribution to the conflict is purely financial, sunk costs induce a desire to cut losses. When intervention involves US lives, sunk costs make no difference to the level of support. Finally, contrary to the implicit assumptions of past policymakers, ex ante levels of public support for sending troops and sending money are indistinguishable. These findings hold true both in situations involving high Iraq War level sunk costs and low Somalia-style costs.

Dictators and Death: Casualty Sensitivity of Autocracies in Militarized Interstate Disputes

Why are some authoritarian regimes so quick to surrender amid lower numbers of casualties while others prove willing to incur significant casualty counts to continue their war efforts? In this study, we explore the propensity of different authoritarian regime types to sustain casualties in interstate conflicts. We argue that authoritarian leaders with smaller winning coalitions find it easier to distribute the costs of militarized conflicts outside of those coalitions. This diminishes their sensitivity to casualties. Applying a theoretical model based on an inverse divide-the-dollar game (with respect to the distribution of public “bads”), we find that personalist regimes tend to sustain the highest number of casualties in militarized interstate disputes when compared to other autocracies. Our findings suggest that along with the audience cost abilities of an autocratic adversary, target states should also consider an autocratic regime's casualty sensitivity in deciding whether to reciprocate with military action.

Gender Difference in American Public Opinion on the Use of Military Force: Evidence from Before and after the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, 1980-2013

Recent scholarship indicates that gender is a strong correlate of Americans' attitudes toward the use of military force. However, most of the existing evidence is based on a limited number of military actions. The purpose of this paper is to address these gaps by analyzing 965 individual survey questions that query support for using US military force in twenty four historical episodes, beginning in 1982 with military aid to El Salvador and continuing through the recent wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. I conclude that gender difference is generalized over a large number of historical episodes and types of military action. Nonetheless, gender difference does vary substantially, and in many cases a substantial percentage of women supports the use of force. The difference between men and women varies most with the salience and level of violence, and women are more sensitive to humanitarian concerns. Women are more sensitive to casualties in many historical cases, but during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the casualty sensitivity of men gradually increased and the gender difference decreased. I argue that scholars should turn their attention to studying individual-level differences among men and women in support for using military force.

Reassessing American Casualty Sensitivity

Scholars have long conceptualized public support for war as the product of a cost–benefit calculation in which combat casualties factor significantly. This article argues that, when calculating the human costs of conflict, Americans care about more than just the number of war dead; they also care about the distribution of those casualties across society. Using two original survey experiments, we show that inequalities in sacrifice affect Americans’ casualty sensitivity. We find strong evidence that learning about socioeconomic inequalities in casualties in previous wars decreases Americans’ casualty tolerance toward future military endeavors. These effects are stronger for some mission types, particularly non-humanitarian interventions, than others. The effects are also concentrated among Americans from states that suffered high casualty rates in the Iraq War. Our results suggest that raising public awareness of inequalities in wartime sacrifice could significantly strengthen popular constraints on policy makers contemplating military solutions to future crises.

Implications of the sunk cost effect and regional proximity for public support for Canada’s mission in Kandahar

Much of the literature on casualty sensitivity suggests that there is an inverse correlation between casualty levels and public support for war. It also suggests that a public will be more sensitive to local casualties. This article tests these pre-existing theses using data from Canada's participation in the war in southern Afghanistan between February 2006 and 2011. Studying the impact of both provincial and nationwide casualties, it finds no evidence to support these assumptions. Instead, this study finds strong indications that nationwide casualties led to a short-term increase in public support for the Afghan mission. This result is attributed to the sunk cost effect.

How Military Recruitment Affects Collective Action and its Outcomes1

This paper aims to advance the research on the conjunction of two fields—antiwar protest and casualty aversion—by offering a conceptual development of the role of military recruitment in affecting casualty sensitivity–incited antiwar mobilization. Scholars have shown that sensitivity to losses is not a constant variable. Its reflection in the public sphere is affected by variables clustered together as “the politics of war,” such as sense of threat, mission success, number of casualties, and elite consensus, which can be mediated by collective actors. However, the role of the mode of military recruitment in influencing collective action in the military realm has been neglected. It is argued that the mode of military recruitment mediates collective actors’ ability to leverage the politics of war to challenge dominant discourse and influence war policy, owing to the cumulative impact of four recruitment-related variables: republicanism, social power, the favoring of “voice,” and bounded discourse. All shape the movement's framing and resources in a way that affects mobilization.

Revealed Cost Tolerance and Power Asymmetries: The Reputational Consequences of Casualty Sensitivity during War

This paper examines whether combatants’ willingness to suffer casualties in pursuit of their wartime objectives has reputational consequences. I argue that those who are willing to suffer high casualties gain a reputation for having a high cost tolerance that helps them deter future challenges, while those who give up after suffering few casualties acquire a reputation for having a low cost tolerance which makes their potential adversaries more willing to challenge them in the aftermath of war. This is especially true when the combatants face weak challengers, because these actors tend to adopt strategies that specifically target the cost tolerance of their opponents. Stronger challengers tend to adopt strategies that target the military capabilities or war making capacity of their opponents, and are therefore less sensitive to new information about their adversaries’ cost tolerance. Thus, the reputational consequences of casualty sensitivity are conditioned by power asymmetries. I test this argument against competing hypotheses using data on casualties, war outcomes, and militarized dispute initiation from 1816-2004. I find that, as predicted, challengers with fewer material resources are more likely to target combatants that suffer low casualties in losing wars, while the behavior of challengers with more material resources is unaffected.

How Casualty Sensitivity Affects Civilian Control: The Israeli Experience

In an effort to enhance the dialog between the literature on casualty sensitivity and that on civilian control, this article offers an integrative analysis that shows how high levels of casualty sensitivity affect the balance of power between civilians and the military. By drawing on the case of Israel during the Second Lebanon War (2006) and the Gaza War (2009), the article demonstrates that casualty sensitivity has a double effect. Initially, it restrains military action because the military internalizes this casualty shyness and, in response, adopts policies of casualty aversion. Thus, casualty sensitivity empowers civilians (at least, dovish civilians) vis a vis the military. However, the military and political leaders’ efforts to compensate for these restraints ultimately give the military even more latitude. These efforts involve military doctrines that allow rapid decision making, contingency plans that weaken civilian control, and the military’s control over the cost-informed discourse. Casualty aversion thus affects civilian control.

Casualty Sensitivity in a Post-Soviet Context: Russian Views of the Second Chechen War, 2001–2004

Russia provides an interesting case for the analysis of why, how, and to what effect modern governments seek to shape public opinion regarding their military campaigns. Russia's leadership has exerted considerable efforts to shape domestic and international perceptions of the second Chechen war, which commenced in August 1999 with an incursion into the neighboring re public of Dagestan by Chechen extremists. By all accounts, the current cam paign was tremendously popular at the outset, factoring heavily in Vladimir Putin's meteoric rise to the presidency in 2000. But the conflict has persisted, producing an ever-larger toll of casualties and economic costs. Has the level of public support for the military campaign persisted over time, or has it waned? How do factors such as casualty levels, the justification of the campaign, and the prospects for success relate to the dynamic of public support? How effec tive have the government's attempts to mold public views of the war been? Have public perceptions of the conflict affected the level of ethnic animosities? We address these questions using survey data from 2001-2004 and quali tative data from focus groups conducted in 2002. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that portrays the war as broadly popular, Russians have been divided regarding the proper policy solution to the war, with growing numbers sup porting non-military solutions. Policy preferences regarding the war are related to sensitivity to casualties and economic costs as well as views on the justifi

Failing to Win: Perceptions of Victory and Defeat in International Politics

Failing to Win: Perceptions of Victory and Defeat in International Politics. By Dominic D. P. Johnson and Dominic Tierney. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. 345p. $35.00. One inevitable result of the recent U.S. military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq has been renewed scholarly interest in the determinants of wartime public opinion. In a recent influential article, Christopher Gelpi, Peter Feaver, and Jason Reifler (“Success Matters: Casualty Sensitivity and the War in Iraq,” International Security 30 [Winter 2005/6]: 7–46) argue that casualty tolerance is primarily shaped by prospective beliefs about likely success and retrospective judgments regarding the “rightness” of the decision to initiate the conflict. This rationalist account of wartime public opinion suggests that the mass public will accept the costs of war if they are exceeded by attainable and important benefits.

The Electoral Cost of War: Iraq Casualties and the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election

Many contend that President Bush’s reelection and increased vote share in 2004 prove that the Iraq War was either electorally irrelevant or aided him. We present contrary evidence. Focusing on the change in Bush’s 2004 showing compared to 2000, we discover that Iraq casualties from a state significantly depressed the President’s vote share there. We infer that were it not for the approximately 10,000 U.S. dead and wounded by Election Day, Bush would have won nearly 2% more of the national popular vote, carrying several additional states and winning decisively. Such a result would have been close to forecasts based on models that did not include war impacts. Casualty effects are largest in “blue” states. In contrast, National Guard/Reservist call-ups had no impact beyond the main casualty effect. We discuss implications for both the election modeling enterprise and the debate over the “casualty sensitivity” of the U.S. public.

Success Matters: Casualty Sensitivity and the War in Iraq

Since the Vietnam War, U.S. policymakers have worried that the American public will support military operations only if the human costs of the war, as measured in combat casualties, are minimal. Although the public is rightly averse to suffering casualties, the level of popular sensitivity to U.S. military casualties depends critically on the context in which those losses occur. The public's tolerance for the human costs of war is primarily shaped by the intersection of two crucial factors: beliefs about the rightness or wrongness of the war, and beliefs about the war's likely success. The impact of each belief depends upon the other. Ultimately, however, beliefs about the likelihood of success matter most in determining the public's willingness to tolerate U.S. military deaths in combat. A reanalysis of publicly available polls and a detailed analysis of a series of polls designed by the authors to tap into public attitudes on casualties support this conclusion.

Success Matters: Casualty Sensitivity and the War in Iraq

Success Matters: Casualty Sensitivity and the War in Iraq