Recent scholarship has fruitfully investigated the effect of international organization (IO) approval on public support for military intervention. Following Jentleson and Britton [Bruce W. Jentleson and Rebecca L. Britton, “Still Pretty Prudent: Post-Cold War American Public Opinion on the Use of Military Force,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 42, no. 4 (1998): 395–417], scholars argue that IO approval does not increase already high public support for “foreign policy restraint” (FPR) operations intended to coerce “aggressively threatening” opponents, including terrorists. We challenge this argument, focusing on public support for contributing to military coalitions. The public may wonder whether leaders are sincere when they frame a coalition military operation as having FPR objectives; this may lead the public to put a premium on multilateral validation. We also question the common argument that UN Security Council approval necessarily has a greater positive effect on public support for intervention than approval from regional IOs. Approval from broad-based regional IOs, such as the African Union (AU), may be just as consequential. Data from survey experiments that we conducted in three countries confirm our principal hypotheses: (1) IO approval consistently increases public support for contributing to military coalitions even in counterterrorism cases and (2) the UN and AU approval effects are of comparable magnitude. These findings expand our theoretical understanding of the conditions under which IO approval can increase public support for military intervention.
Safe areas established by powerful states can improve short-term civilian protection during ethnic civil wars. Paradoxically, however, they may worsen the plight of vulnerable civilians over the medium term. This can occur in three ways. First, when safe areas encompass sizeable territories within a broader conflict zone, they may reduce incentives for protected groups to compromise during peace negotiations, thus prolonging hostilities. Second, there is a nontrivial possibility that protected groups will use the safe areas as a base for launching high-risk offensives, deliberately putting civilians at risk in the hope of drawing the protection forces more deeply into the war. Third, safe areas may embolden protected groups to seek unilateral secession, further increasing the risk of conflict escalation. By elucidating the causal mechanisms involved, this article helps us assess the probability of these outcomes occurring. States that consider intervening militarily to establish safe areas in ethnic civil wars need to weigh the short-term benefits against these possible longer-term downsides.
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