Coalitions of the willing? International backing and British public support for military action

Abstract

Studies of public support for war highlight the importance of context. Most people do not simply support or oppose the use of force but instead assess its merits depending on various aspects of the situation. One such aspect is the extent of international backing – whether from individual states or supranational organizations – for military action. This backing may be active, notably through the contribution of troops, or more a passive matter of endorsement or authorization of action. In this article, a survey experiment embedded in a major internet survey of British foreign policy attitudes (N = 2,205) is used to explore how international backing affects public support for military action. Britain’s military potential and recent history make it an obvious case study here. Both active and endorsement backing prove to have separate and significant positive effects on support. Importantly, the absolute number of troops involved matters far less than the proportion of total troop numbers to be contributed. And the perceived strength of the enemy predicts support only when the British are to contribute a large proportion of total forces. Predispositional variables are used to investigate the sources of the experimental effects but with little success: the impact of international backing proves remarkably consistent across the sample.

How Do People Evaluate Foreign Aid To ‘Nasty’ Regimes?

“…3 Among many, see Dietrich (2013), Bush (2015), Reinsberg (2015), and Winters & Martinez (2015). 4 See examples concerning immigration policy (Scheve & Slaughter 2001a, Facchini & Mayda 2009, trade policy (Scheve & Slaughter 2001b, Hays, Ehrlich & Peinhardt 2005, monetary policy (Bearce & Tuxhorn 2017), economic sanctions (Heinrich, Kobayashi & Peterson 2016), diplomacy (Tanaka 2015), counterterrorism (Garcia & Geva 2016), and the use of the military (Tomz & Weeks 2013, Johns & Davies 2014.…”

“… 4 See examples concerning immigration policy (Facchini and Mayda 2009; Scheve and Slaughter 2001a), trade policy (Hays, Ehrlich, and Peinhardt 2005; Scheve and Slaughter 2001b), monetary policy (Bearce and Tuxhorn 2017), economic sanctions (Heinrich, Kobayashi, and Peterson 2017), diplomacy (Tanaka 2016), counterterrorism (Garcia and Geva 2016), and the use and financing of the military (Flores-Macıas and Kreps 2017; Johns and Davies 2014; Tomz and Weeks 2013). …”

Negative surprise in UN Security Council authorization: Do the UK and French vetoes influence the general public’s support of US military action?

“…In fact, as the contrast between the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War and 2003 Iraq War suggests (Thompson, 2006(Thompson, , 2009, US uses of force which were authorized by the UNSC received significantly higher levels of support from the general public than unauthorized uses. The effects are empirically confirmed both within countries initiating and leading the use of force, like the United States of America (USA), and in 'third-party' countries like the United Kingdom (UK) and Japan (Chapman, 2007(Chapman, , 2011Johns & Davies, 2014;Fang, 2008;Grieco et al, 2011;Ikeda & Tago, 2014;Tago & Ikeda, 2015;Thompson, 2006Thompson, , 2009Voeten, 2005). 1 One of the more interesting implications of authorization by international organizations is that of 'surprises'.…”

“…Under the current international order that prohibits the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, 4 successful authorization of the use of force by the UN Security Council can be seen as an exceptional measure which therefore sends positive and persuasive information on the military action both to the audience of the force-initiating state (Chapman, 2007(Chapman, , 2011Fang, 2008;Grieco et al, 2011;Johns & Davies, 2014) and to third-party foreign audiences (Ikeda & Tago, 2014;Tago & Ikeda, 2015;Thompson, 2006Thompson, , 2009. Mobilizing the support of both domestic and foreign audiences is crucial when military action commences.…”

Security of solar radiation management geoengineering

“…The distribution of operations, and of decision-making, across a range of actor countries may be the best way to demonstrate that communities around the world feel that they are 'part of the process'be that through political or economic involvement. This bears comparison to a 'coalition of the willing' (Baum, M A, 2013;Johns and Davies, 2014). This may not be the least-cost option; and may increase the theoretical attack surface, albeit while generally improving redundancy.…”