From Moscow With a Mushroom Cloud? Russian Public Attitudes to the Use of Nuclear Weapons in a Conflict With NATO

Abstract

This article presents findings of an original survey experiment on public attitudes toward nuclear use conducted on a representative sample of Russian citizens. We randomly assigned our participants to experimental treatments with vignettes describing a military conflict between Russia and NATO in the Baltics, where Moscow considered a limited nuclear “escalate-to-deescalate” strike to avert defeat. Our findings show that Russians are significantly more averse to nuclear strikes than to the corresponding use of conventional missiles. The participants disapproved similarly of a demonstrative nuclear explosion in an unpopulated area and of nuclear strikes in a more escalated scenario. We also found associations between the moral values of individuals and strike support corresponding to earlier studies in the United States. Finally, our participants reported similar concerns about both nuclear and conventional strikes, with the worry about civilian casualties and the suffering of victims at the top of the list across experimental treatments.

The “Commitment Trap” Revisited: Experimental Evidence on Ambiguous Nuclear Threats

“…As argued by Snyder and Borghard (2011), the latter is an important distinction for the audience costs theory, yet has rarely been tested in audience costs experiments. Our finding that the US public preference regarding nuclear use remains constant irrespective of leaders' threats also adds to the recent wave of "nuclear taboo" experiments (Allison, Herzog, and Ko 2022;Bowen, Goldfien, and Graham 2023;Dill, Sagan, and Valentino 2022;Horschig 2022;Koch and Wells 2021;Press, Sagan, and Valentino 2013;Rathbun and Stein 2020;Sagan and Valentino 2017;Smetana and Vranka 2021;Smetana and Onderco 2023;Sukin 2020).…”

Hawks in the making? European public views on nuclear weapons post‐Ukraine

“…(Tannenwald, 2002, p. 48). More recent experimental scholarship on public attitudes towards nuclear use also explicitly works with the assumption that the public opinion has constraining effects on leaders in both democratic (Dill et al, 2022; Press et al, 2013) and non‐democratic (Smetana & Onderco, 2022b) nuclear states. As such, public aversion to nuclear use is not the single factor determining the robustness of nuclear non‐use norm, but it is arguably an important piece of the puzzle.…”

The lesser evil? Experimental evidence on the strength of nuclear and chemical weapon “taboos”

“…Our study contributes to contemporary scholarship on the “taboos” surrounding unconventional weapons in world politics. In particular, we provide an important comparative perspective to the new wave of scholarship studying public attitudes toward the use of nuclear weapons (Press, Sagan and Valentino, 2013; Sagan and Valentino, 2017; Haworth, Sagan and Valentino, 2019; Rathbun and Stein, 2020; Sukin, 2020; Koch and Wells, 2020; Montgomery and Carpenter, 2020; Smetana and Vranka, 2021; Egel and Hines, 2021; Onderco and Smetana, 2021; Allison, Herzog and Ko, 2022; Horschig, 2022; Bowen, Goldfien and Graham, 2022; Smetana and Onderco, 2022a; Dill, Sagan and Valentino, 2022). Comparative research in this area is ever more pertinent given the recent use of chemical weapons in Syria (Bentley, 2016, 2017; Geis and Schlag, 2017; Chapman, Elbahtimy and Martin, 2018; Edwards and Cacciatori, 2018; Henriksen, 2018; Price, 2018, 2019; Koblentz, 2019), repeated employment of chemical agents as an assassination tool (Lewis, 2018; Kaszeta, 2021: chap.…”