Under the Umbrella: Nuclear Crises, Extended Deterrence, and Public Opinion

Abstract

How robust is public support for extended nuclear deterrence in patron and client states? Recent studies have improved scholarly understanding of US public opinion about nuclear weapon use against non-nuclear adversaries. Yet, there is limited knowledge of public attitudes regarding retaliation for nuclear strikes against US allies. We develop a theoretical typology of nuclear crises and investigate this phenomenon with a novel survey experiment ( n = 6,623). Americans, Japanese, and South Koreans viewed realistic emergency alert messages about a most-likely case for nuclear retaliation: a North Korean missile attack on a US ally protected by the nuclear umbrella. Support for nuclear retaliation is low in all three countries, with important cross-national differences. Favorability increases with North Korean nuclear first-use, but it remains limited nonetheless. Surprisingly, US “tripwire” troop casualties do not increase Americans’ demands for nuclear retaliation. These findings have important implications for the study of nuclear crises and practice of extended deterrence.

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).…”

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

“…Their findings demonstrated that American citizens were significantly less averse to the military use of nuclear weapons than previously thought, setting off a new wave of research into the nuclear nonuse norm, or the “nuclear taboo.” Unlike earlier historical accounts of high-level decision-making (Tannenwald 2007; Paul 2009; Sauer 2015), this new wave has been fielding large-N surveys to examine public attitudes toward the use of nuclear weapons under different experimental conditions (Sagan and Valentino 2017; Haworth, Sagan, and Valentino 2019; Rathbun and Stein 2020; Koch and Wells 2020; Montgomery and Carpenter 2020; Smetana and Vranka 2021; Bowen, Goldfien, and Graham 2022; see Smetana and Wunderlich 2021 for a review). However, most of these studies have mainly focused on the United States; only recently have scholars started to conduct these experiments to investigate (non)use attitudes in other nuclear-armed countries (Sukin 2020; Egel and Hines 2021; Dill, Sagan, and Valentino 2022; Horschig 2022; Allison, Herzog, and Ko 2022).…”

Imperfect Victims? Civilian Men, Vulnerability, and Policy Preferences

“…Importantly, such moral concerns remain salient even when issues of state and international security are at stake, that is, when the country in question is developing nuclear weapon capabilities (Tomz and Weeks 2020). A recent survey experimental study likewise indicates that even in a hypothetical scenario in which North Korea launches a nuclear attack, a clear majority of U.S., Japanese, and South Korean publics reject nuclear retaliation, a decision that is driven at least in part by concern about civilian casualties in North Korea (Allison, Herzog, and Ko 2022). These findings are a strong indicator that human rights violations and the targeting of civilians are important factors that shape public opinion toward states and societies affected by war, in both Western and non-Western democracies.…”