When Do Americans Support Strong Interventions?

Prof. Valentino’s survey of 1,000 Americans has questions about interventions.

It’s strong intervention for the U.S. to remove a foreign leader or government. So, it’s of interest to know when Americans think this is justified. From question 17, we learn that there are two cases in which strong majorities support the use of U.S. military force to remove foreign leaders or governments from power. 61% approve of this “to stop massive human rights abuses by the government, such as the killing of thousands of civilians”. 57% approve of this “to prevent the government from giving weapons of mass destruction to America’s adversaries”.

Although these questions are asked and answered in the abstract, without reference to a specific case, they tell us how the government can persuade Americans. If the government tells Americans (and Americans believe) that a government is slaughtering civilians, presumably meaning its own citizens, then a strong majority of Americans approves of unilateral U.S. intervention, without reference to the cost or complications that it might entail. This was done in the case of Gaddafi. Saddam Hussein was advertised as gassing Kurds. Assad in Syria is berated for bombing civilians and was accused of gassing them. Serbia was accused of such killing too. The House has recently accused Russian separatists in Ukraine of such killing, even though most of such bombardment was done by the Ukrainian armed forces.

So, this charge is a very strong and important one, because 61% of Americans have some kind of moral and pragmatic belief in interfering in a foreign country when they are told by their government that a big killing is going on that’s attributable to the foreign leaders or government.

The U.S. government doesn’t accuse every leader and every government that is carrying out killing campaigns. Sometimes it supports them. Its accusations, true and false, are very much tailored to other foreign policy objectives. It’s not the case, either, that Americans would view Abe Lincoln as a leader who killed large numbers of Americans unjustifiably.

What we have here is majority approval among Americans of a unilateral responsibility to protect (known as R2P among its proponents) or at least a strong disposition toward it, until the costs and ramifications are brought into the equation.

The libertarian position on R2P is to be against it, because it entails a collective judgment and action of the state that lacks legitimation from all those who are forcibly entered into the collective. This is true of all the state’s legislation. R2P is a special case.

The libertarian view turns on individual freedom versus collective action enforced by the state. In libertarian theory, individuals should have the right to dispose of their property (wealth) as they decide, not as others decide for them without their approval. In libertarian theory, if state K is possibly killing its citizens, the decisions of the citizens of state P as to what to do or not to do about this belong to them as free individuals, not to state P that claims sovereignty over these individuals. State P views individuals as citizens and claims the right to act on their behalf or for them, employing their property and lives as it sees fit. This claim is only exercised justly, however, if those whom it impacts consent to the process by which the state decisions are made. They must have agreed to abide by the state’s decisions. A government cannot justly undertake R2P or any other measures except for those people who have agreed to be its citizens. This requirement is patently not met by the American government. One becomes a citizen of the U.S. upon birth on a particular piece of the earth’s surface, not by consent to its government. One does not consent to obey the state’s laws or pay its taxes. One is made to do so by virtue of a geographical accident. An American citizen becomes a numbered member of a herd on territorial grounds, not because he or she has made a moral or political decision or affirmation.

The other case in which there was a substantial majority in favor of intervention (57%) was “to prevent the government from giving weapons of mass destruction to America’s adversaries”. Who might these hypothetical adversaries be? They might be terrorists. This question alludes to Iraq, Iran and North Korea, because these are precisely the states that the U.S. government has told Americans have or want to have weapons of mass destruction and who were prone to help terrorists. (We know that Iraq didn’t have WMD and couldn’t deliver them against America if they did, and we know that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. We know that Iran has no program to produce nuclear weapons. North Korea has tested nuclear weapons.)

The relevant consideration here is that 57% are willing to depose a foreign leader or a government on suspicion of having WMD and delivering them to unnamed adversaries. No such case has ever come to light. This shows that the Bush Doctrine has been put over to many Americans. Many are willing to take preemptive action against suspects.

We find here another way to persuade Americans of the rightness of an intervention. Tell them that the government that the U.S. wants to attack has WMD and has bad intentions. Tell them that the WMD can fall into the “wrong” hands.

Other responses in question 17 inform us as to what other appeals the U.S. can make or has already made that are effective or ineffective. We can see the extent to which American opinion is aligned with the inclinations of American leaders to intervene strongly in foreign countries unilaterally to change their governments.

54% would intervene “to prevent the [foreign] government from producing weapons of mass destruction.”

52% would intervene “to end the [foreign] government’s support for terrorist governments.”

36% would intervene “to defend U.S. economic interests from being seized by the [foreign] government.”

Only 6.5% would intervene “to remove non-democratic governments.”

Large numbers of Americans know that the interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan have gone badly. In question 15, 60% say that America’s leaders have failed in Iraq and Afghanistan to learn the lessons of Vietnam (66% of Democrats, 67% of Independents and 51% of Republicans.)

Even so, Americans in this 2012 survey show a rather strong predisposition to intrude unilaterally in foreign countries and intrude very strongly by military action. The government’s propaganda has “taken” in the American public, even if there is disillusionment over Iraq and Afghanistan. And there is such disillusionment.

Last year, Americans were not convinced that bombing Syria was a good idea. On the other hand, bombing ISIS has met with approval and it includes some bombing of Syria. Perhaps the predisposition to intervene in the American public is now tempered somewhat by having been burned twice in the new century, or three times if you count Libya, or four times if you count aid to the Assad opposition in Syria.

However, many Americans still have an itchy trigger finger in their intervention predisposition. They can be rallied fairly easily to do something that’s considered by them to be morally right, as in R2P. They can be spurred to act by calls to self-defense, even when the threats are remote or non-existent. There is no solid and principled resistance either to believing government or to resisting its calls for military interventions.

It’s worth noting that this tendency to go for the jugular overseas is stronger among Republicans than Democrats. On question 17, we find that 70% of Republicans are willing to depose a foreign government either to prevent it from producing WMD, or prevent it from giving WMD to adversaries or to end that government’s support for terrorist organizations.

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