Still Taboo? Citizens’ Attitudes towards the Use of Nuclear Weapons

• In Event: Public Opinion and War

Abstract

Can citizen attitudes toward the use of nuclear weapons be moderated through citizen education?

Recent research by Scott Sagan and Benjamin Valentino (2017) has found that a significant proportion of the American public is willing to approve the use of nuclear weapons in defense of U.S. interests. This research demonstrates that the “nuclear taboo” – the shared belief that it is wrong to use nuclear weapons – is neither as strong nor as universal as Nina Tannenwald (1999) and others have argued.

The apparent fragility of the non-use tradition may be a condition that stems from the way in which people think about the consequence of nuclear weapons use. We know from dozens of studies conducted during four decades of the Cold War that the public has long thought about the effects of nuclear weapons in highly abstract ways. American respondents, in considering the aftermath of a nuclear strike, have tended not to expect survivors, and thus have focused on material damage to buildings and objects rather than on harm done to human beings (Fiske 1986). We argue that a lack of vivid information about the consequences of a nuclear attack limits the public’s ability to imagine the real-world implications of a leader’s decision to conduct a nuclear strike, and thus weakens the nuclear non-use norm.

To investigate whether attitudes toward the use of nuclear weapons can be moderated through information about real-world consequences, we conducted two independent survey experiments in May of 2018, using nationally representative samples, to assess each of the two main theoretical mechanisms that support the nuclear non-use norm. First, to examine the foundation of moral principles regarding conduct in war that are theorized to sustain the nuclear taboo, we tested whether respondents who receive vivid details about the uniquely destructive effects of a nuclear blast – either material destruction, or the effects on human bodies – would be less supportive of nuclear use. Second, in a separate experiment, we tested the effect of raising a sense of nuclear risk by varying the likelihood that the target of a nuclear strike will retaliate. This experiment assessed the role of self-interest, rather than morality, in supporting the non-use tradition.

We found that different types of information mattered in different ways, but that overall, respondents were less likely to choose to conduct a nuclear attack if they were first presented with concrete, vivid information about the effects of nuclear weapons. First, respondents who received vivid information about possible human effects of a nuclear blast were significantly less likely both to choose to conduct a nuclear attack, and to approve the president’s use of nuclear weapons. Providing information about the effects of nuclear weapons on the human body was also statistically significantly associated with greater sympathy for the victims of the hypothetical nuclear attack; respondents who read about the harm done to the human body were less likely to blame the attacked civilians than those who read about material damage or who received no effects information.

Second, respondents who received information about the possibility of limited nuclear retaliation were less likely to choose to conduct an attack than those who received no such information. However, respondents were generally insensitive to variations in the level of risk of retaliation; in most cases, any non-zero risk of retaliation produced responses that were statistically indistinguishable from other non-zero levels of risk. This is, essentially, what the concept of nuclear deterrence rests on: That when the punishment for attacking is severe enough, even a low probability that the punishment will be carried out is sufficient to deter the potential attacker. Any risk of a nuclear exchange, no matter how small, will prevent leaders from choosing to use their nuclear weapons.

These findings indicate that that each of the two theorized mechanisms may support the nuclear non-use tradition, but that the strength of each mechanism is affected by exposure to vivid information. At the same time, there is ample evidence that presidents do not make decisions on the (non)use of nuclear weapons without considering how the American public might react, and so this project is important because it sheds light on whether the population would constrain or encourage any leader in such circumstances.

Authors

• Lisa Langdon Koch, Claremont McKenna College

• Matthew Wells, Wabash College