Determinants of Support for Nuclear Use in South Korea and the United States

• In Event: International Survey Experiments on Nuclear Weapons

Abstract

Under what conditions should we anticipate public support for nuclear use? Evidence from two 2018 surveys among a nationally representative sample of South Korean citizens and a nationally representative sample of American citizens suggests that individuals make situational judgments when deciding to support or oppose nuclear use as well as when deciding whether to attack government, military, and/or civilian targets. In particular, I find that individuals use both consequentialist logic, taking into account the retaliatory effects of nuclear use, and affective logic, taking into account preexisting attitudes about the defending and attacking states in a potential nuclear use scenario. These dual findings suggest that attitudes towards nuclear use are not characterized by a static, normative taboo—as some scholars have suggested—but that, instead, attitudes towards nuclear use and non-use are complex and are dependent on situationally determined assessments of both the strategic and affective dynamics at play in a particular scenario.

Author

• Lauren Sukin, Stanford University