Casualty Sensitivity, Public Perception, and the Politics of Military Operations

• In Event: The Military and American Society

Abstract

Is the American public casualty sensitive? To date, the literature is mixed on just how sensitive the public is to news of those killed and wounded in combat. Explanations that dismiss the importance of casualties focus instead on the power of elite cues (Berinsky 2009), taxes (Kreps 2018), and public expectations of success (Gelpi et al. 2009). This paper examines one particularly prominent explanation of public opinion and war: the importance of the expectation of success in predicting support for conflict. I argue that public expectations of success are in fact conditioned upon reported casualties—that judgements about the future are conditioned upon past behavior. Using evidence from a 3,300 respondent, nationally-representative survey experiment, I find that even small changes in reported casualties significantly impact the public’s expectation of the success of a hypothetical military intervention. These findings suggest that the risks associated with individual military operations can have an outsized effect on public support for a conflict more broadly, opening up new and interesting questions about how civilian leaders weigh the costs and benefits of military action. This provides increased nuance and understanding to our understanding of public opinion, war, and foreign policy.

Author

• Carrie A. Lee, U.S. Air War College