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"Feaver, Peter"
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Choosing your battles
America's debate over whether and how to invade Iraq clustered into civilian versus military camps. Top military officials appeared reluctant to use force, the most hawkish voices in government were civilians who had not served in uniform, and everyone was worried that the American public would not tolerate casualties in war. This book shows that this civilian-military argument--which has characterized earlier debates over Bosnia, Somalia, and Kosovo--is typical, not exceptional. Indeed, the underlying pattern has shaped U.S. foreign policy at least since 1816. The new afterword by Peter Feaver and Christopher Gelpi traces these themes through the first two years of the current Iraq war, showing how civil-military debates and concerns about sensitivity to casualties continue to shape American foreign policy in profound ways.
eBook
أهمية النجاح : الحساسية إزاء الإصابات والحرب في العراق
تركز الدراسة على أن تحمل الشعب الأمريكي للتكاليف البشرية للحرب يحدده بشكل أساسي تلاقي موقفين حاسمين الاعتقاد بصوابية الحرب أو خطئها والاعتقاد بإمكانية نجاح هذه الحرب ويعتمد أثر كل موقف من هذين الموقفين أحدهما على الآخر ولكن نجد في نهاية الأمر أن الاعتقاد بإمكانية النجاح أهم ما يحدد مدى استعداد الشعب لتحمل القتلى العسكريين وتناقش الدراسة موضوع البحث على أربع مراحل الأولى يوضح فيها المؤلف فهمه للحساسية إزاء الإصابات ويضع عمله في سياق البحث الشامل حول هذا الموضوع الأمريكيين في الحرب والثانية يجد فيها من خلال التحليلات التي أجراها للمعدلات الأسبوعية لتأييد الشعب للرئيس من كانون الثاني/يناير 2003 حتى تشرين الثاني/نوفمبر 2004 والثالثة يقوم فيها بتفحص العوامل التي تحدد مدى تحمل الشعب للإصابات والرابعة لأن حجته تحدد «الآمال في تحقيق النجاح» بأنها العامل الرئيسي في تكوين حساسية الشعب إزاء الإصابات فقد استطلع الطريقة التي يعرف بها الشعب النجاح في العراق وما المؤشرات التي يثق بها الشعب كمقياس لإمكانية تحقيق النجاح.
Book
Paying the human costs of war
From the Korean War to the current conflict in Iraq, Paying the Human Costs of War examines the ways in which the American public decides whether to support the use of military force. Contrary to the conventional view, the authors demonstrate that the public does not respond reflexively and solely to the number of casualties in a conflict. Instead, the book argues that the public makes reasoned and reasonable cost-benefit calculations for their continued support of a war based on the justifications for it and the likelihood it will succeed, along with the costs that have been suffered in casualties. Of these factors, the book finds that the most important consideration for the public is the expectation of success. If the public believes that a mission will succeed, the public will support it even if the costs are high. When the public does not expect the mission to succeed, even small costs will cause the withdrawal of support. Providing a wealth of new evidence about American attitudes toward military conflict, Paying the Human Costs of War offers insights into a controversial, timely, and ongoing national discussion.
eBook
The Right to Be Right: Civil-Military Relations and the Iraq Surge Decision
President George W. Bush's Iraq surge decision in late 2006 is an interesting case for civil-military relations theory, in particular, the debate between professional supremacists and civilian supremacists over how much to defer to the military on decisions during war. The professional supremacists argue that the primary problem for civil-military relations during war is ensuring the military an adequate voice and keeping civilians from micromanaging and mismanaging matters. Civilian supremacists, in contrast, argue that the primary problem is ensuring that well-informed civilian strategic guidance is authoritatively directing key decisions, even when the military disagrees with that direction. A close reading of the available evidence—both in published accounts and in new, not-for-attribution interviews with the key players—shows that the surge decision vindicates neither camp. If President Bush had followed the professional supremacists, there would have been no surge because his key military commanders were recommending against that option. If Bush had followed the civilian supremacists to the letter, however, there might have been a revolt of the generals, causing the domestic political props under the surge to collapse. Instead, Bush's hybrid approach worked better than either ideal type would have.
Journal Article
Success Matters: Casualty Sensitivity and the War in Iraq
Since the Vietnam War, U.S. policymakers have worried that the American public will support military operations only if the human costs of the war, as measured in combat casualties, are minimal. Although the public is rightly averse to suffering casualties, the level of popular sensitivity to U.S. military casualties depends critically on the context in which those losses occur. The public's tolerance for the human costs of war is primarily shaped by the intersection of two crucial factors: beliefs about the rightness or wrongness of the war, and beliefs about the war's likely success. The impact of each belief depends upon the other. Ultimately, however, beliefs about the likelihood of success matter most in determining the public's willingness to tolerate U.S. military deaths in combat. A reanalysis of publicly available polls and a detailed analysis of a series of polls designed by the authors to tap into public attitudes on casualties support this conclusion.
Journal Article
Elite Military Cues and Public Opinion About the Use of Military Force
Do military endorsements influence Americans’ political and foreign policy views? We find that senior military officers have the ability to nudge public attitudes under certain conditions. Through a series of large, survey-based experiments, with nearly 12,000 completed interviews from national samples, we find that participants respond to survey questions in predictable ways depending on whether they have been prompted with information about the views of senior military leaders on the very same questions. When told that senior military leaders oppose particular interventions abroad, public opposition to that intervention increases; endorsements of support boost public support but by a smaller magnitude. Subsequent causal mediation analysis suggests that military opinion influences public opinion primarily through its impact on a mission’s perceived legitimacy and, to a lesser degree, it’s perceived likelihood of success.
Journal Article
Let's Get a Second Opinion: International Institutions and American Public Support for War
Recent scholarship on international institutions has begun to explore potentially powerful indirect pathways by which international institutions may influence states' domestic politics and thereby influence the foreign policy preferences and strategies of state leaders. In this paper, we provide evidence documenting the indirect impact of institutional cues on public support for the use of force through an analysis of individual-level survey data and a survey-based experiment that examines support for a hypothetical American intervention in East Timor. We find that institutional endorsements increase support for the use of force among members of the American public who value the institution making the endorsement and among those who do not have confidence in the president. These individual-level analyses show that international institutions can affect domestic support for military action by serving providing a valuable \"second opinion\" on the proposed use of force.
Journal Article
The Establishment and U.S. Grand Strategy
In his article \"Why America's grand strategy has not changed: Power, habit, and the U.S. foreign policy establishment,\" ('International Security', Volume 42, Number 4 (Spring 2018), pages 9-46) Patrick Porter argues that the continuity of U.S. grand strategy since World War II has resulted from a group-think mentality fostered by a powerful foreign policy elite - \"the Blob\" - that stifles debate and prevents needed course corrections. Porter's provocative argument is ultimately unpersuasive, because it overstates the degree of conformity and consensus in U.S. strategy while slighting the most obvious explanations for the strategy's endurance. Below we highlight several problems with his argument.
Journal Article