Domestic tolerance for casualties
The NY Times today has in interesting article on the influence of a Duke political scientist's work on the Iraq war strategy - and more specifically, on President Bush's Naval Academy speech.
Peter D. Feaver (which would also make a good name for a radio DJ) was also recently cited in a Foreign Affairs article by John Mueller. The referenced Feaver statistic was then cited here, in this post just more than one month ago.
I say this not to toot my own horn (or John Mueller's for that matter), but to point out the significance of Feaver's work on public opinion about wars, which he has done in partnership with his Duke colleague Christopher Gelpi. They have a book called "Choosing Your Battles: American Civil-Military Relations and the Use of Force."
The meat of the NY Times article is that Feaver and Gelpi's research shows that Americans are willing to support many casualties in a war, as long as they believe victory is possible. Hence the "Plan for Victory" backdrop behind the president, as the Times points out.
(Side note: How insulting are the power-phrase backdrops? They're like Bill O'Reilly's "Talking Points." Are we that stupid, that we need it broken down for us simply? Do the semi-subliminal messages really have an effect on the stupid masses? I'm not sure if the Republicans have a monopoly on this; I don't watch much TV. I wouldn't be surprised if Democrats did it, too. But I'm not a fan.)
This is the line from Mueller's article that I previously posted:
"For example, the political scientists Peter Feaver and Christopher Gelpi have calculated, rather remarkably, that Americans would on average be entirely willing to see 6,861 soldiers die in order to bring democracy to Congo."
My bolding. But, as the Times would point out, that is only if democracy was actually achieved.
I don't think the whole "Americans will keep supporting the effort if it seems we can win" is that prescient of a thesis, but it is nice to know political scientists are actually relevant to foreign policy. Of course, Secretary Rice is a poli sci Ph.D, and the administration can't get enough of democratic peace theory (except when we need a base in a non-democratic country, ha ha). And Feaver probably won't win the Nobel for arguably helping the administration keep U.S. troops in Iraq. But it is nice to see some practical results of political science research.
I know some folks don't like studying attitudes and conducting massive public-opinion polls, but they can provide some helpful data.
Peter D. Feaver (which would also make a good name for a radio DJ) was also recently cited in a Foreign Affairs article by John Mueller. The referenced Feaver statistic was then cited here, in this post just more than one month ago.
I say this not to toot my own horn (or John Mueller's for that matter), but to point out the significance of Feaver's work on public opinion about wars, which he has done in partnership with his Duke colleague Christopher Gelpi. They have a book called "Choosing Your Battles: American Civil-Military Relations and the Use of Force."
The meat of the NY Times article is that Feaver and Gelpi's research shows that Americans are willing to support many casualties in a war, as long as they believe victory is possible. Hence the "Plan for Victory" backdrop behind the president, as the Times points out.
(Side note: How insulting are the power-phrase backdrops? They're like Bill O'Reilly's "Talking Points." Are we that stupid, that we need it broken down for us simply? Do the semi-subliminal messages really have an effect on the stupid masses? I'm not sure if the Republicans have a monopoly on this; I don't watch much TV. I wouldn't be surprised if Democrats did it, too. But I'm not a fan.)
This is the line from Mueller's article that I previously posted:
"For example, the political scientists Peter Feaver and Christopher Gelpi have calculated, rather remarkably, that Americans would on average be entirely willing to see 6,861 soldiers die in order to bring democracy to Congo."
My bolding. But, as the Times would point out, that is only if democracy was actually achieved.
I don't think the whole "Americans will keep supporting the effort if it seems we can win" is that prescient of a thesis, but it is nice to know political scientists are actually relevant to foreign policy. Of course, Secretary Rice is a poli sci Ph.D, and the administration can't get enough of democratic peace theory (except when we need a base in a non-democratic country, ha ha). And Feaver probably won't win the Nobel for arguably helping the administration keep U.S. troops in Iraq. But it is nice to see some practical results of political science research.
I know some folks don't like studying attitudes and conducting massive public-opinion polls, but they can provide some helpful data.
posted by bp at
9:16 PM
3 Comments:
I've also noticed such data. And I think the Dems would do well to notice, as they head towards 2006 & 2008 elections. Since most Americans would rather win a war, than lose one (after all, the casualties are more tragic if they ammount to a defeat), I think a better Dem strategy (I thought this in the 2004 election) wasn't to argue that the war was a mistake or a disaster (a case can be made for those things, sure), but to argue that they'd do a BETTER job of winning the war. That is, not say "Bush has screwed up; we should leave Iraq" but rather "Bush has screwed up; let us tell you how we plan to turn things around and win this war". I think the latter message will get more votes from "security issues voters".
Sure, it might lose them the anti-war base. But the worst that could happen is the anti-war base stays home (they're certianly not going to vote GOP). But I think they'd make up for it by gaining moderate/undecided voters, which is where the GOP has been winning. I still think Bush won in 2004 because the Dems didn't give those voters a more appealing option. The "anyone-but-Bush" base is small, and would probably never vote GOP anyhow. But most voters wanted a "better-than-Bush" candidate, not just an "any-guy-will-do" campaign strategy.
By
Miguel Centellas, at 11:10 PM
Yeah, the Democrats have had a tough time reading the public, and also have been unable to present a popular alternative to current foreign policy.
The United States has been trying to avoid a "second Vietnam" since the first one, but people often think negatively of that war for how we entered it, and that it seemed to drag on. The unvictorious departure, however, might be what truly sealed the dark legacy.
If we would have left Southeast Asia with some degree of "victory," though, the Gulf of Tonkin and the tragedy of 58,000 dead would have been mitigated - at least to the memory of the American public.
Feaver and Gilpin probably brought this up in their book... I haven't read it, so I'm not sure.
By
bp, at 7:38 AM
For more on the feaver/gelpi research, see this post at Mystery Pollster:
http://www.mysterypollster.com/main/2005/12/polling_the_str.html
By
Anonymous, at 10:50 AM
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