The role of public opinion in nations' decisions to join or withdraw from the war in Iraq

Recent qualitative studies of the relationship between public opinion and U.S. foreign policy put decisions into the following two categories: the President tends to lead or to follow public opinion; public opinion influences decision-making, constrains the decision, or has no impact. These studies typically research the initial decision to intervene, but fail to examine the subsequent decisions to sustain and win a war: financial and human means, conduct, objectives, duration, and communication. I argue that these elements of a winning strategy are impacted by concerns with public support at home. The impact of public opinion on the decision whether to use force is better understood when analyzing the compromise between the perception of anticipated public opinion and the necessities of a military campaign. Public opinion impacts the strategy, the timing, and length of an intervention, and inversely, those elements impact the anticipated public opinion and ultimately the decision to use force or choose a different course of action. The president can expect to influence public opinion and raise the acceptability of an intervention through various means. As a consequence, there is a back-and-forth process between anticipated public support for a given intervention and the consideration of the use of force. Contrary to the current literature, which tends to conclude that the president enjoys a substantial margin for maneuver, an analysis of post Cold War cases of interventions, limited interventions, and military escalations shows that anticipated public opinion limited the president's margin for maneuver and influenced not only the decision to intervene but also the military strategy and in the end, the result of the intervention. These findings contradict the realist paradigm for which only the structure of the international system matters and domestic politics are irrelevant in the study of international relations.

How strongly does public opinion affect the making of U.S. foreign policy? In The Impact of Public Opinion on U.S. Foreign Policy Since Vietnam, Richard Sobel provides a compelling answer to this provocative question that has long stirred spirited debate among scholars, activists, and policymakers. The book explains how public attitudes have affected the making of U.S. foreign policy. It also explores the tension between theoretical views of what the role of public opinion should be in a democracy and the actual historical records. Focusing on four of the most prominent foreign interventions of the last generation--the Vietnam War, the Nicaraguan contra funding controversy, the Persian Gulf War, and the Bosnia crisis--the book demonstrates that public opinion constrained but did not set American foreign policy. The cases provide detailed information on the events, public attitudes, and policies for each of these four major U.S. conflicts. Sobel supports his argument with insights drawn from the words of decision-makers in public statements, records, and memoirs, as well as from interviews with three former secretaries of state and four former secretaries of defense. The book also explores how public sentiment about a specific crisis emerges over time and how it is often tied to the climate of interventionist and noninterventionist opinion. Clearly written, The Impact of Public Opinion on U.S. Foreign Policy Since Vietnam is an essential text for courses in American government, public opinion, political behavior, and American foreign policy. It will also have strong appeal to scholars, policy makers, and general readers who are interested in gaining a deeper understanding of the politics behind the most significant conflicts of recent times.

Military intervention in a conflict without a reasonable prospect of success is unjustifiable, especially when it is done in the name of humanity. Couched in the debate on the responsibility to protect civilians from violence and drawing on traditional 'just war' principles, the centralpremise of this book is that humanitarian military intervention can be justified as a policy option only if decision makers can be reasonably sure that intervention will do more good than harm. This book asks, 'Have past humanitarian military interventions been successful?' It defines success as saving lives and sets out a methodology for estimating the number of lives saved by a particular military intervention. Analysis of 17 military operations in six conflict areas that were thedefining cases of the 1990s-northern Iraq after the Gulf War, Somalia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, Kosovo and East Timor-shows that the majority were successful by this measure. In every conflict studied, however, some military interventions succeeded while others failed, raising the question, 'Why have some past interventions been more successful than others?' This book argues that the central factors determining whether a humanitarian intervention succeeds are theobjectives of the intervention and the military strategy employed by the intervening states. Four types of humanitarian military intervention are offered: helping to deliver emergency aid, protecting aid operations, saving the victims of violence and defeating the perpetrators of violence. Thefocus on strategy within these four types allows an exploration of the political and military dimensions of humanitarian intervention and highlights the advantages and disadvantages of each of the four types.Humanitarian military intervention is controversial. Scepticism is always in order about the need to use military force because the consequences can be so dire. Yet it has become equally controversial not to intervene when a government subjects its citizens to massive violation of their basic humanrights. This book recognizes the limits of humanitarian intervention but does not shy away from suggesting how military force can save lives in extreme circumstances.

The role of public opinion in nations' decisions to join or withdraw from the war in Iraq

"Amid the criticism of the UN's apparent failure to intervene in humanitarian disasters there has been little scholarly consideration of the real issues. The nature of human rights, sovereignty, UN organisation and the practice of humanitarian action are some of the themes that are addressed in this volume which combines a theoretical approach with empirical analysis from those with practical experience in the field of international humanitarian assistance."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved