In fall 2018, survey analyst James Ron teamed up with colleagues from the University of Minnesota and Center for Victims of Torture to conduct a survey exploring American attitudes towards a wide range of civil and human rights issues, at home and abroad. Their respondents included a nationally representative sample of 2,000 adult American, along with 1,000 respondents who had voted for Donald J. Trump in the 2016 Republican primaries. All respondents were recruited online and surveyed by YouGov, one of the world’s most respected survey providers.
Overall, two thirds of the nationally representative sample opposed US air strikes that killed civilians, confirming a trend identified in previous surveys: Americans like strikes by manned aircraft and drones because they do not endanger US troops, but are uneasy when told that these strikes may kill innocents. In a 2018 Pew survey, for example, 58 percent of respondents supported drone strikes against foreign extremists, but 80 percent were also concerned these strikes would endanger civilians.
Concern for the well being of non-combatants in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere was not distributed equally across partisan lines, however. In the fall 2018 survey conducted by Ron and colleagues, early Trump supporters were far more willing than other Republicans, Democrats and Independents to support airstrikes, even when they endangered civilians. Thus, only 26 percent of the early Trump supporters shared the majority of Americans’ concern with the safety of non-combatants.
Politics matter: Statistical analysis showed that strongly identified Republicans favored airstrikes 12 percent more than strongly identified Democrats, controlling for a wide variety of factors, such as race, gender, financial security, education, religion, and more. People who wanted stricter immigration laws, included banning Muslims from entering the US, were 25 percent more pro-strike than those with opposing views.
Race also mattered: White respondents who expressed a strong sense of racial vulnerability were 16 percent more in favor of strikes that killed civilian than white respondents with no such sensibilities. And, white respondents who scored higher on an index of racially-based resentment towards African Americans were 14 percent more in favor of strikes than those who scored low on this measure. .
Attitudes towards politics, race, immigration, and Muslims are strongly linked to Americans’ tolerance of civilian-killing airstrikes overseas. when they endangered civilian life.
For the Washington Post article describing these results, see https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/06/no-americans-dont-support-airstrikes-that-kill-civilians-even-when-they-target-terrorists.
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James Ron, PhD, is the lead author of the Cambridge University Press book, “Taking Root: Public Opinion and Human Rights in the Global South,” and the sole author of “Frontiers and Ghettos: State Violence in Serbia and Israel,” published by the University of California Press. He has published dozens of scholarly articles and newspaper editorials on human rights, civil society, humanitarian aid, and political violence, and has taught at a number of universities, including Johns Hopkins, McGill, Carleton, and the University of Minnesota. For more details, please see www.jamesron.com.
