Misdiagnosis [with Reply]
Author(s): Christopher Gelpi and John Mueller
Source: Foreign Affairs, Vol. 85, No. 1 (Jan. - Feb., 2006), pp. 139-144
Published by: Council on Foreign Relations
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Response
The
Cost
of War
How Many CasualtiesWill AmericansTolerate?
Misdiagnosis
CHRISTOPHER
GELPI
In "TheIraqSyndrome"(November/
December 2005),JohnMueller argues
that public support for the American
wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq can
be explained with "a simple association:
as casualties mount, support decreases."
He goes on to say that support for the
Iraqwar has dropped so fast that itmakes
sense to talk about an "Iraq syndrome," a
Mueller goes far beyond his limited data
and must ignore extensive evidence that
runs counter to his theory.Even the limited
dataMueller cites disprove his own cen
tral claim: that support drops steadily
and inexorably
with mounting casualties
regardlessof context.Along theway,
Mueller grosslymisstates the findings
frommy co-authored research and largely
overlooksresearch
byRichardEichenberg,
BruceJentleson,StevenKull,EricLarson,
and others that adds more nuance to
thispicture.
casualty-induced
aversionto the future
use of force by theUnited States.
MODERN
SENSITIVITIES
Mueller's landmarkcontributionsto Casualty sensitivity may be thought of as
the study of public opinion and war have
price sensitivity to the human cost of
rightly earned him much respect and
war. As with other forms of price sensi
inspired a large portion of the scholarly
tivity, some members of the public are
agenda taken up by me and my research
more sensitive to casualties than others,
partner, Peter Feaver. In this essay, how
and one person's sensitivity to casualties
ever, he is only partially correct. The
may vary over time.
public is, as he notes, sensitive to casualties:
In fact, the public's willingness to bear
casualties are the cost of war, and the
the human cost of war has varied substan
public would prefer the same outcome
tially during different phases of thewars
at
(victory) lowercost (fewercasualties). in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq. The key
But when he steps from there to casualty
variable is the perceived likelihood that
phobia-a sensitivity to casualties so
the mission will succeed. Variations in
acute that it paralyzes policymakers
perceptions of success over time have
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ChristopherGelpi andJohnMueller
substantiallyaltered the extent towhich stand scrutiny. The assertion of such a
casualtieshave erodedaggregatepublic relationship is based entirely on a single
observation:thedrop inpublicsupport
support for each war. Varying percep
tions of success have also played amajor betweenAugust andDecember 1950.
role in determiningwhich individuals Mueller attributes this drop to the io,ooo
have decided to oppose the war in Iraq,
specifically, andwhen. It is this breadth of
evidence that ledme andmy co-author to
characterize theAmerican public as "defeat
U.S. battle deaths during this period, but
he fails to note that theUnited States was
also suffering some of itsmost lopsided
battlefield defeats at the time, as Chinese
phobic"ratherthan"casualty-phobic." forcessweptdown thepeninsula.Further
dismissesour research more, he fails to note that public support
Mueller cursorily
by citing out of context a survey statisticwe
report in a 1999 op-ed: themean response
to a question about the number of accept
able casualties in a hypothetical U.S.
for thewar increased by eight percentage
points betweenDecember 1950and
August 1951despite the fact that nearly
during
were kiUled
8,oooAmericansoldiers
military interventionin theDemocratic
that period. Why
Republic of the Congo. Mueller clings to
a confused reading of that statistic, despite
our extensive discussion in a subsequent
book, Choosing Your Battles. We invite
readers to read pages 95-148 to decide for
rallydespite themounting casualties?
did public support
Because U.S. forcesmanaged to recapture
South Korean territory and stabilize the
front at the 38th parallel. Public support
only began towane again when casualties
whetherMueller has accuratelymounted-though not precipitously
themselves
after thewar settled into a stalemate.
Similarly, Mueller's depiction of the
a
drop in support for the Vietnam War
results we discuss in that book is that
majority of theAmerican public claims it gives the impression of a gradual decline
in response toU.S. casualties.What he
would tolerate something on the order of
a hundred casualties to bring democracy to fails to note in his chart is the numbers of
casualties that generated drops in support.
Congo. Our main point, however, is that
the focus of policymakers and pundits on The rateof U.S. casualties began to decline
casualties, without reference to context, is after President Richard Nixon instituted
misguided, because public support for a his policy of"Vietnamization" in 1969, but
public support for the war declined more
military operation will erode sharply in
quickly than it had from 1965 through
the face of mounting casualties when the
public believes the war is failing but will
1967, despite the fewer casualties. The
critical turning point appears to have been
remain relatively robust when the public
the Tet offensive, in February 1968: the
believes thewar is succeeding. This argu
media's
of
negative portrayal of Tet seems to
ment is based on extensive analyses
scores of surveys-including much of the have solidified Vietnam as a failure in the
public mind, and our analyses indicate
survey data on which Mueller relies.
that the negative impact of casualties on
Mueller's claim that public support
for the Korean War dropped as casualties support for thewar tripled inTet's wake.
In fact, prior to Tet, U.S. casualties had a
mounted, for example, does not with
reported our argument. For the record,
of the (limited)survey
our interpretation
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The Cost ofWar
statistically
significantimpactonlybecause U.S. casualties had no impact on presi
of the ten-percentage-point drop in pub
lic support fromMarch toMay of 1966.
Between May 1966 and December 1967,
more than 12,000 U.S. soldiers died, but
public support for thewar dropped by only
three percent. After Tet, on the other hand,
the public lost hope and casualties led to
a steady decline in support.
Finally, with regard to Iraq,Mueller
once again overstates the evidence of a
dential approval. For example, from July
toNovember 2003, therewere 200 U.S.
deaths in Iraq and the president's approval
rating dropped by more than eight per
centage points. On the other hand, from
July toNovember 2004, there were 300
deaths, but Bush's approval rating remained
unchanged.More detailed analyses indicate
that these changes were statistically sig
nificant even when accounting for other
consistentrelationship
betweencasualties factors that influence presidential approval.
In 2005, according to the data, U.S.
and public support.As his charts illustrate,
casualties continued to have no impact
public opinion data on whether thewars
inKorea, Vietnam, and Iraqwere a "mis on approval ratings untilMarch orApril.
take"were available only on an intermittent Public optimism about progress in Iraq
appears to have carried theBush adminis
basis, making reliable statistical analyses
tration through the costly assault on Fallu
difficult. Presidential-approval data, on
the other hand, are available on a regular jah, and the president received a noticeable
basis, and the wording of questions in
bounce in approval in thewake of the suc
presidential-approvalsurveysremains cessfiil Iraqi elections at the end ofJanuary.
Since that time, however, the public has
consistent, both of which allow formore
reliableanalyses.ConsideringPresident had few benchmarks bywhich it canmeas
George W. Bush's approval rating over the ure progress in Iraq.Thus, sinceMarch,
course of operations in Iraq is instructive. we have seen the human toll begin to erode
During the "major combat" phase of the
presidentialapprovalonce again.
war, presidential approval did not decline
WEIGHING THE COSTS
in the face of casualties suffered as the
U.S. quickly swept Saddam Hussein from PublicsupportforU.S. militaryoperations,
power. One might dismiss this finding as then, does not inexorably decrease like
a brief "rallyround the flag" effect, because sand flowing through an hourglass. In
fromJune 2003 toJune2004-during
stead, theAmerican public regularlymakes
what we label the "insurgency" phase of
judgments about the potential costs and
thewar-presidential
approval appears
benefits of amilitary operation. As the
to have declined in response to casualties
likelihood of obtaining any benefits dimin
(with one brief reprieve in response to the ishes, the human cost of war becomes less
capture of Saddam). But in June 2004,
tolerable,and casualtiesreducesupport
theBush administrationrestoredsover
for the operation. On the other hand, if
eignty to Iraq and began preparations for and when the public is optimistic about a
elections,bolsteringpublicoptimismabout successful outcome, it is farmore willing
success, or at least progress, in Iraq. Con
to bear the human cost of war.
sequently,during the "post-sovereignty"
Iwould note, however, thatMueller
period, fromJune toNovember 2004,
makes at least one important observation:
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ChristopherGelpi andJohnMueller
the same kind of drop in support that re
stlted from thousands of deaths inVietnam
has resulted from just hundreds of deaths in
plausible
Mueller positsa superficially
Iraq.
hypothesisfor thisdifference-that the
public views Iraq as less important than
he does not cite survey data
Vietnam-but
to support that claim. It seems highly
unlikely that the stakes inVietnam were
considered to be ten times as great as those
in Iraq. Instead, my co-author and I put
forthamore promisinghypothesis:that
First, support tends to drop faster in
the earlier phases of awar than in the
later ones because weak supporters are
rather quickly alienated, as has been
found in all threewars I examined. But
regardless, the overall pattern is one of
erosion of support as casualties mount,
and,given thequalityof public-opinion
data and the complexity of events, it
seems unlikely that the data can really
be pushed to obtain the precise kind of
directcasualty-to-supportrelationship
Gelpi seeks. In part this is because, as I
technologyhaschangedthe levelof"neces note in the article, positive events in a
sary"casualtiesthatthepublicbelievessuc war can temporarily increase support,
and negative ones temporarily reduce it,
cess requires. In other words, the public
even as the overall trend does not change.
will tolerate the evil of casualties provided
It is not at all clear, however, that the
that they are truly necessary for victory
Tet offensive was "the crucial turning
but the technological prowess of theAmer
point," asGelpi maintains. Tet did in
icanmilitary has changed the public's
spire public alarm about the prospects for
expectations of how many casualties are
success in the Vietnam War, but a
in fact needed to achieve victory.We find
itmore plausible that the public has seen an glance at the figure supplied with my
changein technology original article will demonstrate that
order-of-magnitude
over the past 30 years than that it has come support simply continued to erode, not
to believe in an order-of-magnitude change dropprecipitously,during thatepisode.
in stakes. But we recognize that these re Moreover, support for theVietnam War
declined by 21percentage points in the two
main competing hypotheses thatwarrant
and a half years before Tet but by only 14
continuedresearch.
GELPI isAssociate
CHRISTOPHER
percentage points in the three years after it.
Whatever the effect of the Tet offen
Professor of Political Science at Duke Uni
D.
sive, it is important to stress, as I do in the
versity and the co-author, with Peter
article, that any increases or decreases in
Feaver, of Choosing Your Battles: Ameri
support tend to be temporary: support
can Civil-Military Relations and theUse
begins to erode again if and when further
of Force.
American casualties are registered. This
interpretation fits the Iraqwar data sup
plied in the article quite well. (In dealing
with Iraq,Gelpi unnecessarily complicates
things by abandoning measures of support
I thankChristopher Gelpi for his thought
ful and extensive comments on my article. forwar for ones of presidential approval,
Space is limited, but letme reply to several which depends on many factors other
than war.)
of his key objections.
in the years since Vietnam, the advance of
Mueller Replies
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My interpretation seems to be sup
ported by poll results tallied since the
article went to press. Support for thewar
dropped at the time of Hurricane Katrina,
asAmericans began towonder about
the nation'spriorities,but this decline
was more than reversed by the successful
Iraqi elections of November 15, the kind
of progressive
benchmarklaudedbyGelpi.
Within days,however,supportdropped
defeatphobic, not casualtyphobic."
Their analysisactuallyconcludes,however,
not that the public as awhole is defeat
phobic, but only that some 20 percent
of it is (see page 145). In their view, this
minority group is particularly sensitive
to seeming advances or setbacks. Iwould
simply add that any shifts in opinion as
a result tend to prove temporary. Gelpi
and Feaver are also much too confident
again to a level slightly lower than was
thatpresidentialcheerleadingcan increase
registeredbeforeeitherevent tookplace.
support for amilitary venture, asBush, like
Lyndon Johnson before him, seems to be
In all, the phenomenon suggests that a
significant and lasting reversal of the
erosion of support for thewar in Iraq is
unlikely. Those who already consider the
costs of thewar to be too high will probably
findingout.
Second, Gelpi iswrong to charge that
Imisstate his findings. In seeking a vivid
example of the notion thatAmericans are
not permanentlyreversetheiropinioneven defeat-phobicratherthancasualty-phobic,
in the event of good news.
I (ratherincidentally)
appliedinformation
Data from the Korean War are sparse, from aNovember 7,1999, Washington Post
but they can be interpreted in the same
op-ed inwhich he and Feaver proclaim
it a "myth" that "Americans are casualty
way. A plunge in support after the Chinese
entered thewar-inflicting major casual
shy" and attempt to demonstrate that
ties on U.S. troops-was, asGelpi notes,
"amajority of the American people will
partly (but only partly) reversed when
accept combat deaths-so
long as the
better news came in from the battlefield.
mission has the potential to be successftil."
But, as he also notes, support sagged there To support their case, they cite results
after as casualties continued to accrue.
from a poll they conducted indicating
There was also a bump upward in support, thatAmericans would, on average, accept
perhaps based on wishful thinking, when
6,861 batfle deaths to "stabilize a democratic
Dwight Eisenhowerwas electedpresident government inCongo." They also conclude
at the end of 1952.But other data show a
thatAmericans would accept an average
decline again to the end of the war (see
of 29,853battle deaths "toprevent Iraq from
pages 44-53 of my War, Presidents, and
obtaining weapons of mass destruction."
Public Opinion). Most important for pre
(I contributed to a rebuttal to the op-ed
sent purposes, the data suggest that those at the time, but the Post did not publish
who abandoned their support for thewar, it. It is posted at psweb.sbs.ohio-state.edu/
particularly in the early months, never
faculty/jmueller/klarevas.doc.)
really came back to stay.
In their subsequent book, Gelpi and
In the end, my interpretation may
Feaver do acknowledge in a footnote
not be all that different from Gelpi's. In
that the numbers in the op-ed were "overly
Your
Choosing
Battles, he and Peter Feaver susceptibletomisinterpretation,"and
repeatedly declare that "the public is
they then rejigger their analysis of the
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samepoll questionand essentiallycon
clude that the figure forCongo was some
6,8oo percent too high. The damage,
however, had already been done: this
unfortunateop-edhasbeenwidely cited,
particularly
applied,andmisinterpreted,
inmilitary publications.
Third, Gelpi goes on to speculate that
improvedtechnology
may havereducedthe
level of casualties the public will tolerate
to achieve success. I find this to be an
interesting idea, and I certainly agreewith
him that it deserves further research. I
In Somalia. Bosnia, Haiti, Kosovo, and
Congo, the public clearly found the stakes
too low to justify many casualties at all,
whereas in Korea, Vietnam, and, espe
cially,Iraq,the stakesprovedinsufficient
as costs rose. And, as suggested inmy
article, if the public comes to consider a
venture to be scarcely worth further
American bloodshed (as it did in regard
toVietnam in 1975,Lebanon in 1983, and
Somalia in 1993), itwill be quite willing
to cut its losses and get out-that
is, to
rise above any supposed phobias and
am somewhatskeptical,however,because acceptdefeat.0
of the experienceof 2001.Although their
casualty tolerance was never put to the
test, quite a bit of poll data suggest that
Americans, deeply threatened and in a rage
after 9/nl, were willing to suffer enormous
casualties in the fight against al Qaeda
inAfghanistan.
And
I suspect that, whatever
the
Americanswould
changesin technology,
react to another raid on Pearl Harbor in
much the same way that they did in 1941.
A degree of support for this proposition
comes from data gathered in 1990 after
Iraq invaded Kuwait. Some U.S. troops
were sent to neighboring Saudi Arabia to
deter an attack on that country, and poll
data made it quite clear that if Iraq had
attacked those troops, support in 1990 for
going after Iraqwould have been over
whelming. Indeed, limited data suggest
that prospective support for retaliating
against Iraq in the event of such an attack
was higher than prospective support was
in 1941 for retaliating against Japan if that
country were to attack Hawaii (see page
123of my book Policy and Opinion in the
Gulf War).
If the stakes are high enough, Ameri
canswill still accept considerable casualties.
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