8/7/2023 0 Comments War room org![]() ![]() The present study reports the results of two surveys designed to replicate and extend Sagan and Valentino’s ( 9) important findings and explore their implications. The strongest attitudinal predictor of vengefulness in warfare has been the degree to which an individual supports the death penalty for persons convicted of murder ( 16, 18), a finding replicated in the Sagan and Valentino study ( 9). Vengeful tendencies have been found to predict support for wars and assassinations ( 10 – 16) and to be prevalent in the desire to punish transgressors in everyday life as well ( 17). Specifically, support for nuclear weapons use was far greater among Republicans and among persons who advocated the death penalty for convicted murderers.Īn extensive multidisciplinary literature has documented the prevalence and correlates of revenge, retribution, and punishment in American personal, political, and military contexts. Moreover, political and attitudinal factors that should not be relevant in a decision about whether to unleash nuclear weapons on civilians were, nevertheless, strongly associated with public support. Other noteworthy findings were that support for use of nuclear weapons was accompanied by a belief that the action was ethical and the victims were to blame for their fate. Moreover, they found that this support was insensitive to scope: It did not decline when the estimated number of civilian casualties was increased 20-fold, from 100,000 to 2,000,000. Indeed, they found that almost 60% of their respondents would support a government decision to use a nuclear bomb against enemy civilians to end a difficult war that threatened the lives of many American troops. Their findings are disturbing, showing no signs of a nuclear taboo. Sagan and Valentino ( 9) conducted a survey to understand whether public opinion in the United States would oppose or support a decision by the president to use nuclear weapons in international crises. Arms control policies and treaties are being abandoned and violated ( 6), nuclear weapons arsenals are being updated, redesigned, and enlarged ( 7), and volatile leaders in control of those weapons have shown a cavalier willingness to engage in dangerous forms of nuclear “saber-rattling,” as when President Donald Trump threatened to “totally destroy North Korea” ( 8). A major reduction in the size of the world’s nuclear arsenal since the end of the cold war lends support to this optimistic view that, in an otherwise violent world, the use of nuclear weapons has been declared off limits.īut recent events paint a less comforting picture. ![]() Others have optimistically viewed this as part of a larger humanitarian revolution that is in keeping with acceptance of a just war principle of noncombatant immunity ( 2 – 5). Some have attributed this to a taboo against the “first use” of these uniquely violent and destructive weapons ( 1). In the decades since World War II ended in a nuclear firestorm, scholars have observed a decline in United States public support for the use of nuclear weapons. The common thread of punitiveness underlying and connecting these issues needs to be recognized, understood, and confronted by any society that professes to value fundamental human rights and wishes to prevent important decisions from being affected by irrelevant and harmful sociocultural and political biases. This lends support to the provocative notion of “virtuous violence” put forth by Fiske and Rai, who assert that people commit violence because they believe it is the morally right thing to do. Those who support these various policies that threaten harm to many people tend to believe that the victims are blameworthy and it is ethical to take actions or policies that might harm them. ![]() ![]() This is the finding from two national surveys of Democrats and Republicans that measured support for punitive regulations and policies across these four seemingly unrelated issues, and a fifth, using nuclear weapons against enemy civilians (in survey 1) or approving of disproportionate killing with conventional weapons (in survey 2). How likely is it that someone would approve of using a nuclear weapon to kill millions of enemy civilians in the hope of ending a ground war that threatens thousands of American troops? Ask them how they feel about prosecuting immigrants, banning abortion, supporting the death penalty, and protecting gun rights and you will know. ![]()
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