Kettles of Hawks: Public Opinion on the Nuclear Taboo and Noncombatant Immunity in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Israel

Recent scholarship has established that a majority of Americans will support the use nuclear weapons and violate principle noncombatant immunity when American lives are on line. Some scholars contend, however, these hawkish attitudes an outlier other Western democratic publics have more fully internalized taboo, as well prohibition deliberately killing civilians. To investigate cross-national important norms, we conducted survey experiment American, British, French, Israeli citizens. We find not exceptional. Rather, respondents display most preferences; French citizens roughly equally hawkish; British public is consistently least supportive or targeting Categorical prohibitions—against civilians—do little to shape opinion in four countries. Instead, each state follows same consequentialist logic: near willing using they effective than conventional options, but declines collateral civilian deaths rise. Respondents’ preferences for compatriots over foreign civilians respondents’ retributiveness help explain individual-level variation attitudes.