Report: Americans Support Use of Nuclear Weapons If It Saves Lives of U.S. Military

Zachary Keck

Security, Asia

But what happens after?

A sizeable majority of the American people are ready to support the use of nuclear weapons if it saves the lives of U.S. military servicemen and women.

That’s according to a new survey conducted by Scott D. Sagan and Benjamin A. Valentino, the results of which were published in the new issue of International Security (Full disclosure: International Security is published by my former employer, the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs).

The article is rare in being an academic study that is extremely timely given the current tensions between the United States and North Korea. The authors begin by noting that U.S. support for President Harry S. Truman's decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has steadily declined since 1945. Immediately after the war, 85 percent of Americans supported Truman's decision. By 2015, only 45 percent of Americans said dropping atomic bombs on Japan was “the right thing to do.” This has led some scholars to contend that the general public have internalized the taboo against the use of nuclear weapons, while others say that there is a larger norm against targeting noncombatants in war.

Sagan and Valentino’s findings cast doubt on those arguments. They contend that public opinion of the atomic bombings that ended World War II are not necessarily representative of the public’s views on the use of nuclear weapons in general. As they point out, opinion on Truman’s decision to use the bomb is likely colored by the fact that Japan is a staunch U.S. ally and the animosities fueling World War II have faded with time.