When Democracies Choose War: Politics, Public Opinion, and the Marketplace of Ideas 9781626376687

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When Democracies Choose War

When Democracies Choose War Politics, Public Opinion, and the Marketplace of Ideas

Andrew Z. Katz

b o u l d e r l o n d o n

Published in the United States of America in 2017 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.rienner.com

and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU

© 2017 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Katz, Andrew Z., 1959– author. Title: When democracies choose war : politics, public opinion, and the marketplace of ideas / by Andrew Z. Katz. Description: Boulder, Colorado : Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017002125 (print) | LCCN 2017026772 (ebook) | ISBN 9781626376687 (e-book) | ISBN 9781626376465 (hardcover : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Democracy—Decision making. | War—Decision making. | Public opinion—Political aspects. | Indochinese War, 1946–1954—Political aspects—France. | Vietnam War, 1961–1975—Political aspects—United States. | Falkland Islands War, 1982—Political aspects—Great Britain. | Lebanon—History—Israeli intervention, 1982–1985—Political aspects—Israel. | Iraq War, 2003-2011—Political aspects—United States. Classification: LCC JC421 (ebook) | LCC JC421 .K366 2017 (print) | DDC 355.02/72—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017002125

British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in the United States of America

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992.

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Contents

List of Tables and Figures Acknowledgments

1 Democratic Wars of Choice and the Marketplace of Ideas 2 France’s Effort to Retain Indochina

3 Richard Nixon’s Pursuit of “Peace with Honor” in Vietnam

vii ix 1

31 65

4 Britain’s War to Retake the Falklands

105

6 War as a “New Product”: Marketing Operation Iraqi Freedom

163

5 Israel’s 1982 Invasion of Lebanon to Secure Peace in the Galilee

7 Toward a Better Understanding of Democracies at War?

Appendix Bibliography Index About the Book

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221 223 241 253

Tables and Figures

Tables

2.1 3.1 3.2

3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 4.1 4.2

4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6

French Opinion on Indochina Overall Frequency Count of Coded Items Judgments on the War Coded by the Likely Allegiance to the Chief of Government Frames of Coded Judgments on the War Comparison of Frames Coded According to the Individual’s Likely Allegiance to the Chief of Government Comparison of Frames of Coded Judgments per Juncture Overall Tenor of New York Times News Articles Frequency Count of New York Times Op-Ed Sentiment Public Opinion on Congressional Action to End the War The Pace of US Troop Withdrawals Overall Frequency Count of Coded Items Judgments on the War Coded by the Likely Allegiance to the Chief of Government Frames of Coded Judgments on the War Comparison of Frames Coded According to the Individual’s Likely Allegiance to the Chief of Government Comparison of Frames of Coded Judgments per Juncture Party Preference in the Next UK General Election vii

48 81

81 82 83 85 88 88 90 91 118

119 120 121 123 125

viii 4.7

4.8 5.1 5.2

5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 6.1 6.2

6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 7.1

Tables and Figures

British Public Opinion on Risking the Lives of the Armed Forces British Public Opinion on the Falklands War Overall Frequency Count of Coded Items Judgments on the War Coded by the Likely Allegiance to the Chief of Government Frames of Coded Judgments on the War Comparison of Frames Coded According to the Individual’s Likely Allegiance to the Chief of Government Comparison of Frames of Coded Judgments by Juncture Israeli Public Preferences on Lebanon Judging Israel’s Invasion of Lebanon Overall Frequency Count of Coded Items Judgments on the War Coded by the Likely Allegiance to the Chief of Government Frames of Coded Judgments on the War Comparison of Frames Coded According to the Individual’s Likely Allegiance to the Chief of Government Overall Tenor of New York Times News Articles New York Times Op-Ed Sentiment Comparison of Frames of Coded Judgments by Juncture War Outcomes and Framing Contests

126 127 146

147 148 149 150 154 155 177

178 179 180 181 182 183 211

Figures

1.1

3.1

6.1 6.2 6.3

7.1 7.2

A Model of Public Opinion Activation and Normative Change Approval for President Nixon’s Handling of Vietnam from Internal White House Polling Approval of President Bush’s Handling of the Iraq War Support for the Use of US Force Against Iraq Partisan Approval for Bush’s Handling of the Situation in Iraq Polarization of Coded Stands Frequency of Problem-Definition Frames in Database

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89 169 171

193 216 217

Acknowledgments

I am a bit further along in my life and career than most first-time book authors. Owing to the number of years it took for these ideas to come to fruition, my parents and in-laws are unable to enjoy the pride of this accomplishment. My two sons, however, are now grown and perhaps can better appreciate what this book means to me and, I hope, can see in this achievement the merits of doing things “not because they are easy but because they are hard.” I have been extraordinarily fortunate to teach at an institution of higher learning that both encourages its faculty to engage their students and provides resources to help them fulfill their scholarly ambitions. Accordingly, several Denison University students have been important contributors to this project and have enriched my life in the process. I extend my appreciation to Adam Crowther, Kelsey Bryant, Meghan Hofert, Josh Williams, Lauren Mallet, Lauren Brown, Lauren Waters, Katherine Standbridge, Kristina Dungan, and Leah Hansler. I am grateful to Sue Davis, Katy Crossley-Frolick, Vaughn Shannon, Laura Roselle, and Douglas Foyle, who read the entire manuscript and offered useful insights. I am especially thankful for the crucial assistance provided by Mike Brady. I acknowledge the contributions of three political scientists from my past who deserve special mention for their contributions to my development as a scholar. Phil Powlick taught me a great deal about the craft of research, and Emmett Buell helped foster my development as a professional writer. I owe the biggest debt to Richard Melanson. From the time I was a graduate student through my arrival at Denison, Dick was a mentor, advocate, inspiration, and friend. Though we have been out of touch for a while, I have never lost sight of the debt I owe him. ix

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Acknowledgments

Over the years I have been the recipient of assistance from numerous archivists. I would like to mention Anne-Sophie Cras of the Centre des archives diplomatiques de Nantes for her especially helpful guidance. The late Marilyn Grobschmidt helped initiate this project; Lynne Rienner and Shena Redmond helped bring it to publication. Several individuals have played supporting roles in bringing me to this point. Thanks to Shirley Lange, Joe Baumgarten, Steve Vogel, Dave Bussan, and Cathy Dollard. Both Ezra Sagan Katz and Toby Sagan Katz made direct and indirect contributions to the completion of the book. All errors and shortcomings contained herein are the fault of no one but myself. Ever since I took a nap in her dorm room at the age of eighteen while she diligently wrote a final paper, Susannah Sagan has been my inspiration, role model, and lodestar through life. It is to her that I have devoted all of my adult life, and to her that I dedicate this book.

1 Democratic Wars of Choice and the Marketplace of Ideas

As the summer of 2002 wound to a close, speculation was rife across the country that Iraq would be the next target of the George W. Bush administration’s war on terror. Prominent foreign policy experts from the president’s own party, including former secretary of state James Baker and national security advisor Brent Scowcroft, questioned the wisdom of going to war against Iraq in high-visibility venues.1 Yet the White House remained mum on its plans, waiting until after Labor Day to launch a coordinated public relations campaign to build domestic support for a bellicose policy toward Saddam Hussein. Curiously, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card explained the delay in terms of marketing strategy, informing New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller, “You don’t introduce new products in August.”2 To even the most seasoned and sophisticated observers of US foreign policy, this must have seemed a rather crass remark, reflecting an attitude appropriate to marketing laundry detergent but not for national security affairs. In fact, Card’s statement reveals a lot about how modern democracies justify and sustain so-called wars of choice and anticipates the central themes explored in this book. In short, the comment represents the culmination of efforts by leaders of democracies to persuade their citizens to embrace the decision to take up arms regardless of their reluctance, in the words of Immanuel Kant, to risk “all the calamities of war.” Card’s reference intrigues because it strikes at the heart of theoretical and practical concerns regarding democracy and war. Inspired by Kant’s argument that states in which citizens enjoy liberal rights would share a zone of peace, the proposition that democratic states do not wage war on fellow democracies has gathered significant empirical support and has become a regular feature of the rhetoric of political leaders.3 However, the degree to which democracy inhibits or promotes the use of force in the 1

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When Democracies Choose War

more limited instance of democratic-democratic war, let alone in general, remains in dispute. Scholars searching for a satisfactory explanation for why democracies behave one way toward similarly constituted regimes while evincing no such restraint against other regime types have few untapped routes for empirical investigation. Wars between democracies, and even near misses, have been so rare that limited insight can be gained from further intensive consideration of such cases.4 To better understand the interaction of democracy and war, I propose examination of cases where the state does not face anything approaching an existential threat, making it incumbent on leaders to generate societal support for military action that for all intents and purposes is a choice. In their study of the misapplication of the right-to-protect norm, Badescu and Weiss demonstrate how “backlash and contestation” can help “clarify the actual meaning and limits” of a norm, even in cases when the norm is not heeded.5 I use democratic wars of choice in a similar fashion to enlighten our understanding of the evolution of liberal constraints on the use of force. I ask whether these instances of democratic war provoke a domestic reaction that propels forward the adoption of norms restricting future democratic belligerent action. Richard Haass has popularized the distinction between wars of necessity and wars of choice. A war of choice is one in which the survival of the state is not at risk, where decisionmakers opt for war as one of the possible means to achieve desirable but not core state goals.6 A war, according to Haass, “undertaken for reasons that do not involve obvious self-defense.”7 Democracies certainly engage in wars of choice; the question is whether and how democracy affects state behavior in these wars. Through close observation of democratic wars of choice, we may appreciate whether, as a consequence of the experience, democratic identity and liberal norms evolve to forestall such wars from the panoply of actions states identifying themselves as “liberal” do not commit. Haass presents the decision to go to war as dichotomous—it’s either a choice or a necessity. Of course, there is some element of choice in almost all wars. Moreover, modern democracies seldom face existential threats. There may be instances when a democratic leader does not think the state faces a threat to its existence but nevertheless believes that he or she must go to war owing to political necessity, fearing that a failure to respond to the domestic political imperative of attacking the hated foe will put their political viability at risk. For example, although Spain posed no existential threat to the United States, domestic pressure arguably compelled President William McKinley to war in 1898. Were the leader to resist the siren calls to war in such circumstances, placing his or her own assessment of the national interest above political concerns, we would characterize their refusal as a profile in courage, reflecting a difficult choice, but a choice

Democratic Wars of Choice and the Marketplace of Ideas

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nevertheless. Thus, even when war might seem a political necessity, there is an element of choice. Moreover, given the low levels of knowledge and awareness of foreign affairs among the public, it is extremely unlikely that pressure for war from ordinary citizens would emerge without elite encouragement and debate—precisely the mechanisms that regulate democratic involvement in war of interest in this study. A concept used to describe the pressures faced by dictators in the developing world also may be applicable to leaders of democratic states. Steven David uses the term omnibalancing to refer to the need for dictators in what was then called the third world to placate potential domestic rivals even as they respond to the structural imperatives of the international system.8 No leader is immune from tending to their domestic flanks; the key point is that when the choice is war—no matter how narrow that choice may be— democratic systems afford many pathways for contrary voices to air their views. How actors in a democracy navigate these pathways when the subject is war forms the core focus of this research. We therefore ought to think of wars as falling along a choice continuum, with a very narrow set of conflicts on one end of the spectrum being clearly of necessity, and at the other end would be those uses of force advocated by few other than those at the pinnacle of state power. Given the realities of democratic governance, the instruments of state power cannot be applied to any substantial degree or for very long without the acquiescence of society. Thus, in most cases, governing elites must expend effort bringing other institutions and the body politic to concur with their assessment that this perceived danger must be met with force. In those rare instances when political necessity may argue in favor of a use of force, hesitant leaders may endeavor to argue that in actuality war would be more of a choice than their constituents contend. In most cases, however, it is incumbent on a democratic leader to present the prospect of war as falling as close to the necessity side of this continuum as possible to secure the broad backing that makes battlefield success possible. To do so, the leader must frame the choice of war in terms that will resonate positively across society, reflecting the purposes for which the democratic audience believes wars should be fought. Or, in Card’s language, sell the war to reluctant consumers hesitant to find war in the national interest or consonant with expected norms of liberal state behavior. Theoretical Foundations

What is the connection between democratic war, democratic politics, and democratic norms? How do democratic officials reconcile their assessment of national security requirements with imperatives imposed by the political system? In short, what happens domestically when democracies choose

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When Democracies Choose War

war? To address these questions, I integrate three areas of inquiry that for sake of scholarly convenience are normally kept separate. First, I take my research question from democratic peace theory, which finds mixed evidence that liberal states are more peaceful than other regime types (the monadic proposition) and persuasive indications that they do not wage war against fellow democracies (the dyadic). Much democratic peace research over the past two decades or so seeks explanation for why democracies tend not to fight fellow democracies but engage in war against nondemocratic opponents. By highlighting democratic wars against illiberal targets that do not pose an immediate threat, I aim to clarify why democracies fight some types of wars but not others. Can we explain why war between democracies has been rare, if not nonexistent, by examining the conditions that give rise to opposition to democratic wars of choice? In addressing this question, I seek a more nuanced understanding of the role of democracy and war than is currently provided by democratic peace research. I explain the variance in democratic behavior by highlighting normative debate about wars of choice in the democratic marketplace of ideas and exploring the role played by public opinion in rendering some forms of wars inappropriate for democracies to wage. Second, I incorporate research on public opinion and foreign policy to provide guidance on the conditions under which public opinion becomes activated in foreign policy formulation. Basically, activation of public opinion occurs when debate among societal elites signals a challenge to the normative justification for a war of choice offered by leaders. I use newspaper coverage and other contemporaneous accounts as a representation of the marketplace of ideas and evaluate the degree of elite consensus through content analysis of the debate carried out in the national media. Third, to evaluate how arguments over ideas affect the course of a war of choice and how this debate ultimately influences the evolution of democratic norms, I turn to constructivism, a mode of analysis that emphasizes the role of nonmaterial factors such as identity and norms on state behavior. In contrast to materialist approaches, such as realism and liberalism, that focus on power and wealth as the key motivating factors for state action, constructivism highlights how the determination of “appropriate” behavior constrains the policy choices available to officials. I evaluate how arguments presented by leaders in support of policy are challenged by elite and public debate, and I use constructivist analysis to interpret how this interaction constitutes the evolving position of society on the appropriateness of the use of force in a given context. In essence, when there is debate over a democratic war of choice in the marketplace of ideas, the conditions are ripe for the evolution of norms that define democratic identity and shape democratic behavior. I bring these three strands of inquiry together to explore the debate in the democratic marketplace of ideas for five cases of democratic wars of

Democratic Wars of Choice and the Marketplace of Ideas

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choice: the French effort to retain Indochina after World War II, Richard Nixon’s effort to sustain US intervention in Vietnam from 1960 to 1973, Great Britain’s war to retake the Falklands in 1982, Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and the decision to topple Saddam Hussein and its aftermath in Iraq in the early 2000s. To lay the foundation for my case studies, I use Card’s metaphor as a segue to explore sequentially how the key themes relevant to this project from the literatures on democratic peace, public opinion and war, and the potency of norms come to a confluence when debate over war is engaged. I present my model of the relationship between wars of choice, democratic politics, and norms of liberal behavior. I complete this introductory chapter with a description of my research methodology and case format. The Interaction of International Relations and Domestic Politics

By connecting the choice to go to war with the ensuing domestic debate over its wisdom, I follow in the footsteps of Robert Putnam, whose two-level diplomacy makes a start toward reconciling the security requirements of the external realm with the political constraints of the domestic. I advance Putnam’s efforts at synthesis by focusing on how democracy shapes the interpretation and presentation of the security environment and consequently the resources available to leaders to pursue their security agendas. Putnam characterizes international diplomacy as a contest between chiefs of government (COGs) negotiating on the international plane, while these principals remain attentive to what their domestic counterparts are willing to ratify. The winset, or range of acceptable negotiating outcomes, is forged by the interaction of the COG and his or her domestic audience, regardless of regime type.9 Scholarship on interstate rivalry offers another avenue of research that explores the link between domestic politics and international relations. Eric Cox examines how domestic politics may shape state action to ameliorate interstate rivalries. He finds that domestic or foreign policy failure may lead the public to turn to new leadership to seek an end to an ongoing conflict.10 Using a dynamic longitudinal approach, Diehl and Goertz confirm that joint democracies are very rarely rivals, and indicate that when former rivals become democracies, their hostility is likely to end.11 Of course, for every democratic war of choice, the COG’s job is to make the case that war is necessary. The opposition’s task is to make the counterargument that the choice of war is unnecessary, imprudent, premature, or immoral. In a democracy, the clash among various individuals and institutions in the marketplace of ideas determines the size and characteristics of the win-set. Curiously, aside from Putnam and some others, this rela-

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When Democracies Choose War

tionship, though not highlighted by scholars, is attended to assiduously by contemporary policymakers, as Card’s remark made clear.12 By applying a marketing metaphor to a foreign policy issue, Card confessed to the realist-based conventional wisdom among academics and policymakers that the duty of leaders is to identify security threats, formulate a justification for resulting policy, and then expect domestic support to follow. Even so, his declaration resonates as an admission that the public must be coached to support the choice of war. Leaders of democracies are normally loath to admit considering public opinion when conducting foreign policy, since consulting polls on questions of national security violates the almost universally held realist value that officials act on the basis of the national interest, not domestic politics. This attitude was best expressed by a highlevel State Department official who proclaimed in Bernard Cohen’s 1973 classic, Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: “To hell with public opinion. . . . We should lead, not follow.”13 On this basis, Card’s admission that the choice to go to war needed to be sold as does laundry detergent does not seem surprising. After all, being dismissive of the reasoning capacity of the public fits right in with the sentiment expressed by Cohen’s respondent, as well as empirical evidence collected over the decades that reveals public opinion to be fairly uninformed about issues of international import. While waiting until after Labor Day to ensure you have the attention of the domestic audience suggests a low regard for the public’s ability to concentrate on issues of state, it is not an attitude that lacks basis in scholarly literature and standard practice. Nevertheless, Card’s remark is striking because democratic officials tend to be sensitive about making comments that denigrate the reasoning capacity of constituents. But perhaps he wasn’t being careless. Instead, his remark may be seen as a recognition of the need for leaders to respond, educate, and shape a public opinion that although not well informed, has structured attitudes that policymakers must skillfully tap into when legitimating the choice to go to war. One also must wonder to what degree the Bush administration policy was shaped or constrained by the need to present “a new product” in the democratic marketplace of ideas. After all, Card’s remark is an implicit acknowledgment that there are limits beyond which marketing techniques fail. Why else be concerned about the timing of the marketing campaign? Moreover, there must have been much consternation and debate in the White House over the content of the “new product” introduction. Supposedly, then, there are boundaries of democratic acceptance for wars of choice, and Card’s metaphor refers to the Bush administration’s efforts to find and test them. Is there a magic ingredient to a successful campaign to gain public support for a democratic war of choice? The essence of democratic governance is that citizen preferences somehow flow to leaders and that policy, domestic or foreign, reflects the popu-

Democratic Wars of Choice and the Marketplace of Ideas

7

lar will. Yet the process through which public preferences and policy interact remains underexplored. If, as realists contend, the national security interest reflects an objective reality undifferentiated by regime type, the only contrast between democratic regimes and others will be found in the necessity to persuade a sometimes skeptical, usually gullible public of its importance, not in the leadership’s decision to choose war. Thus, Card’s reference to marketing strategy pays lip service to the need to build domestic support for foreign policy, while it nevertheless reinforces the realist notion that foreign policy flows from the top down. In trying to persuade the home audience to support a war of choice, are officials constrained by the liberal sensibilities of their constituents? Persuading the home audience of the necessity for war may be an essential part of any state’s road to belligerence. Surely democracies, unlike other political systems, are designed to provide a multiplicity of channels for domestic interests to influence policy. When the policy at issue is whether to go to war, the rationale offered by officials must be vetted in the marketplace of ideas. Importantly, in this arena the chief executive does not always win. Democratic leaders must be attentive to winning framing contests to assuage citizen reservations about risking blood, treasure, and their liberal identity. Democratic peace theory and other liberal approaches highlight the significance of internal politics to external policy but fall short of explaining the circumstances under which democracy constrains the use of force. I explore this theoretical and practical tension in the democratic marketplace of ideas, the crucible in which those in favor of a war of choice must make their appeal. I provide an overview of democratic peace research in the next section, focusing on the key theoretical gap left exposed in this literature. The Democratic Peace

It began with a nugget of a finding. As students of international politics began to accumulate data in pursuit of a scientific understanding of the causes of war, they stumbled on a finding so potent that it has been lauded as among the most significant empirical determinations in political science: democracies do not fight other democracies.14 Even though there is scant evidence of a democracy warring on another democracy, scholarly consensus on the value or meaning of this historical observation remains elusive. Some skeptics practically ridicule the so-called dyadic peace as sophistry.15 Miriam Elman bemoans “the cantankerous narrow-mindedness exhibited by some of the participants in the debate.”16 Critiques of the democratic peace finding explain the apparent absence of war among democracies as the product of realpolitik assessment of power balances,17 of common interests,18 or

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When Democracies Choose War

of shared preferences.19 An alternative explanation of the democratic peace focuses on audience costs, which make democratic threats credible, thus causing adversaries to back down short of war, and democratic leaders reluctant to embark on risky foreign policies.20 Some consider the democratic peace overdetermined, with multiple factors combining to account for the apparent absence of wars among democracies.21 If democracies do not fight other democracies but engage in many other forms of aggression against a range of targets, why is this the case? Advocates of the liberal peace identify democratic norms and institutions as the causal factors that explain why democracies are inhibited from engaging fellow democracies in war yet allow for democratic war against other regime types. According to this view, the liberal norm of peaceful conflict resolution along with the institutional checks and balances of democratic systems work in some undetermined combination to stop conflicts among democracies from escalating to war. Democracies thus belong to a community sharing the norm of live-and-let-live, so just as disputes within these states are resolved short of violence, so is the expectation—and the empirical reality—that disputes between democracies will not escalate to war.22 If we accept that democracies do not wage war against other democracies, they still fight nondemocracies and use violent means short of war against all types of targets. Indeed, acts of liberal aggression in the form of armed intervention, covert penetration, colonialism, and the like provide ready examples to discredit anyone’s vision of pacifistic democracies.23 Nevertheless, the monadic variant of the democratic peace that democracy constrains state behavior has its adherents. For example, R. J. Rummel has been a leading proponent of the monadic proposition, presenting evidence in a series of essays that democratic or (as he calls them) libertarian states are less violent.24 Elaborations of the monadic thesis include studies finding that democracies are less likely to join wars,25 and democracies are more likely to resolve disputes at a lower rung on the conflict escalation ladder.26 Over the past century democracies have proven less prone to domestic collective violence than nondemocracies.27 In addition, democracies experiencing relative decline have been shown to adopt strategies other than preventive war to maintain their position in the international hierarchy.28 Democracies have been found to be less likely to initiate crises, and established democracies with proportional representation systems are least likely to be involved in war.29 Looking at the role of democracy on international affairs from a different perspective, Reiter and Stam conclude that democracies are more likely than other states to avoid initiating risky wars and to win the wars in which they engage because their leaders are accountable to their constituents.30 Collectively these findings suggest that the interaction of liberal norms and democratic institutions combine to restrain democratic behavior in a range of circumstances. However, the conditions under which norms

Democratic Wars of Choice and the Marketplace of Ideas

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become a factor in the deliberations of democratic institutions and thereby constrain the conduct of democracies in world affairs remain a puzzle. Democratic Wars of Choice and the Marketplace of Ideas

Skeptics of democratic peace theory point to the selective application of the norm of peaceful conflict resolution, which does not prevent democracies from using force when it suits them, as well as the complicity (if not encouragement) of democratic institutions in promoting war, to discredit the leading causal mechanisms of the democratic peace.31 If the question of why democracies come to reject certain types of wars yet embrace others lies at the crux of the democratic peace controversy, weighing the relative significance of norms and institutional structures in producing the phenomenon has been the essence of scholarship among the theory’s advocates.32 Russett considers the two “not fully separable in theory or in practice.”33 Clearly, both are essential; how they interact and reinforce each other requires further investigation. It would be fair to assume that political structures, particularly popularly elected legislatures, provide meaningful insight into a society’s norms.34 Important case studies demonstrate that these factors affect the democratic peace. For example, Barbara Farnham finds that Franklin D. Roosevelt’s evaluation of the threat posed by Adolf Hitler changed as Roosevelt came to view him as dismissive of democratic norms at Munich.35 Meanwhile, a case study analysis of war between four mixed pairs of states by Miriam Fendius Elman concludes that different democratic institutional structures have varying impacts on decisions to use force.36 Such intensive examination of democratic decisions to begin, continue, or end involvement in war can clarify our understanding of how democratic norms and institutions interact and shed light on the evolutionary process that narrows the range of appropriate democratic uses of force. Democratic wars of choice become possible when officials succeed in arguing for the prudential necessity and normative legitimacy for using force in the marketplace of ideas. Whether through persuasive power, stealth, inadequacy of the political opposition, or rapid military success, democratic leaders intent on using force secure domestic support by appealing to the voters’ interests and normative beliefs about the state’s role in international politics. Democratic wars of choice become unpopular not just because official goals are more difficult to achieve than anticipated but because contestation over the war’s purpose provides a normative basis for opposition to the war that resonates among citizens. Potentially, through a process of norm diffusion, these arguments become the root of a normative prohibition embraced by democracies in general.37

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When Democracies Choose War

Doyle argues that “liberal wars are only fought for popular, liberal purposes.”38 If so, we would expect that democratic leaders articulate a liberal justification for wars of choice to their publics. Moreover, we would anticipate that as the war endures, a domestic debate will be enjoined to evaluate the official rationale for war in terms of liberal norms. Democratic objection could be raised on a multitude of grounds: cost in lives or treasure, prudence (“the wrong war at the wrong time against the wrong enemy” syndrome), or a rising dissonance in society as the perception grows that resources are being used to achieve ends that are anathema to state identity (e.g., intentionally inflicting massive civilian deaths). Of course, democracies fight wars that violate liberal norms of peaceful conflict resolution and the live and let live principle; norms are not a barrier to behavior. Rather, as RisseKappen asserts, “norms guide behavior in a probabilistic sense,” reminding us, “we do run red lights from time to time.”39 Although critics may find a democratic war of choice problematic for any number of reasons, an indictment of the official definition of the problem that ostensibly necessitated the war brings to the forefront the question of whether state action is compatible with democratic identity. Once this critique gains traction in the marketplace of ideas, public support for continued sacrifice is likely to ebb. To unpack the purported normative causal mechanism of the democratic peace, I spotlight the degree to which norms are contested during debate in the marketplace of ideas. Nye and Welch call for detailed case studies to tease out the causes of democratic peace, an especially valuable means for exploring causal mechanisms and generating more highly differentiated variables for further study.40 For example, Risse-Kappen and Elman differentiate among democratic regime types, concluding that public opinion and leader autonomy vary according to institutional structure.41 By contrast, investigation into normative restraints on democratic uses of force lacks a temporal dimension. Using multiple methods, Rousseau finds that democratic structures are a significant factor in restraining democratic escalation against all regime types, but concludes that norms largely do not play a moderating role.42 He focuses on norms as reflected in the socialization of leaders, primarily the norm of peaceful conflict resolution. Although Rousseau incorporates an evolutionary institutional mechanism that allows him to trace the ability of competing centers of power to inhibit the choice for war at different stages of a conflict, norms remain static. Critics of democratic peace theory overlook the fact that democratic norms are not fixed. Indeed, research by Diehl, Goertz, and Balas confirms that norms against conquest and secession that emerged after 1945, along with the norm in favor of decolonization that took hold in the 1960s, have contributed to the greater peacefulness of post–World War II interstate politics.43 To tease out how contestation over norms govern the use of force and how evolving norms enter domestic political debate, we need to look intensively at cases

Democratic Wars of Choice and the Marketplace of Ideas

11

of democratic war when official justifications for the use of force are subject to normative challenge and ask whether the home audience has become engaged in determining the outcome of this contest. Citizen sensitivity to the material sacrifices that warfare demands fluctuates according to the stakes at hand.44 Moreover, as I develop in the next section, democratic norms that inhibit the contemplation of force in certain contexts develop over time, often in response to a significant event.45 Therefore, officials’ freedom of maneuver to act without the check of democratic institutions, or the inhibitions presented by normative constraints, vary. This explains how democratic leaders in the past were able to engage in wars that from today’s perspective seem incongruous with the assumptions of the democratic peace. Scholarship on the marketplace of ideas emphasizes the ability of elites to hijack the foreign policy agenda or of officials to use their control over information and the like to silence debate.46 In essence, by controlling the marketplace of ideas, policymakers are able to use force irrespective of the interests of the median voter, thereby mitigating (at least temporarily) any constraints imposed by democracy. Wars of choice present an opportunity to evaluate how the interaction of elites and public opinion in the marketplace of ideas shape the course of democratic intervention. As Gil Merom writes, the marketplace of ideas provides society with a means to oppose state policies “over expedient and moral issues that concern human life and dignity.”47 I open the window into democratic norm evolution by testing whether elite debate over the normative justification for war activates oppositional public opinion and in turn influences the development of democratic norms regarding the legitimate use of force. To develop my model, I consider next the role of norms in democratic peace research. Norms and the Democratic Peace

Rationalist approaches like realism, liberalism, neorealism, and neoliberalism explain state behavior through the logic of consequences, that is, policies are assumed to reflect an assessment of state capabilities and interests. Constructivists, on the other hand, look to the logic of appropriateness to make sense of state actions that seem to confound rationalist explanation.48 Ann Florini argues that “the realm of conceivable behavior in a given social structure is normatively determined and it is not as wide as the realm of behavior that is physically possible.”49 In this gray area where norms are uncertain or ambiguous, capability permits democratic leaders to choose war, following the probabilistic calculus to which Risse-Kappen refers.50 In reaction, democracy affords others in the political system the opportunity to question such a choice. Indeed, the political process essential to liberal

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When Democracies Choose War

identity ensures, as Doyle writes, that “nonliberal principles and interests will not become the norm in the formation of liberal foreign policy.”51 Here is where the concept of policy legitimacy, first introduced by Alexander George, can be helpful in untangling the nexus of international behavior, norms, and domestic politics. Policy legitimacy is conferred when others in the political system agree that the leader’s intended goals can be achieved and that the proposed course of action reflects national values.52 How, then, can a democratic leader best convey to society the cognitive (achievability) and normative (right) components of policy legitimacy? Not surprisingly, justifications for war, as Freedman puts it, “draw on normative arguments, on expectations about how governments should behave towards their own people, and on how human beings and states should behave towards each other.”53 Laura Roselle develops this idea further, arguing that “national identity clearly shapes and often constrains the ways by which leader will seek to legitimize policies.”54 Thus, when it comes to democratic wars of choice, the justification for the resort to arms offered by the COG may be contested on normative grounds in the marketplace of ideas. When the state is engaged in (or openly contemplating the prospect of) a war of choice, society is provided the opportunity to chime in on the fit between state action and ascriptive norms. Social identity theory indicates that group membership encourages the adoption of common markers of identity and behavior. Belonging to the community of liberal democracies thereby fosters adherence to the norms that denote the unique features of the group.55 As Finnemore and Sikkink write, following liberal norms is part of liberal state identity, something liberals “take pride in or from which they gain self-esteem.”56 Thus, one would expect citizens of democracies to promote behaviors commensurate with the expectations of group identity and reject actions that are inappropriate in the estimation of the wider community. Jeffrey Legro defines norms as “collective understandings of the proper behavior of actors.”57 Norms are significant to state behavior because they affect the ability of leaders to persuade others to sacrifice on behalf of their agenda.58 Thus officials in a democracy may promote foreign policy actions that are outside the scope of normatively acceptable behavior at a given point in time. As Russett notes, even the “norm that democracies should not fight each other seems to have developed only toward the end of the nineteenth century.”59 Democracies did not emerge on this Earth with a disinclination to fight other democracies.60 Rather, the democratic injunction against using military force against fellow democracies developed experientially. For instance, Stephen Rock’s case analysis of US-British relations from 1845 to 1930 suggests an evolution in their “special relationship” from one based on a mix of interest, Anglo-Saxonism, and democracy to one more firmly rooted in “shared liberal values and democratic institutions.”61

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He finds that increasingly, democracy served as an impediment to war between the two states, “with the deepening of democracy in Britain and the growing awareness of that country’s democratic character in the United States.”62 Generalizing from Rock’s treatment, not only does the extent of democracy evolve in a given state (i.e., the scope of liberal rights and the breadth of the voting franchise), so does what a democratic state considers “appropriate” in its external relations. Democratic states formerly engaged in a range of behaviors that ultimately became anathema in the eyes of those who would identify themselves as liberal democrats. Slavery, dueling, and wars against fellow democracies are types of activities that democracies now eschew.63 Moreover, the democratic definition of citizen has evolved, as the definition of human being has been broadened to expand the range of victims that states consider worthy of humanitarian intervention.64 Similarly, self-determination did not become a goal of statecraft until Woodrow Wilson introduced it during World War I.65 Finally, as Bruce Russett points out, colonization and the normative right to rule are examples of past justifications for expansionary state policies that were once of unquestioned legitimacy but now are thought unseemly types of engagement for democratic states.66 Somehow democratic military actions formerly considered appropriate become the subject of domestic political contention. The interaction between this contention and the event in question provides the spark that tips norm evolution forward. If democratic norms evolve, what factors influence their content? I suggest that an examination of public opinion can provide useful insights into the evolution of norms.67 To do so, we need to review the extant literature on public opinion and foreign policy. Democratic use of force against a target state becomes possible when the threat it poses is socially constructed as an imminent danger.68 The process through which such a construction occurs requires mobilization of elites and persuasion of public opinion in the marketplace of ideas. Recent research in the area of public opinion and foreign policy provides the tools to evaluate this process. Public Opinion and the Democratic Peace

Across the democratic peace literature, public opinion is often mentioned but rarely investigated. Contributors to the democratic peace debate offer a bifurcated view of public opinion: either it is a force that provokes reluctant leaders to war or it is a factor that encourages otherwise bellicose leaders to moderate their positions. For example, in her edited volume of case studies on the democratic peace, Elman concludes that a “cumulative finding of this book is that public opinion often is not a force for peace.”69 In fact, she singles out public opinion along with undemocratic leadership as the main

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When Democracies Choose War

sources of democratic aggression.70 On the other side of the ledger, Rummel suggests that democratic wars are “‘usually precluded by the restraint of public opinion,’” while Russett asserts that “democracies are constrained in going to war by the need to ensure broad popular support, manifested in various institutions of government.”71 Students of public opinion and foreign policy offer a more nuanced view of the impact of public opinion on state policy, with important implications for our understanding of the democratic peace. Public opinion on foreign policy issues is seen by most analysts as uninformed yet based on underlying values, largely latent on many specific, narrow issues, but stable on policy direction.72 During the early stages of a foreign policy crisis, the public almost intuitively approves government action via the rally-round-the-flag effect.73 Over the years, a number of factors have been identified as potential causes of the inevitable decline in popular support for war. John Mueller made an initial contribution to our understanding that the public may react rationally to real-world events when he first confirmed the notion of casualty sensitivity with his finding that support for war declined in correlation with the logarithm of the casualty rate.74 The next generation of research on public opinion and war began to differentiate among the purposes behind an intervention. It was found that the public was more likely to support the use of force to prevent a potential rival from gaining an advantage or to stop the abuse of human rights than to intervene to shape the internal affairs of a target state.75 Similarly, the stakes at hand in a use of force have been found to be a crucial determinant of public support.76 More recently, the likelihood of success for use of force, along with its “rightness or wrongness,” has been identified as the key variables explaining the variance in public support for war.77 In contrast, Berinsky attributes the public’s stance on war to partisan identification, finding individuals more likely to support uses of force initiated or sustained by presidents of their political party.78 Other analysts have isolated the stage of the foreign policy making process as an important consideration in determining the significance of public opinion to decisionmakers.79 Certainly, public officials rarely admit that their policies are driven by public opinion, yet they clearly pay attention to reading and influencing poll results.80 Though much of the scholarship on the public opinion–foreign policy link has a US focus, research on other democratic systems confirm similar characteristics.81 Therefore, although the public lacks specific knowledge of issues having international import, public opinion does matter in the foreign policy making process. A key public opinion issue relevant to the democratic peace literature concerns the factors that cause public opinion to become activated. There is some consensus in the literature that elite debate carried out in the media is

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crucial.82 That is, public opinion only becomes a factor when there is open elite disagreement over policy. For example, Klarevas writes that “dissensus among leadership elites or reports of unsuccessful operational outcomes” can contribute to the erosion of public support for the use of force.83 Otherwise, the public either pays little attention to policy or supports the government’s actions. Leaders of democracies wishing to evade liberal constraints would certainly try to prevent activation of public opinion. As William LeoGrande found in his examination of congressional support for Reagan’s Nicaragua policy, officials were concerned with what public opinion might become.84 Interestingly, Sebastian Rosato considers evidence of initial public support for democratic uses of force where there was no immediate threat to the national interest to be an indictment of the democratic peace claim that public opinion is a restraining factor. But he limits his attention to “public opinion early in a war since it is presumably this initial reaction that concerns policymakers the most,” a choice that happens to suit his thesis but fails to reflect a complete understanding of the public opinion–foreign policy nexus.85 Democratic leaders may safely assume initial public support for the use of force given the rally-round-the-flag effect. Moreover, during the early stages of military engagement, the chief executive has unique advantages of information to shape debate.86 At the same time, democratic uses of force are framed by leaders as upholding, not violating, liberal norms. Rosato’s critique, and that of much of the democratic peace literature, pro and con, eliminates democratic politics from the mix and ignores the implications of potential public opinion activation. In her book on intervention, Finnemore reminds us that state interests are rarely obvious and declares that “much of politics is a struggle to define them.”87 Democratic engagement in war is the result of an assessment that belligerence is dictated by the national interest. For constructivists, that interest reflects state identity. Ruggie encourages constructivists to investigate “the identities and interests of states and to show how they have been socially constructed.”88 Accordingly, I highlight efforts of leaders to persuade the public that a war of choice serves the national interest and reflects national identity. Finnemore and Sikkink consider persuasion “central” to an understanding of “normative influence and change,” asserting that “persuasion is the process by which agent action becomes social structure, ideas become norms, and the subjective becomes the intersubjective.”89 Building on this literature, Marijke Breuning examines the role of individuals, or gatekeepers, in the process of normative change. She finds that those gatekeepers best able to “craft their message in such a way as to gain broad public support” and “navigate the peculiarities of the political institutions within which they function” are more likely to succeed at promoting normative change.90

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When Democracies Choose War

We ought to consider how public opinion and the effort to shape it are part and parcel of the process of threat perception and identity formation in democracies.91 As Farrell suggests, the dyadic peace “is the absence of war between states that perceive themselves and each other to be liberal democracies” (emphasis in original). By highlighting how “identity shapes the application of norms,” constructivism can untangle why democracies are less ready to fight certain types of wars than others.92 Democratic political systems are intended to reflect a broad conception of what state interest is. Democracies are also designed to allow widespread input into defining their identity. Enthusiasts for the democratic peace should embrace the idea that state behavior is a product of the interaction of societal actors, a concept best expressed in Andrew Moravcsik’s comprehensive liberal theory of preferences: “the state is not an actor but a representative institution constantly subject to capture and recapture, construction and reconstruction by coalitions of social actors. Representative institutions and practices constitute the critical ‘transmission belt’ by which the preferences and social power of individuals and groups are translated into state policy.”93 Public opinion is an understudied component of the “transmission belt” of the democratic peace. If we can tap into how public opinion influences democratic behavior in war, we may gain a fuller understanding of the promises and shortcomings of democratic peace research. The first step in doing so requires familiarity with a thorny concept from the political communication literature—framing, for this is how the purposes for war are presented by leaders, debated by elites in the marketplace of ideas, and processed by the public that the success or failure of a war of choice is determined. Framing Effects

According to Robert Entman, framing is the process of “selecting and highlighting some facets of events or issues, and making connections among them so as to promote a particular interpretation, evaluation, and/or solution” (emphasis in original). 94 Entman emphasizes that when there is “cultural congruence” between how an administration characterizes its policies and society’s cognitive map of how the world works, public approval will be more likely. Finnemore and Sikkink’s observations are consistent with Entman’s, noting that those seeking to establish norms succeed when “the new frames resonate with broader public understandings and are adopted as new ways of talking about and understanding issues.”95 Similarly, Crawford links frames to arguments over identity, explaining that one representation of a matter at hand dominates by “claiming that specific behaviors are associated with certain identities.” She cites the

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claim of a French legislator during parliamentary debate in 1930 as an example of an “identity argument”: “France will be a great colonizing power, or it will cease to be France.”96 How does this relate to the democratic peace debate? Advocates of using force in a democracy must win a domestic contest in the marketplace of ideas over the legitimacy and efficacy of going to war. As Entman argues: “Democratic politics is all about convincing others to see things as you do, so that they will support your goals. That means conveying ideas and framing choices in ways that make your side of the story seem the most persuasive.”97 Entman brings together various strands in the public opinion and foreign policy literature that can help explain why citizens in a democracy may turn against certain types of war aims. He goes beyond the role of elite debate in activating public opinion against a use of force to incorporate the way government officials and elites frame the particular policy. For example, he contrasts official statements and media coverage of the downing of KAL 007 by the Soviet Union in 1982 and the 1988 destruction of an Iranian civilian Airbus by the USS Vincennes, strikingly similar events that received starkly different media coverage and consequently public reaction. The former was portrayed by US officials as a knowing, deliberate act of barbarism, whereas the latter was attributed to technological failure and human error. Because this official story line meshed with the experience of US news consumers, no widely accessible counterframe could penetrate the media. If an alternative news narrative were offered, it would not resonate with the preexisting schemas of the public that the Soviet Union was an “evil empire” and the United States a benevolent force for good in the world. As Entman proposes, there is a set of beliefs and experiences that make up an individual’s schema, or the “networks of linked ideas and feelings that provide people their major templates for interpreting foreign policy.”98 Citizens in a democracy have a sense of what types of state behavior are proper given their country’s history and the values inculcated by society. This is not to say that any foreign policy action taken by a democratic state passes through an evaluative rubric for each citizen. Rather, foreign policy decisions of sufficient moment to generate treatment in the marketplace of ideas have the potential to trigger responses in citizens ratifying or questioning the appropriateness of state action. Therefore, wars of choice conducted by democracies must reflect more than just the national interest as conceived by leaders; the official framing of the rationale for using force must resonate in the collective schemas of the public. To minimize the likelihood of public opinion activation, the government’s aim is to present the war as being as close to the necessity end of the choice continuum as possible. If this is accomplished, any resulting debate will be conducted on security grounds, where officials can use claims of unique expertise to dominate the marketplace of ideas, rather than

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on prudence or values, where the bar to effective participation is lower. Successful framing of a choice of war as a security necessity tends to quiet opposition as vulnerability and threat are habitual, ready schemas to be tapped by authorities. There are other reasons for justifying a war of choice, however, and though farther from the pole of necessity, in such instances it becomes imperative for leaders to frame the use of force in terms resonant with citizens’ experience and expectations of what is appropriate. Of course, in presenting a justification for war, there is what Baum and Potter call “the elasticity of reality,” demarcating “the range within which events can be spun, or framed” before provoking a hostile public reaction.99 When the official framing of an intervention is incongruent with the schemas held by the public, other elites may offer an alternative definition of the problem at hand and the remedy chosen. When democratic military interventions evoke such a counterframe, or a presentation and/or organization of events that is plausible and runs contrary to the official frame, the legitimacy of the war of choice is undermined and the underlying normative basis for such democratic wars becomes suspect. An Integrated Model of Democratic Politics and Wars of Choice

The degree to which a war is more of a choice than a necessity is a normative question rather than an empirical one. A democratic COG presents their justification for going to war, often in the form of a major address to the nation marking a change in policy, which, as Hallin notes, is usually accompanied by a “public relations blitz.”100 When elites respond with a counterframe of the war’s rationale that is culturally congruent with societal expectations and gets covered in the nation’s news media, the goals or win-set of the COG become constrained by the resulting domestic political pressure.101 Such an alternate description of the nature of the problem faced and/or the best solution to it—what, borrowing from Entman,102 I refer to as the “problem definition”—imperils a democratic leader’s effort as domestic politics renders the range of objectives set by the COG unobtainable. Moreover, to advance his or her objectives in the face of mounting opposition at home, the COG may approve high-risk military moves to salvage these goals before democratic institutions impose limitations on the scope of the war. In this sense, two-level diplomacy is reversed as the COG gambles that a bold move on the foreign battlefront can forestall the success of their adversaries in the domestic political arena.103 In Figure 1.1 I present my model of democratic politics and war. Crucial is the media coverage of elite debate, which may follow from the COG’s intention to choose war. What matters most here is the extent to

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which frame contestation appears in the coverage. If opponents articulate a counterframe to that proffered by the COG that is congruent with national experience and liberal norms, I expect activation of oppositional public opinion, which in turn will threaten the ability of leaders to continue the war. Using news coverage and other indicators of elite debate, I determine whether opposition to official policy is offered on normative or policy grounds. In essence, the official problem definition provides a rationale for why the threat faced must be met by force, with this remedy justified as being consistent with prevailing norms and national identity. Critiques may also be framed in terms of policy (i.e., are the tactics suited to the task at hand?), or if expected procedures have been used by leadership to reach and implement the choice of war (e.g., has the legislature been properly consulted, or have the appropriate multilateral institutions been brought on board?). I catalog the extent and sources of opposition to state policy in terms of these frames and chart the reaction of public opinion. Finally, I assess whether policy changes as a result and/or if the justification for policy comes to reflect the normative arguments of dissenters. Figure 1.1 A Model of Public Opinion Activation and Normative Change Wars of Choice

Marketplace of Ideas Elite Debate

Media Coverage Incongruent Counterframe

Congruent Counterframe

Public Rally

Public Opinion Activation

Marginal Opposition

Significant Opposition

Normative Consistency

Normative Change

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When Democracies Choose War

Case Selection

According to some commentators on the US legal system, a district attorney could easily persuade a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. While it might be tempting to consider this an apt metaphor for the relationship between democratic COGs and war, leaders advocating the use of force in democracies face varying constraints on their ability to choose and prosecute successfully such military actions. Unlike the grand jury with the apocryphal lunch order–turned-defendant, I hypothesize that leaders of democracies sometimes lose the contest in the marketplace of ideas over a war of choice because society does not accept its placement as being as “necessary” as leaders claim or find the use of force in the circumstances at hand inconsistent with the state’s liberal identity. My examination of democratic wars of choice begins with the French effort to reclaim Indochina. This case provides foundational material essential for understanding how norms of democratic appropriateness emerged in the post–World War II period. In several respects France was itself a nascent democracy at the time, with women having just won the vote and the media becoming more open during the period under scrutiny. Then I highlight the Nixon phase of the Vietnam War, when two conditions important for this analysis obtained. First, the marriage of public opinion polling and public relations strategy came to the fore during this time, making it the first “modern” media-managed war.104 Second, when Nixon shifted the goal of US participation to the achievement of honor, Vietnam arguably became a war of choice. Previously, though the survival of the United States was not at stake, the rhetoric of containment had created a situation where the collapse of South Vietnam to communism was portrayed widely as an existential threat to the anticommunist coalition. At the same time, the marketplace of ideas became enlivened with opposition to state policy from Congress and other elites as the media presented the war throughout this phase as an issue of legitimate controversy.105 I turn next to the British endeavor to retake the Falkland Islands following Argentina’s 1982 invasion. This case provides an interesting contrast to the French effort in Indochina, insofar as the British did not invoke a colonial claim at all but accused the Argentines of violating the self-determination of the Falklanders. Israel’s 1982 war in Lebanon, ostensibly to address the threat posed by Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) rocket and artillery fire, comes next. Prime Minister Menachem Begin framed the war in terms of security but also emphasized the opportunities presented by unfolding developments on the battlefield that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) could not but exploit. Begin and Defense Minister Ariel Sharon brought an expansive vision of what the IDF could achieve for the state’s security interests by routing the PLO from Lebanon. What began as a rela-

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tively modest effort to clear out the PLO from a forty-kilometer strip north of the Israeli border became a wider conflict involving Syria, the siege of Beirut, and profound moral questioning in Israeli society about the purposes for which state power should be used. The Falklands and Lebanon cases were examined as separate chapters in an edited volume on the democratic peace.106 However, these treatments were not comparative. Although these two states differ in terms of democratic regime type, these are surely two closely matched democracies in terms of capability facing nonexistential threats. In the British case, support for the government’s war aims never wavered, whereas in the other, intense domestic contention compelled the curtailment of the Israeli government’s ambition. Thus, we have two cases with different outcomes, with domestic opposition emerging in one and not the other. For my final case I consider the US war in Iraq beginning in March 2003. The persistence of US involvement in Iraq despite public opposition, a change in party control in Congress, and a blue-ribbon commission advocating disengagement makes this case an important test of any theory purporting democratic influence over wars of choice. There are clear limitations regarding which cases of democratic war are available for research. First, with a total of only thirty-eight interstate wars listed in the latest iteration of the Correlates of War (COW) database for the 1945–2003 interval, there are few mixed dyads including a democracy.107 Second, because my analysis centers on the independent variables of elite debate and media coverage, the need for language fluency limits the purview of potential cases. Third, the war of choice under study has to generate sustained media coverage, otherwise there would be nothing to analyze. While not the only post–World War II cases that fit these criteria, the five I examine will help unpack the causal processes where threat perception, liberal norms, and democratic politics interact to constrain wars of choice. By selecting democratic wars of choice with some variation in the result, we can best see the degree to which my independent variables of institutional structure, the framing of elite debate, and media coverage factored in producing each outcome.108 In doing so, I respond to George and Bennett’s call for more “research on the interactions between leaders and publics” in what they refer to as the “interdemocratic peace.”109 The five cases break down into two categorical types: Type 1 are wars of relatively short duration where the initial, declared strategic objective remains unchanged, although the tactics are altered to fit domestically imposed constraints. The Falklands and Lebanon wars fit this category. Type 2 wars are of enduring intensity, where the strategic objective is altered in response to domestically imposed limits. Furthermore, tactics are adjusted in an attempt to mitigate the impact of domestic constraints. The two Vietnam cases and Iraq fit this category.

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When Democracies Choose War

Owing to the relatively sparse debate conducted in French media outlets during most of its war in Indochina, newspaper articles are not subject to systematic content analysis. Instead, I characterize the marketplace of ideas by examining elite debate reflected in party and parliamentary politics. Otherwise, I use coverage of the wars of choice in the leading national newspapers as a surrogate for the marketplace of ideas. Newspaper articles for Type 1 cases were coded at regular intervals, beginning just before the start of the wars and ending near the conclusion of hostilities in the Falklands, and when a truce brokered by the United States allowing for the evacuation of the PLO from Lebanon was reached (August 19, 1982).110 For Type 2 cases I reviewed a week’s coverage during periods of significant political developments in the wars. For both of these wars, I examine news coverage during times when more intensive treatment in the marketplace of ideas is expected. Each case begins with my description of the official explanation for the war of choice. Next I evaluate how each fits the criteria for a war of choice, consider the unique features of each political structure, and discuss how the case relates to the study of democracy and war. I then examine the evidence from the content analysis. These data inform my presentation of public opinion polling regarding each war. Finally I examine the debate over the war and how that affects state behavior as the war continues and in its aftermath. Although my findings regarding the implication of these developments on democratic norms must remain speculative, I suggest we can tease out the emergence or refinement of democratic norms of international behavior from these examples and make a contribution to our understanding of the evolution of democratic peace. Notes 1. For example, Scowcroft argued against an invasion of Iraq in an appearance on Face the Nation (CBS News, August 4, 2002) and penned an opinion piece, “Don’t Attack Saddam,” Wall Street Journal, August 15, 2002; James Baker, “The Right Way to Change a Regime,” New York Times, August 25, 2002. 2. Elisabeth Bumiller, “Traces of Terror: The Strategy; Bush Aides Set Strategy to Sell Policy on Iraq, New York Times, September 7, 2002. 3. I use democratic and liberal interchangeably throughout this book. 4. Christopher Layne, “Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace,” International Security, 19, no. 2 (Fall 1994): 5–49. 5. Cristina G. Badescu and Thomas G. Weiss, “Misrepresenting R2P and Advancing Norms: An Alternative Spiral?,” International Studies Perspectives, 11, no. 4 (November 2010): 354–374; 369. 6. Richard Haass, War of Necessity: War of Choice (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009). 7. Richard N. Haass, “Wars of Choice,” Washington Post, November 23, 2003, p. B07.

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8. Steven R. David, Choosing Sides: Alignment and Realignment in the Third World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991). 9. Robert D. Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games,” International Organization, 42, no. 3 (Summer 1988): 427–460. 10. Eric W. Cox, Why Enduring Rivalries Do—or Don’t—End (Boulder, CO: FirstForumPress, 2010). 11. Paul Diehl and Gary Goertz, War and Peace in International Rivalry (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001). 12. See the discussion of the lack of exploration of internal-external interaction in Robert Keohane, ed., Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986); Peter B. Evans, Harold K. Jacobson, and Robert D. Putnam, eds., Double-Edged Diplomacy: International Bargaining and Domestic Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 13. Bernard Cohen, The Public’s Impact on Foreign Policy (Boston: Little Brown, 1973), 62. 14. Jack S. Levy, “Domestic Politics and War,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 18, no. 4 (Spring 1988): 662; Steve Chan, “In Search of Democratic Peace: Problems and Promise,” Security Studies, 8, no. 2/3 (Winter 1998/1999–Spring 1999): 60; Colin H. Kahl, “Constructing A Separate Peace: Constructivism, Collective Liberal Identity, and Democratic Peace,” Security Studies, 8, no. 2/3 (Winter 1998/1999–Spring 1999): 94– 144, 143; Thomas Risse-Kappen, “Democratic Peace—Warlike Democracies? A Social Constructivist Interpretation of the Liberal Argument,” European Journal of International Relations, 1, no. 4 (1995): 491–517, 494. 15. Christopher Layne, “Lord Palmerston and the Triumph of Realism: AngloFrench Relations, 1830–48,” in Miriam Fendius Elman, ed., Paths to Peace: Is Democracy the Answer? (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 61–100. 16. Miriam Fendius Elman, “The Never-Ending Story: Democracy and Peace,” International Studies Review, 1, no. 3 (Fall 1999): 87–103, 103. 17. Layne, “Kant or Cant.” 18. Henry S. Farber and Joanne Gowa, “Polities and Peace,” International Security, 20, no. 2 (Fall 1995): 123–146; Joanne Gowa, “Democratic States and International Disputes,” International Organization, 49, no. 3 (Summer 1995): 511–522. Also, Erik Gartzke and Alex Weisiger, “Permanent Friends? Dynamic Difference and the Democratic Peace,” International Studies Quarterly, 57, no. 1 (March 2013): 171–185. 19. Erik Gartzke, “Preferences and the Democratic Peace,” International Studies Quarterly, 44, no. 2 (June 2000): 191–212; Erik Gartzke, “Kant We All Just Get Along? Opportunity, Willingness, and the Origins of the Democratic Peace,” American Journal of Political Science, 42, no. 1 (January 1998): 1–27. Alternatively, Michael Mousseau, “The Democratic Peace Unraveled: It’s the Economy,” International Studies Quarterly, 57, no. 1 (March 2013): 186–197, attributes the absence of war not to democracy but to shared “contract-intensive” economies. 20. Kenneth A. Schultz, Democracy and Coercive Diplomacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). For an application of the audience cost hypothesis to democracies with varying institutional structures, see Philip B. K. Potter and Matthew A. Baum, “Looking for Audience Costs in All the Wrong Places: Electoral Institutions, Media Access and Democratic Constraint,” Journal of Politics, 76, no. 1 (January 2014): 167–181. 21. For example, Farber and Gowa, “Polities and Peace.” 22. Stalwart defense of the theory is offered by Allan Dafoe, John R. Oneal, and Bruce Russett, “The Democratic Peace: Weighing the Evidence and Cautious Inferences,” International Studies Quarterly, 57, no. 1 (March 2013): 201–214, and James

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Lee Ray, “War on the Democratic Peace,” International Studies Quarterly, 57, no. 1 (March 2013): 198–200. 23. Michael Poznansky advances an argument that covert operations may be consistent with democratic peace theory in “Stasis or Decay? Reconciling Covert War and the Democratic Peace,” International Studies Quarterly, 59, no. 4 (2015): 815–826. 24. R. J. Rummel, “Libertarianism and International Violence,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 27, no. 1 (March 1983): 27–71. James Lee Ray, Democracy and International Conflict: An Evaluation of the Democratic Peace Proposition (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995), 13–18, offers an extensive discussion of the corpus of Rummel’s work. 25. Stuart A. Bremer, “Are Democracies Less Likely to Join Wars?,” paper presented at the 1992 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, September 3–6, 1992; Stuart A. Bremer, “‘Dangerous Dyads’ Conditions Affecting the Likelihood of Interstate War, 1816–1965,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 36, no. 2 (June 1992): 309–341. 26. William J. Dixon, “Democracy and the Management of International Conflict,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 37, no. 1 (March 1993): 42–68. 27. R. J. Rummel, “Democracy, Power, Genocide, and Mass Murder,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 39, no. 1 (March 1995): 3–26. 28. Randall L. Schweller, “Domestic Structure and Preventive War: Are Democracies More Pacific?,” World Politics, 44, no. 2 (January 1992): 35–69. 29. David L. Rousseau, Christopher Gelpi, Dan Reiter, and Paul Huth, “Assessing the Dyadic Nature of the Democratic Peace, 1918–1988,” American Political Science Review, 90, no. 3 (September 1996): 512–533; David LeBlang and Steve Chan, “Explaining Wars Fought by Established Democracies: Do Institutional Constraints Matter?,” Political Research Quarterly, 56, no. 4 (December 2003): 385–400. 30. Dan Reiter and Allan C. Stam, Democracies at War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002). 31. For example, see Sebastian Rosato, “The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory,” American Political Science Review, 97, no. 4 (November 2003): 585–602. 32. Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 40–42; Bruce Russett, Controlling the Sword (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 124. John M. Owen IV, Liberal Peace, Liberal War: American Politics and International Security (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), 90–91, notes that empirical tests yield no clear winner in this debate; see also, Owen, Liberal Peace, Liberal War, 17–19. 33. Russett, Grasping, 119; Ray, Democracy and International Conflict, 30 and 37; and Spencer R. Weart, Never at War: Why Democracies Will Not Fight One Another (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 90. 34. See Thomas Risse-Kappen, “Ideas Do Not Float Freely: Transnational Coalitions, Domestic Structures, and the End of the Cold War,” International Organization, 48, no. 2 (Spring 1994): 209. 35. Barbara Farnham, “The Theory of Democratic Peace and Threat Perception,” International Studies Quarterly, 47, no. 3 (September 2003): 395–415. 36. Miriam Fendius Elman, “Unpacking Democracy: Presidentialism, Parliamentarism, and Theories of Democratic Peace,” Security Studies, 9, no. 4 (Summer 2000): 91–126; T. Clifton Morgan and Sally Howard Campbell, “Domestic Structure, Decisional Constraints, and War: So Why Kant Democracies Fight?,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 35, no. 2 (June 1991): 187–211, esp. 209; Thomas Risse-Kappen, “Public Opinion, Domestic Structure, and Foreign Policy in Liberal Democracies,” World Politics, 43, no. 4 (July 1991): 479–512.

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37. Martha Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs About the Use of Force (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003); Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change,” International Organization, 52, no. 4 (Autumn 1998): 887–917; Neta C. Crawford, Argument and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). This process of norm diffusion can also lead to the widespread adoption of illiberal norms, such as preventive war; Kerstin Fisk and Jennifer M. Ramos, “Actions Speak Louder Than Words: Preventive Self-Defense as a Cascading Norm,” International Studies Perspectives, 15, no. 2 (May 2014): 163–185. 38. Michael W. Doyle, “Liberalism and World Politics,” American Political Science Review, 80, no. 4 (December 1986): 1151–1169, 1160. 39. Risse-Kappen, “Democratic Peace—Warlike Democracies?,” 504. 40. Joseph S. Nye Jr. and David A. Welch, Understanding Global Conflict and Cooperation, 8th ed. (Boston: Longman, 2011), 62; Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 21. 41. Risse-Kappen, “Public Opinion, Domestic Structure”; Elman, “Unpacking Democracy.” 42. David L. Rousseau, Democracy and War: Institutions, Norms, and the Evolution of International Conflict (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005). 43. Paul Diehl, Gary Goertz, and Alexandru Balas, The Puzzle of Peace: The Evolution of Peace in the International System (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). 44. Eric Larson and Bogdan Savych, American Public Support for US Military Operations from Mogadishu to Baghdad (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2005); Christopher Gelpi, Peter D. Feaver, and Jason Reifler, “Success Matters: Casualty Sensitivity and the War in Iraq,” International Security, 30, no. 3 (Winter 2005–2006): 7–46. 45. Theo Farrell, The Norms of War: Cultural Beliefs and Modern Conflict (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2005). 46. Chaim Kaufmann, “Threat Inflation and the Marketplace of Ideas,” International Security, 29, no. 1 (Summer 2004): 5–48; also see Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991); Jane Kellett Cramer, “Militarized Patriotism: Why the U.S. Marketplace of Ideas Failed Before the Iraq War,” Security Studies, 16, no. 3 (July–September 2007): 489– 524. A different perspective is offered by A. Trevor Thrall, “A Bear in the Woods? Threat Framing and the Marketplace of Values,” Security Studies, 16, no. 3 (July–September 2007): 452–488. 47. Gil Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 19. 48. Martha Finnemore, National Interests in International Society (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), 28–31. 49. Ann Florini, “The Evolution of International Norms,” International Studies Quarterly, 40, no. 3 (September 1996): 363–389, 366; Vaughn P. Shannon, “Norms Are What States Make of Them: The Political Psychology of Norm Violation,” International Studies Quarterly, 44, no. 2 (June 2000): 293–316, 298. 50. Risse-Kappen, “Democratic Peace—Warlike Democracies?,” 504. Also, Shannon, “Norms Are What States Make of Them,” 294, notes that norm violation may occur when there is room for interpretation. 51. Michael W. Doyle, “Three Pillars of the Liberal Peace,” American Political Science Review, 99, no. 3 (August 2005): 465. 52. Alexander L. George, “Domestic Constraints on Regime Change in U.S. Foreign Policy: The Need for Policy Legitimacy,” in Ole R. Holsti, Randolph M. Siverson,

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and Alexander L. George, eds., Change in the International System (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1980), 233–262. 53. Lawrence Freedman, “The Age of Liberal Wars,” Review of International Studies, 31, (special issue: Force and Legitimacy in World Politics) (December 2005): 93–107, 94. 54. Laura Roselle, Media and the Politics of Failure: Great Powers, Communication Strategies, and Military Defeats (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 10. 55. Rose McDermott, “Psychological Approaches to Identity: Experimentation and Application,” in Rawi Abdelal, Yoshiko M. Herrera, Alastair Iain Johnston, and Rose McDermott, eds., Measuring Identity: A Guide for Social Scientists (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 345–367, 347–349. Also, Jodie Anstee, “Norms and the Management of Identities: The Case for Engagement Between Constructivism and the Social Identity Approach,” in Vaughn Shannon and Paul Kowert, eds., Psychology and Constructivism in International Relations: An Ideational Alliance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012), 76–91. 56. Finnemore and Sikkink, “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change,” 904. 57. Jeffrey W. Legro, “Which Norms Matter? Revisiting the ‘Failure’ of Internationalism,” International Organization, 51, no. 1 (Winter 1997): 31–63. 33. 58. Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace, 136. 59. Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace, 5. 60. Charles Lipson, How Democracies Have Made a Separate Peace (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 43. Risse-Kappen, “Democratic Peace—Warlike Democracies?,” 508. 61. Stephen R. Rock, “Anglo-US Relations, 1845–1930: Did Shared Liberal Values and Democratic Institutions Keep the Peace?,” in Miriam Fendius Elman, ed., Paths to Peace: Is Democracy the Answer? (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 101–149, 147. 62. Rock, “Anglo-US Relations, 1845–1930,” 147. Also see Owen, Liberal Peace, Liberal War on elite perceptions. 63. John Mueller, Retreat from Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War (New York: Basic Books, 1989); Robert H. Jackson, “The Weight of Ideas in Decolonization: Normative Change in International Relations,” in Judith Goldstein and Robert Keohane, eds., Ideas & Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 111–138; James Lee Ray, “The Abolition of Slavery and the End of International War,” International Organization, 43, no. 3 (Summer 1989): 405–440. Chaim D. Kaufman and Robert A. Pape, “Explaining Costly International Moral Action: Britain’s Sixty-year Campaign Against the Atlantic Slave Trade,” International Organization, 53, no. 4 (Autumn 1999): 631–668 argue that the vagaries of domestic coalition politics permitted a “saintly logroll” of “a parochial religious movement that held particular beliefs and identified slavery as one of a set of interconnected evils for which England would face divine punishment if left uncorrected” (643). 64. See Martha Finnemore, “Constructing Norms of Humanitarian Intervention,” in Peter J. Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 153–185; and Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention. 65. See Neta C. Crawford, “Decolonization as an International Norm: The Evolution of Practices, Arguments, and Beliefs,” in Laura W. Reed and Carl Kaysen, eds., Emerging Norms of Justified Intervention (Cambridge, MA: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1993), 37–61.

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66. Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace, 35. Also see Robert H. Jackson, “The Weight of Ideas in Decolonization: Normative Change in International Relations,” in Judith Goldstein and Robert Keohane, eds., Ideas & Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 111–138; Miles Kahler, Decolonization in Britain and France (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984). 67. Finnemore suggests exploring public opinion and media as possible mechanisms by which “norms are created, changed, and exercise their influence,” in Finnemore, “Constructing Norms of Humanitarian Intervention,” 185. 68. Risse-Kappen, “Democratic Peace—Warlike Democracies?,” 503 and 507. 69. Miriam Fendius Elman, “Testing the Democratic Peace Theory,” in Miriam Fendius Elman, ed., Paths to Peace: Is Democracy the Answer? (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 473–506, 487. 70. Elman, “Testing the Democratic Peace Theory,” 486. 71. Rummel, quoted in Ray, Democracy and International Conflict, p. 15; Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace, 38. 72. For reviews of this rather substantial literature, see Ole R. Holsti, American Public Opinion on the Iraq War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011); Holsti, Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy, rev. ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004); Richard Sobel, The Impact of Public Opinion on US Foreign Policy Since Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Philip J. Powlick and Andrew Z. Katz, “Defining the American Public Opinion/Foreign Policy Nexus,” International Studies Quarterly, 42, Supplement 1 (May1998): 29–62; Louis Klarevas, “The ‘Essential Domino’ of Military Operations: American Public Opinion and the Use of Force,” International Studies Perspectives, 3, no. 4 (November 2002): 417–437. Three prominent recent examinations of the public opinion–foreign policy link include Christopher Gelpi, Peter D. Feaver, and Jason Reifler, Paying the Human Costs of War: American Public Opinion and Casualties in Military Conflicts (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009); Adam J. Berinsky, In Time of War: Understanding American Public Opinion from World War II to Iraq (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); and Benjamin I. Page with Marshall M. Bouton, The Foreign Policy Disconnect: What Americans Want from Our Leaders but Don’t Get (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). 73. Matthew A. Baum, “The Constituent Foundations of the ‘Rally-Round-the-Flag Phenomenon,’” International Studies Quarterly, 46, no. 2 (June 2002): 263–298. 74. John Mueller, War, Presidents, and Public Opinion (New York: Wiley, 1973); John Mueller, Policy and Opinion in the Gulf War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); John Mueller, “The Iraq Syndrome,” Foreign Affairs, 84, no. 6 (November–December 2005): 44–54; Scott Sigmund Gartner and Gary M. Segura, “War, Casualties, and Public Opinion,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 42, no. 3 (June 1998): 278–300. 75. Bruce W. Jentleson and Rebecca L. Britton, “Still Pretty Prudent: Post–Cold War American Public Opinion on the Use of Military Force,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 42, no. 3 (August 1998): 395–417; Bruce W. Jentleson, “The Pretty Prudent Public: Post Post-Vietnam American Opinion on the Use of Force,” International Studies Quarterly, 36, no. 1 (March 1992): 49–74; Klarevas,“The ‘Essential Domino’ of Military Operations.” 76. Larson and Savych, American Public Support for US Military Operations. 77. Gelpi, Feaver, and Reifler, “Success Matters”; Gelpi, Feaver, and Reifler, Paying the Human Costs of War.

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78. Berinsky, In Time of War. Interestingly, even when there is public support for humanitarian intervention, congressional views are shaped by partisanship; see Timothy Hildebrandt, Courtney Hillebrecht, Peter M. Holm, and Jon Pevehouse, “The Domestic Politics of Humanitarian Intervention: Public Opinion, Partisanship, and Ideology,” Foreign Policy Analysis, 9, no. 3 (July 2013): 243–266. 79. Thomas Knecht and Stephen Weatherford, “Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: The Stages of Presidential Decision-Making,” International Studies Quarterly, 50, no. 3 (September 2006): 705–727. 80. Robert Y. Shapiro and Lawrence R. Jacobs, “Who Leads and Who Follows? US Presidents, Public Opinion, and Foreign Policy,” in Brigitte L. Nacos, Robert Y. Shapiro, and Pierangelo Isernia, eds., Decisionmaking in a Glass House (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), 223–245; Andrew Z. Katz, “Public Opinion and the Contradictions of Jimmy Carter’s Foreign Policy,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, 30, no. 4 (December 2000): 662–687; Andrew Z. Katz, “Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: The Nixon Administration and the Pursuit of Peace with Honor In Vietnam,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, 27, no. 3 (Summer 1997): 496–513; Shoon Kathleen Murray and Peter Howard, “Variation in White House Polling Operations Carter to Clinton,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 66, no. 4 (Winter 2002): 527–558. On misreading opinion, Steven Kull and I. M. Destler, Misreading the Public: The Myth of a New Isolationism (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1999). 81. See, for example, Brigitte L. Nacos, Robert Y. Shapiro, and Pierangelo Isernia, eds., Decisionmaking in a Glass House (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000). 82. Powlick and Katz, “Defining the American Public Opinion/Foreign Policy Nexus”; Klarevas, “The ‘Essential Domino’ of Military Operations”; John Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Robert M. Entman, Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion, and US Foreign Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). 83. Klarevas, “The ‘Essential Domino’ of Military Operations,” 435; also Eric V. Larson, “Putting Theory to Work: Diagnosing Public Opinion on the US Intervention in Bosnia,” in Miroslav Nincic and Joseph Lepgold, eds., Being Useful: Policy Relevance and International Relations Theory (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 174–233. 84. William M. LeoGrande, “Did the Public Matter? The Impact of Opinion on Congressional Support for Ronald Reagan’s Nicaragua Policy,” in Richard Sobel, ed., Public Opinion in US Foreign Policy: The Controversy over Contra Aid (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1993), 167–189, 186. Also, Sobel, “What Have We Learned About Public Opinion in U.S. Foreign Policy,” in Sobel, ed., Public Opinion in US Foreign Policy, 269–278, 276. 85. Rosato, “The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory,” 596, n15. A similar critique of this claim is offered by Philip B. K. Potter and Matthew A. Baum, “Democratic Peace, Domestic Audience Costs, and Political Communication,” Political Communication, 27, no. 4 (October–December 2010): 453–470. 86. See Douglas L. Kriner, After the Rubicon: Congress, Presidents, and the Politics of Waging War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010). 87. Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention, 49, 93–94. 88. John Gerard Ruggie, “What Makes the World Hang Together? Neo-utilitarianism and the Social Constructivist Challenge,” International Organization, 52, no. 4 (Autumn 1998): 855–885, 879. 89. Finnemore and Sikkink, “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change,” 914.

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90. Marijke Breuning, “Roles and Realities: When and Why Gatekeepers Fail to Change Foreign Policy,” Foreign Policy Analysis, 9, no. 3 (July 2013): 307–325, 322. 91. Jarrod Hayes, “The Democratic Peace and the New Evolution of an Old Idea,” European Journal of International Relations, 18, no. 4 (December 2012): 767–791; Jarrod Hayes, “Securitization, Social Identity, and Democratic Security: Nixon, India, and the Ties That Bind,” International Organization, 66, no. 1 (January 2012): 63–93; Jarrod Hayes, “Identity and Securitization in the Democratic Peace: The United States and the Divergence of Response to India and Iran’s Nuclear Programs,” International Studies Quarterly, 53, no. 4 (December 2009): 977–981, 981. 92. Theo Farrell, “Constructivist Security Studies: Portrait of a Research Program,” International Studies Review, 4, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 49–72, 67. 93. Andrew Moravcsik, “Taking Preferences Seriously: A Liberal Theory of International Politics,” International Organization, 51, no. 4 (Autumn 1997): 513– 553, 518. 94. Entman, Projections of Power, 5. 95. Finnemore and Sikkink, “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change,” 897. 96. Crawford, Argument and Change, 25; Léon Archimbaud quoted in Rudolf von Albertini, Decolonization: The Administration and Future of the Colonies, 1919–1960 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971), 265. 97. Entman, Projections of Power, 147. 98. Entman, Projections of Power, 147–148. 99. Matthew A. Baum, and Philip B. K. Potter, “The Relationships Between Mass Media, Public Opinion, and Foreign Policy: Toward a Theoretical Synthesis,” Annual Review of Political Science, 11 (2008): 39–65, 56. 100. Daniel C. Hallin, The “Uncensored War”: The Media and the Vietnam War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 184. Research on the efforts of recent US presidents shows the limits of this tactic; Jeffrey S. Peake and Matthew EshbaughSoha, “The Agenda-Setting Impact of Major Presidential Addresses,” Political Communication, 25, no. 2 (April 2008): 113–137. 101. Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics.” 102. Entman, Projections of Power, 6, passim. Indeed, my analytic framework closely follows Entman’s work. 103. In Putnam’s formulation, negotiators on the international plane can only agree to terms that will be accepted at home, so domestic politics circumscribes international diplomacy. Here, the COG seeks to use coercion abroad to preempt a narrowing of options from being imposed on the home front. 104. Katz, “Public Opinion and Foreign Policy”; Diane J. Heith, “Staffing the White House Public Opinion Apparatus: 1969–1988, Public Opinion Quarterly, 62, no. 2 (August 1998): 165–189; Lawrence Jacobs and Robert Y. Shapiro, “The Rise of Presidential Polling: The Nixon White House in Historical Perspective,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 59, no. 2 (Summer 1995): 163–195. 105. This is not to say that opposition did not surface until Nixon’s inauguration. However, as Hallin, The “Uncensored War,” 162 writes: “by 1968, the establishment itself—and the nation as a whole—was so divided over the war that the media naturally took a far more skeptical stance toward administration policy than in the early years: Vietnam, in other words, entered the Sphere of Legitimate Controversy.” 106. Lawrence Freedman, “How Did the Democratic Process Affect Britain’s Decision to Reoccupy the Falklands?,” 235–266, and Miriam Fendius Elman, “Israel’s Invasion of Lebanon, 1982: Regime Change and War Decisions,” 301–334, both in

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Miriam Fendius Elman, ed., Paths to Peace: Is Democracy the Answer? (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997). 107. Meredith Reid Sarkees, “The List of Inter-State Wars,” in Meredith Reid Sarkees and Frank Whelon Wayman, Resort to War: A Data Guide to Inter-State, ExtraState, Intra-State, and Non-State Wars, 1816–2007 (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2010), http://www.correlatesofwar.org/COW2%20Data/WarData_NEW/WarList_NEW.html# New COW War List (accessed January 14, 2015). 108. Laura Roselle and Sharon Spray, Research and Writing in International Relations, 2nd ed. (Boston: Longman, 2012), 36; George and Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development, 80. 109. George and Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development, 58. 110. See the Appendix for coding protocol.

2 France’s Effort to Retain Indochina

I begin my examination of democratic wars of choice with the French effort to restore its colonial control over Indochina at the end of World War II. Accepting the dyadic argument that democracies are disinclined to fight fellow democracies, I use this case to provide insight into the process that removes certain types of wars from the range of behaviors in which democratic states will engage. Surely the dyadic peace is not primordial; there is sufficient evidence of democratic “near misses” when confronting other democracies during the nineteenth century to warrant consideration of whether the evolutionary adoption of liberal norms render objectionable the pursuit of belligerence for once uncontroversial goals.1 War against fellow democracies is one such norm. I propose that for illustrative purposes we examine war to preserve empire as another, searching for markers that might help us trace the origins of democratic reluctance to fight certain kinds of wars. This chapter thus serves as a prequel of sorts, setting the stage for analyses of more contemporary democratic choices of war by illuminating how a normative prohibition against illiberal state behavior gathers momentum as state policy is challenged through democratic political institutions. In three respects, the French effort in Southeast Asia may seem a curious selection for inclusion in a study of democratic wars of choice. First, Indochina was part of the French empire, so decisions in Paris to use force to regain French territory do not fit neatly into the war of choice category. French officials viewed Indochina as an integral part of the empire; to them, military action to restore French sovereignty following the defeat of Japan fit squarely into the realm of self-defense, not choice. Second, the First Indochina War fails to fit the operational definition of war used in the democratic peace literature because it was not a contest between independent, sovereign states. Last, France used its empire to fight this war. Although there were direct costs to 31

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France over the course of the conflict (20,685 dead from metropolitan France2), this was not an effort for which French leaders sought to mobilize the population of the metropole. Furthermore, the costs to France of the effort were reduced when Vietnam became a front in the Cold War and the US commitment to finance the global containment of communism grew after the start of the Korean War, with the United States willing to relieve France of the financial burdens of prosecuting the war against Viet Minh communists.3 In addition, if one’s interest is on the postcolonial transformation of democracies, wouldn’t the French war in Algeria be a better case? Why begin an investigation into democratic wars of choice with this conflict? Though these attributes argue against beginning a study of democratic wars of choice with this case, I consider the French experience to be foundational to an understanding of the role of liberal norms in modern war. Yes, Indochina was distant and the costs of fighting there a greater burden than post–World War II France could bear. But in reviewing the circumstances that led inexorably to the French departure far short of achieving its goals, we may observe clearly how the evolving conception of liberal identity and the widening scope of democracy in French domestic politics rendered a war for empire untenable. In a sense, democracies became more democratic after World War II, and France is emblematic of that shift. While the transformation was hardly immediate, during the postwar era it no longer conferred status, either at home or internationally, to have an empire. Moreover, liberal identity increasingly came to encompass not only the precept of self-determination abroad but the inclusion of domestic inputs in the policy process that may have served to effect a shift in state ambition. Having an empire, let alone defending it by force of arms against indigenous populations articulating liberal claims to self-determination and human rights, becomes problematic as these norms are universalized among democracies in the twentieth century. I surmise that we can best see this normative momentum develop with the French effort in Indochina. Democratic Context Insofar as France considered Indochina part of its empire, a war to reclaim the territory was not a choice. This is certainly not a universal view. Hendrik Spruyt, for example, rejects the idea that France “had no choice but to fight.”4 Certainly, the “no choice” argument presupposes an unexamined imperial conception of French identity. Under this pre–World War II identity, having an empire was an integral part of being France. Retaining Indochina was therefore a state goal falling as close as possible to the necessity pole of the choice continuum. What transpired as this identity A War of Choice?

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became contested is the story of this chapter. One of the intriguing features of the French case is its position at the junction of two themes central to an understanding of democratic wars of choice. First, identity is not fixed.5 The French experience during this time frame elucidates a shift in liberal identity toward one that eschews empire and the use of force in the service of imperial ends. Second, the extent to which democratic participation facilitates a debate in the marketplace of ideas over where on the choice continuum a war ought to be placed is key. As France emerged from the trauma of World War II, did the avenues available for societal input broaden, increasing the sensitivity of decisionmakers to the comfort of citizens with the purposes for which the state fought? When democratic leaders embark on a war of choice, they typically do not anticipate that the premises on which the war is launched will be rejected by democratic political institutions (i.e., the legislature, elites, the media, and public opinion). Any leader committing his or her state to war by definition considers belligerence close to the necessity end of the continuum. Moreover, democratic officials, sensitive to the constraints of the political system, proceed to war believing there is a societal consensus that the course of action they contemplate falls well within the bounds of appropriate state behavior.6 But what at first strikes leaders as relatively consensual may eventually become the object of democratic contention. The French right to rule over the peoples of Indochina, and the consequent great power status that an empire conferred, was an essential part of French identity prior to the developments cataloged in this chapter—a matter unexamined by society until Viet Minh resistance opened space in the marketplace of ideas for a reevaluation of French identity. At that point, war became increasingly seen as closer to the pole of choice on the choice continuum, as democratic politics, not a narrow elite, served to shape the French commitment to empire. The most notable characteristic of the French Fourth Republic is not the frequency with which governments came and went or even the degree to which it proved to be a placeholder, lasting just a dozen or so years between World War II before the establishment of the Fifth Republic in 1958. Rather, the most remarkable aspect of this regime is the extent to which it marked France’s transition to a modern liberal democratic state. While this is not the place to offer a detailed accounting of the attributes of the Fourth Republic, a few salient features are worth emphasizing. First, it was a particularly unstable parliamentary democracy, with fourteen separate cabinets between its establishment in 1947 and the investiture of Joseph Laniel as prime minister on June 28, 1953. Second, a broad multiplicity of parties jockeyed for influence, ranging from the Communists on Democratic Structure

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the left to the Gaullists on the right. Though there was a range of premiers during this time, there was a good deal of consistency among those serving in the key posts.7 Third, the Fourth Republic had a proportional electoral system, with members elected for five-year terms. Successful votes of no confidence led to dissolution of the cabinet, but not to new elections. Between 1946 and the 1954 Geneva Conference, there was only one national election, in 1951. Finally, as the popularity of parties on the extreme ends of the spectrum increased, those at the center (i.e., the Socialists, the Mouvement Républicain Populaire, the Radicals, along with some smaller parties) adjusted the electoral system in 1951 to include the apparentement, in which declared coalitions of parties could win all the seats in the district if their combined vote surpassed 50 percent. This device succeeded in limiting the power of the Gaullists and Communists, who would have won 23 and 68 more seats in the 627-member chamber, respectively, had the old electoral system been in place.8 In these and other respects, the Fourth Republic was far from majoritarian; indeed, Spruyt attributes the record of French recolonization to the multiple veto points this system allowed.9 Although this may explain why the colonial military and other French interests were able to resist decolonization, it tells us nothing about whether and how contrary sentiment might have filtered through to policymakers to effect a different approach. Despite the structural shortcomings of the Fourth Republic from a majoritarian perspective, the initial choice to use French military power in the service of colonial ends was eventually challenged by voices emanating from wider society. Democracy and War: The Case of the French Return to Indochina

This case is characterized as an “extra-state war” by the Correlates of War project, thus as noted, it does not fit the selection criteria used in the democratic peace literature. Nevertheless, I include it precisely because the French war to reclaim Indochina represents the confluence of two forces central to my argument: France assumes all the characteristics of a modern liberal democracy as simultaneously decolonization becomes an inescapable concern. The French Indochina case provides a unique window on how democracy, with norms and identity in flux, interacts with wars of choice. Quantitative examinations of the democratic peace find the post-1945 period significant, with skeptics pointing to security logic as a convenient explanation.10 For example, Farber and Gowa argue that the bipolar alignment of the Cold War explains the paucity of democratic-on-democratic war after 1945.11 Worth investigation, though, is whether democratic norms and identity also changed as the postwar era got under way and the effect of this

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shift on the international conduct of democracies. The French case presents two interesting avenues of inquiry on this score. First, French decisionmakers took military action in Indochina on behalf of an idea that defined French identity to that point. France was an empire, and possessing one provided the grandeur that constituted the national self-conception. Moreover, in its relations with the Vietnamese, France continued to behave in a manner consistent with colonial norms: that indigenous peoples needed the guidance of their colonizers, and the relationship of dependency was not considered problematic in the metropole. Even as the French began to promote selfgovernment for the Associated States of Indochina, the “professed autonomy” was, as Martin Thomas writes, a “sham.”12 Did this change? Second, French democracy underwent a profound change after World War II: women finally received the vote, while the national media environment became more open during the decade following the occupation.13 If the essence of French identity continued to require grandeur, why depart Indochina short of achieving that goal? Either material considerations regarding power and finances made persistence problematic, or the national conception of French identity came under domestic challenge, severely limiting the ability of pro-grandeur elites to extract the resources necessary to retain a hold on Indochina. The French case therefore provides an opportunity to juxtapose the widening of pathways for societal dissent with the pressure of sustaining a colonialist relationship that perhaps no longer fit French identity, forcing leaders of the state to come to grips with the consequences of this shift on its preferences for Indochina. By tracing the presence of debate over identity in the French marketplace of ideas, I seek insight into how democracies factor identity into calculations regarding the national interest. I thereby also illuminate a key explanation for the nature of democratic peace, showing how actions once widely accepted by democracies become prohibited owing to the evolution of identity-based norms. What began as a war to restore a colonial outpost evolved in terms of strategic objective, a process best understood through the application of a model that accounts for the role of the domestic marketplace of ideas on the derivation of the national interest. Under my typology the French effort is classified as a Type 2 case, meaning it was a war of long duration where the strategic objective changed. For my other Type 2 cases, I examined newspaper coverage at weekly intervals selected to correspond with potential turning points for debate in the national marketplace of ideas. Out of necessity, I take a different course here because the French war has some shortcomings in terms of its amenability to the type of media content analysis to which subsequent cases will be subject. Secondary accounts indicate a paucity of coverage of this conflict in the French media and politics more generally. A preliminary analysis of Le Monde at three-week intervals from June 25 through December 17, 1953, for a total of nine weeks worth of

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coverage, bears this out. A review of the front page and editorial pages of a leading French newspaper for Indochina coverage identified only forty pieces referencing Indochina at all, and few of these merited close scrutiny. In contrast, of my four other cases, the Iraq War had the fewest total front page and op-ed items, with three times as many of these located during the four weeks of Iraq War data as found in nine weeks sampling Le Monde. I focus my attention on two aspects of the French Indochina War. First, I examine the initial decision to reassert the French claim, seeking to establish the normative and domestic political environment that argued in favor of reconquest. Second, and more intensively, I concentrate on the machinations of French leaders to sustain a military commitment in the face of domestic opposition while retaining the expectation that their fundamental goals nevertheless could be achieved. My initial step in this inquiry will be establishing the normative environment in France as World War II drew to a close. I consider the elite expression of French interests and the nature of public opinion at the outset of the reconquest, then I examine the debate in the French marketplace of ideas that led officials to alter tactics in Indochina to forestall rising political opposition at home, again accounting for both elite and public opinion. I supplement my portrait of the French marketplace of ideas with observations from the French and US diplomatic record. As enthusiasts for continued French involvement against the Viet Minh, candid assessments by US observers of the limits imposed by French domestic politics on military operations in Indochina will be especially informative. My inquiry then turns to the phenomenon I label “two-level diplomacy reversed,” where to achieve goals that are diplomatically out of reach owing to military weakness, officials launch a last-ditch offensive before domestic political patience for the war runs out and options for a favorable outcome are foreclosed.14 I measure public opinion with poll data (though in this case these are scant), newspaper articles and editorials, and the debate in the French National Assembly. Finally, I evaluate the degree to which the French departure from Indochina was a consequence of a normative shift away from empire and a definition of French identity that required grandeur, more than merely the product of exhaustion, a lack of resources, or capitulation to the Americanization of the conflict. Norms of Empire

The defeat of France at the hands of the Nazis in May 1940 put the French colonies of Indochina in the hands of the collaborationist Vichy regime. Vichy and the Free French Forces were both, according to Martin Evans’s account, “wholeheartedly committed to empire.”15 Free French delegates sought the “liberation” of France but pointedly denied that prospect to colo-

France’s Effort to Retain Indochina

37

nial peoples. For example, at a January 1944 Brazzaville colonial conference held by Charles de Gaulle, René Pleven, the provisional commissioner for the Colonies, “declared that France ‘refuses all idea of autonomy, all possibility of an evolution outside the French bloc of empire; the eventual, even distant establishment of self-government is rejected.’”16 On March 9, 1945, Japanese forces took over administration of French Indochina. The next day, Paul Giaccobi, Pleven’s successor as colonial minister, remarked to the provisional Consultative Assembly: “‘Bientôt notre drapeau flottera à nouveau sur Hanoi, Huê et Saigon, libres comme à Strasbourg et à Metz’” [Soon our flag will flutter anew over Hanoi, Hue and Saigon, free like Strasbourg and Metz].17 Indeed, according to former Saigon correspondent Arthur Dommen, French official statements during 1945 inaccurately “spoke as if the Indochinese were anxiously awaiting for the French to liberate them from the Japanese.”18 The Japanese takeover had important consequences for the French and Vietnamese. Vietnamese nationalists drew inspiration from the Japanese example of Asians defeating a European power, confidence from managing their own affairs during the occupation, and military experience in their armed resistance to the Japanese. Moreover, the Viet Minh built relationships with the United States and others as the movement reached out for financial, military, and diplomatic support. In contrast, the French did not believe that liberation of Indochina should be the result of the Japanese defeat, only the product of an act of France.19 US, British, and Soviet negotiators decided at Potsdam on July 26, 1945, that Chinese forces would take the Japanese surrender north of the 16th parallel, the British to the south. De Gaulle, not officially informed until August 15, announced two days later his selections for the posts of commander of the French Expeditionary Corps and high commissioner for Indochina. Vietnamese emperor Bao Dai responded to this announcement with a letter to de Gaulle on August 18, appealing to the recent common experience of the two nations: “You have suffered too much during four deadly years not to understand that the Vietnamese people . . . no longer desire and can no longer endure any foreign domination of government.” Bao Dai continued with the prescient observation that evidently made no impact on the French mind-set: “Even if you were to come to re-establish French government here it would not be obeyed: each village would be a nest of resistance, each former collaborator an enemy, and your officials and your colonists themselves would ask to leave that unbreatheable atmosphere.”20 Official instructions given to High Commissioner for Indochina Georges Thierry d’Argenlieu, as Dommen describes, were “to re-establish French sovereignty over all of Indochina whatever the circumstances.”21 Regardless of the incompetence with which the French sought to reassert their authority, the perceived need to reclaim Indochina originated not with

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When Democracies Choose War

the French national interest but with the norm underlying great power identity. Certainly in the aftermath of the French defeat by the Nazis and the Japanese takeover of Indochina in 1945, there was a strong domestic imperative for the country to restore its sense of national pride. In this respect, the attachment to Indochina was unique. On the other hand, that great power status could best be conferred through an empire reflects a socially constructed identity that may have been shared through the nineteenth century but was increasingly contested during the twentieth. During the 1930s, for example, as Martin Thomas describes it, “republican imperialism” was widely seen “as a force for good,” while “the right of European nations to rule ‘lesser’ societies” went largely unquestioned in France or in other great powers.22 How the French government reached its decision to reestablish control over its colony reflects the continuing relevance of this norm of empire. How the French government came to the decision to leave Indochina promises to illuminate the pathway whereby democratic states reconcile the ambitions of leaders with the evolving countervailing normative constraints that may emerge from society. A conception of French national identity as a great power propelled post–World War II France back to Indochina. With an empire, France was better positioned to resist les anglo-saxons, and as a French school text made clear: “European France is a medium-sized power, with overseas France she is a great power, the French Union.”23 Moreover, as Anthony Clayton observes, “nothing in her history, recent experience, institutions or politics prepared France for any voluntary withdrawal from empire after the end of the Second World War.”24 Indeed, as historian of contemporary French history Jean-Pierre Rioux makes clear, de Gaulle’s efforts to restore grandeur “encountered no opposition.”25 Not surprisingly, French public opinion in 1945 reflected positively on the values of empire. Ruscio and Tignères report that even those “qui avouent méconnaitre l’outre-mer” [who admit to being unaware of the overseas territories] say they are attached to imperial values, with more than 80 percent of those surveyed believing France right to keep its possessions.26 The analysts attribute the views of the French public to concerns about national identity. Having an empire during World War II gave France a form of strategic depth, as well as recognition internationally of great power status. Furthermore, 62 percent of those surveyed pointed to the “bon travail” [good work] France engaged in with its colonies.27 Importantly, the most significant observation we can render about French public opinion at the time of its return to Indochina was its inattention, with one-third of those surveyed declaring “no opinion” on the issue in a January 1947 survey.28 Ruscio and Tignères characterize French public opinion on Indochina as a “vague, mais superficiel, attachement à l’Empire, fait de bonne conscience, sur un fond général de méconnais-

France’s Effort to Retain Indochina

39

sance” (emphasis in original) [vague, but superficial attachment to the Empire, made in good conscience, on a foundation of general ignorance].29 For the most part, the French marketplace of ideas remained fairly tranquil on the Indochina question. Ruscio and Tignères conclude that “une lecture attentive de la presse de la IVe République, des débats parlementaires, des controverses politiques, permet de constater que l’Indochine n’a été au coeur du l’actualité qu’épisodiquement” [a careful reading of the press of the Fourth Republic, parliamentary debates, political controversies, reveals that Indochina has only sporadically been at the heart of the news].30 According to Rioux’s account, “only the scandals and the violent Communist protests against the war succeeded in occasionally piercing the war of indifference.”31 As a consequence of sequential decisions intended to minimize the impact of the war on the home front, however, decisionmakers inadvertently set France on a course that would necessitate a broader debate by initiating military measures that culminated in the French stand at Dien Bien Phu, with the ensuant airing of dissent over the official justification for the war. French Debate in the Marketplace of Ideas

The French effort in Indochina may be divided into three phases: the 1945– 1946 period when the French first endeavored to reassert control; a local colonial war from 1947 to 1950; and a large-scale conflict with an international dimension from 1950 through the fall of Dien Bien Phu and the consequent Geneva Accords in 1954.32 Kupchan maintains that during the first phase, French elites saw “the preservation of empire as synonymous with domestic legitimacy and the well-being of the metropole.”33 By returning to Indochina, French elites, as Bradley puts it, can “restore the grandeur and Great Power status” of the nation and use Vietnam as an asset for the reconstruction of the domestic economy.34 Seductive as these ambitions may have been, the real costs of reconquest did not go unexamined by French elites. For example, Clayton reports that in July 1946, General Philippe Leclerc, commander of the French Far East Expeditionary Corps, warned that France is “heading for a guerrilla war that she could neither win nor afford.”35 As 1946 drew to a close, French forces battled the Viet Minh for control of Hanoi and Haiphong, engaging in brutal tactics that left approximately 6,000 Vietnamese civilians dead.36 At this point, many French leaders, according to Ruscio and Tignères, echo the opinions of their nineteenth-century predecessors and rallied-round-the-flag, as Radical Deputy Léon Martinand-Déplat declared on December 22, 1946: “Le drapeau français est engagé. On ne discute pas avec des rebelles et des assassins” [The French flag is engaged. We do not argue with rebels and assassins].37

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When Democracies Choose War

With the investiture of Paul Ramadier as premier on January 21, 1947, French policy toward the peoples of Indochina adopted a liberal tone. A directive to envoy Emile Bollaert emphasized “that France has no wish to reestablish her sovereignty in its former form over her territories overseas in Asia. She declares formally that she has no wish to involve herself or intervene against their will in the internal government of the Indochinese states.”38 Nevertheless, French domestic politics limits the ability of the state to disengage. A three-party coalition of Communists, Socialists, and the Christian Democratic Mouvement Républican Populaire (MRP) had dominated the Fourth Republic since its inception, but tripartism broke down in spring 1947 when Communist deputies refused to vote for credits for the war in Indochina.39 At this point, de Gaulle launched the Rassemblement du Peuple Français (RPF), creating competition with the MRP for right-wing support and as a consequence, the MRP rejected a liberal course of action on Indochina, the party unwilling to risk being perceived as “soft” on colonial issues.40 Moreover, significant sentiment remained in the Assemblée Nationale that capitulating to the demands of the Viet Minh would be tantamount to rendering the Vosges Mountains as the boundaries of France.41 Several developments in 1950 fundamentally altered the French effort in Indochina. First, a series of critical articles appeared in Le Monde that year, marking the distinguished newspaper’s initial expressions of opposition to French Indochina policy. According to Pierre Cenerelli’s analysis of media coverage of the French Indochina War, news articles and editorials in Le Monde “qualified as neocolonial until the end of 1946.”42 By 1950, Maurice Duverger wrote a front-page article “arguing that France must plan to evacuate Indochina because of the increasing absurdity of its war effort.”43 A 1950 editorial targeted French “pride and thirst for power” for leading the government “foolishly to attempt to reintegrate Indochina into the empire without the means to do so.”44 The appearance of these critical stories in the media marks the opening of the French marketplace of ideas. Second, the introduction of Chinese weapons into the contest increased French vulnerability on the ground. This, followed by North Korea’s June 1950 attack on South Korea, cast the conflict in stark, east-west terms. The US response shifted France’s effort from restoration of empire to containment of communism. US policy changed to overt financial and political support for the French, with aid increasing from $15 million in May 1950 to $500 million in 1953–1954, while the French fight became an essential component of the struggle against communism.45 As the former facilitated the ability of the Paris government to fight in Indochina with fewer domestic political costs, the latter removed restoring empire as the primary rationale for the continued French presence. Consequently, with the rising US profile, anticommunism infused with anticolonialism replaced preservation of empire and restoration of grandeur as the defining features of the war,

France’s Effort to Retain Indochina

41

rendering the task of maintaining French domestic support for continued involvement even more problematic. Finally, by this point, according to Ruscio and Tignères, “la justification nationale de l’engagement français en Indochine avait donc quasiment disparu” [the national justification for the French involvement in Indochina had therefore virtually disappeared].46 As 1950 drew to a close, Clayton characterized the war as “now generally unpopular,” with large numbers of Socialists and the leader of the Radical Party Pierre Mendès France “now vociferously opposing it.”47 No wonder then, that when the General Staff proposed several steps in 1951 to improve French prospects in the war, their recommendations went nowhere. The government refused to extend military service to two years or allow conscripts to serve overseas, as Charles Kupchan observes, “fearful that they would be extremely unpopular and have potentially disastrous political consequences.”48 The opinion polling of this era was not as omnipresent nor as consistent as that to which we have become accustomed. Still, there are sufficient survey data available to draw some general conclusions about French public opinion and the war in Indochina. Two basic tendencies emerge from a review of public opinion polling from this time. First, as noted already, the general public was not very attentive to the situation in Indochina. Second, extant surveys make clear the greater magnitude of the pro-withdrawal/negotiate sentiment versus the segment of French public opinion willing to persevere. Only 23 percent of those surveyed in February 1954 claimed to regularly follow the news from Indochina, suggesting low issue salience (45 percent reported occasionally; 32 percent never). By comparison, this figure is not far removed from the percentage of US citizens who followed the news about fighting in Central America “very closely” in 1982 (15 percent) and 1986 (20 percent), when the United States was embroiled in debate over policy toward the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua.49 This level of public attention was nevertheless adequate, Russett argues, to limit the scope of the Reagan administration’s intervention because the opinions of those opposed to Reagan’s policy reflected “normative barriers to subverting the Sandinista revolution which was widely regarded as in some way legitimate.”50 Thus, low aggregate levels of issue salience alone are not sufficient to discount public opinion providing a normative impediment to state pursuit of goals antithetical to some portion of the public’s conception of national identity. Fairly high percentages of respondents express “no opinion” when asked about French policy in Indochina. As many as 30 percent declared no opinion in a January 1947 survey, and throughout the French effort those Public Opinion

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When Democracies Choose War

without a preference held steady in the 20–25 percent range. As noted, even in February 1954, on the eve of the climactic battle at Dien Bien Phu, onethird of respondents claimed they “never” followed the news on Indochina, and only 45 percent paid attention from “time to time.”51 Cenerelli attributes “the feeble mobilization” observed by students of French public opinion on the Indochina War to the “lack of information” presented by the news media. Low levels of public knowledge “meant that the French voters did not exert enough pressure on their government to change its handling of the difficult situation in the region. As a result, the government continued to pursue policies that benefited only a small number of private interests and were ill-adapted to the situation on the field.”52 Ageron claims that Dien Bien Phu and the later armistice activated public opinion in the debate over decolonization in Algeria.53 Perhaps. Still, French governments until Mendès France became premier in June 1954 continued to pursue a colonial objective in Indochina that had limited support in public opinion surveys. For example, Jacques Valette reports a tremendous decline from 37 percent in July 1947 to 5 percent in February 1953 in the proportion of respondents preferring to “put things back in order” in Indochina. There was a corresponding increase during this interval in the percentage approving of the idea of compromise, from 15 percent to 42 percent.54 At no point did any survey show as many as 40 percent of respondents preferring to continue France’s war in Indochina. Instead, in January 1947, 37 percent “supported the reestablishment of colonial order,” with an equal number favoring negotiated settlement or immediate end to colonialism, marking the high-water mark for French public support of the colonialist option.55 As Ruscio and Tignères conclude, “c’est un fait décisif et, finalement, assez rare au cours même d’un conflict: à aucune occasion, les ‘pour’ ne furent majoritaires” (emphasis in original) [it is a decisive fact, and finally, rather rare in the course of a conflict: at no point did those “for” make a majority].56 Particularly striking is the 38 percent who favored giving Indochina independence in May 1953, a month before the investiture of Laniel, the final prime minister to preside over the French military campaign in Indochina. Two-Level Diplomacy Reversed

In the face of public opposition and elite resistance to the continuing French effort in Indochina, Laniel was invested as the fifteenth prime minister of the hapless Fourth Republic on June 26, 1953. His selection followed a five-week interregnum between governments, a crisis symptomatic of the political shortcomings of the French regime.57 Pledging continuity on French foreign policy, Laniel, a colonialist, might have wished to reestab-

France’s Effort to Retain Indochina

43

lish French control over Indochina, but he did not have sufficient political strength to do so.58 As Irving relates, Laniel pledged in his investiture speech that “France would not abandon her friends,” but would consider all paths to a just peace.59 At the same time, he opposed direct negotiations with the Viet Minh.60 Later, according to Irving, in debate in the Assemblée Nationale in October 1953, Laniel declared, “France would negotiate with the Viet Minh only from a position of strength.”61 Certainly, the effort to retain Indochina had grown problematic by the time of Laniel’s investiture, with France first considering an honorable exit in May 1953.62 Primary responsibility for Indochina policy in the Laniel government fell to Foreign Minister Georges Bidault (MRP), who, Irving notes, “realised that French public opinion was rapidly losing interest in Indochina,” yet he, too, believed a show of strength could secure a peace that did not require concessions to the Viet Minh.63 Successive French governments made Indochina a priority because of the perceived impact its loss would have on France’s status as a great power.64 In the logic of French policy, the loss of Indochina, perhaps not fatal in and of itself, would have a negative effect on its colonies in North Africa. As H. Freeman Matthews, the US deputy undersecretary of state, suggested to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles during a January 1953 meeting at the Pentagon: “They feel North Africa is vital; otherwise they would become a country like Belgium.”65 Regardless of the assessments of French officials, the norm challenged by opponents of the French war in Indochina was colonialism. Robert H. Jackson connects the adoption of decolonization to the increasing acceptance of civil rights within democracies.66 This suggests that the French retreat from Indochina and later North Africa was part of a long-term process. Thus, although the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu is often seen as the precipitating event of their withdrawal from Vietnam, it would be overstating the case to assume that the battle was the turning point of the French Indochina experience. Rather, societal questioning of the idea of empire led decisionmakers to the self-defeating strategy of creating the Dien Bien Phu garrison in the mistaken premise that a quick victory there would enable France to secure a favorable negotiated settlement from the Viet Minh. Although French decisionmakers may have held to the notion that to remain great France must maintain its empire, this point of view was far from universally held. Charles Kupchan, for example, singles out Dien Bien Phu for causing “French elites to reorient strategy and withdraw from Indochina.”67 To Kupchan, the “strategic culture” of empire kept the war going despite its desperate character because elites believed that maintenance of the empire upheld the domestic legitimacy of the regime. According to this view, the disaster at Dien Bien Phu and the subsequent fall of the Laniel government led to the abandonment of the French position. It is cru-

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When Democracies Choose War

cial to recognize, however, that public opinion and its impact on the Assemblée Nationale limited the ability of French colonialists to regain control of Indochina long before that battle. In this sense, Dien Bien Phu was the product of a struggle between a state leadership that believed in the continued importance of empire, and a wider society that did not share the view that this goal was worth sacrifice. Laniel voiced his commitment to win the war in Vietnam, pledging soon after he took office that he would not agree to a French withdrawal.68 His commitment would not be easy to fulfill, as a US State Department memo of the previous December noted “a growing belief in French governmental circles and in French public opinion generally that France cannot indefinitely or even for very much longer continue the present effort in Indochina.”69 To conduct the war against the Viet Minh despite rising opposition at home, Laniel sought additional aid from the United States to fund the Navarre Plan, a program first introduced by Laniel’s predecessor, René Mayer, of increasing the aggressiveness and size of the French military presence as well as training an indigenous Vietnam National Army.70 A report from the US State Department to the National Security Council recommended that the United States provide the French with the requested funds, arguing that Laniel’s government was the first of the Fourth Republic prepared to take the actions necessary to secure a favorable outcome to the war. At the same time, the State Department warned that it was “almost certainly the last French government which would undertake to continue the war in Indo-China” (emphasis in original).”71 Until November 1953 Laniel refused to consider negotiations with the Viet Minh. Rather, he believed that if the United States made the funds available, an honorable exit could be attained in relatively short order through the Navarre Plan. Here is where two-level diplomacy gets reversed. The Navarre Plan was designed to pressure the Viet Minh to negotiate a concessionary settlement before French domestic support ran dry. As General Henri Navarre told a July 24, 1953, meeting of the Comité de Défense Nationale: “It is only through the offensive that it is possible to beat the enemy or, at the least, to realize a military outcome that is favorable enough to convince him that he will not win and that he has an interest in negotiating.”72 But the plan could not be fulfilled to its complete extent owing to the unwillingness of French decisionmakers to provide Navarre with the resources needed.73 The logic behind the French decision to bait the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu is thus rooted in democratic politics at home more than military or diplomatic strategy. Domestic unwillingness to stay the course in Indochina made French leaders desperate to implement a partially The Navarre Plan

France’s Effort to Retain Indochina

45

funded, ill-considered plan that they hoped would preserve the French position by strengthening their diplomatic hand. Instead, by launching the plan, the French committed themselves to the battle that broke the proverbial camel’s back of public support. What sort of negotiated settlement did Laniel hope to achieve through successful implementation of the Navarre Plan? Only the broadest outlines of what constituted an honorable exit, what was called “une porte de sortie honorable” [a door to an honorable exit]74 were publicly stated. Ho Chi Minh’s overture to negotiate in November 1953 was rejected by Laniel until France had gained the military upper hand.75 Laniel sought to “convaincre l’adversaire qu’il ne devait pas esperer nous ecraser de ses armes” [convince the enemy that he should not hope to crush us militarily]76 through the Navarre Plan, while improving the will and capability of the Associated States ultimately to contain the Viet Minh forces themselves. Therefore, at least through 1953, an honorable settlement to the Laniel government consisted of an end to French losses, independence for the Associated States within the framework of the French Union, and an unspecified though certainly minor part for the Viet Minh.77 As late as March 6, 1954, Laniel’s six-point cease-fire plan called for a Viet Minh withdrawal from the Tonkin Delta to zones in central Vietnam and their evacuation or disarmament from southern Vietnam.78 Indeed, Bidault continued to resist the idea of partition until events forced his hand during the last month of the Laniel government. Instead, he proposed a “leopard-skin regroupment” and insisted on resolving military issues before facing political ones, positions not unlike those taken later on by US president Richard Nixon (i.e., the “cease-fire in place” of October 7, 1970, and the persistence on separating political and military issues).79 Military success was crucial to Laniel’s diplomacy in preserving political room for maneuver on the home front in advance of any potential negotiations with his Viet Minh adversary. US ambassador at Saigon Donald R. Heath conveyed in a January 21, 1954, cable to Washington the view of Marc Jacquet, French secretary of State for the Associated States, who argued that Navarre had to produce victories soon lest the opposition in parliament force the government in power to begin negotiations with the Viet Minh. He favored the prospect of a Viet Minh attack on Dien Bien Phu, reasoning that a victory “would greatly diminish French opposition to [the] war in Indochina.”80 The Viet Minh attacked on March 13, 1954. Although the implications of that defeat on the French will to fight surprised many in the Eisenhower administration, it proved to be a fatal blow for Laniel’s effort to preserve grandeur in Indochina. On April 24, 1954, as the situation at Dien Bien Phu turned grave (the garrison fell on May 7), Dulles sent a letter to Bidault urging the Laniel government not to abandon its commitment to fight the Viet Minh. Dulles’s

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When Democracies Choose War

plea reflects his sense of the security imperatives involved in denying communism a foothold in the region, as well as his reading of the continuing strength and viability of the French position. Dulles wrote that US military experts doubted the fall of Dien Bien Phu would have a crippling impact on the French situation in Indochina. In the final analysis, he concluded, the losses to the Viet Minh had been so great “that whatever the outcome, the balance from a purely military standpoint would remain favorable to the French Union.”81 Dulles was not alone in this analysis of the international imperatives; his assessment of the situation was flawed because he disregarded the potency of domestic opposition to Laniel’s agenda. Owing to US agreement to a compromise in Korea, the pressure on Laniel to negotiate became irresistible. Bidault came to Washington on July 12, 1953, and informed his allies: “The French people want the same for Indochina that is being achieved in Korea.”82 Mounting domestic sentiment throughout the second half of 1953 compelled Laniel to agree to negotiate and gave impetus to the plan to achieve a bargaining advantage over the Viet Minh by inflicting a military defeat at Dien Bien Phu.83 The underlying influence of French public opinion is expressed nicely in an undated correspondence between the French Foreign Ministry and officials in the embassy in Bangkok prior to the Geneva conference, that “meme si on est sceptique sur les chances d’aboutir á Geneve, il est inconcevable de faire ainsi bon marché des espoirs du peuple français, qui a fait assez de sacrifices en Indochine pour avoir le droit d’etre écouté” [even if one is skeptical about the chances for success in Geneva, it is inconceivable to cheapen the hopes of the French people, who have made enough sacrifices in Indochina to have the right to be heard].84 Meanwhile, the main contenders to succeed Laniel engaged in a contest for popular support in the Assemblée Nationale by promising reductions in the commitment to Indochina.85 Laniel finally pledged to negotiate and relented from demanding the Viet Minh’s surrender during a November 13, 1953, legislative debate on Indochina. In reviewing Laniel’s declaration at a staff meeting, Dulles expressed some sympathy for the premier’s predicament, noting that political reality in France left Laniel no choice. The secretary went on to say that although the French government knew it was not yet in a position to negotiate, “no French Government could ask the French people to rule out an armistice in Indochina while we had gone ahead with an armistice in Korea.”86 Regardless of Laniel’s preferences, French Indochina policy was shaped by domestic political constraints that reflected societal intolerance for sacrifice to achieve a goal that no longer reflected French identity or democratic norms of behavior. The Navarre Plan and Public Opinion

France’s Effort to Retain Indochina

47

Improving the French bargaining position prior to negotiations may have been Laniel’s paramount concern, but domestic imperatives required immediate movement on the diplomatic front. At the February 1954 fourpower Berlin Conference, before the Navarre Plan faced its big test, the Laniel government insisted that the Indochina question be included on the agenda for the upcoming Geneva conference on east-west affairs. Concern about public opinion led the French government to instruct the reluctant-tocompromise Bidault to be flexible.87 According to Dulles’s cable to President Eisenhower, Bidault parried Dulles’s objections to a course reeking of appeasement by countering that the bottom would “fall out of [the] French home situation unless” the government used this diplomatic forum “to indicate a desire to end [the] Indochina war.”88 Some months later, Dulles declared in remarks on the Geneva Conference prepared for delivery to Congress: “the growing weakness of the French Government . . . led the Government of Laniel and Bidault against its better judgment to insist on negotiations for peace.”89 Surely there were contrary pressures on Laniel not to abandon Indochina or besmirch France’s honor. For some elements of the French body politic, continued sacrifice for grandeur was worthwhile, though by May 1953, only 19 percent of respondents supported continuing the war, with 38 percent favoring independence for Indochina, and another 11 percent advocating abandoning the effort altogether. Nevertheless, the US National Intelligence Estimate of June 4, 1953, observed that the Laniel government was “under strong pressure to maintain its position.”90 The mixed sentiment of French public opinion on Indochina is recorded in Table 2.1, where in almost every instance, upward of 40 percent of respondents expressed the desire to get out of the war. The clearest and most effective manifestation of domestic opposition to persistence in Indochina came from the Assemblée Nationale, where dissenting public opinion could be given political voice. In the French parliament, the Laniel government found itself caught between those on the left who were opposed to the war on its own terms and some on the right who were concerned with the war’s cost.91 A little more than two weeks into the Laniel administration, Bidault traveled to Washington for a joint meeting with State Department officials at the secretary’s residence. When the subject turned to Indochina, Bidault could not hide his government’s concern with “the state of public opinion in France.” According to the minutes of the discussion, Bidault linked this concern with Laniel’s precarious position in the legislature, recalling “that [Pierre] Mendès-France failed of approval as Prime Minister by only 12 The Role of the National Assembly

48 Table 2.1 French Opinion on Indochina

“What should be done in Indochina?” (in %)

Date

May 1947a

Negotiate Continue 55 15 n/a n/a 24 n/a 42

July 1947 July 1949b August 1949a October 1950b May 1953b February 1954b b

29 37 19 19 27c 19d 7

End n/a n/a n/a 33 0 n/a n/a

Abandon n/a n/a 11 11 18 11 18

Give Independence n/a 22 38 5 n/a 38 n/a

No Other Opinion n/a 5 7 9 11 7 4

16 21 25 23 20 25 29

Sources: a. Gallup Index of International Opinion; b. Sondages Revue Française de l’Opinion Publique. Notes: n/a: not applicable. c. “Establish order, continue the war.” d. “Establish order, send more troops.”

Of those with an opinion above:

“What is it necessary to do in Indochina?” (in %)

Prosecute the war Negotiate or abandon Appeal to the UN

July 1947

July 1949

52 48

28 72

October 1950

Source: Sondages Revue Française de l’Opinion Publique, 13, no. 2 (1951): 49.

April 1951

38 52 10

“In your opinion, what should be done about Indochina?” (in %)

Send reinforcements Withdraw the troops Keep things No opinion

Of those providing an opinion:

Send reinforcements Withdraw the troops Keep things

32 26 5 37

51 41 8

Source: Sondages Revue Française de l’Opinion Publique, 13, no. 2 (1951): 49.

France’s Effort to Retain Indochina

49

votes on an investiture statement which included a proposal for the opening of negotiations in Indochina.”92 It is important to note that following November 1946, there was only one point in this saga when the electorate, and not jockeying among the parties in the National Assembly, could shape the government.93 The legislative elections of June 17, 1951, resulted in de Gaulle’s newly established RPF winning 22 percent of the vote (120 seats of 627 total); the Communists captured 25 percent of the vote (100 seats), while the MRP and Socialists each lost representation (the MRP won half of the votes it gained in 1946, its parliamentary strength falling from 167 to 86 seats, and the Socialists were down almost 700,000 votes out of almost 19 million cast, but losing only 2 seats). Though these results strengthened the colonialist position, there was ample political opportunity for the anticolonial left to cobble together a coalition should the effort in Indochina falter. Once a lonely voice urging France to align its burdens with its capabilities, Mendès-France became a leading critic of French Indochina policy from within the mainstream parties.94 By the time of the June 4, 1953, unsuccessful vote on his first investment, the American embassy reported that Mendès-France was no longer a “fairly isolated” advocate of withdrawal, but had been joined by others in public life and the noncommunist press.95 Ambassador Douglas Dillon conveyed to Washington that when the communist deputies were included with those voting in favor of MendèsFrance’s first investiture, “approximately two-thirds of Parliament [were] in favor of or willing to accept immediate and more or less unconditional withdrawal from Indochina.”96 According to Dillon, Mendès-France eventually came to represent “a substantial majority of the French people.” He recalled advising Dulles, “that a great majority of the French people wanted to be finished with Indochina and it just happened that was one of the reasons the Mendès-France government came into power.”97 Acute parliamentary limitations were imposed on Laniel’s ability to be more muscular on Indochina owing to the support for the Mendès-France alternative, which served as a political guillotine hovering over Laniel’s head. Throughout Laniel’s ministry, there existed a high probability that if he faltered he would be replaced by Mendès-France, as indeed happened following the fall of Dien Bien Phu. This was the prediction of Secretary of State for the Associated States Marc Jacquet, who told the US chargé d’affaires in January 1954 that “within three to six months French public opinion will oblige the National Assembly to support only that government which can promise a solution to the Indochina problem even if the solution is withdrawal.”98 It was a mistake to assume, as had Dulles, that “tremendous domestic pressure to avoid military defeat” would lead the French to adopt his requirements for US intervention. Not only would the French have to grant independence to their colony under this plan, they would have to pledge to remain in the war

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until victory. Dulles’s reading of Laniel’s predicament leads Melanie Billings-Yun to conclude that Dulles was oblivious to “the virtual unanimity in France for a negotiated peace regardless of the cost.”99 Many in the French parliament, most prominently Mendès-France, were suspicious that Laniel had only agreed to negotiate at Geneva as a ploy for prolonging the war and gaining US intervention.100 The assembly debated Indochina just four days before the Viet Minh launched their attack on Dien Bien Phu, and approved a government accepted ordre du jour: “Takes account of statements of government reaffirming its will to seize and to explore all solutions capable of bringing about as rapidly as possible the cessation of the conflict and of assuring the peace and liberty in the Associated States indissolubly united within French Union.”101 Along with the preceding debate, the March 9 ordre du jour reflected the long-term diplomatic weakness of France more than the short-term strength of Laniel’s position. Because of its commitment to go to Geneva, the government, according to Dillon’s characterization of events, “was able to carry the day; but it was victory that perhaps ought to be limited by the caveat all-too-implicit in course of debate: Let government beware if settlement is not reached at Geneva.”102 We cannot know what the Laniel government might have achieved at Geneva had Dien Bien Phu not been a disaster. However, it is clear that public opinion was turning against the war long before the battle began. Lasting from March 13 to May 7, the fighting was marked by a frenzy of activity between France and its allies and much consternation in France. In an address to the legislature on April 9, Laniel urged members to desist from haggling with the government while French soldiers were dying. He insisted it was the policy of the government to “do everything to achieve victory . . . with material aid which Franco-Vietnamese forces are receiving from US.”103 Indeed, Laniel had just requested that the United States implement Operation Vulture, a plan that included use of US air power to break the Viet Minh siege of the garrison. At a tripartite meeting with Dulles and British foreign minister Anthony Eden on April 24, Bidault affirmed “that he and Laniel would certainly wish to continue the fight in Indochina even though Dien Bien Phu were lost.”104 Laniel faced a vote of confidence on May 13, barely maintaining his hold on power with a two-vote majority. As Le Monde argued, “A two-vote majority may be sufficient to make peace. It is certainly not sufficient . . . to continue the war.”105 Those in favor of maintaining a French position in Indochina could no longer muster political support sufficient to prolong the military presence; the preferences of society to end the war triumphed over the state’s desire to retain its hold on Indochina and thereby restore lost grandeur. Laniel’s foreign minister continued to take a tough line at Geneva, refusing to recognize Viet Minh sovereignty, while the rest of his

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government sought salvation through internationalization of the war.106 French willingness to persist was minimal, and in any event, it was doubtful that US intervention could be mustered in time and under conditions to help the French save face.107 Laniel resigned on June 12, unable to apply his conception of French security needs to the Indochina problem. In his place, the legislature affirmed Pierre Mendès-France in the expectation that he could liquidate the Indochina morass and address the nation’s other foreign policy dilemma, the European Defense Community.108 The Evolution of Norms and Wars of Choice

Virtually across the board, French political parties following World War II accepted uncritically the notion that Indochina needed to remain a part of France.109 French elites believed restoration of empire necessary to restore the national greatness sullied by events of the early twentieth century and did not question the appropriateness of colonial rule. Tony Smith expressed the consensus view of French elites of the Fourth Republic, who “shared anguish at the passing of national greatness, shared humiliation at three generations of defeat, a shared nationalistic determination that France retain her independence in a hostile world—all brought to rest on the conviction that in the empire they would ‘maintenir.’”110 The sense that France should fight a war to maintain its hold on Indochina lost currency as the norm of empire receded in acceptance. This shifting sentiment was made manifest through media coverage, growing dissent within key political parties, and in dispatches from officials in the French Foreign Ministry, which displayed a penchant for trumpeting how the country’s stance toward Indochina reflected not the norms of empire but those of liberalism. Media coverage of the war gradually became more critical toward its latter stages. In part, the dearth of debate during the earlier part of the war was the consequence of the fact that French society lacked outlets to channel open debate common in late twentieth-century democracies. As Crawford attests, “resistance to empire was not new”; what changed in the midtwentieth century was the power of media to build public awareness of the “techniques used to sustain empire.”111 Through regulation and selfrestraint, French news media remained largely under government control throughout the Indochina War, with Agence France-Press not independent until 1957, while television and radio remained an arm of the Information Ministry through 1964. Le Monde, though independent, maintained its influence, according to Cenerelli, owing to its reputation for being close to the government.112 As French democratic institutions developed, the elite conception of French identity that rallied around the norm of empire and grandeur at the end of World War II became subject to challenge in a much

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more robust marketplace of ideas. As the war endured, therefore, the French national interest and the identity that constituted it became increasingly the product of domestic debate, not the province of a narrow elite. After 1947, French Communists propagandized against “la sale guerre” [the dirty war], and critiques in the communist press eventually bled over into the mainstream media. For example, only in the spring of 1953 did Le Monde report on the “affaires des piastres,” a scandal involving the corruption of French officials in Indochina, charges first revealed in the communist press in 1950.113 In response to the resulting public outrage over the illegal trading of currency in Indochina, the French government devalued the piaster, which had adverse consequences on the local population and served to reinforce the sense of dependency despite French claims. Similarly, revelations about corruption by the French military, the “affaires des Généreaux,” were picked up by Le Monde only after being uncovered by Time magazine.114 Interestingly, the May 1953 establishment of France’s first news magazine, L’Express, grew out of left-of-center frustration with the absence of the type of independent news gathering found in Time.115 The affaires des Généreaux was precipitated by differences among French elites over how to proceed in Indochina with the Socialists trying to use the report on French prospects by General Georges Revers to undercut the policy of its MRP coalition partner.116 As the negative aspects of French involvement in the war entered the marketplace of ideas, public support for the effort came under further stress. Instead of promoting the war as a means to restore lost glory, French officials began to argue against withdrawal out of respect for the sacrifices made by the fallen, all the while resisting granting the Vietnamese the full independence to which they aspired.117 While the French government insisted on addressing Vietnamese nationalism through the “French Union,” Bao Dai, the former Vietnamese emperor the French sought to install as leader of a postcolonial Vietnam, argued in the October 15, 1953, issue of Le Monde that if the French Union is simply a “new look” for colonialism, “elle a peu de chances de survie” [it has little chance of survival]. He emphasized that unless the relationship among participants in the French Union reflected the principles of the French constitution, bringing together voluntarily free peoples, the ties between France and Vietnam would completely unravel.118 Of course, the Bao Dai option was unacceptable to French parties on the left, to say nothing of the US citizens and Vietnamese who viewed the emperor as a tool of the French.119 Regardless, full sovereignty for Vietnam was not part of the Laniel government’s program. As late as June 10, 1954, two days before the end of the Laniel government, Bidault affirmed in the Journal Official that France could not accept “straightforward withdrawal.”120 Irving contends that members of the Assemblée Nationale “obviously took it that Bidault

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intended to pursue the war to victory.”121 Certainly, among government elites, Bidault exemplified what remained of the colonial position on Indochina. Like many US officials, Bidault believed partition would lead to an eventual communist takeover of all Indochina. Irving relates that despite Bidault’s preferences, he had been instructed by the government “to do all he could to get a Far Eastern conference,”122 the legislature making clear to Bidault on three occasions what he had to do to get peace.123 As Irving puts it, Bidault’s colleagues “no doubt worried at the likely reaction of public opinion” if there was not a diplomatic parley on the horizon.124 Though Bidault’s preferences regarding Indochina may have remained consistent, internal party dynamics made sustaining a neocolonial policy more problematic as views on the legitimacy of empire and/or the wisdom of the French effort were undergoing challenge from party rank and file and elites. The Fourth Republic was not a majoritarian system, and to all accounts, the public was not activated until the last months of the war. Yet evolution among party representatives suggests a mechanism through which dissenting views could affect policy. Both the MRP and the Socialists, for example, experienced internal dissension over Indochina policy, and in the end, they shifted the weight of the French political system toward decolonization. Even within the party Bidault founded, his position on Indochina was untenable. Beginning in 1950, members of the MRP began issuing denunciations of the methods of repression used in Indochina.125 The Catholic press began criticizing the dirty tactics used in the war.126 Prominent members of the MRP also expressed reservations in discussions with other officials. For example, in November 1952, Secretary of State for the War Pierre de Chevigné told President Vincent Auriol privately that Bao Dai had no support and that the interest of France was to withdraw.127 Public opinion polling reflects the sentiment of rank-and-file MRP supporters. According to a May 1953 survey, 41 percent of those identifying with the MRP favored an immediate end to the conflict, with only 20 percent in favor of a military solution.128 In October 1953, another MRP legislator, Robert Buron, voted against the government’s Indochina policy, noting in his memoirs he had “enough of it.”129 Meanwhile, according to Dalloz, former MRP secretary of state for the navy André Monteil declared that he “dénonce désormais le politique coloniale d’un Bidault” [henceforth denounces the colonial policy of a Bidault]. By this point, the defection of many MRP Catholic intellectuals to the Indochina stance of Mendès-France did not bode well for Bidault’s position on the war.130 The Socialists also had qualms about the direction of French policy toward Indochina. For example, in a July 17, 1953, Le Monde op-ed, Paul Rivet, a former Socialist member of the Assemblée Nationale, urged the French toward peace in Indochina, excoriating his fellow citizens to move beyond the pain of the present to find in their collective memories an identity

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that could form “les bases d’une union durable, comme la Grande-Bretagne et l’Inde ont eu la sagesse de les réaliser” [the basis of a durable union, like Great Britain and India had the wisdom of achieving].131 Indeed, as French officials struggled to find a modality for postcolonial ties with Indochina, the British example of decolonization complicated their efforts. For example, in talks at Rambouillet during the summer of 1953 between Socialist president Auriol and Bao Dai, “le concept même de l’Union Française se trouvait remis en question” [even the concept of the French Union was questioned]. Progress on reaching agreement “a été obscurci par les références aux rapports des dominions avec la Grande-Bretagne dans le Commonwealth” [was obscured by references to the relations of the dominions with Great Britain in the Commonwealth].132 The norm for how to define relations between colonizer and former colony was being established by the British, with the French effort to carve out a union of former colonial states receiving little acclaim outside France. Rivet’s was hardly an isolated Socialist voice calling for an end to the war. According to Kahler’s account, while party officials endorsed the war to reclaim French authority, “the Socialist rank and file repeatedly made their opposition known.” For example, even as the party approved including Vietnam in the French Union at the March 1947 meeting of the National Council, delegates “called for an immediate cease-fire and negotiations with ‘the government of Vietnam.’” Furthermore, at a subsequent party congress, “the final motion called for the ‘abandonment of the colonialist policy which only maintains the unity of the French Union by using an apparatus of administrative and military coercion, both costly and inhuman, in flagrant violation of the Constitution.’”133 As the war continued, the French Foreign Ministry sought to present the French effort as promoting liberal ideals. Documents generated by Foreign Ministry officials in Paris and abroad continually reference the liberal attributes of the French approach. Paper traffic among French diplomats reveals a concern for presenting the Indochina effort in a manner that spotlights norms shared by post–World War II democratic actors. Repeatedly, across three years of records, French officials proclaimed that France was applying liberal precepts in its relations with Indochina. For example, a January 5, 1951, release from the press office of the French embassy in London summarizing the achievements of the June–November 1950 Pau Conference between France and the Associated States maintains that the “French approach to the building up of the French Union had grown more and more liberal” in the years following de Gaulle’s first enunciation of the idea at Brazzaville in 1944.134 An English version of the November 1, 1951, installment of the Foreign Ministry’s periodic Note D’Orientation (providing guidance to department personnel) conveyed the accomplishments of French military commander in

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Vietnam General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny’s visit to Washington. The note highlighted de Lattre’s success at persuading Washington that France was “not waging a colonial war” and concluded that his effort “relieves France of the accusation that she was waging an unjust war.”135 Similarly, in a July 21, 1952, memo to French ambassadors, High Commissioner for Indochina Jean Letourneau outlined the achievements of his meeting in Washington, sharing his impression that the US press subscribed fully to the view that “only Communist propaganda” considers France conducting “une guerre coloniale.”136 Even as the French approached its final six months of fighting, Maurice Dejean, Letourneau’s replacement as commissioner,137 insisted in a January 20, 1954, correspondence that the relations between France and Indochina embodied in the constitution of the Fourth Republic “est sans conteste d’inspiration libérale; il insiste sur la notion d’égalité entre les peuples qui est à la base de l’Union Française et il reconnait au sein de cette dernière l’existence de ‘nations’ diverses” [is without question of liberal inspiration; it insists on the idea of the equality of the people which is at the foundation of the French Union and it recognizes in it the existence of diverse “nations”].138 Whether these references to liberal ideals were intended to sustain the morale of French Foreign Ministry employees or was only for the consumption of nettlesome allies growing weary of the French crusade to hold on to some semblance of its empire, these diplomatic declarations are revealing. The language of French diplomats stressed the liberal nature of their state’s approach to Indochina. Leaving aside the actual content of French policy toward Indochina, it mattered to French officials that the state’s relationship with the Associated States was perceived as being consistent with liberal expectations. These invocations of liberal identity confirm that while policy may have yet to catch up with rhetoric, the machinery of the French government was engaged in an effort to frame its commitment to Indochina as reflecting liberal norms, not the norms of empire. Whether generated internally or externally, the normative conversation in France shifted dramatically over the nine years separating the ends of World War II and the French Indochina War. Government officials could not frame the war in a manner sufficiently resonant to persuade domestic constituencies that continued sacrifice was in the French interest. Moreover, a counterframe that France was fighting a dirty war to prevent self-determination gained currency through the party system, with sufficient strength to derail the efforts of prowar officials to carry the day. An essential norm of democratic governance is responsiveness to societal preferences. French colonial officials of the Fourth Republic displayed varying levels of fealty to French public opinion. Letourneau certainly recognized the growing significance of French public opinion to the effort in Indochina, acknowledging in a January 30, 1951, speech to opinion journalists (“presse

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de réflexion”) that their “l’influence et le rôle sont devenue plus importants que jamais en des temps où les Gouvernments ne peuvent agir qu’avec l’appui et la confiance des peuples” [influence and role has become more important than ever in this time where governments may only act with the support and confidence of the people].139 More dismissively, General Navarre claimed in an interview with Le Monde published on August 7, 1953, that a majority in France opposed negotiations with the Viet Minh.140 Similarly, in April 1954, Bidault claimed to Dulles that French public opinion would not support the war without ties.141 Neither claim is borne out by the polling evidence. Laniel offered a more honest appraisal, admitting during discussions in the Assemblée Nationale on October 27, 1953, that the war “est impopulaire, c’est vrai” [is unpopular, it is true].142 In the final analysis, as Ruscio and Tignères contend, “ce n’est pas Mendès France qui a fait basculer le pays vers la paix en 1954, c’est le pays qui a fait basculer la politique français vers Mendès” [it isn’t Mendès-France who swung the country to peace in 1954, it is the country which swung French politics toward Mendès].143 Conclusion

The French effort to reassert its control over Indochina bridges two distinct democratic identities. Colonialism was not considered inconsistent with liberal values by many “democrats” through World War II. In the decade following the war, however, empire, with its psychic costs inflicted by the ongoing need to coerce a restive local populace into submission, could no longer be justified to a democratic populace that did not see its benefits, tangible or otherwise. The French marketplace of ideas was neither as open nor as amenable to content analysis of media coverage, as would be for later democracies pursuing wars of choice. Still, this case provides a valuable foundation for evaluating the interaction of democracy and war, setting the stage for a fuller appreciation for how the post–World War II liberal identity fashions democratic use of force in subsequent conflicts. The elite consensus in favor of maintaining the colonial hold on Indochina began to deteriorate shortly after the French military returned to Vietnam. Critiques appearing in the communist press gradually entered mainstream debate. Whether the official justification for war was empire or anticommunism, the counterframe that France was conducting a dirty war to suppress a legitimate nationalist movement resonated sufficiently well among a large enough portion of the elite and public to handcuff the ability of officials to pursue effectively its military goals. The French war to preserve empire increasingly was seen much more as a war of choice France could not afford financially or in terms of its adherence to democratic

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norms and identity than a war falling anywhere near the necessity end of the choice continuum. Moreover, in an effort to salvage whatever goals it could, French elites succumbed unwittingly to the logic of two-level diplomacy reversed. With a deteriorating base of support at home, pro-empire officials such as Laniel and Bidault opted for the high-risk, high-stakes payoff represented by the Navarre Plan. Instead of widening negotiating possibilities for the French side, this tactic had the reverse effect, narrowing the prospects for the French to retain much influence in Indochina at all owing to the domestic political ramifications of the lost gamble, let alone strengthening the diplomatic hand of the Viet Minh. This case reveals a shift in liberal identity that increasingly came to inform democratic state behavior regarding war going forward. The French Indochina case shows the relationship between identity and democratic war on the one hand and how democracy shapes state behavior in war on the other. Empire ceased to be an acceptable identity for liberal democratic states during the mid-twentieth century. Moreover, democratic participation in foreign policy formulation along with more open media access became norms of democratic governance, even as elected and military officials sought ways to insulate battlefield considerations from scrutiny. The broadening conception of human rights, manifested both in support for the principle of self-determination as well as in the discomfort with coercive tactics used to subdue the colonized seeking independence made the French choice of war in Indochina problematic regardless of material conditions. I illuminate this shift further in Chapter 4, where three decades later, the United Kingdom faced a choice of war to maintain its sovereignty over a distant piece of real estate, but the articulated norms for which it fought were dramatically different than those applied when France returned to Indochina. I turn now to the US war in Vietnam, where the location and adversary may have been the same, but the level of domestic political engagement mark a new era in the prosecution of democratic wars of choice. Notes

1. Christopher Layne, “Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace,” International Security, 19, no. 2 (Fall 1994): 5–49. Also, Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 43–62, makes a valiant though less than determinative effort to use ancient Greece to demonstrate the timeless nature of the dyadic peace. 2. Martin Windrow and Mike Chappell, The French Indochina War, 1946–1954 (Oxford: Osprey, 1998), 40. 3. For example, see George McTurnan Kahin, Intervention (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1987), 8, 36–37, 42, and 44. 4. Hendrik Spruyt, Ending Empire: Contested Sovereignty and Territorial Partition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), 89.

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5. For example, Neta C. Crawford, Argument and Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decolonization, and Humanitarian Intervention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 42, and Rawi Abdelal, Yoshiko M. Herrera, Alastair Iain Johnston, and Rose McDermott, “Identity as a Variable,” in Rawi Abdelal, Yoshiko M. Herrera, Alastair Iain Johnston, and Rose McDermott, eds., Measuring Identity: A Guide for Social Scientists (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 17–32, 27. 6. Philip J. Powlick and Andrew Z. Katz, “Defining the American Public Opinion/ Foreign Policy Nexus,” International Studies Quarterly, 42, Supplement 1 (May 1998): 29–62. 7. Spruyt, Ending Empire, 97; Duncan MacRae Jr., “Intraparty Divisions and Cabinet Coalitions in the Fourth French Republic,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 5, no. 2 (January 1963): 164–211, 164. 8. Howard Rosenthal, “Viability, Preference, and Coalitions in the French Election of 1951,” Public Choice, 21 (Spring 1975): 27–39, 28; Spruyt, Ending Empire, 97. 9. Spruyt, Ending Empire, 89–90; Howard Rosenthal and Erik Voeten, “Government Instability with Perfect Spatial Voting: France: 1946–1958,” Russell Sage Foundation, Working Paper no. 197 (March 2002), 36. 10. Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace; also see Sebastian Rosato, “The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory,” American Political Science Review, 97, no. 4 (November 2003): 585–602. 11. Henry S. Farber and Joanne Gowa, “Common Interests or Common Polities? Reinterpreting the Democratic Peace,” Journal of Politics, 59, no. 2 (May 1997): 393– 417; Henry S. Farber and Joanne Gowa, “Polities and Peace,” International Security, 20, no. 2 (Fall 1995): 123–146. 12. Martin Thomas, Fight or Flight: Britain, France, and Their Roads from Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 154. 13. Pierre Cenerelli, “Revisions of Empire: The French Media and the Indochina War, 1946–54,” dissertation in Comparative History Program at Brandeis University, May 2000. 14. Robert D. Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games,” International Organization, 42, no. 3 (Summer 1988): 427–460. 15. Martin Evans, “From Colonialism to Post-Colonialism: The French Empire Since Napoleon,” in Martin S. Alexander, ed., French History Since Napoleon (London: Arnold, 1999), 391–415, 407. 16. Quoted in Anthony Clayton, The Wars of French Decolonization (London: Longman, 1994), 14. Also, Jean-Pierre Rioux, The Fourth Republic, 1944–1958, Godfrey Rogers, trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 86; Evans, “From Colonialism to Post-Colonialism,” 408. 17. In Jacques Valette, La Guerre d’Indochine 1945–1954 (Paris: Armand Colin Editeur, 1994), 35. This quote echoes the sentiments of General Leclerc when he led French troops into Hanoi on March 18, 1946, and from a balcony declared Hanoi the “last stop of Liberation after Fezzan, Paris, Strasbourg and Berchtesgaden.” Quoted in David G. Marr, “Creating Defense Capacity in Vietnam, 1945–1947,” in Mark Atwood Lawrence and Fredrik Logevall, eds., The First Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 90. 18. Arthur J. Dommen, Nationalism and Communism in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 171. 19. Dommen, Nationalism and Communism, 171. Also, see Mark Atwook Lawrence, “Forging the ‘Great Combination’: Britain and the Indochina Problem, 1945–1950,’” in Mark Atwood Lawrence and Fredrik Logevall, eds., The First Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 105–

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127, and Martin Thomas, “French Imperial Reconstruction and the Development of the Indochina War, 1945–1950,” in Mark Atwood Lawrence and Fredrik Logevall, eds., The First Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 130. 20. Quoted in Dommen, Nationalism and Communism, 107. 21. Dommen, Nationalism and Communism, 131–132; Rioux, The Fourth Republic, 92. Spruyt, Ending Empire, 93, highlights the role played by the military’s insulation from civilian control in allowing D’Argenlieu to act unilaterally. 22. Thomas, Fight or Flight, 34 and 35. 23. Quoted in Clayton, The Wars of French Decolonization, 15 and 3. 24. Clayton, The Wars of French Decolonization, 1. 25. Rioux, The Fourth Republic, 81. 26. Alain Ruscio and Serge Tignères, Dien Bien Phu, Mythes et réalités: Cinquante ans de passions françaises (1954–2004) (Paris: Les Indes Savantes, 2005), 14. 27. Ruscio and Tignères, Dien Bien Phu, 15. 28. Ruscio and Tignères, Dien Bien Phu, 16–17. 29. Ruscio and Tignères, Dien Bien Phu, 16. 30. Ruscio and Tignères, Dien Bien Phu, 17. 31. Rioux, The Fourth Republic, 210. 32. Clayton, The Wars of French Decolonization, 39. 33. Charles A. Kupchan, The Vulnerability of Empire (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 287–288. 34. Mark Philip Bradley, “Making Sense of the French War: The Postcolonial Moment and the First Vietnam War, 1945–1954,” in Mark Atwood Lawrence and Fredrik Logevall, eds., The First Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 22. 35. Clayton, The Wars of French Decolonization, 45. 36. William S. Logan, Hanoi: Biography of a City (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000); Rioux, The Fourth Republic, 94. 37. Quoted in Ruscio and Tignères, Dien Bien Phu, 23. 38. In Dommen, Nationalism and Communism, 174–175. 39. Clayton, The Wars of French Decolonization, 48–49. 40. Clayton, The Wars of French Decolonization, 10. Also Thomas, “French Imperial Reconstruction,” 137. 41. Ruscio and Tignères, Dien Bien Phu, 23–24. 42. Cenerelli, Revisions of Empire, 318. 43. Cenerelli, Revisions of Empire, 319. 44. Cenerelli, Revisions of Empire, 320. 45. By spring 1954, the United States provided more than two-thirds of the cost; between 1950 and 1954 US aid totaled approximately $3 billion. Bradley, “Making Sense of the French War,” 18, and Mark Atwood Lawrence and Fredrik Logevall, “Introduction,” in Mark Atwood Lawrence and Fredrik Logevall, eds., The First Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 10. Also, Laurent Cesari, “The Declining Value of Indochina: France and the Economics of Empire, 1950–1955,” in Mark Atwood Lawrence and Fredrik Logevall, eds., The First Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 186, notes that France received $500 million in military aid from the United States in 1953–1954. 46. Ruscio and Tignères, Dien Bien Phu, 20. 47. Clayton, The Wars of French Decolonization, 55. 48. Kupchan, Vulnerability of Empire, 275–276.

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49. Charles-Robert Ageron, “L’Opinion Française Devant la Guerre d’Algérie,” Revue Française d’Historie d’Outre-mer, 63, no. 231 (1976): 256–285, 258; Chicago Council on Foreign Relations data in Eugene R. Wittkopf, Faces of Internationalism: Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990), 255; Cenerelli, Revisions of Empire, 339. 50. Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace, 124; also, see Richard Sobel, ed., Public Opinion in US Foreign Policy: The Controversy over Contra Aid (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1993). 51. Ruscio and Tignères, Dien Bien Phu, 16–17. 52. Cenerelli, Revisions of Empire, 327. 53. Ageron, “L’Opinion Française,” 258. 54. Valette, La Guerre d’Indochine, 7. 55. From Sondages: Revue Française de l’Opinion Publique (1951), no. 2; Bradley, “Making Sense of the French War,” 16. 56. Ruscio and Tignères, Dien Bien Phu, 20. 57. See Jacques Fauvet, La IVe Republique (Paris: A. Fayard, 1959); Duncan MacRae Jr., Parliament, Parties, and Society in France, 1946–1958 (New York: St. Martin’s, 1967). Also, Roy C. Macridis, “French Foreign Policy,” in Roy C. Macridis, ed., Foreign Policy in World Politics, 5th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1976), 75–76; R. E. M. Irving, The First Indochina War: French and American Policy, 1945–54 (London: Croom Helm, 1975), 115; Thomas, “French Imperial Reconstruction,” 130. 58. Melanie Billings-Yun, Decision Against War: Eisenhower and Dien Bien Phu, 1954 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 9 and 31. 59. Irving, The First Indochina War, 116. 60. Laurent Cesari and Jacques de Folin, “Military Necessity, Political Impossibility: The French Viewpoint on Operation Vautour,” in Lawrence S. Kaplan, Denise Artaud, Mark R. Rubin, eds., Dien Bien Phu and the Crisis of Franco-American Relations, 1954– 1955 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1990), 105. 61. Irving, The First Indochina War, 116. 62. Cesari and Folin, in “Military Necessity, Political Impossibility,” 105. 63. Irving, The First Indochina War, 115–116. 64. A position advocated by the newly named chief of the French Joint Chiefs of Staff, Lieutenant General Paul Ely, who believed a withdrawal from Indochina would have disastrous consequences on France’s world position. Memorandum of conversation by director of the Office of Philippine and Southeast Asian Affairs, Philip W. Bonsal, August 8, 1953, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 13, 722. 65. Discussion of State-Director of Mutual Security–Joint Chiefs of Staff Meeting, January 28, 1953, FRUS, 13, 362. See also Kupchan, Vulnerability of Empire, 278. 66. Robert H. Jackson, “The Weight of Ideas in Decolonization: Normative Change in International Relations,” in Judith Goldstein and Robert Keohane, eds., Ideas & Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 135–136. 67. Kupchan, Vulnerability of Empire, 285. 68. Telegram from Dillon to the secretary of State, July 29, 1953, FRUS, 13, 702; Dillon to the secretary of State, July 31, 1953, 708; Irving, The First Indochina War, 116. 69. Memo from Assistant Secretary for Far Eastern Affairs Allison to Deputy Undersecretary of State Matthews, December 29, 1952, FRUS, 13, 332. 70. Irwin M. Wall, The United States and the Making of Postwar France, 1945– 1954 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 250, traces the origins of the Navarre Plan to René Mayer’s March 1953 trip to Washington.

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71. See the entire report of the National Security Council by the Department of State, August 5, 1953, FRUS, 714–717. The French had requested $400 million (717). 72. In Kupchan, Vulnerability of Empire, 279. 73. Kupchan, Vulnerability of Empire, 275–277; Billings-Yun, Decision Against War, 6; Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, (New York: Doubleday, 1963), 360; Philippe Devillers and Jean Lacouture, End of a War: Indochina, 1954 (New York: Praeger, 1969), 38 and 43; Dillon to State, July 16, 1953, FRUS, 681. 74. The term was used by René Mayer, Laniel’s predecessor. Joseph Laniel, Jours de Gloire et Jours Cruels 1908–1958 (Paris: Presses de la Cite, 1971), 213. 75. Memorandum of conversation between Laniel and MacArthur, December 4, 1953, Bermuda, FRUS, 897. 76. Laniel, Jours de Gloire et Jours Cruels, 214. 77. For the US conception of an honorable peace, see memo by Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs Robertson to Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Merchant, April 8, 1953, FRUS, 557–558; for Bidault’s views, see United States Minutes of the First United States–French Meeting at the Residence of the Secretary of State, Washington, July 12, 1953, 666. 78. See Gary R. Hess, “Redefining the American Position in Southeast Asia: The US and the Geneva and Manila Conferences,” in Lawrence S. Kaplan, Denise Artaud, and Mark R. Rubin, eds., Dien Bien Phu and the Crisis of Franco-American Relations, 1954–1955 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1990), 127; Devillers and Lacouture, End of a War, 67. 79. Irving, The First Indochina War, 117, 119, and 122; Andrew Z. Katz, “Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: The Nixon Administration and the Pursuit of Peace with Honor in Vietnam,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, 27, no. 3 (Summer 1997): 496– 513. 80. Heath to Department of State, January 22, 1954, FRUS, 991. 81. John Foster Dulles Papers (JFDP), Eisenhower Subject Series, Box 8, Letter to Bidault, Folder 18, Indochina, May 1953–1954 (4), April 24, 1954. 82. Quoted in Kaplan, “The United States, NATO, and French Indochina,” in Lawrence S. Kaplan, Denise Artaud, and Mark R. Rubin, eds., Dien Bien Phu and the Crisis of Franco-American Relations, 1954–1955 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1990): 229–250, 231. Memo by the director of the Office of Philippine and Southeast Asian Affairs (Bonsal) to the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs (Robertson), April 22, 1953, FRUS, 488, 556–557, and esp. 643 where Defense Minister René Pleven is quoted: “prospect of Korean armistice made longing for Indochina armistice almost uncontrollable.” Also see Bidault’s comments in “La réunion aurait lieu à l’automne en Suisse,” Le Monde, July 16, 1953. 83. Wall, The United States and the Making of Postwar France, 250. 84. Centre des Archives Diplomatiques de Nantes (CADN), undated memo, Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres, Bangkok, 66PO/1, Affaires Politiques, VB 5205, Secret ou Confidentiel (mais non de caractere personnel) la Thailande et les Etats Associes, Indochine S3 folder, Carton 191, 5202—Politique intérieur française, 1947–1954. 85. Kahin, Intervention, 40. 86. From Secretary’s Staff Meeting, note 3, November 13, 1953, FRUS, 864. 87. Irving, The First Indochina War, 119: “the French Government no doubt worried at the likely reaction of public opinion if no conference on Indochina ensued”; Devillers and Lacouture, End of a War, 56. 88. Telegram from secretary of State to the president, Berlin, February 6, 1954, FRUS, 1021; also George Herring, “Franco-American Conflict in Indochina, 1950–1954,” in Lawrence S. Kaplan, Denise Artaud, and Mark R. Rubin, eds., Dien

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Bien Phu and the Crisis of Franco-American Relations, 1954–1955 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1990), 29–48, 40, and George C. Herring and Richard H. Immerman, “Eisenhower, Dulles, and Dien Bien Phu: ‘The Day We Didn’t Go to War’ Revisited,” in Lawrence S. Kaplan, Denise Artaud, and Mark R. Rubin, eds., Dien Bien Phu and the Crisis of Franco-American Relations, 1954–1955 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1990), 81–104, 91; also, Telegram from Secretary of State to the President, Berlin, 2/9/54, FRUS, p. 1025. 89. JFDP, Selected Correspondence, Box 81, May 5, 1954, re: Geneva Conference “Indochina Peace,” draft of Dulles’s remarks to Congress, 6. 90. FRUS, 599. 91. United States Minutes of United States–French Conversations, Second Session, at the Quai d’Orsay, Paris, April 26, 1953, FRUS, 509. On the impact of the National Assembly, see Wall, The United States and the Making of Postwar France, 261; and Irving, The First Indochina War, 128. 92. United States Minutes of the First United States–French meeting at the Residence of the Secretary of State, Washington, July 12, 1953, FRUS, 656. 93. Thomas, “French Imperial Reconstruction,” 137. 94. MacRae, Parliament, Parties, and Society in France, 315. 95. Dillon to State Department, May 23, 1953, FRUS, p. 579. 96. Dillon to State, July 2, 1953, reporting conversation with Minister of the Associated States Paul Reynaud, FRUS, 632. 97. JFDP, John Foster Dulles Oral Histories, 1965, re: Douglas, C. Dillon, 19–20. 98. Jacquet was incensed over a Joseph Alsop dispatch (Washington Post, January 4, 1954) attributed to him that the National Assembly would recall French troops within six months if no allied reinforcements were sent to Indochina. Robert P. Joyce to State, January 5, 1954, FRUS, 940–941. 99. Billings-Yun, Decision Against War, 59. 100. Dillon to State, March 10, 1954, FRUS, 1103–1105. 101. Dillon to State, March 10, 1954, FRUS, 1103. 102. Dillon to State, March 10, 1954, FRUS, 1104. 103. Telegram from Dillon to State, April 9, 1954, FRUS, 1299. 104. JFDP, John Foster Dulles, Selected Correspondence, Box 82, 1954, re: Indochina 1954, Chronology of Actions on Indochina, 5. 105. Quoted in Billings-Yun, Decision Against War, 155. 106. Telegram from Dillon to State, May 13, 1954, FRUS, 1545; also telegram from the Chargé at Saigon (McClintock) to State, May 10, 1965, FRUS, 1530–1531. 107. For a full treatment of the dilemmas of US intervention, see Billings-Yun, Decision Against War, and Lawrence S. Kaplan, Denise Artaud, and Rubin, eds., Dien Bien Phu and the Crisis of Franco-American Relations, 1954–1955 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1990). 108. MacRae, Parliament, Parties, and Society in France, 315–316. 109. Thomas, “French Imperial Reconstruction,” 130. 110. Tony Smith, “A Comparative Study of French and British Decolonization,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 20, no. 1 (January 1978): 80. 111. Neta C. Crawford, “Decolonization as an International Norm: The Evolution of Practices, Arguments, and Beliefs,” in Laura W. Reed and Carl Kaysen, eds., Emerging Norms of Justified Intervention (Cambridge, MA: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1993), 48. Also see Gil Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 112. Cenerelli, “Revisions of Empire,” 318. 113. Cenerelli, “Revisions of Empire,” 321.

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114. Cenerelli, “Revisions of Empire,” 321. 115. On the “affaires des generaux” and L’express see Wilfred P. Deac, “In the Early 1950s, France’s Own Versions of the Pentagon Papers Scandal Accelerated the French Loss in Indochina,” Vietnam Magazine, 18, no. 1 (June 2005): 58–62. 116. Thomas, “French Imperial Reconstruction,” 146–147. 117. Irving, The First Indochina War, 116. 118. “Dans une déclaration au « Monde » Bao Daï précise comment il conçoit l’indépendance du Vietnam et le rétablissement de la paix,” Le Monde, October 15, 1953, 1, quote on 3. 119. Thomas, “French Imperial Reconstruction,” 145. 120. Irving, The First Indochina War, 116. 121. Irving, The First Indochina War, 116. 122. Irving, The First Indochina War, 119. 123. Irving, The First Indochina War, 128. 124. Irving, The First Indochina War, 119. 125. Jacquez Dalloz, “L’opposition M.R.P. à la guerre d’indochine,” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 43, no. 1 (January–March 1996): 109. 126. Martin Thomas, “Colonial Policies of the Mouvement Républicain Populaire, 1944–1954: From Reform to Reaction,” English Historical Review, 118, no. 476 (April 2003): 409. 127. Dalloz, “L’opposition M.R.P.,” 113. 128. Dalloz, “L’opposition M.R.P.,” 112; Sondages. 129. Dalloz, “L’opposition M.R.P.,” 114, cites Buron’s memoir, “J’en ai assez.” 130. Dalloz, “L’opposition M.R.P.,” 115. 131. Paul Rivet, “Libres Opinions: Vers la paix en Indochine,” Le Monde, July 17, 1953, 3. 132. “M. Vincent Auriol, Bao Daï et plusieurs ministres examinant le problème de la libre association du Vietnam dans l’Union française,” Le Monde, August 29, 1953, 1, 2. 133. Miles Kahler, Decolonization in Britain and France: The Domestic Consequences of International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 175. 134. CADN, Ambassade de France á Londres, “The New Status of the Associated States of Indochina .. Within the French Union,” January 5, 1951, Indochine, Politique interieure, AS–10–1 folder, Londres Ambassade, 378PO/6, Carton 635, 2. 135. CADN, “Resume en Anglais de la Note D’Orientation No 15,” November 1, 1951, Affaires d’Indochine 5301 Folder, Carton 192, Affaires Politiques. 136. CADN, Haut Commissariat de France en Indochine, July 21, 1952, Le Ministre d’etat Charge des Relations avec les Etats Associes à des Ambassadeurs, OBJET: Entretiens de Washington, Affaires Politiques. Affaires d’Indochine 5301 folder, Carton 192, Affaires Politiques, 12–13. 137. The title of the position changed in April 27, 1953, from high commissioner. 138. CADN, L’Ambassadeur de France Commissaire General de France en Indochine à Monsieur le Secretaire d’Etat à la Presidence du Conseil Chargé des Relations avec les États Associes, January 20, 1954, A.S. Les Etats Associés et l’Union Française, Indochine Politique interieure AS–10–1, 1953–1954 folder, Carton 995, Londres Ambassade 378PO/6, 3. 139. CADN, Le Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres a Monsieur l’Ambassadeurde (sic) France à Bangkok, January 30, 1951, a.s. Disours de M. Letourneau sur la position de la France vis-à-vis des Etats associes, Affaires Politiques. Affaires d’Indochine 5301 folder, Carton 192, 5301—Indochine (généralities), 1947–1957, 1.

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140. “La guerre d’Indochine: « Si les Chinois veulent envahir l’Indochine ils le peuvent . . . mais nous comptons sur les Américains pour les en empêcher » déclare à Hanoi le général Navarre,” Le Monde, August 7, 1953. 141. Herring and Immerman, “Eisenhower, Dulles, and Dien Bien Phu,” 91. 142. Ruscio and Tignères, Dien Bien Phu, 22. 143. Ruscio and Tignères, Dien Bien Phu, 22.

3 Richard Nixon’s Pursuit of “Peace with Honor” in Vietnam

Following the 1954 Geneva Accords, the United States asserted direct responsibility for sustaining a pro-Western government below the 17th parallel in Vietnam, relegating France to the role of bystander and soon frequent critic of US policy in the process.1 Over the following two decades, beginning with Dwight Eisenhower and ending with Gerald Ford, US presidents struggled to reconcile what they believed to be the national security requirement of preventing a communist takeover of the south with limits imposed by domestic politics.2 The imperative to contain communism led Eisenhower and Kennedy to commit money, military advisers, and national prestige to shaping an independent South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam). Constrained by concerns over involvement in another Asian land war, both presidents resisted sending US military power to South Vietnam commensurate with the security needs articulated by their more hawkish advisers. Following the US-sanctioned coup and assassination of South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem in November 1963 and the assassination of President Kennedy later that month, the survival of an independent South Vietnam could be secured only by the massive commitment of the US military. Thus, Lyndon Johnson made the choice for war and began a sustained bombing campaign in February 1965 and introduced 100,000 combat troops in July that year.3 Although Johnson arguably chose to escalate the US military commitment to the level of war, the politics of US foreign policy at the time certainly constrained his freedom of maneuver. Indeed, Johnson’s actions display a palpable concern that domestic politics would exert irresistible pressure to maximize military resources devoted to defeating the enemy and thereby derail the president’s preference to keep the war limited.4 Nevertheless, I elaborate briefly on the characteristics of Johnson’s choice 65

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before focusing on the choice made by his successor, Richard Nixon, to continue the war and sustain democratic support by reframing the definition of the problem requiring persistence to the preservation of US honor. US involvement in Vietnam endured as a dominant domestic political concern through at least four national elections, even as the strategic objective underwent revision, first by Johnson and extensively by Nixon. Vietnam, like the French effort in Indochina and the Iraq War, meets the criteria of a Type 2 case, where a war of choice becomes a lasting issue of democratic political contention. I argue that Johnson neither perceived nor acted as if he had a choice to escalate US involvement in Vietnam. Nixon, on the other hand, declared repeatedly that he tried to achieve what he thought necessary and not take the politically expedient course of withdrawal, blaming his predecessor for the failure on the way out. Established democracies are not likely to face existential threats, so to extract the resources required to go to war, democratic leaders are obligated to persuade society that any potential use of force falls as close to the necessity side of the choice continuum as possible. I construct the argument that some wars of choice become unacceptable for democracies to wage, and this process commences in the marketplace of ideas when the choice for war is under consideration. Johnson engaged the marketplace of ideas with all his persuasive tools, making the case that direct US military involvement was consistent with long-standing policy, the national interest, moral traditions, and the dictates of prudence. Members of Congress, other elites, and public opinion barely contested Johnson’s judgment of the imperative for war at first, but as the conflict continued, these institutions adjudicated the degree to which society concurred with where on the continuum of choice the war belonged. Johnson and Nixon defined the problem faced by the United States as one requiring the continued use of force. How their problem definition fared in the marketplace of ideas is key to understanding what happened in terms of US involvement in Vietnam and in appreciating how the scope of normative democratic behavior in international affairs evolves. In this chapter I concentrate on Nixon’s choice to continue with Johnson’s commitment, because unlike his predecessor, who faced no real option but to elevate the US military commitment to war, Nixon, as he frequently noted, had the option to blame Johnson for the morass and find a low-cost means of extricating the United States from Vietnam. The Democratic Context: Was There a Choice?

As with the French return to Indochina after World War II, the basic logic behind Johnson’s decision fit well within the grain of national experience and expectations. Moreover, just like his predecessors, who feared the

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specter of global communism, Johnson’s escalation of the US commitment to South Vietnam can be understood, as historian George Herring writes, as the “logical, if not inevitable outgrowth of a world view and a policy, the policy of containment, which Americans in and out of government accepted without serious question for more than two decades.”5 Though not all analysts share Herring’s view, certainly there was much pressure on Johnson to avoid reneging on a commitment to which his predecessors had invested considerable national prestige. How much choice did Johnson have regarding escalation? Herring’s containment thesis, though not totally absolving Johnson of culpability for expanding US participation, nevertheless suggests that the preservation of a noncommunist South Vietnam became a vital national interest before Kennedy’s assassination. Other analysts take a less charitable perspective on Johnson’s role, accusing him of misinterpreting the international environment and mistakenly applying historical lessons inappropriate to the Vietnam context. For example, Fredrik Logevall argues that “a veritable chorus of voices challenged” Johnson’s appraisal of what the situation in South Vietnam required from the United States.6 In this view, Johnson chose war under circumstances that would have led other presidents (and certainly his predecessor) to abstain. Owing to his lack of “a detached critical perspective,” Logevall writes, Johnson was uniquely “vulnerable to clichés and stereotypes about world affairs.”7 Doris Kearns Goodwin’s portrait of Johnson presents a similar picture, that he “was not simply a victim of circumstance” but made the decision to escalate based on “his belief that a Communist victory would be a serious defeat for America, that no problem was insoluble, that Americans could do anything.” Underlying all this, of course, was an intense “fear of appearing weak.”8 In contrast, Kahin represents Johnson as hesitant to go all in, resisting as long as he felt he could the machinations of Dean Rusk, Robert McNamara, and McGeorge Bundy, who ultimately persuaded him to take direct responsibility for South Vietnam’s survival with a sustained bombing campaign.9 There was nothing preordained about Johnson’s decision to go to war. As Logevall and others make clear, there were contrary voices arguing against an expanded commitment and in favor of a face-saving negotiated exit.10 However, these voices were too few and far between. The key point, as Logevall admits yet understates, is that the challenges to Johnson’s policy inclinations were usually offered “in muted tones.”11 This distinction is crucial because the consensus of the president’s inner circle was not subject to scrutiny in the marketplace of ideas. Though a few members of Congress, such as Wayne Morse (D-OR), Ernest Gruening (D-AK), and Frank Church (D-ID), along with some allies abroad, may have raised questions early on about the wisdom of escalation in Vietnam and broached the corresponding option of neutralization, vigorous and open democratic debate was absent.12

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Indeed, in Daniel Hallin’s account, Vietnam policy remained in what he calls the “sphere of consensus” until the final year of the Johnson presidency.13 Congressional debate first surfaced with Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on the war in February 1966. Even then, critics such as George Kennan objected more to the lack of prudence in US involvement, not the need to use military force to confront the expansion of Soviet influence.14 Kennan professed to know of no “serious commentator” who advocated “anything like a total and immediate withdrawal from Vietnam.” In his testimony, he recommended instead that the United States “liquidate this involvement just as soon as can be done without inordinate damage to our own prestige or to the stability of conditions in that area.”15 At this point, when the United States had more than 184,000 service personnel in country, a mainstream realist voice of reason urged withdrawal, but not in a way that harmed the interests the United States sought to protect prior to Johnson’s ascension to the presidency. One year earlier, as the Johnson administration elevated the US military commitment to South Vietnam and sought to justify its decision in a February 1965 white paper, realist icon Hans Morgenthau found administration efforts to present its case for war “most disturbing.” Opining in the April 18, 1965, edition of the New York Times Magazine, Morgenthau faulted a series of “misconceptions” in the government’s brief, chief among them a “tendency to conduct foreign and military policy not on their own merits, but as exercises in public relations.” He accused the administration of constructing “an imaginary world that pleases it,” in this case transforming a civil war, albeit one “aided and abetted—not created—from abroad,” to an act of “foreign aggression.”16 As with Kennan’s critique before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a year later, these are rebukes of the application of containment doctrine to the situation at hand, not an indictment of the assumptions that guided US foreign policy for two decades. What troubled these exemplars of the realist tradition was the degree to which the situation in Vietnam was misrepresented as requiring direct US military intervention, when in fact these observers considered it more an example of localized civil war not fitting under their conception of the containment rubric. But calibrating exactly when a loss to communism mattered and when it didn’t confounded theorists and policymakers alike throughout the Cold War. Kennan and Morgenthau did not appreciate the practical political problems of applying subtlety and discernment to actual cases. Like his Cold War predecessors, Johnson was faced with the onerous task of reconciling domestic expectations with international reality. Analysts will continue to debate the extent of Johnson’s responsibility for escalation; without a doubt his path to the choice of war was extraordinarily narrow, and it is difficult to see how greater wisdom would have provided a choice other than escalation (though the pattern of escalation provided some latitude to policymakers).

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A telephone conversation between Johnson and Senator Richard Russell Jr. (D-GA) on the necessity for escalation illustrates the limits of the president’s choice nicely. Troubled by the poor prospects of the various escalatory options, Johnson sought advice from his old friend Russell, a reliable foreign policy hawk and chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Russell told Johnson in a May 27, 1964, telephone call that if he were president, “I would respectfully decline to undertake” military intervention. For Russell, the situation in Vietnam represented “the damned worse mess I ever saw.” The senator continued, expressing concern about “how we’re going to ever get out without fighting a major war with the Chinese and all of them down there in those rice paddies and jungles.”17 While counseling caution and asserting that Vietnam “isn’t important a damn bit,” Russell nevertheless held out hope that there was “undoubtedly some middleground somewhere.” In his own style, he seemed to be articulating the essence of the conundrum Johnson faced, that although war was a poor choice, there had to be some way to make it palatable. Johnson expressed the same sentiment in a conversation with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara three months earlier, when he noted: “You can have more war or you can have more appeasement. But we don’t want more of either.”18 Johnson also expressed his inclination to avoid sending troops, but the lessons of history and his sense of the imperatives of containment tugged at his conscience. Although circumstances on the ground may have warranted the caution and unease reflected in Russell’s remarks, the problem of global communism, coupled with a pejorative view of appeasement, left Johnson with no choice but military intervention. His lack of options reflected the consensus in the public square, as few voices (Kennan and Morgenthau notwithstanding) were raised in the marketplace of ideas questioning the president’s definition of the problem (external aggression), his identification of its source (global communism), or his selected remedy (military escalation). As Johnson intensified US military involvement, mainstream opponents like J. William Fulbright questioned administration claims that South Vietnam was a vital interest. According to Zelizer, the Arkansas senator dismissed the assertion that the United States “had no choice but further escalation of the war.”19 Senate critics may have tried to parry the White House rationale by arguing that Ho Chi Minh led an “indigenous Vietnamese nationalist” movement, that containment was not applicable to such a postcolonial political struggle, and that assertions of the strategic importance of Vietnam and the consequences to US credibility and prestige were overstated.20 At the same time, as Fry makes clear, senators to Johnson’s right, such as John Stennis (D-MS), Stuart Symington (D-MO), and Henry Jackson (D-WA), were challenging the president’s decision to fight a limited war with restrictions on bombing targets.21 In the final analysis, regardless of whether a US show of force to preserve the South Vietnamese government was dictated by circumstances or

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the president blundered needlessly into the military buildup, Johnson’s choice of war fit perfectly within the realm of what citizens accepted as a necessary, if not required, application of national power. Johnson set forth his principal reasons for going to war in an April 7, 1965, speech at Johns Hopkins University. He outlined two categories of justifications for his choice of war—some resonating with liberal values, others reflecting more traditional security concerns. In both respects, Johnson stayed true to the ingrained schemas of his fellow citizens, that military intervention was an essential tool for coping with Cold War challenges and that when using its power the United States was always a force for good in world affairs. In presenting his case to the public, Johnson achieved what Entman calls “cultural congruence” between how he characterized the threat, the response he proposed, and the expectations of the public.22 Johnson developed two security-oriented themes in his address that tell us quite a bit about justifying a democratic war of choice. First, he returned to the lessons of Munich, applying to Southeast Asia the admonition that because “the appetite for aggression is never satisfied,” the United States must draw the line in Vietnam. As the United States had done earlier in Europe, it must do in Asia, Johnson declared, invoking the Bible to warn Communists in Asia of his determination to avoid the perceived errors of appeasement of the Nazis: “Hither to shalt thou come, but no further.”23 By adhering so closely to the so-called Munich script, Johnson could tap into the cognitive maps of Cold War citizens that linked distant aggression to proximate threats to US national security. Whether the actual threat was real, imagined, or exaggerated, Johnson succeeded in framing his Vietnam policy in terms that (initially, at least) reflected national consensus, leaving those few opposed to his policy little room for maneuver in the marketplace of ideas. Second, according to Johnson, intervention in Vietnam was necessary to preserve the credibility of US promises. Acting to prevent dominoes from falling to ensure allies and adversaries of the credibility of US security commitments is neither a uniquely democratic nor US motivation for war. Yet as Johnson made his case on these grounds, he evoked themes that constitute shared liberal understandings of normative international behavior. US credibility was necessary for far more than the narrow goal of protecting national security: it was essential to keep an expanding global menace at bay. Johnson was not justifying this as a colonial war, to maintain an empire, advance US glory, or for profit. US security was at stake, but security was defined indivisibly and expansively: indivisibly in terms of the liberal theme that only “in a world where every country can shape its own destiny” could US freedom be secure; expansively insofar as Johnson defined the US interest to secure South Vietnam’s right to self-determination, to oppose aggression generally, and to move beyond the use of force to international law for the resolution of disputes.

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Both of the security-oriented rationales to build support for this war of choice worked in concert with liberal themes that have often been used to encourage democratic publics to wage war. Promoting freedom, selfdetermination, and protecting human rights round out the liberal purposes of this war of choice. At the time, few questioned whether these goals were unreasonable items on the US foreign policy agenda or if they were achievable given democratic identity: war is sometimes a necessary response to aggression, both to forestall emergent threats before they fester and to aid the victims who yearn to be free. The contradictions inherent in the US advocacy of self-determination coupled with policies that actively hindered the free choice of the Vietnamese people were hardly apparent at the time. Just two months before his March 31, 1968, dramatic announcement that he would not seek reelection coupled with his reversal of Vietnam policy, Johnson asserted that the United States was fighting in Vietnam “now as we fought 25 years ago–to prevent any further expansion of totalitarian coercion over the souls of men.”24 George W. Bush’s rationale for war in Iraq a generation later sounded similar themes, though as I consider in Chapter 5, the liberal elements were present to a much more understated degree. That Johnson’s full-throated invocation of the liberal mission in Vietnam may seem naive today does not mean that such rhetoric about going to war for these reasons in 1965, or even early 1968, seemed anything but reasonable and proper, if not almost imprudent. Undoubtedly, Johnson’s speech at Johns Hopkins and subsequent addresses were rhetorically crafted to maximize domestic support for the intervention that was under way. A different president or other speech writers may have changed the points of emphasis or selected different grace notes, but the basic themes fit well within the consensus definition of the purpose for which it was appropriate to use US military force. Though others may have counseled against US intervention on pragmatic grounds, there was nothing exceptional about Johnson’s diagnosis of the problem (external aggression), his assessment of the causal agent responsible for the threat (communism), or his proposed solution (US military intervention). This was not a war of choice that tested the boundaries of accepted democratic use of force. In fact, it dovetailed almost perfectly with societal expectations of what democracies needed to do when confronted with this type of threat. Thus, Johnson’s choice for war was not much of a choice at all. Though dissent increased after 1965, Johnson persisted with a strategy intended to preserve South Vietnamese independence with a US presence just large enough to prevent a North Vietnamese victory. He certainly had to

The Essence of Nixon’s Choice

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cope with opposition to his Vietnam policy in his government, among elites, in Congress, and with the public. Until the final year of his presidency, however, his course in Vietnam reflected the national consensus on anticommunist containment that persistence in Vietnam was necessary. Following the Tet Offensive in 1968, Johnson rejected the policy of gradual escalation to meet the challenge from Hanoi and turned instead to advocating negotiations. Since he did not run for reelection, we cannot know what path he would have taken toward ending the war. Nixon, by contrast, assumed the powers of the presidency and inherited a war that no longer had a compelling strategic rationale or a widely accepted justification for continued national sacrifice. He not only had the choice of whether to continue the war, he had to provide a compelling problem definition for doing so. Nixon chose to continue the war despite being in a position where, as he said in November 1969 and repeatedly thereafter, “I could blame the defeat which would be the result of my action on him [Johnson] and come out as the peacemaker.”25 I explore how Nixon justified his reclamation of the purpose for war and how his framing of this choice fared in the democratic marketplace of ideas. To do so, I provide some structural context before presenting Nixon’s choice to remain in Vietnam to achieve “peace with honor” and his plan to secure it. Next, as a Type 2 war of choice, its long duration argues for gauging the extent of framing contests at times of intense debate. Accordingly, I use content analysis of coverage in the New York Times to examine four turning points for Nixon’s framing of the necessity for continued war: his signal “silent majority” speech of November 1969, the Cambodian incursion of April 1970, the period following the South Vietnamese invasion of Laos in April 1971, and an interval during the US mining of Haiphong Harbor to halt the North Vietnamese Spring Offensive in May 1972. I assess the role of public opinion in shaping administration policy and turn to the reaction of Congress. I conclude by considering how the four-year debate in the marketplace of ideas permitted or constrained Nixon’s choice to continue the war. According to Elman’s definition, the United States, as a presidential democracy, ostensibly promotes “greater institutional constraint on the executive” than other democratic subtypes.26 Because Congress is a separate institution sharing the war power with the president, the executive cannot take for granted its support, as might the prime minister in the United Kingdom. This is especially so when different political parties control each branch, as was the case throughout Nixon’s term.27 This suggests that Nixon was limited in his ability to pursue an aggressive policy in Vietnam if it did not conform with congressional preferences. Democratic Structure: Presidential Democracy

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The US Congress has three routes of influence over the president’s stewardship of war policy. Through its constitutional prerogative over the war power, Congress could vote to curtail the president’s discretion over the use of force by circumscribing the extent, duration, or geographic scope of a military action. Similarly, the power of the purse provides Congress with the ultimate check on the president’s ability to wage war by cutting off funding. There are constitutional limits to the efficacy of either of these legislative prospects, however, as the Presentment Clause requires any proposed legislation regarding the war power or appropriations to be signed or vetoed by the president. Since a president is unlikely to agree to a curtailment of executive autonomy, any Congress seeking legislative remedy to perceived presidential overreach or overextension would have to secure two-thirds majorities in both houses—a tall order, especially when the safety of troops on the ground or the need to repatriate US prisoners of war could be endangered by congressional “meddling.” Accordingly, the most relevant power the presidential system grants to Congress in the case of an ongoing use of force does not require legislation. Instead, members of Congress can most readily play an independent role in determining war policy by framing debate in the marketplace of ideas; as Lindsay observes, members “recognize that one of their most powerful instruments for shaping foreign policy is their ability to change the climate of opinion” through framing.28 As I develop more fully, the struggle between the two political branches of the US government limited Nixon’s latitude to use force and hold steadfast on his negotiating terms. Before considering the interplay of Congress and president in Vietnam policy, I offer some discussion of Nixon’s approach and how it fared in national debate. Analysis of the Vietnam War requires some rather arbitrary delineations. One could accept the correlates of war demarcation of Phase 2 of the Vietnam War as extending from 1965 to 1975. But of course, the predicate for US involvement in that war was laid sometime earlier—with the passage of Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in August 1964, the coup against Diem in November 1963, the decision to support the south following the Geneva Accords of 1954, or any number of points in between.29 Although not all analysts would concur on a start date for US participation in the Vietnam War, US involvement during the Nixon years raises issues fundamental to the study of democracy and war and therefore, I argue, merits treatment as a unique phase of the war for at least four reasons. First, during this interval public opinion became a central component of Vietnam policymaking.30 Johnson also made use of public opinion polling on Vietnam policy. But as Bruce Altschuler makes clear, Johnson used Democracy and War: The Vietnam Case

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When Democracies Choose War

internal polling (Quayle), private information from Harris, along with publicly available polls, largely to confirm that he had “the public support needed to free him to carry out policies he had already decided on.”31 Well represented by former advertising executives, the Nixon team was masterful in its use of polling and coordinated speech making to shape public debate and ushered in the modern era of White House political communications.32 Moreover, as a plurality president (winning only 43 percent of the vote) Nixon had the need to be well attuned to electoral politics. Opportunities to peel away organized labor, ethnic Catholics, and of course white Southerners from the Democratic New Deal coalition were capitalized on with impressive political adroitness. Particularly during this phase, Vietnam became a war fought not only in Southeast Asia but as an internal battle over the nature of US society. Nixon deftly tapped into the anxieties of some citizens who were not inclined toward the GOP and nudged these citizens toward discomfort with the Democratic Party by highlighting the antiwar movement’s disrespect for political institutions and the US way of life.33 Second, while elite consensus broke down during the Johnson administration, it was only during the Nixon administration that a full-throated framing contest among elites developed. In part, this was the natural outgrowth of partisan change. With a Republican in the White House, liberal elites could turn against the war with a vengeance. The fact that antiwar sentiment was pervasive among groups toward which Nixon always felt antipathy and antagonism only exacerbated the partisan nature of tensions over the war. Nixon did not need encouragement to find hostility from the media, left-leaning members of Congress, career bureaucrats, academics, and other activists. By the same token, many of those opposed to the war felt little reason to trust the president. Third, owing to these divisions, and the fact that control of Congress and the executive was split between the two major political parties, the constitutional separation of powers became a factor in Vietnam policymaking during Nixon’s presidency. Members of Congress sought to restore the significance of the legislative branch in foreign policy formulation and war making. A congressional foreign policy “resurgence” marked Nixon’s term, as members sought to correct for the institution’s war power that had atrophied during the Cold War and endeavored to use the power of the purse to affect the war in Vietnam.34 Finally, widespread questioning of the morality of US involvement in Vietnam came to the fore during the Nixon administration, as the character of US intervention as something less than a benevolent effort to defend democratic principles entered mainstream consciousness. As Schulzinger notes, “By 1968 a significant portion of the public discussion of Vietnam involved concepts of morality.”35 The worthiness of the South Vietnamese government, the morality of the US intervention under terms of jus ad

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bellum,36 and the conduct of US service personnel all came under heightened scrutiny during the Nixon years. Though all of these aspects of the US experience in Vietnam were present during the Johnson phase, none were as prominent as they were under Nixon. If democracy can act as a brake on the foreign policy decisions of leaders, it was during this phase of US involvement that this prospect became plausible. The Government’s Appeal: Pursuing Honor in Vietnam

By the time Richard Nixon grasped the reins of government on January 20, 1969, US involvement in Vietnam was by any definition unpopular.37 The new administration’s task, as prospective National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger put it, would be to “adopt a strategy which reduces casualties and concentrates on protecting the population.” He proposed strengthening the South Vietnamese army “to permit a gradual withdrawal of some American forces.”38 To Nixon and Kissinger, perseverance in Vietnam was essential to the national security interest. As Kissinger argued in a 1966 article for Look magazine, regardless of whether Vietnam itself was a vital interest, a US withdrawal would embolden adversaries, demoralize allies, and diminish the credibility of the United States.39 In his memoirs, Kissinger reports that as Nixon prepared to deliver his first major speech on the war, he advised that the president not defend the original commitment. Nixon disagreed, telling his special assistant for National Security Affairs that “the American public would not accept sacrifice for a war that had no valid purpose.”40 Accordingly, in his November 3, 1969, address, Nixon briefly reviewed the steps his predecessors took that led to the US commitment to South Vietnam, then explained why he could not order withdrawal even though politically “this would have been a popular and easy course to follow.”41 Rather, to implement its design, the new administration had to offer a compelling frame for why the national interest required preserving South Vietnamese independence. Starting with the administration’s original diplomatic goals as a baseline, I assess how public opinion and congressional action curtailed Nixon’s diplomatic horizons regarding the requirements for peace with honor. To the president, the norm of honor or prestige was critical to national security, and thus continued sacrifice in Vietnam was necessary as precipitate withdrawal, what Nixon derisively referred to as a “bug out,” would cause an indirect, cascading diminution of US security. Many in the United States were coming to see the conflict as a war that was actually a poor choice at the outset, and Nixon attempted to reframe it as a war that remained as close to the pole of necessity on the choice continuum as possible.

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When Democracies Choose War

Nixon used some subterfuge (the secret bombing of Cambodia, which began March 18, 1969), boldness (the invasion of Cambodia in 1970 and the mining of North Vietnamese harbors two years later), along with mastery of domestic political gamesmanship to effect his vision of US security requirements in Vietnam. Like the French with the Navarre Plan, Nixon employed various coercive military measures that his predecessor had been unwilling to implement to compel the North Vietnamese to negotiate despite the steady withdrawal of US troops. As with Joseph Laniel and French Indochina policy, inadequate public support combined with significant legislative opposition to derail Nixon’s efforts to advance what he considered initially to be in the national interest. What Nixon endeavored to frame as the only choice possible was hotly contested in the marketplace of ideas, and as a consequence, the verdict of US society placed peace with honor much further from the pole of necessity end of the choice continuum than Nixon believed was warranted. The Government’s Frame: Vietnamization and the Pursuit of Honor in Vietnam

Vietnamization was designed to reconcile the limits of domestic tolerance for continuation of the war with the administration’s commitment to preserve national honor. It held out the prospect that failing North Vietnamese concessions, US forces would remain in South Vietnam until the Saigon government could protect itself and US prisoners were returned. Indeed, when Vietnamization was first fleshed out, the expectation was that the United States would retain a residual force.42 All the while, the US military presence in Vietnam would be reduced to maintain public support. As we will see, the main problem with this plan concerned the North Vietnamese, and again, two-level diplomacy reversed. Why would Hanoi surrender at the negotiating table what it controlled on the battlefield? To coerce the North Vietnamese to terms, Nixon sporadically unleashed a paroxysm of violence. While his intention was to prove to the politburo and its allies that he was neither squeamish about casualties nor sensitive to domestic dissent, in the end public opinion and congressional action reined in his ambitions. True, Nixon was willing to contravene democratic principles by bombing Cambodia in secret or use military tactics some critics condemned as morally repugnant, but for the most part his coercive tactics had a greater impact on widening the win-set of negotiating terms he found acceptable than in narrowing that of the North Vietnamese. During the first days of the administration, Nixon’s chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, jotted down three goals for the United States to achieve in Vietnam: mutual withdrawal, restoring the DMZ (the Demilitarized Zone, or 17th parallel separating North and South Vietnam), and a prisoner exchange.43 In addition, the administration made public its refusal to agree to a coalition

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government for South Vietnam or to infringe on the right of the South Vietnamese to choose their own leaders. The president outlined the US negotiating position during a national address on May 14, 1969: “mutual withdrawal of non–South Vietnamese forces from South Viet-Nam and free choice for the people of South VietNam.” He noted that the long-term interests of peace required no less and promised that he did not expect “unlimited patience from a people whose hopes for peace have too often been raised and cruelly dashed over the past four years.”44 A September 11, 1969, memo from Kissinger to Nixon noted that “public opinion will be heavily influenced by progress—or lack of it—in Paris and the ability of the GVN [Government of Vietnam] to hold up militarily and politically.”45 Kissinger presented four possible options for achieving a satisfactory resolution in the memo, each of which contained potential pitfalls. First, the administration could continue with the present course of troop withdrawals gauged to local conditions and efforts at negotiation, but this option would test the patience of the US public and was dependent on the resilience of the South Vietnamese. Second, adoption of a cease-fire in place “would be ambiguous and risky,” as acknowledging “lack of GVN authority in large parts of the countryside” might “cause the GVN to collapse.”46 Third, a regularized schedule of troop withdrawals imperiled South Vietnam’s survival without political settlement, cease-fire, or North Vietnamese Army (NVA) withdrawals.47 Finally, Kissinger considered military coercion as a means of reaching an agreement with the North Vietnamese. Of course, the biggest problem with this option was the US public. Before the White House could embark on such a course, Kissinger advocated informing the home audience of Nixon’s willingness “to withdraw our forces and see genuine free political competition among the South Vietnamese.” Doing so would lay the blame on the North for the lack of diplomatic progress and responsibility for the escalation by having “refused to pull out its forces and the PRG [Provisional Revolutionary Government] [for having] insisted on the destruction of the GVN in advance of political competition.”48 He argued that taking this step would require that the administration “reaffirm our limited goals, underscore enemy intransigence, and demonstrate that the only alternatives were endless stalemate or humiliation.”49 In the end, Nixon’s policy was an amalgam of these suggestions. All were necessary to convey to the American people that a way out of Vietnam was being pursued, even as the US military took steps to weaken the North, strengthen the hold of the Saigon government over its territory, and buy time through troop withdrawals and lower draft calls to pursue diplomacy. In a major national address on November 3, 1969, Nixon outlined his Vietnamization strategy and called on the “silent majority” of citizens to support his quest to achieve “peace with honor.” He emphasized the

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necessity of continuing the war, saying that a “precipitate withdrawal . . . would be a disaster not only for South Vietnam but for the United States and the cause of peace.” Nixon portrayed his choice to persist in Vietnam as necessary to avoid communist massacres of innocent South Vietnamese, along with a devastating “collapse of confidence in American leadership” that he warned would be the result of a premature US departure. More important, Nixon warned of a loss in US self-confidence if the nation did not continue the war until South Vietnam could defend its own independence.50 Nixon continued with these themes in his speech announcing the Cambodia incursion on April 30, 1970. Once again, he framed the problem in terms of honor, credibility, and prestige. Moreover, responsibility for failure to reach a negotiated settlement was placed squarely on the North Vietnamese, with Nixon accusing his interlocutors of responding to his overtures with “intransigence at the conference table, belligerence in Hanoi, massive military aggression in Laos and Cambodia, and stepped-up attacks in South Vietnam, designed to increase American casualties.”51 Sending US troops along with the South Vietnamese army (ARVN) into Cambodia was presented as a remedy to “to protect our men who are in Vietnam and to guarantee the continued success of our withdrawal and Vietnamization programs.”52 Nixon defined the problem requiring the foray into Cambodia as North Vietnamese resistance to anything short of what he considered a surrender, combined with the enemy’s continuing provocations, which threatened the remaining US troops as well as South Vietnam’s long-term viability. More broadly, he asserted that the problem the United States confronted in Vietnam had to be met with force, lest the humiliation of defeat sap US credibility. Using over-the-top language, Nixon equated the domestic attacks on universities and other institutions of Western civilization with the necessity for the United States to act forcefully against communist sanctuaries in Cambodia, warning that “If, when the chips are down, the world’s most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.”53 As if this was not enough to frame the issues in a favorable light, Nixon emphasized the need to avoid the United States becoming “a second-rate power and to see this Nation accept the first defeat in its proud 190-year history.”54 He contrasted the “slaughter and savagery” of the North Vietnamese with the morally upstanding US intervention which, according to him, was intended not to control more territory or impose a government on others but only to allow the South Vietnamese self-determination. A year later, on April 7, 1971, Nixon again addressed the people of the United States. In retrospect, he characterized these first few months of 1971 as “the lowest point” of his first term.55 With a negotiated settlement to the war still elusive, Nixon authorized a South Vietnamese army invasion of

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NVA strongholds in Laos. Owing to congressional constraints stemming from the 1970 Cambodian incursion, the United States only provided the ARVN with air support and transport.56 Beginning on February 8 and ending on April 6, 1971, the operation did not go well. Nixon turned to the television airwaves to argue that like the spring 1970 US–ARVN joint operations in Cambodia, the offensive in Laos demonstrated the success of Vietnamization. To cement his point, he announced an acceleration in the troop withdrawal program, so that by the end of 1971, of the 540,000 troops in Vietnam when he became president, only 175,000 would remain. Nixon made clear that he was ending US participation in the war through the withdrawal program, while he assured his viewers that South Vietnam was progressing toward being able to defend itself once US combat troops were gone. He also indirectly addressed the March 29, 1971, conviction of Lieutenant William Calley Jr. for the civilian massacre at My Lai. Nixon used the opportunity of his speech to remind Americans that “never in history have men fought for less selfish motives—not for conquest, not for glory, only for the right of people far away to choose the kind of government they want.”57 Nixon turned the moral spotlight on the North Vietnamese, accusing them of barbarically holding prisoners of war as a bargaining chip with the United States. With only 60,000 US service personnel stationed in South Vietnam, the North Vietnamese launched the 1972 Spring Offensive with what initially seemed devastating effectiveness. Sandwiched between Nixon’s February trip to Beijing and his May summit in Moscow, the president ordered a ferocious response to the NVA assault, renewing bombing north of the demilitarized zone (DMZ), coordinating close air and artillery support for ARVN units, and, most significant, approving the mining of the key North Vietnamese port of Haiphong. His framing of these actions was a decisive test of the future of his peace with honor plan and the prospects for his reelection. In his May 1972 speech Nixon reaffirmed themes raised in earlier addresses. Once again, he reminded his audience that he could have taken the easy choice politically and pulled out, since he “did not send over onehalf million Americans to Vietnam.” Instead, he emphasized the need to protect the remaining troops there, along with preserving the honor of the United States. Nixon asserted that his government had offered the North Vietnamese “the maximum of what any President of the United States could offer.” He revisited the contrast between the United States, which fought with “a degree of restraint unprecedented in the annals of war,” and the “tyranny and terror” the communists would unleash if they were to conquer the south. US citizens, Nixon asserted, seek “peace not conquest.” One thing the president would not do, he declared, is conspire with Hanoi on the dissolution of the Saigon government, pledging to “not cross the line from generosity to treachery.”58

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When Democracies Choose War

For his whole first term, Nixon endeavored to secure what he deemed an honorable peace from Vietnam. While his definition of the problem that required US persistence barely wavered, the terms he identified as necessary to achieve it shifted markedly. Conditions constituting honor at the outset of his term—including mutual withdrawal, a residual force, affirmation of the DMZ as an international boundary, and no recognition of the PRG as a legitimate contender for political power in the South—fell by the wayside as Kissinger negotiated an agreement with the North Vietnamese. The United States would not be complicit in the overthrow of South Vietnamese President Thieu, but the presence of NVA units throughout the country left Thieu’s long-term prospects extremely precarious. The dynamics of this evolution resulted from the interaction of Nixon’s Vietnam policy with elite debate, congressional action, and public opinion in the marketplace of ideas. I turn to a content analysis of news coverage to best illuminate this pattern. Using a search of the Proquest database of New York Times coverage, I examined all material in the newspaper for the terms “Vietnam” and “Nixon” for the date ranges November 2–8, 1969; April 29–May 5, 1970; April 6–12, 1971; and May 7–13, 1972, corresponding to major presidential policy addresses on November 3, 1969; April 30, 1970; April 7, 1971; and May 8, 1972, respectively.59 At each of these points Nixon articulated his conception of an honorable peace, framing his argument in terms that resonated with key liberal norms central to the US experience. Except for the final interval of analysis, the overall tone of Vietnam items in the New York Times as displayed in Table 3.1 tended to be neutral. Coverage of Nixon’s silent majority speech epitomizes balance, with 44 percent of items coded as neutral, and roughly 25–30 percent split between positive and negative. As Nixon’s term and the war wore on, reportage in the Times grew less positive and more negative, culminating with almost half of Vietnam items during the 1972 Spring Offensive presenting a negative tone. Table 3.2 highlights individual judgments presented as substantive components of each item on the war into categories defined by whether the source was likely an ally of the White House (e.g., members of the administration or GOP members of Congress), an enemy (i.e., congressional Democrats), or neutral (e.g., members of the public or experts). Strikingly, three of ten judgments offered by administration sources and its allies opposed Nixon’s framing or conduct of the war. Almost half of the total judgments (48.2 percent) were offered by neutral sources; the remainder (21.7 percent) were provided by Nixon’s political adversaries. Importantly, three-fourths of the judgments offered by neutral sources were negative. With neutral sources Media Coverage: The Debate in the Marketplace of Ideas

Richard Nixon’s Pursuit of “Peace with Honor” in Vietnam

Table 3.1 Overall Frequency Count of Coded Items Case

November 2–8, 1969 n April 29–May 5, 1970 n April 6–12, 1971 n May 7–13, 1972 n Total n

Positive 26.2% 22 11.8% 15 7.8% 4 13.9% 16 15.1% 57

Negative 29.8% 25 42.5% 54 37.3% 19 48.7% 56 40.8% 154

Neutral 44.0% 37 45.7% 58 54.9% 28 37.4% 43 44.0% 166

81

Total Articles 84

127 51

115

377

making up such a large share of the total number of judgments, and almost 75 percent of these opposing Nixon’s framing of the war, it is not surprising that the president proved unable to fulfill his initial objectives. By introducing frames into the analysis, Table 3.3 provides a clearer sense of what Nixon was up against domestically. Three-fifths of the judgments in the New York Times negatively framed Nixon’s handling of the war. In particular, judgments of his policy and leadership overwhelmed those approving of the president’s approach to the war and his management of expectations regarding leadership norms (approximately two-thirds of policy and leadership judgments were negative). The balance of judgments on Nixon’s framing of the problem was not as lopsided. More than 40 percent of the judgments on Nixon’s problem-definition frame approved of the language the president used to build a case for a continued US presence on Table 3.2 Judgments on the War Coded by the Likely Allegiance to the Chief of Government

Ally n Enemy n Neutral n Total n

Support 66.8% 276 14.1% 42 21.5% 142 33.6% 460

Oppose 28.8% 119 82.2% 244 74.3% 491 62.3% 854

Neutral 4.4% 18 3.7% 11 4.2% 28 4.2% 57

Total Judgments 30.1% 413 21.7% 297 48.2% 661 1,371

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Table 3.3 Frames of Coded Judgments on the War Frame

Problem definition column percentagea n = 423 Policy column percentagea n = 626 Leadership column percentagea n = 182 Unclear column percentagea n = 79 None column percentagea n = 61 Total n = 1,371

Support 42.8% 39.4% 181 31.0% 42.2% 194 30.2% 12.0% 55 20.3% 3.5% 16 23.0% 3.0% 14 460

Oppose 54.9% 27.2% 232 64.2% 47.1% 402 68.7% 14.6% 125 68.4% 6.3% 54 67.2% 4.8% 41 854

Neutral 2.4% 17.5% 10 4.8% 52.6% 30 1.1% 3.5% 2 11.4% 15.8% 9 9.8% 10.5% 6 57

Note: a. Entries for “column percentage” show the proportion of that particular frame category among supportive, opposed, and neutral judgments, respectively (e.g., during the Vietnam War, 39.4% of the total supportive judgments were in the problem definition frame). The other percentages reflect the breakdown of supportive, opposed, and neutral judgments for each type of frame.

the Vietnam battlefield, though almost 55 percent of judgments in the Times opposed Nixon’s justification for persistence in the war. Strong support for Nixon’s problem definition among his likely allies (85.4 percent) comes across clearly in Table 3.4. Though there is slightly more opposition to the president’s policy and leadership (in the 30 percent range) among putative Nixon stalwarts than on problem definition (13.2 percent), these results indicate that the White House had little reason to worry about challenges to its framing from political supporters. Thirty percent of all Vietnam judgments in the Times came from administration sources and likely allies, while close to half (48.2 percent) were offered by neutral sources. Significantly, approximately three-fourths of neutral sources reject Nixon’s problem definition, policy, and leadership. In contrast, only one in five judgments coded in the data set presented the views of Nixon’s likely political adversaries. Very few of these offered solace to the White House for their efforts to redefine the US mission to achieve peace with honor, as nearly 80 percent of the judgments by opponents of Nixon’s problem definition were negative. Table 3.5 breaks down judgmental frames in New York Times coverage by each Vietnam War juncture. During the week of Nixon’s November 3, 1969,

83 Table 3.4 Comparison of Frames Coded According to the Individual’s Likely Allegiance to the Chief of Government Source Ally

Neutral

Opponent

Frame

Problem definition n Policy n Leadership n Unclear n None n Total n

Problem definition n Policy n Leadership n Unclear n None n Total n

Problem definition n Policy n Leadership n Unclear n None n Total n

Support

Oppose

Neutral

Total

85.4% 123 57.7% 113 65.9% 29 29.4% 5 50.0% 6 66.8% 276

13.2% 19 36.7% 72 31.8% 14 52.9% 9 41.7% 5 28.8% 119

1.4% 2 5.6% 11 2.3% 1 17.7% 3 8.3% 1 4.4% 18

34.9% 144 47.5% 196 10.7% 44 4.1% 17 2.9% 12

21.6% 38 21.9% 66 21.2% 22 18.2% 8 22.2% 8 21.5% 142

74.4% 131 73.8% 222 77.9% 81 72.7% 32 69.4% 25 74.3% 491

4.0% 7 4.3% 13 1.0% 1 9.1% 4 8.3% 3 4.2% 28

26.6% 176 45.5% 301 15.7% 104 6.7% 44 5.4% 36

19.4% 20 11.6% 15 11.8% 4 16.7% 3 0.0% 0 14.1% 42

79.6% 82 83.7% 108 88.2% 30 72.2% 13 84.6% 11 82.2% 244

1.0% 1 4.7% 6 0.0% 0 11.1% 2 15.4% 2 3.7% 11

34.7% 103 43.4% 129 11.4% 34 6.1% 18 4.4% 13

413

661

297

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When Democracies Choose War

speech, coverage reflects support for the president’s revised definition of the problem. Nearly two-thirds of the judgments presented in the Times were favorable regarding Nixon’s call for a continuing US military effort to secure honor, although the reaction in terms of policy and leadership was less encouraging for the White House. Indeed, opposition to the Vietnam policy overall, as well as disapproval of Nixon’s lack of fidelity to leadership expectations, was high across all four intervals. Critiques of his choice of military tactics, for example, or his aggressive actions such as the move into Cambodia in disregard of Congress, rankled from two-thirds to four-fifths of those offering judgments in the Times coverage during the Cambodia, Laos, and Haiphong mining periods. Reaction to Nixon’s problem definition, however, was not as uniformly negative, although almost 60 percent of the judgments opposed his assertion that the North Vietnamese presence in Cambodia required a US military response. While the president defended the incursion as “indispensable for the continuing success of that withdrawal program,” opponents such as Democratic National Chairman Larry O’Brien called the action an escalation and derided it as “tragic” and “potentially dangerous.”60 One year later, Nixon’s characterization of the continued US involvement in Vietnam following the South Vietnamese invasion of Laos and the Calley case was supported by nearly 60 percent of the judgments in the Times. It is difficult to disentangle the effects of the Calley conviction on the overall Vietnam debate. Bogart reports that a May 1971 Harris poll showed two-to-one agreement that the US military involvement was “morally wrong.” He concludes that the My Lai revelations led to a shift in opinion from the adverse consequences of a US withdrawal, to a “fear that the war was corroding the American character.”61 Judgments again turned strongly negative when Nixon sought to justify his response to the North Vietnamese 1972 Spring Offensive as meeting a threat to core US interests, warning that “defeat in Vietnam would encourage this kind of aggression all over the world.”62 Contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination Senators George McGovern (SD) and Edmund Muskie (ME) rejected this premise. Muskie condemned Nixon’s actions as “risking a major confrontation with the Soviet Union and with China,” and “jeopardizing the major security interests of the United States.”63 McGovern responded that “the only purpose of this dangerous new course is to keep General Thieu in power a little longer and perhaps to save Mr. Nixon’s face a little longer.”64 Clearly, these data show widespread opposition to the presidents’ effort to frame continued US involvement in Vietnam in terms of honor and security. Certainly, coverage in the New York Times reveals negative judgments of Nixon’s policy choices and leadership across the board among neutral sources, and of course, on the part of Nixon’s partisan adversaries. Although a large number of opinions in Times stories took issue with Nixon’s problem

85 Table 3.5 Comparison of Frames of Coded Judgments per Juncture Problem Definition

Policy

Leadership

Unclear

None

Total

64.2% 52 34.6% 28 1.2% 1

47.7% 42 51.1% 45 1.1% 1

41.9% 18 55.8% 24 2.3% 1

41.7% 5 58.3% 7 0.0% 0

19.2% 5 69.2% 18 11.5% 3

48.8% 122 48.8% 122 2.4% 6

November 2–8, 1969

Support n Oppose n Neutral n Column total n

32.4% 81

April 29–May 5, 1970 Support n Oppose n Neutral n Column total n

41.6% 57 56.9% 78 1.5% 2 29.8% 137

April 6–12, 1971

Support n Oppose n Neutral n Column total n

59.6% 28 38.3% 18 2.1% 1

33.8% 47

May 7–13, 1972

Support n Oppose n Neutral n Column total n

27.8% 44 68.4% 108 3.8% 6

30.3% 158

35.2% 88

31.7% 66 66.3% 138 1.9% 4 45.2% 208

20.6% 14 77.9% 53 1.5% 1

48.9% 68

27.5% 72 63.4% 166 9.2% 24

50.2% 262

17.2% 43

21.2% 14 78.8% 52 0.0% 0 14.3% 66

30.8% 4 69.2% 9 0.0% 0 9.4% 13

31.7% 19 66.7% 40 1.7% 1 11.5% 60

4.8% 12

27.6% 8 72.4% 21 0.0% 0 6.3% 29

0.0% 0 100.0% 7 0.0% 0 5.0% 7

9.7% 3 61.3% 19 29.0% 9 5.9% 31

10.4% 26

25.0% 5 60.0% 12 1.5% 3 4.3% 20

25.0% 1 75.0% 3 0.0% 0 2.9% 4

27.3% 3 72.7% 8 0.0% 0 2.1% 11

250

32.6% 150 65.4% 301 2.0% 9 460

33.8% 47 64.7% 90 1.4% 2 139

27.0% 141 65.3% 341 7.7% 40 522

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When Democracies Choose War

definition, on this score his political allies sometimes received support from neutrals. To better appreciate how these judgments influenced debate over the war, I turn to consideration of elite opinion as expressed in the editorial sections of the Times. I examine elite debate during the Nixon phase of the war in two ways. First, I offer a brief scan of some opinion journalism from the Times to highlight the framing environment during the president’s initial four years in office. By no means do I provide a representative sample of op-ed content here. Rather, I use a handful of excerpts to illuminate the principal axes of contention over framing the war. Second, I present an accounting of the overall sentiment of news, opinion, and editorial items in the Times during the four intervals of focus. As Nixon prepared to give his November 3, 1969, address, the New York Times surveyed its international correspondents to assess sentiment in foreign capitals toward US involvement in Vietnam. In his synopsis of the reporting, Henry Tanner concluded there was “no pressure for a ‘bugout’” abroad. In fact, he observed that in most foreign capitals, “the hope is for an orderly disengagement that will prevent a sudden disruption of existing international patterns.” Interestingly, although there was acknowledgment that “protests have weakened the American negotiating position,” foreign diplomats considered this “the price of democracy.”65 The theme of democracy—whether Nixon was acting in defiance of public preferences or if the majority of the public stood with the president— formed the fulcrum for debate over the war. Certainly for many New York Times columnists, as with the White House, what the public thought about Vietnam and how that sentiment was portrayed consumed a good amount of attention. In essence, while the president and his opponents engaged in the framing contests presented in the preceding section, the target audience for all this debate was public opinion. While the threat to US prestige and credibility and the loss of honor were the problems Nixon sought to forestall by remaining engaged in the fighting until a reasonable settlement could be secured, he simultaneously sought to convey the impression to the public and political elites that the silent majority agreed with this diagnosis and his prescription. In other words, his goal in framing the war was to do so in a way that bolstered his claims that he was being responsive to democratic preferences and that US citizens would accept as the embodiment of their voice. Juxtaposing two columns of liberal pundit Tom Wicker illuminates Nixon’s challenge on this point. While acknowledging the need for presidents to sometimes “go counter to popular feeling,” Wicker wondered following Nixon’s silent majority address “how he is to do so, how to make his actions Elite Debate

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more palatable and his policies more understandable” (emphasis in original).66 A few years later, after the announcement of the mining of Haiphong Harbor, Wicker denounced Nixon as “an emperor,” bemoaning the fact that “a people who wanted peace could still be given war at his dictate.”67 For Wicker and others on his side of the debate, Nixon failed the democratic test. His partisans countered that the president’s resounding 1972 reelection victory confirmed his hold on the allegiance of the silent majority. This ongoing debate cannot be resolved here, but its roots extend to the framing contests highlighted in the preceding section. Of course, the theme of dealing with the constraints of democratic governance was not only on the minds of newspaper columnists. The White House went to great lengths to measure public sentiment, to be sure, but perhaps more significant, officials sought to delegitimize those opposed to the president’s position. In a column published the day after Nixon delivered his November 3, 1969, address, James Reston observed that recent polls showed that public opinion tilted against Vietnam War protesters.68 Not surprisingly, a key theme developed in that speech, and a main thrust of administration rhetoric from that point forward, sought to contrast the understandable frustration of those Nixon labeled “the silent majority” as distinct from the war’s vocal opponents who did not share the values or sensibilities of mainstream Americans.69 Certainly New York Times stories in the news section leaned more toward opposition to Nixon’s approach than the norm of objective journalism would suggest. As seen in Table 3.6, a plurality of items identified as news articles had a neutral tone, yet there was a fairly strong number of these ostensibly impartial news items that had an overall negative tenor. New York Times opinion pieces and editorials, on the other hand, were quite hostile to Nixon’s Vietnam efforts. Table 3.7 demonstrates the high hurdles the president faced in building support for his policies, given establishment hostility to the president’s agenda as represented in the Times opinion pages. Nixon’s strategy, however, was to pillory institutions such as the Times as inimically hostile to the president and by extension to the silent majority the White House nurtured. Nixon advanced a silent majority frame as a crucial component of his efforts, in essence using a form of adversarial-identity framing which, as Gamson writes, pits “an all-inclusive we . . . in conflict with some they.”70 His rhetoric tapped into the fact that most citizens wanted the US mission to succeed, while the administration’s willingness to characterize those who opposed the war as advocating failure and disparaging the sacrifices of soldiers protecting US values served to intimidate critics and neutralize opponents. Polling for the Nixon White House indicates an ongoing concern with public perception of the president’s credibility and popular tolerance for continued assertions of US military power to achieve a settlement (e.g.,

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Table 3.6 Overall Tenor of New York Times News Articles Case

November 2–8, 1969 n April 29–May 5, 1970 n April 6–12, 1971 n May 7–13, 1972 n

Support 25% 14 13% 12 3% 1 15% 12

Oppose

Neutral

23.2% 13 34% 31 23% 7 42% 33

51.8% 29 53% 49 73% 22 43% 34

Total 56

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30

79

the White House commissioned polls asking whether Nixon promised more than he could deliver on Vietnam; if respondents favored a bombing halt; whether he had “been frank and straightforward” on the war; and sought to ascertain the extent of public support for the use of US air power to assist a potential ARVN invasion of North Vietnam). White House–commissioned surveys asked respondents about Nixon’s handling of the war at regular intervals, with twenty-one installments of the question asked between early March 1971 and election day in November 1972. As seen in Figure 3.1, these data reveal approval for Nixon’s handling of the war only rising above the 50 percent mark following his January 1972 disclosure of the unproductive secret talks between Kissinger and the North Vietnamese under way since August 4, 1969.71 At the same time, internal White House polling shows two-thirds of respondents supporting a congressional action

Table 3.7 Frequency Count of New York Times Op-Ed Sentiment Case

November 2–8, 1969

April 29–May 5, 1970

April 6–12, 1971

May 7–13, 1972

Type

Opinion Editorial Total Opinion Editorial Total Opinion Editorial Total Opinion Editorial Total

Support 2 0 2 1 0 1 0 0 0 2 0 2

Oppose 4 2 6 12 4 16 3 4 7 9 4 13

Neutral 1 1 2 2 0 2 0 0 0 4 1 5

Total 7 3 10 15 4 19 3 4 7 15 5 20

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Figure 3.1 Approval for President Nixon's Handling of Vietnam from Internal White House Polling 90 80 70

Approve Approve Disapprove Disapprove Don't Kn ow Know Don't

60

Pe Percent rcent

50 40 30 20 10 0

Date Date

Source: The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research. (()*&(+",&$(-&./&$(0"$(1#234%(5,4.4".(+&6&7$%* (( ( ( ( ( ( (

to mandate an end to the war, but tepid approval at best for the pace with which the president was withdrawing troops (see Tables 3.8 and 3.9). By creating a narrative of silent majority support for his policies, Nixon was able to forestall Congress from passing end-the-war legislation. Still, as seen in the French case, limited democratic support for persistence in Vietnam led to conditions of two-level diplomacy reversed. As will be seen, Nixon’s skill at prevailing in framing contests did not immunize the administration from falling into the trap of taking strategic risks to alleviate pressure at home, only to further circumscribe the range of options the president could exercise in his effort to coerce Hanoi to terms. No democratic subtype—indeed, no government at all—is free from institutional wrangling over policy. Nixon’s and Kissinger’s reputations for skill at bureaucratic maneuvering notwithstanding, the ability of the White House to implement its preferences suffered from resistance by other bureaucratic players acting on their own behalf, particularly Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird. As Dallek writes, Laird “was as much as master of bureaucratic intrigue as Nixon.”72 Nixon’s and Kissinger’s efforts to prevail in framing their Vietnam policy suffered from Laird’s penchant for prodding the troop withdrawal Government Institutions

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Table 3.8 Public Opinion on Congressional Action to End the War (in %)

“A proposal has been made in Congress to require the US government to bring home all US troops before the end of this year. Would you like to have your Congressman vote for or against this proposal?”

Polling Dates

April 5–6, 1971 April 12–14, 1971 April 28–30, 1971 May 1–2, 1971 May 6–7, 1971 April 27–29, 1972

For 62 63 61 68 63 60

Against 26 28 32 20 19 27

No Opinion 12 9 7 12 18 13

Source: Opinion Research Corporation, National Archives and Records Administration.

schedule forward.73 In addition to the other domestic political imperatives propelling the troop withdrawal schedule relentlessly forward, the president had to cope with elements of his own government responding to various internal imperatives to liquidate the US military presence in Vietnam more rapidly than his diplomatic agenda required. The Domestic Side of Two-Level Diplomacy Reversed

Central to Nixon’s diplomatic strategy was maintaining sufficient domestic support to remain involved in the war until the local balance of forces changed to produce an honorable settlement. His call to the silent majority for support74 in his November 3, 1969, speech was intended to dissuade the north from believing “that all it has to do is to wait for our next concession, and our next concession after that one, until it gets everything it wants.”75 Public reaction to this speech was strongly positive, with Nixon’s approval rating for handling the Vietnam situation rising to its highest level before the end of the war.76 Nixon’s April 30, 1970, announcement that US troops, in conjunction with the South Vietnamese army, had launched an incursion into Cambodia to destroy communist sanctuaries also met with approval from the general public, with 58 percent in a White House poll saying it was right and 27 percent calling it wrong.77 Significantly, the White House public relations operation went into full swing to frame this invasion as a benefit to the Vietnamization program. For instance, Kissinger wrote the president the

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Table 3.9 The Pace of US Troop Withdrawals (in %)

“Do you feel that President Nixon’s plan for withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam brings our troops back too fast, too slow or just about right?”

Polling Date

September 14–18, 1969a April 21–24, 1970a April 22–24, 1970b May 25–30, 1970a July 25–30, 1970a January 1971a February 22–27, 1971a April 5–6, 1971b April 8, 1971b April 12–13, 1971b April 12–15, 1971a April 18–25, 1971a April 28–30, 1971b July 10–16, 1971a October 26–31, 1971a November 19–21, 1971b January 3–20, 1972b February 8–15, 1972a February 29–March 6, 1972a April 27–29, 1972b

Too Fast 6 8 12 13 8 4 3 5 6 7 5 4 12 4 3 5 4 4 — 9

Too Slow 29 34 30 27 32 46 34 46 40 39 45 48 46 42 53 40 43 45 43 31

Just About Right 49 47 45 45 49 42 53 38 42 44 45 39 35 48 38 46 45 44 44 49

No Opinion 16 11 13 15 11 8 10 11 12 10 5 9 7 6 6 9 8 7 — 11

Sources: Harris Survey Yearbook of Public Opinion and NARA. a. Harris Survey. b. Opinion Research Corporation for the White House.

following press release touting the operation: “Since the completion of the Cambodia operation, the number of US deaths has been the lowest for any three-week period in four years.”78 Nixon instructed Haldeman that after one month, he should get the statement out to “our P.R. group to get a maximum play in Congress, Press, etc.” In addition, an ostensibly independent public relations group, the “Tell It to Hanoi” committee, was mobilized to run radio spots in twenty major metropolitan markets encouraging listeners to contact their members of Congress in support of the “action in Cambodia to protect American lives.”79 Demonstrating public support for its peace with honor program was a central part of the administration’s plan. By framing the public’s reaction as supportive, Nixon endeavored to create the impression of popular momentum on the side of his blueprint, granting greater freedom of maneuver mil-

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itarily and diplomatically. In turn, success on the battlefield or the negotiating table would translate to greater public support—or at least that’s the supposition on which the White House operated. Try as they might, however, White House officials could not translate public support for the US action in Cambodia to a license for prosecuting the war vigorously enough to secure their diplomatic objectives. Even though public opinion polls revealed support for the operation, college campuses exploded (with students killed at protests at Kent State University in Ohio and Jackson State College in Mississippi) and Congress became defiant. Furthermore, owing to domestic political calculations, the administration sacrificed the military benefits of the invasion. Nixon’s zeal to demonstrate the invasion as a success extended to manipulation of the Vietnamization strategy; the administration reversed its original decision to remove 60,000 troops in 1970 and 90,000 in 1971. Instead, the president made the larger cut first, thus weakening the military and diplomatic hand of the United States to placate the domestic audience.80 Moreover, the duration and geographical extent of the incursion was limited to sixty days and twenty-one miles, respectively, owing to fears of an adverse domestic reaction.81 An operation designed to facilitate Nixon’s commitment to honor was vitiated by the president’s struggle against political forces at home that did not share his evaluation of national security requirements or his disregard for the requirements of foreign policy making in a democracy. Two-level game logic left Nixon with a dual domestic diplomatic problem. First, White House documents reveal a palpable concern for building and maintaining evidence of public opinion support. While the Opinion Research Corporation (ORC) provided the White House with its internal polls, Haldeman wondered whether the White House should “build” ORC into a third independent polling concern to compete with Harris and Gallup. He conceded, on his legal pad, that polls “affect ability to govern,” and bragged in an earlier entry: “we know pollsmanship.”82 Clearly the White House understood that public opinion polls were not just a barometer of popular attitudes but could be used to persuade others in the government to support the president’s program.83 As Entman writes, polls provide political contestants with ammunition to advance a frame, because “any description of public opinion is such a selective interpretation,”84 and the White House excelled in using poll results to build its case that the public was supportive of Nixon’s actions. These efforts could silence critics and blunt momentum of potential counterframes holding that Nixon’s policies violated democratic political preferences or contravened liberal norms. Thus, with evidence of public support in hand, the second half of Nixon’s domestic diplomatic problem concerned Congress. To prevent Congress from passing end-the-war legislation, the administration devoted much energy lobbying wavering members with evidence that the people were behind the president’s Vietnam policy.

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The legislative branch first achieved concrete results constraining administration Vietnam policy with the post-Cambodia Cooper-Church Amendment to prevent US troops from participating in cross–South Vietnamese border operations. Administration congressional liaison William Timmons outlined the approach to defeat Cooper-Church in a May 20, 1970, memo to other White House officials: Most Senators report mail and office visitations heavily in favor of CooperChurch. However, their back home speeches supporting the President are well received. This indicates the opposition is organized, and the true sentiment has not been properly felt. We should make certain the majority viewpoint is forcefully expressed to the Senate.85

Timmons recommended that various groups and opinion molders be mobilized to convey the “majority viewpoint.” A follow-up plan included attack groups, Vietnam backgrounders “emphasizing what we’ve accomplished,” and the distribution of newspaper editorials on Capitol Hill. Jeb Magruder suggested to Haldeman that the administration distribute the results of a favorable internal poll “through other methods to get maximum coverage.” He went so far as to advocate that petition and recall movements be initiated against certain senators.86 A version of Cooper-Church eventually passed, preventing Nixon from assisting the ARVN directly during its February 1971 invasion of Laos.87 Other than this prohibition, Nixon’s difficulties with Congress revolved not around legislation but on the message conveyed to Hanoi by the ever-greater levels of support each end-the-war bill received.88 The administration’s difficulty with Congress became especially acute at the time of the 1972 Spring Offensive. With the North Vietnamese apparently on the verge of a victory that would be extremely embarrassing to an administration standing for reelection, Nixon ordered a series of steps to prevent South Vietnam from collapsing while US troops remained in country.89 Laying mines in Haiphong coupled with intense aerial bombardment turned the tide of battle in favor of the South Vietnamese. On the domestic front, the White House public relations arm launched a vigorous campaign to minimize any adverse reaction in Congress. The Opinion Research Corporation conducted a telephone survey on Nixon’s actions April 27–29, 1972, using five excerpts from the president’s address on April 26 to demonstrate that the public was solidly behind him (agreement with the statements ranged from a low of 66 percent to a high of 86 percent). Dubious as this technique may be in gaining an objective sounding of opinion on the bombing and mining, the White House was quick to use these findings to its political advantage. A May 1, 1972, cover memo from Gordon C. Strachan to Haldeman outlined the distribution strategy for the

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release of the poll information. Contacts at major media outlets were handdelivered copies of the release. Republican Senators Hugh Scott (PA) and Robert Griffin (MI) were provided copies to circulate. Some staff members were cautious about ensuring the appearance of White House detachment from ORC’s efforts, preferring to allow mailings and mentions of the polling material into speeches to catch media attention. Seeing the need for more rapid dissemination, Haldeman overruled his aides, instructing them to distribute the polls on Capitol Hill for use against Democrats and administration spokespersons immediately.90 Even as Nixon succeeded in forestalling the North Vietnamese military onslaught, the administration had to head off congressional efforts to end the war through the appropriations process. Although none of the bills under consideration prior to enactment of the 1973 Paris Peace Accords became law, the continual presence of antiwar legislation on the congressional agenda was, as Kissinger pointed out, “dramatizing to Hanoi the erosion of our position.”91 Despite administration lobbying, congressional momentum in favor of antiwar legislation kept building.92 On September 2, 1972, the Senate passed the antiwar Brooke Amendment, while the administration concentrated on defeating such measures in the House. A similar bill had been defeated there on August 10, with administration supporters prevailing by a 177–229 vote. After the November election, it was likely that both houses would agree to cut off funding for the war unless the administration was able to negotiate a peace agreement first.93 Interestingly, the administration’s polls reveal a public desire for Congress to end the war. The information, reproduced in Table 3.8, was removed from the White House press release touting public support for Nixon’s actions by Haldeman’s pen.94 Had this material been divulged, Nixon’s political opponents would have been well positioned to frame congressional proposals to stop the war as being in accordance with popular preferences and not the renegade usurpations of an out-of-step minority. Normative Change: Peace with Honor?

Nixon’s handling of the 1972 Spring Offensive proved deft all around, with Hanoi militarily weakened and diplomatically isolated.95 Moreover, the president was able to deliver a significant military blow to the enemy without much domestic blowback. Interestingly, his February visit to China and upcoming trip to Moscow helped allay fears that US actions in Vietnam would have wider repercussions. Over the next few months, negotiations between Kissinger and the North Vietnamese proceeded, with the outlines of a settlement emerging in late October, only to be delayed by the objec-

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tions of Thieu.96 When the Paris Peace Accords ending US involvement in the Vietnam War were signed January 27, 1973, Nixon had achieved just one of his original objectives: Thieu remained head of the constitutional government of South Vietnam. On the other hand, North Vietnamese troops remained in the south, the DMZ was not affirmed as an international boundary, and an administrative structure (the National Council of Reconciliation and Concord) was created, giving political legitimacy to the insurgents in the South.97 There are two legacies of this record worthy of our attention. First is the narrow issue of evaluating the degree to which Nixon achieved the goal of peace with honor, therefore validating his choice of war. Second is the broad question of whether debate over the war contributed to evolutionary shifts in liberal norms of state behavior. In some respects, these are intertwined. At the root of Nixon’s efforts was a normative concern: states ought not to appear weak or concede defeat when other options are available. Sustaining status as a reflection of prestige or other nonmaterial factors was arguably as important to Nixon and his supporters as any actual loss in power would be. What about the US body politic and liberal norms of international behavior more broadly? Did the Vietnam experience alter the degree to which “honor” and the like factored as a component in the conception of the national interest for the United States and other democracies? I weigh in on the debate regarding peace with honor and then speculate briefly on the issue of normative change. Was Nixon’s pursuit of peace with honor just a mask to secure a so-called decent interval, or did his strategy of withdrawals combined with coercion produce a viable negotiated settlement that only failed as a result of congressional meddling coupled with his Watergate-induced weakness? Jeffrey Kimball presents archival evidence substantiating that Nixon sought a negotiated settlement that allowed for a decent interval of time between finalizing an agreement and South Vietnam’s ultimate demise. In contrast, Larry Berman interprets the documentary record to support his contention that Nixon knew the settlement was flawed but expected that “permanent war” using US air power to keep the North Vietnamese at bay for as long as possible would enable him to keep South Vietnam afloat. These two positions correspond roughly to the orthodox interpretation that US involvement in Vietnam was a mistake, and therefore Nixon’s stewardship unduly extended it, in contradistinction to the revisionist or win school view that the president successfully applied coercive diplomacy to bring forth an honorable settlement only to have Congress snatch a hard-earned victory from his grasp in the wake of Watergate.98 Although this debate does not end here, the present inquiry shines an important light on it: throughout Nixon’s term, supporters and opponents engaged in a framing contest that laid the foundations for this enduring argument about the war.

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Though the Nixon administration managed the framing contest as well as possible, it was prevented from using the resources of society to achieve the president’s goals because the political opposition succeeded in generating a resonant counterframe that attracted political support sufficient to constrain Nixon’s choices. In the end, public and congressional pressure substantially narrowed Nixon’s options to the timing of withdrawals, and thus liquidating the US commitment to Vietnam became an imperative. As Richard Melanson observes, “Nixon’s task was to convince the public that his pace of withdrawal was superior to those of his critics.”99 Despite its skill in public relations, White House efforts to engender public support by manipulating polls did not succeed in insulating the Vietnamization program from the consequences of two-level diplomacy reversed. In Table 3.9, we saw public opinion split fairly equally between those believing Nixon’s pace was too slow and those believing it was just about right. Those who wished for a faster pace of withdrawal had their preferences articulated by various members of Congress. The presence of this contrary sentiment made Nixon’s diplomatic hand particularly weak, since the North Vietnamese could take comfort in the fact that US domestic pressure would eventually force Nixon to capitulate on many of his initial aims. In the end, Nixon had to settle for an Indochina policy commensurate with limitations imposed by the democratic process. Although it’s difficult to ascertain the degree to which the Vietnam experience altered liberal norms, there are some suggestive indications of normative evolution resulting from the war. Nixon defined the problem requiring perseverance in Vietnam in terms of honor, credibility, and prestige. These reflect normative values that became contested features of national identity during debate over the war. Was loss of a war problematic if it did not have a deleterious effect on national security? Would allies find the United States a more reliable partner if blood and treasure continued to be sacrificed on what seemed a losing cause? Did it matter very much to national prestige if the United States actually lost a war? The underlying issues raised by these questions reflect normative contestation regarding the appropriate response to loss, essentially pitting those who supported Nixon’s framing against those opposed. Arguably, Ronald Reagan’s willingness to withdraw US Marines “offshore” from Lebanon in 1984, or George H. W. Bush’s reticence to “intervene militarily in Iraq’s internal affairs and risk being drawn into a Vietnam-style quagmire”100 to protect Iraqi Kurds and Shias from persecution by Saddam Hussein are indicative of some Vietnam-induced normative change in US identity. Of course, in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, such Vietnam-inspired reticence diminished in salience, only to reemerge with intervention in Iraq. Gerald Ford had replaced Nixon as president by the time the North Vietnamese captured Saigon on April 30, 1975. Two members of Ford’s inner

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circle, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, later became central players in the administration of George W. Bush. They and other adherents to a revisionist interpretation of the Vietnam experience formed a policymaking core that dismissed the relevance of any normative restraints on advancing the national interest, whether in regard to promoting internal political change in target countries, fighting preventive wars, or allowing democratic constraints at home or abroad to impede their vision of what was best for US security.101 Moreover, they built on the Nixon administration’s legacy regarding the need for mastery of public relations to minimize adverse public or congressional opinion in foreign policy in selling the Iraq War. I detail these efforts in Chapter 5. I turn now to the United Kingdom’s response to Argentina’s seizure of the Falkland Islands in 1982. Notes

1. Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam (New York: Random House, 2012); Kathryn Statler, Replacing France: The Origins of American Intervention in Vietnam (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007); Mark Atwood Lawrence, Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007); Melanie Billings-Yun, Decision Against War: Eisenhower and Dien Bien Phu, 1954 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988); Lawrence S. Kaplan, Denise Artaud, and Mark R. Rubin, eds., Dien Bien Phu and the Crisis of Franco-American Relations, 1954–1955 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Research, 1990). 2. The Vietnam War literature is vast. Representative works focusing on the tension between security concerns and domestic tolerance across administrations include Leslie H. Gelb with Richard K. Betts, The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1979); Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (New York: Viking, 1983); George C. Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975 (New York: Wiley, 1979); Robert D. Schulzinger, A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam, 1941–1975 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Melvin Small, Antiwarriors: The Vietnam War and the Battle for America’s Hearts and Minds (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002); Marilyn B. Young, The Vietnam Wars 1945–1990 (New York: HarperCollins, 1991). 3. Johnson’s decisionmaking is the focus of the following studies: Fredrik Logevall, “Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, 34, no. 1 (March 2004): 100–112; Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); Lloyd C. Gardner, Pay Any Price: Lyndon Johnson and the Wars for Vietnam (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1997); Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992); Larry Berman, Planning a Tragedy (New York: Norton, 1982); Larry Berman, Lyndon Johnson’s War: The Road to Stalemate in Vietnam (New York: Norton, 1989); George McTurnan Kahin, Intervention: How America Became Involved in Vietnam (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1987); Robert Gallucci, Neither Peace nor Honor: The Politics of American Military Policy in Viet-Nam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975).

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4. As Doris Kearns Goodwin relates, Johnson disregarded his advisers and kept escalations as unobtrusive as possible owing to his fear of “touching off a right-wing stampede,” Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (New York: Signet, 1977), 295. Also see Kathleen J. Turner, Lyndon Johnson’s Dual War: Vietnam and the Press (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 6; Gelb and Betts, Irony of Vietnam, 222, 159–160; Berman, Planning a Tragedy; Bruce Altschuler, LBJ and the Polls (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1990), argues that Johnson “feared hawks more than doves” (43). 5. Herring, America’s Longest War, x. 6. Logevall, Choosing War, 376. 7. Logevall, Choosing War, 79. 8. Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson, 297 and 275. 9. Kahin, Intervention, 272–273, 291; also Gelb and Betts, Irony of Vietnam, 352– 354. For a nice encapsulation of the debate on the degree to which Johnson was “highly constrained,” see Elizabeth N. Saunders, Leaders at War: How Presidents Shape Military Interventions (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), 262, n180. 10. In addition, Khong offers a compelling analysis of the role of George Ball as the in-house dissenter; in contrast, with limited access to the historical record, Irving Janis, Victims of Groupthink: A Psychological Study of Foreign-Policy Decisions and Fiascoes (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972), 135, speculates on whether “group dynamics exerted considerable influence on the decisions of the policy-makers who escalated the war in Vietnam.” 11. Logevall, Choosing War, 376. 12. In separate reviews posted on H-Net, historian Jeffrey Kimball and political scientist Robert Jervis take issue with Logevall’s assertion that Johnson could have taken an alternate course of action. Jervis, “Review of Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam, by Fredrik Logevall,” h-net.org, February 2000, http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=3787; Kimball, “Review of Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam, by Fredrik Logevall,” h-net.org, February 2000, http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev .php?id=3788. 13. Daniel C. Hallin, The “Uncensored War”: The Media and the Vietnam War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 162. 14. Nicholas Thompson, The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War (New York: Picador, 2009). In an effort to dominate the marketplace of ideas, Johnson scheduled a Vietnam conference in Honolulu with US and Republic of Vietnam officials, leaving key administration witnesses unavailable for Fulbright’s hearings and providing alternate news coverage; see Berman, Lyndon Johnson’s War, 10. 15. US Congress, Senate, 89th Cong., 2nd sess., Congressional Record, 112, part 3 (February 10, 1966): S 2984–2985. 16. Hans Morgenthau, “We Are Deluding Ourselves in Vietnam,” New York Times Magazine (April 18, 1965), in Marvin E. Gettleman, ed., Vietnam: History, Documents, and Opinions on a Major World Crisis (New York: Fawcett, 1965), 374. 17. Conversation with Richard Russell, May 27, 1964, http://whitehousetapes.net /clips/1964_0707_russell/index.htm (accessed August 1, 2012). 18. Conversation with Robert McNamara, February 25, 1964, http://whitehousetapes .net/clips/1964_0225_appeasement/ (accessed August 2, 2012). 19. Julian E. Zelizer, “Congress and the Politics of Troop Withdrawal,” Diplomatic History, 34, no. 3 (June 2010): 530. 20. Joseph A. Fry, “To Negotiate or Bomb: Congressional Prescriptions for Withdrawing US Troops from Vietnam,” Diplomatic History, 34, no. 3 (June 2010): 519–520.

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21. Fry, “To Negotiate or Bomb,” 521. 22. Robert M. Entman, Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion, and US Foreign Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 14: “The more congruent the frame is with schemas that dominate the political culture, the more success it will enjoy. The most inherently powerful frames are those fully congruent with schemas habitually used by most members of society” (emphasis in original). 23. Address at Johns Hopkins University: “Peace Without Conquest,” April 7, 1965, http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/speeches.hom/650407.asp (accessed August 1, 2012). 24. In David F. Schmitz, The Tet Offensive: Politics, War, and Public Opinion (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), 96. 25. Richard Nixon, Address to the Nation on the War in Vietnam, November 3, 1969, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=2303&st=&st1= (accessed August 3, 2012). 26. Miriam Fendius Elman, “Unpacking Democracy: Presidentialism, Parliamentarism, and Theories of Democratic Peace,” Security Studies, 9, no. 4 (Summer 2000): 94. 27. William G. Howell and Jon C. Pevehouse, “When Congress Stops Wars,” Foreign Affairs, 86, no. 5 (September/October 2007): 95–108. 28. James M. Lindsay, Congress and the Politics of US Foreign Policy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 132. 29. The challenge of defining such key features of the war is illustrated in Alexander B. Downes, “How Smart and Tough Are Democracies? Reassessing Theories of Democratic Victory in War,” International Security, 33, no. 4 (Spring 2009): 9–51. 30. Andrew Z. Katz, “Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: The Nixon Administration and the Pursuit of Peace with Honor In Vietnam,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, 27, no. 3 (Summer 1997): 496–513; Diane Heith, Polling to Govern: Public Opinion and Presidential Leadership (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004); Lawrence Jacobs and Robert Y. Shapiro, “The Rise of Presidential Polling: The Nixon White House in Historical Perspective,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 59, no. 2 (Summer 1995): 163–195; Lawrence R. Jacobs and Robert Y. Shapiro, “Lyndon Johnson, Vietnam, and Public Opinion: Rethinking Realist Theory of Leadership,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, 29, no. 3 (September 1999): 592–616; Altschuler, LBJ and the Polls. 31. Altschuler, LBJ and the Polls, 44. 32. Jacobs and Shapiro, “The Rise of Presidential Polling,” 166. 33. Richard Melanson, American Foreign Policy Since the Vietnam War: The Search for Consensus From Nixon to George W. Bush, 5th ed. (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2005). Significant work on the antiwar movement includes Small, Antiwarriors; Charles DeBenedetti with Charles Chatfield, An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990); Tom Wells, The War Within: America’s Battle over Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, Peace Now!: American Society and the Ending of the Vietnam War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001). See Michael P. Balzano Jr., “The Silent Versus the New Majority,” in Leon Friedman and William F. Levantrosser, eds., Richard M. Nixon: Politician, President, Administrator (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1991), 259–274. 34. Thomas M. Franck and Edward Weisband, Foreign Policy by Congress (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979); Cecil V. Crabb and Pat M. Holt, Invitation to Struggle: Congress, the President, and Foreign Policy, 3rd ed. (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1989); James L. Sundquist, The Decline and Resurgence of Congress (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1981); Lindsay, Congress and the Politics; James M. Lindsay, “Deference and Defiance: The Shifting

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Rhythms of Executive-Legislative Relations in Foreign Policy,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, 33, no. 3 (September 2003): 530–546; Robert David Johnson, Congress and the Cold War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), chronicles the increasing restiveness of the Senate on Cold War US foreign policy made manifest with Vietnam, though earlier than that on foreign aid. Also, Amy Belasco, Lynn J. Cunningham, Hannah Fischer, and Larry A. Niksch, “Congressional Restrictions on U.S. Military Operations in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Somalia, and Kosovo: Funding and Non-Funding Approaches,” CRS Report for Congress, January 16, 2007, http:// www.fas.org/sgp/crs /natsec/RL33803.pdf. 35. Schulzinger, A Time for War, 227. 36. Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1975). 37. There are numerous examinations of US public opinion and Vietnam, most of them focusing on the Johnson administration. John Mueller, War, Presidents, and Public Opinion (New York: Wiley, 1973); Bruce Andrews, “Public Constraint and American Policy in Vietnam,” Sage Professional Papers in International Studies, Series 02042 (Beverly Hills, 1976); Sidney Verba, Richard A. Brody, Edwin B. Parker, Norman H. Nie, Nelson Polsby, Paul Ekman, and Gordon S. Black, “Public Opinion and the War in Vietnam,” American Political Science Review, 61, no. 2 (June 1967): 317–333; Andre Modigiliani, “Hawks and Doves, Isolationism and Political Distrust: An Analysis of Public Opinion on Military Policy,” American Political Science Review, 66, no. 3 (September 1972): 960–978; William L. Lunch and Peter W. Sperlich, “American Public Opinion and the War in Vietnam,” Western Political Quarterly, 32, no. 1 (March 1979): 21–44; Melvin Small, Johnson, Nixon, and the Doves (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988); Melvin Small, At the Water’s Edge: American Politics and the Vietnam War (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005); Andrew Z. Katz, “Public Opinion, Congress, President Nixon, and the Termination of the Vietnam War,” PhD diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1987; Scott Gartner, Gary Segura, and Michael Wilkening, “All Politics Are Local: Local Losses and Individual Attitudes Toward the Vietnam War,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 41, no. 4 (October 1997): 669–694; Jacobs and Shapiro, “The Rise of Presidential Polling.” 38. Henry Kissinger, “The Viet-Nam Negotiations,” Foreign Affairs, 47, no. 2 (January 1969): 233. 39. Discussed in Walter Isaacson, Kissinger: A Biography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 120. Similar themes are invoked in Kissinger’s Foreign Affairs article, for example, 234. 40. Henry A. Kissinger, White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979), 306. 41. Nixon, “Address to the Nation on the War in Vietnam,” November 3, 1969. 42. See Kissinger, White House Years, 275. 43. White House Special Files (WHSF), President’s Office Files (POF), President’s Handwriting, January 1969, Box 1. Nixon raised these points in his January 27, 1969, press conference. 44. Richard M. Nixon, “Peace in Vietnam,” address to the nation, May 14, 1969, Department of State Bulletin (6/2/69), 460–461. 45. Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) to President Nixon, Washington, September 11, 1969. FRUS, Foreign Relations, 1969–1976, VI, 378. 46. Memo from Kissinger to Nixon, 386. 47. Memo from Kissinger to Nixon, 388. 48. Memo from Kissinger to Nixon, 389. 49. Memo from Kissinger to Nixon, 390. 50. Nixon, “Address to the Nation on the War in Vietnam,” November 3, 1969.

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51. Richard Nixon, “Address to the Nation on the Situation in Southeast Asia,” April 30, 1970, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=2490&st=&st1 =#axzz1ww8Y0f3M (accessed June 5, 2012). 52. Nixon, “Address to the Nation on the Situation in Southeast Asia,” April 30, 1970. 53. Nixon, “Address to the Nation on the Situation in Southeast Asia,” April 30, 1970. Also, see Melanson, American Foreign Policy, 62. 54. Nixon, “Address to the Nation on the Situation in Southeast Asia,” April 30, 1970. 55. Richard M. Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1978), 497, quoted in Robert Dallek, Partners in Power: Nixon and Kissinger (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 245. 56. John Lehman, The Executive, Congress, and Foreign Policy: Studies of the Nixon Administration (New York: Praeger, 1974). 57. Nixon “Address to the Nation on the Situation in Southeast Asia,” April 7, 1971, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=2972&st=Vietnamization&st1= (accessed May 25, 2012). 58. Nixon, “Address to the Nation on the Situation in Southeast Asia,” April 7, 1971. 59. See Appendix for coding protocol. 60. Nixon, “Address to the Nation on the Situation in Southeast Asia”; “Nixon Is Assailed on Cambodia Move at May Day Rally,” New York Times, May 2, 1970, 9. 61. Leo Bogart, Polls and the Awareness of Public Opinion, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1985), 93 and 94. 62. Richard Nixon, “Transcript of President Nixon’s Address to Nation on His Policy in Vietnam War,” New York Times, May 9, 1972, A18. 63. John W. Finney, “Congress Is Split on Nixon’s Action,” New York Times, May 9, 1972, A1, A19. 64. Finney, “Congress Is Split on Nixon’s Action.” 65. Henry Tanner, “Anti-US Feelings on Vietnam Issue Subsiding Abroad,” New York Times, November 2, 1969, 1–2. 66. Tom Wicker, “In the Nation: Loud, Clear and Often,” New York Times, November 4, 1969, 44. 67. Tom Wicker, “An American Emperor,” New York Times, May 9, 1972, 41. 68. James Reston, “Nixon Makes His Stand,” subtitle: “The Advocate of Compromise Accepts Challenge on the Nation’s Tensest Issue,” New York Times, November 4, 1969, 1. 69. For example, see the discussion on “the new majority” in Melanson, American Foreign Policy, 47–55. 70. William A. Gamson, Talking Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 85; also see Philip J. Powlick and Andrew Z. Katz, “Testing a Model of Public Opinion Foreign Policy Linkage: Public Opinion in Two Carter Foreign Policy Decisions,” April 24, 1998, Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago. 71. Richard Nixon, “Address to the Nation Making Public a Plan for Peace in Vietnam,” January 25, 1972, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid =3475&st=&st1= (accessed August 3, 2012). 72. Dallek, Partners in Power, 155. 73. On Laird’s role see Robert J. MacMahon, “The Politics, and Geopolitics, of American Troop Withdrawals from Vietnam, 1968–1972,” Diplomatic History, 34, no. 3 (June 2010): 471–484. 74. For discussion of the Nixon administration’s efforts to influence public opinion, see Katz, “Public Opinion and Foreign Policy.” 75. Richard M. Nixon, “The Pursuit of Peace in Viet-Nam,” address to the nation, November 3, 1969, Department of State Bulletin, November 24, 1969, 439.

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76. Finding an inverse correlation between the cost of living and the president’s popularity, White House assistant Stephen Bull noted the exceptional power of the November 3 speech, which he argued produced Nixon’s highest ratings yet despite negative economic indicators. WHSF, Staff Member Office Files (SMOF), Haldeman, Box 388, “Relationship Between Presidential Activities and Public Approval, March 27, 1970,” 3 and 6. Also see Isaacson, Kissinger, 249. A full discussion of these poll results is undertaken in Katz, “Public Opinion and Foreign Policy.” 77. Katz, “Public Opinion and Foreign Policy,” 500–501; “The Public Appraises the Nixon Administration (revised) (June 1970),” x, WHSF, HRH, Box 406, Gordon Strachan: 1972 Campaign Materials. According to a Harris poll, 50 percent supported the president, while 43 percent had “serious doubts” about his action; Bogart, Polls and the Awareness of Public Opinion, 12. 78. WHSF, POF, President’s Handwriting, July 1970, Box 6. 79. Memo from Jeb Magruder to Haldeman, May 7, 1970, WHSF, Alpha Subject Files, Box 116, Cambodia; also WHSF, H.R. Haldeman, Cambodia, Box 116. 80. Kissinger, White House Years, 481–482. Also see Isaacson, Kissinger, 236– 237, 238–239, 260. 81. Kissinger, White House Years, 507. Also Richard Nixon, “Report on the Cambodian Operation,” June 30, 1970, Public Papers of the Presidents, 1970 (US Government Printing Office, 1971), 536. 82. WHSF Haldeman Notes Box 43 January 1, 1971, to February 15, 1971, Part I, January 19 and January 3. 83. Jacobs and Shapiro, “The Rise of Presidential Polling”; Katz, “Public Opinion and Foreign Policy.” 84. Entman, Projections of Power, 125 passim. 85. WHSF H. R. Haldeman, Alpha Subject Files, Cambodia, Box 116. 86. WHSF H. R. Haldeman, Alpha Subject Files, Cambodia, Box 116, May 21, 1970, memo from Magruder to Haldeman. 87. For a comprehensive discussion see Lehman, The Executive, Congress, and Foreign Policy. Also Lindsay, Congress and the Politics of US Foreign Policy; Zelizer, “Congress and the Politics of Troop Withdrawal,” 529–541; Fry, “To Negotiate or Bomb.” 88. See Katz, “Public Opinion, Congress, President Nixon”; Kissinger, White House Years, 513. 89. WHSF, SMOF, H. R. Haldeman, Box 350, Vietnam Invasion Poll, April 27– 29, 1972. “Comments on the Vietnam Mine Survey” notes the possibility that Vietnam might fall and warns of the consequences. Also see Katz, “Public Opinion and Foreign Policy.” 90. WHSF, SMOF, H. R. Haldeman, Box 357, Distribution of Vietnam Mine Poll, May 9–10, 1972. Also, see Katz, “Public Opinion and Foreign Policy.” 91. Kissinger, White House Years, 971. 92. The White House tried especially hard to keep GOP members from voicing opposition, see WHSF, Alpha Subject Files, Box 116, Cambodia [Part II]; and memo from Colson to Ed Brooke, April 15, 1971, WHSF, POF, President’s Handwriting, Box 10, April 1 through 15, 1971. 93. See Isaacson, Kissinger, 440; Katz, “Public Opinion, Congress, President Nixon.” Also see Camp David—Briefings of South Vietnamese, Paris—November 20–25, 1972—Vol. XXI folder, Memorandum of Conversation with GVN representatives in Paris, November 24, 1972; and Camp David—Sensitive—Vol. XXII (1) folder, cable to Colonel Guay from Colonel Kennedy, December 6, 1972. 94. WHSF, SMOF, H. R. Haldeman, Box 350, Distribution of Vietnam Invasion Poll, April 27–29, 1972.

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95. Owing to Nixon’s opening to China and détente with the Soviet Union, the communist giants paid only lip service to Hanoi’s demands for fraternal, socialist solidarity. The improvement of US relations with North Vietnam’s patrons continued unabridged despite Nixon’s fierce assault on their client. Lorenz M. Lüthi, “Beyond Betrayal: Beijing, Moscow, and the Paris Negotiations, 1971–1973,” Journal of Cold War Studies, 11, no. 1 (Winter 2009): 57–107; Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, Hanoi’s War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012); Robert Jervis, “The Politics of Troop Withdrawal: Salted Peanuts, the Commitment Trap, and Buying Time,” Diplomatic History, 34, no. 3 (June 2010): 507–516; Pierre Asselin, A Bitter Peace (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002). 96. See Isaacson, Kissinger, 446–454; Jeffrey Kimball, “How Wars End: The Vietnam War,” Peace and Change, 20, no. 2 (April 1995): 183–202; Jeffrey Kimball, The Vietnam War Files (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2003). 97. For assessments of the agreement, see Isaacson, Kissinger, 457 and 481–484. Also, Stephen E. Ambrose, “Nixon and Vietnam: Vietnam and Electoral Politics,” in George Donelson Moss, ed., A Vietnam Reader: Sources and Essays (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1991), 203–216; and Joan Hoff, Nixon Reconsidered (New York: Basic Books, 1994), ch. 7; Jervis, “The Politics of Troop Withdrawal.” 98. I am not placing Berman in the revisionist camp, only suggesting that his portrayal of Nixon’s final position closely parallels that associated with revisionist critics. For an overview of Vietnam War historiography, see Gary R. Hess, “The Unending Debate: Historians and the Vietnam War,” Diplomatic History, 18, no. 2 (April 1994): 239–264; also David L. Anderson, “SHAFR Presidential Address: One Vietnam War Should Be Enough and Other Reflections on Diplomatic History and the Making of Foreign Policy,” Diplomatic History, 30, no. 1 (January 2006): 1–21. For the “decent interval” versus “permanent war” debate, see Jeffrey Kimball, Nixon’s Vietnam War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002); Jeffrey Kimball, “Out of Primordial Cultural Ooze: Inventing Political and Policy Legacies About the U.S. Exit from Vietnam,” Diplomatic History, 34, no. 3 (June 2010): 577–587; Larry Berman, No Peace, No Honor: Nixon, Kissinger, and Betrayal in Vietnam (New York: Touchstone, 2001); Jeffrey Kimball and James J. Wirtz, “Exchange on the Nixon Administration and the Vietnam War,” Journal of Cold War Studies, 11, no. 4 (Fall 2009): 142–144. Using evidence from White House tapes, Ken Hughes offers persuasive support for the decent interval thesis (though surely not sufficient to persuade die-hard believers that Nixon achieved peace with honor), “Fatal Politics: Nixon’s Political Timetable for Withdrawing from Vietnam,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 34, no. 3 (June 2010), p. 497–506. 99. Melanson, American Foreign Policy, 57. Or, as Gelb and Betts, Irony of Vietnam, 190, wrote of an earlier stage in the war: “Debates revolved around how to do things better and whether they could be done, not whether they were worth doing.” 100. George H. W. Bush, Public Papers of the Presidents, “Remarks on Assistance for Iraqi Refugees and a News Conference,” April 16, 1991, http://www.presidency .ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=19479&st=&st1= (accessed May 19, 2013). 101. James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (New York: Penguin Group, 2004).

4 Britain’s War to Retake the Falklands

The process of decolonization had moved well along by the time the United Kingdom agreed to negotiate its dominion over the Falkland Islands in January 1966. Whereas the French debate over empire was itself provoked by the situation in Indochina, Great Britain had come to terms with being a former imperial power long before it agreed to engage diplomatically with Argentina over the status of the islands. More than 8,000 miles from London and over 400 miles from Buenos Aires, the Falkland Islands were claimed by the British Crown in 1765, more than fifty years before Argentina became an independent state. The long dispute between Britain and Argentina over the islands is well reviewed elsewhere; because our interest is confined to the democratic war of choice aspect of this conflict, I limit my attention to the brief period leading to the war and the war itself.1 Three themes relevant to the study of democracy and war provide the foundation for my discussion of the Falklands case. First, I consider where this case falls on the war of choice continuum: Was the threat posed by Argentina’s invasion of sufficient moment that elaborate justification by the chief of government (COG) was not required because there was immediate societal consensus on the war’s necessity? Or was this an instance where the political leadership had to persuade governmental colleagues, elites, and the public that the choice for war was appropriate? Second, I examine the role of democratic structure. Elman argues that some democratic subtypes are more likely to facilitate aggressive action than are others. Do the structural characteristics of Westminster parliamentary democracy provide insight to explain the British decision to use force in the Falklands? Last, I place this conflict in the context of the broader democracy and war literature, emphasizing the importance of this case for illuminating the connection between democratic norms, public opinion, and a successful war of 105

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choice. Following my exploration of these themes, I turn to the centerpiece of this chapter: an analysis of the debate over the war in the British marketplace of ideas. The Democratic Context Unlike the French, who sought to defend their empire by force of arms when challenged at the end of World War II, the British accommodated the nationalist impulses coursing throughout its territories and accepted the inevitability of decolonization when granting independence to India in 1947.2 This is not to say that the British path to decolonization was free of rancor or violence. I simply note that for Britain decolonization was accomplished at a lower level of violence than in the French case.3 Furthermore, for British society the key question of whether an empire was worth fighting for had been resolved decades before the Argentine invasion. While the French chose war to preserve empire in Indochina, its leaders believing French identity and the norms of great power behavior were consistent with the resort to arms, the British had already rejected the prospect of using coercion to retain its empire when the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher faced the Argentine challenge for control of the Falklands in 1982. Though successive British governments after the 1966 decision concurred with the goal of negotiating an agreement with Argentina, actually relinquishing the islands was difficult owing to the power of the Falklands Island Committee, a lobbying group composed of former military officials and business and political figures. As a result, any diplomatic progress with Buenos Aires was derailed by the reaction in Parliament, stoked by the efforts of the Falklanders’ lobbying group. Tired of Britain’s lack of flexibility, the military government of Argentina grew increasingly restive over the status of the islands as the 150th anniversary of the British navy’s return to the islands approached. Fearing the consequences on its credibility at home if a resolution was not in sight by then, the government in Buenos Aires took advantage of an opportunity presented by an altercation between Argentina scrap metal dealers and the British navy on nearby South Georgia Island and launched an invasion of the Falklands on April 2, 1982.4 Although the invasion was intended to be a bloodless surprise that would compel the British to adopt a more forthcoming negotiation posture, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher responded by deploying a naval task force to the south Atlantic to dislodge the Argentines by force if necessary. Britain’s choice to respond militarily was not automatic; that is, under Haass’s criteria, the survival of the United Kingdom was hardly at stake. Without question this was an assault on British territory; a different prime A War of Choice?

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minister might have opted for a less belligerent course of action. After all, this was British territory London was seeking to relinquish. Even among Thatcher’s closest supporters there was doubt “that the islands were worth a fight.” Top Thatcher policy adviser John Hoskyns confided in his diary on April 5 his fear “that we are about to make almighty fools of ourselves.”5 A focus on intensive diplomacy was certainly an option. The task force might have been sent, but more as a ploy to encourage the Argentines to provide a face-saving negotiated solution than as a preliminary step to taking back the islands by force. In the final analysis, Thatcher was not interested in compromise. In part, this was a product of her personality, but it also reflected the political conditions of her government, which some observers argue would countenance no alternative to the course of action chosen.6 By sailing the fleet south, she steered Britain toward war, a choice that was popular but not foreordained. Other prime ministers might have adopted an approach more oriented toward diplomacy and not wielded the saber from the outset as unrelentingly as did the “Iron Lady.” Democratic Structure: Westminster Parliamentary Democracy

What role did the institutional structure of the United Kingdom play in the gestation of Thatcher’s reaction to the Argentine invasion? All democracies have a system of checks and balances to limit the COG’s power, but the specific institutional arrangements vary across subtypes. Miriam Elman explicates some of the unique features of different democratic subtypes and the divergent impact each structure is likely to have on decisions to use force. The prototypical Westminster parliamentary democracy, the British political system accords the prime minister much authority over foreign policy, as power over external affairs is centralized in the hands of those who successfully secured majority support of the electorate.7 Elman suggests that the strong majoritarian nature of the Westminster system would render its COG most risk-averse among democratic subtypes as their policymaking autonomy allows voters to identify easily where responsibility lies for foreign policy failures. Schaefer and Walker offer a contrasting view, claiming that because executives in presidential systems occupy a separate branch of government, this renders war-making authority more centralized and autonomous, and therefore, they are more likely to escalate conflicts than are COGs in parliamentary democracies.8 At the same time, the majoritarian Westminster system might be the democratic subtype most prone to the imperial myth making that Snyder argues provokes empire building and overexpansion. In Myths of Empire, Snyder contends that small, self-interested groups may wield influence disproportionate to their size and persuade decisionmakers of the necessity for territorial acquisition.9

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Building on this idea, Elman concludes that with decisionmaking authority concentrated among a small coterie of fellow partisans, groups lobbying for an expansionary foreign policy in a Westminster parliamentary democracy only need to persuade a few key actors to advance the cause of empire.10 Perhaps Britain’s inability to negotiate a resolution of the dispute over the Falklands before 1982 as well as its uncompromising response to Argentina’s military assault may be attributed to the structural characteristics of the Westminster system. Elman contends that in majoritarian systems, there is a greater likelihood of war when the COG is more hawkish than the legislature, whereas when the COG is more dovish than parliament, she predicts more moderate foreign policies. The former observation is borne out in the Falklands case, but prior to the Argentine attack, prime ministers were unable to secure sufficient support from hardline legislators to negotiate an exit from the islands. For example, when Nicholas Ridley, minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, appeared before the House of Commons in 1980 to discuss the idea of “leaseback,” he received a reception so hostile that reports noted he departed “ashen and shaking.” Similarly, a September 23, 1981, letter from a Foreign Ministry official to the British ambassador in Buenos Aires warned that the domestic political environment “prevent(s) us from taking any steps which might be interpreted either as putting pressure on the Islanders or as overruling their wishes.”11 Can the Falklands case bring clarity to these contrasting reckonings of the consequences of this subtype on making war? To what extent did the idiosyncrasies of this democratic subtype figure in the decision to retake the Falklands? What role did Thatcher’s leadership play in the choice of war? Alternatively, can our understanding of this case be best advanced through a focus on democratic norms and the dexterity with which the COG incorporated liberal themes that resonated favorably with British identity in her appeals in the marketplace of ideas? Democracy and War: The Falklands Case

Using the preeminent database for the quantitative study of war, the Correlates of War project, David Lake counts twelve wars involving democracies between 1945 and 1982.12 Interestingly, with 913 battlefield deaths,13 the conflict over the Falklands falls short of the established threshold of 1,000 casualties for inclusion under the criteria used in large-N studies of war (though Lake includes it in his analysis). Since democracies fought in so few wars during the post–World War II period, to dismiss this “war” from close scrutiny because of an arbitrary decision to operationalize war at a particular level of casualties should be a nonstarter.14 Instead, Britain’s choice to fight this war, against a capable sovereign state, where the prospects for success

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were uncertain, illuminates assorted behaviors attributed to democracies where closer inspection is warranted. Importantly, of my five cases, this was the only unqualified victory, so perhaps careful scrutiny may reveal the necessary ingredients for a successful democratic choice for war. From a cursory glance, one might assume that the United Kingdom’s impressive victory was easy to achieve, but in actuality its triumph in the Falklands was by no means a foregone conclusion. After all, the two belligerents were fairly evenly matched, and the Royal Navy had to project state power a very long way from the homeland. At the same time, Britain’s economic woes and the presence of a large and vocal peace movement presaged much domestic contention over the costs of such an enterprise, rendering the choice of war a risky proposition for Thatcher’s government. Given the physical distance of the Falklands from Britain, there was ample time for a debate in the marketplace of ideas to unfold and create impediments to the execution of the prime minister’s plans. None of these factors weighed very much in the run-up to the war, however. To understand why, I turn to two leading explanations for the democratic peace—the selection effects and consent models—which by focusing on the impact of democratic structure offer useful guidance for making sense of British domestic politics and the Falklands War. At the same time, by failing to account for the role of liberal norms in democratic consideration of war, these models miss an essential component of democratic wars of choice. Both the selection effects and consent models argue that the choice to go to war in a democracy carries risk for decisionmakers and serves to make democracies more formidable foes for potential aggressors. The consent model explains how concern over the potentially negative political consequences of war leads democratic leaders to be cautious before taking up arms.15 Relatedly, the selection effects framework proposes that democracies only fight wars they can win.16 Certainly retaking the Falklands was not an easy prospect for the British military, with Thatcher’s Defence Minister John Nott informing her so at the early stages of the crisis. Yet the prime minister embarked on a path to war that had the potential to be costly, if not disastrous. Why? Neither the consent nor selection effects model sheds light on the mechanism that renders some wars a risk worth taking and others a course of action democratic leaders ought to avoid. Similarly, realist accounts that emphasize the COG’s obligation to defend the national interest, regardless of domestic politics, cannot help advance our understanding of how the state interest in democracies reflects some amalgam produced at the intersection of politics and policy, when democratic institutions and liberal norms mix. Reiter and Stam conclude that the institutional constraint provided by public opinion and ultimately elections leads democracies to fight wars they are likely to win, but that norms have nothing to do with democratic choices.

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While Reiter and Stam’s consent model assumes a prominent role for public opinion, they provide no insight for what types of force a particular public would be willing to endorse, noting, “what is a reasonable cause for war for one public may not be reasonable for another.”17 But what is “reasonable” is partly a function of how the choice of war is framed and how the decision to use force is implemented. Democratic publics react to how leaders define the problem that underlies the choice in favor of war; contestation in the marketplace of ideas (or the lack thereof) signals whether the COG’s problem definition fits the normative criteria for why this democratic state fights. Thus, the logic of appropriateness—a normative construct—colors the government’s response to the threat perceived by the COG. Research on the selection effects explanation of the democratic peace offers some other suggestive findings applicable to this case. First, proponents of this line of argument propose that democracies are more successful in war than are nondemocracies owing to the open debate that allows options to be vetted by a broad range of actors.18 The Falklands case provides some validation of this premise. Certainly, the Argentines seriously misread British intentions to reinforce their military assets in the Falklands prior to the invasion, mistakenly basing its assessment of British intentions on reports in the British press.19 The military hierarchy in Buenos Aires accepted at face value British media reports that submarines were being dispatched to the Falklands, erroneously believing that such leaks must be a product of government intent, which was always the case with the press in authoritarian Argentina.20 The government’s misinformed closed decision-making circle, therefore, launched the attack under the premise that a reinforced British presence in the south Atlantic would preclude the possibility of a bloodless invasion. Furthermore, as Gibran observes, “blind stupidity” led the military to pursue a course of action from which they would not be deterred as “they deliberately tuned out any information that did not dovetail with their grandiose plans.”21 By contrast, as I develop below, deliberation and debate yielded a British response that, although reflecting the preferences of Thatcher’s Conservative government, succeeded owing to the broad input of various institutions in the British system. Importantly, this debate and deliberation in decisionmaking is normative in democracies. Second, selection effects advocates wonder whether democracies form a community of interests in which resources are pooled to deter or win a war. Although Reiter and Stam find no evidence of this tendency in their data, the Falklands case does present a suggestive observation of how democracies constitute a normative community.22 According to Freedman and Gamba-Stonehouse, when US secretary of state Al Haig went to Buenos Aires early in the crisis to try to mediate the dispute and avoid a war, he advised military leader General Leopoldo Galtieri: “In the liberal world the sentiment is overwhelmingly in favour of Great Britain and

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would remain so if it comes to a confrontation.”23 Also, in an earlier effort to ward off Argentina’s imminent assault, US president Ronald Reagan warned Galtieri of the negative consequences such an invasion would have on US and world public opinion.24 In her correspondence with Reagan seeking US diplomatic and material support on April 16, Thatcher wrote that should Argentina’s act of aggression not be reversed, “the fundamental principles for which the free world stands would be shattered.” She closed her letter imploring, “it is essential that America, our closest friend and ally, should share with us a common perception of the fundamental issues of democracy and freedom which are at stake.”25 Again, at the root of democratic support is the sense of shared norms and the belief that liberal states constitute a community of mutual support, which might fall short of belligerency but certainly incorporates crucial diplomatic and material aid. More to the point, this shared liberal identity imposes another normative check on public consent: when the state engages in a war of choice, the liberal purpose for which the war is to be fought receives affirmation from the community of like-minded societies. Finally, Reiter and Stam maintain that the institutions of democracy lead officials to pursue only those wars they think they can win and fight these wars with an eye to limiting their duration and cost. They find no evidence to substantiate a role for the norm of peaceful conflict resolution or live-and-let-live in democratic behavior. Instead, leaders of democracies only choose war when they anticipate a high degree of public consent for the option. Yet one attribute of democracy at the core of their argument is actually normative: for public consent to be granted, the institutions of the democracy must ratify the choice. That is, the norm of democratic deliberation must be heeded for the ensuing war to be successful. Democratic norms were at the heart of Thatcher’s effort to rally British citizens behind her policy. According to Stephen Van Evera, one goal of case study research is “to see whether events unfold in the manner predicted and (if the subject involves human behavior) whether actors speak and act as the theory predicts.”26 Under democratic peace theory we would expect that leaders, even if motivated by realist concerns alone, would be constrained by society to choose and then justify war only for liberal ends. Democratic norms and the power of the COG’s appeal to these norms in the British marketplace of ideas played a crucial role in the successful prosecution of this conflict. Perhaps this choice of war succeeded in producing the results initially sought by the COG, because British war aims and the normative justification for the use of force fit Britain’s democratic identity so well that society accepted readily the sacrifices required to achieve state goals. On April 27, 1982, Thatcher made reference to democratic peace logic during an interview on the BBC television program Panorama when she said of the Argentines: “I hope it will make them realize that we are quietly deter-

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mined in support of a principle.” She continued, “We do not want to use force. Democracies never do.”27 I chart more fully Thatcher’s effort to justify the choice of war in terms of democratic norms before turning to an examination of elite debate. I then evaluate the level of consensus on the Falklands among members of the House of Commons and present my analysis of media coverage and public opinion. Characterizing Thatcher’s definition of the problem that she argued required the use of force is crucial to this effort. Making the Appeal: The Government’s Frame

When addressing the House of Commons during a rare Saturday session (the 1956 Suez War being the previous instance), Thatcher outlined the case for a military response to the Argentine assault. The Times presented the ominous context for the session on its front page: “In a political and military crisis without parallel since the Suez operation of 1956, Mrs Margaret Thatcher will today face a hostile House of Commons, demanding to know why British interests in the Falkland Islands have not been protected.”28 Politically, Thatcher had little leeway in striking a forceful reply to Argentina’s action. Both Conservative backbenchers and the Labour opposition were questioning the government’s competence in allowing the Argentines to succeed in the surprise attack. Times reporter Philip Webster observed “a sense of humiliation among Conservative MPs that a Government which came to power with a commitment to strengthen the nation’s defence policy could not prevent the invasion of one of its few remaining overseas territories.”29 In her remarks, Thatcher endeavored to parry charges that her government bore responsibility for inviting the attack and asserted the case for why the invasion must be reversed. Thatcher began by referencing the material national interest threatened by Argentina’s action: “We are here because, for the first time for many years, British sovereign territory has been invaded by a foreign power.” She then declared “the Government’s objective to see that the islands are freed from occupation and are returned to British administration at the earliest possible moment.” However, in her speech before the House of Commons and in subsequent remarks, she defined the problem not primarily as an assault on British sovereignty or even as an act of aggression that needed to be addressed for that reason alone. Rather, the problem was Argentine aggression against the rights of the Falklanders: We have absolutely no doubt about our sovereignty, which has been continuous since 1833. Nor have we any doubt about the unequivocal wishes of the Falkland Islanders, who are British in stock and tradition, and they wish to remain British in allegiance. We cannot allow the democratic rights of the islanders to be denied by the territorial ambitions of Argentina.30

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From early on, Thatcher emphasized the people of the Falklands and their ties to Britain. Despite the proximity of the islands to Argentina, the inhabitants identified themselves as British. She characterized the Falklanders as sharing a British identity: “The people of the Falkland Islands, like the people of the United Kingdom, are an island race. Their way of life is British; their allegiance is to the Crown.”31 While Thatcher may have been moved to rectify the blow to national honor, or to show resolve in resisting armed aggression, concepts central to a modern liberal democratic identity, including respect for self-determination and adherence to norms of peaceful conflict resolution, formed the essence of her public justification for war. To the prime minister and her constituents, there was no irony in using military power to defend these norms. Self-determination was a key ingredient of the government’s framing of its policy. Not only did the Argentines violate the Falklanders’ “right to live in peace,” but their right “to determine their own allegiance.”32 She concluded by framing the choice for war in terms of a moral obligation on the part of the British to act in defense of the self-determination of the people of the Falklands: “It is the wish of the British people and the duty of Her Majesty’s Government to do everything that we can to uphold that right.”33 To appreciate the flavor of elite debate over Thatcher’s approach to the Falklands, I offer a limited sampling of newspaper editorials to encapsulate the main themes of contention voiced by Britain’s political elite. Just prior to the Argentine invasion, as tensions rose over a dispute on nearby South Georgia island, The Times editorialized that “it would be wrong to give Argentina the impression that any sudden Anschluss would go unopposed.”34 This was just the beginning of The Times using World War II language to portray Argentina and its actions in an unfavorable light. For example, in its first editorial after the invasion, The Times labeled it “as perfect an example of unprovoked aggression and military expansion as the world has had to witness since the end of Adolf Hitler.”35 The Times editorial also evoked the theme of self-determination, melding it with a recitation of prior circumstances when Britain helped victims of aggression as in World War II. The editorial pointed out, however, that unlike the Poles, who were foreign, the Falklanders “have not only been able repeatedly to make clear their unanimous and strong desire not to be part of Argentina but also are of manifestly different stock from the Argentine population and in no sense of Argentine origin. The islands and their inhabitants have been British for as long as Argentina has been a state.”36 The government frame of its action as one supporting self-determination of a people who were substantially British and against a despotic regime Elite Debate

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that violated all sorts of liberal norms was given credence by such elite commentary. Indeed, there were few voices in Parliament that could provide a politically tenable counterframe. The cabinet was united, with only one member raising doubts on the evening of April 2 when the government decided to send the task force south.37 Only a small minority of left-wing Labour MPs were against sending the task force. The British peace movement, so prominent on the question of nuclear arms, was relatively silent on the Falklands issue.38 An antiwar organization was formed, the Ad Hoc Committee for Peace in the Falkland Islands, but its membership was small and its political reach limited. As the task force took shape and began steaming toward the south Atlantic, the only debate of note was between those advocating an uncompromising posture vis-à-vis the military government and others who were willing to negotiate. This distinction is best represented by the disagreement between Foreign Minister Francis Pym and former Conservative prime minister Edward Heath, who were sympathetic to a negotiated settlement on one hand, and Thatcher along with Tory backbenchers, who opposed any hint of relinquishing British sovereignty. A London Press Association report published on April 22 noted a “serious split” in the cabinet as the task force approached the Falklands, with one group advocating efforts at diplomacy and educating international opinion on the merits of the British case, while the majority of the cabinet sought to “pull the trigger.”39 Indeed, a resolution to the crisis that ensured British “administration” of the islands, while granting Argentina de jure sovereignty or some form of “lease back” where the islanders’ preference to remain under British control could be accommodated, were rejected as tantamount to appeasement by Thatcher and many of her Tory supporters.40 Elite voices such as The Guardian offered a contrary voice to Thatcher’s point of view in the marketplace of ideas, editorializing that the Falklands had no “strategic or commercial British interest worth fighting for.”41 But the skepticism of The Guardian and of the Daily Mirror42 could not overcome the saturation of endorsements in the public square for the official narrative affirming Thatcher’s choice of war to defend three key democratic principles: self-determination, the British way of life, and the argument that aggression should not pay.43 As Thatcher characterized it in her memoirs: “We were defending our honour as a nation, and principles of fundamental importance to the whole world—above all, that aggressors should never succeed and that international law should prevail over the use of force.”44 Even if these were merely fodder for public consumption, providing the justificatory protein the people craved, Thatcher was effective in her presentation, as these ideas resonated broadly and strongly virtually across the British political spectrum. It may be, as Gibran argues, that Thatcher’s true motives for taking on the Argentine military reflected more

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her concerns over “pride, prestige, and international image” than democratic norms.45 More significant for our purposes is the point that the prime minister could only build support sufficient for going to war by appealing strongly and consistently to these democratic values, shared across the British elite and the wider body politic. As a Westminster parliamentary democracy, foreign policy making was concentrated among Thatcher’s cabinet and advisers. Her government won election on May 4, 1979, meaning that another vote of the people would be held by May 1984. The Conservatives held a forty-three-seat majority in the House of Commons, leaving Labour and the much smaller Social Democratic Party with no tools other than public debate to affect policy. Thatcher’s economic policies had induced a severe economic downturn with a concomitant slide in her popularity that was beginning to turn around. Coincidentally, on the day before the Argentine invasion, the Conservative Party took its first lead in election polls in eight months. Although her political position was improving, as Freedman notes, Thatcher “was taking an enormous gamble” in going to war to liberate the Falklands.46 The Labour opposition leader, Michael Foot, while unsparing in his criticism of the Thatcher government’s policies toward the Falklands and defense in general prior to the Argentine invasion, echoed sentiments similar to the prime minister’s when he took the floor of the Commons during the April 3 debate, calling it a “moral duty” to assist the Falklanders. Coming from the political left, he also offered a refutation of one of the justifications for Argentina’s action: “There was no question of any colonial dependency but of people who wished to be associated with the country and who had built their lives on the basis of association with this country.”47 One possible counterframe to Thatcher’s approach, that this was a retrograde defense of an outdated empire, had no politically prominent mouthpiece. According to Lawrence Freedman’s official history, the April 3 House of Commons debate put the principles of self-determination and the Munich lesson not to reward aggression at the forefront of British purposes and established “a bipartisan consensus.”48 In fact, well before Argentina’s invasion, Labour had already established positions in support of the Falklanders’ right to selfdetermination and against allowing the islanders to come under the control of an Argentine government that was an abuser of human rights.49 As discussed already, Labour leader Foot’s speech in Parliament on April 3 provided Thatcher “with a degree of popular support that might otherwise have been unobtainable.”50 Still, some left-wing Labour MPs did oppose going to war against Argentina. For example, at a meeting of such members on April 5, left-wing Labourite Wedgwood “Tony” Benn argued against proGovernment Institutions

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When Democracies Choose War

viding support for Thatcher’s policy, but as The Times reported, even among Labour’s most hard-line members, Benn’s position was in the minority.51 There was consensus within Labour, as across the British political spectrum, that as Foot put it, “if the dictators of Argentina or anywhere else got into their heads that whenever they wanted to grab someone’s else’s territory they could do it with impunity the world would be more dangerous.”52 Similarly, to an audience sympathetic to Labour in the United States six weeks later, as the task force was about to engage the Argentines, Peter Shore, a Labour shadow minister, shared the party’s stand that “in no circumstances” would it “accept the handover of the Falklands against the will of their inhabitants.”53 Shore reiterated to the US audience the position that this conflict was not a matter of British colonialism but of Argentine aggression. Thatcher defined the problem of Argentine aggression as an assault on liberal democratic values that Britain was obligated to defend. She encountered little opposition in Parliament to her problem definition of the Falklands case. More contentious was Thatcher’s specific policy choices in conducting the war, in terms of the substance of her approach and in the procedures she adopted in pursuit of her goals. Interestingly, Thatcher effectively parried opposition charges that the government was slow and timid in its response to the provocation on South Georgia and in its use of the United Nations Security Council to diffuse the crisis, with the argument that had she been more aggressive and unilateral, she would have been “accused of war mongering and sabre rattling.”54 Without question, Thatcher proceeded with an awareness of the dangers of her mission. After all, during her first briefing on the crisis Defence Minister John Nott informed her of his ministry’s view that once Argentina took the Falklands, Her Majesty’s armed forces would be unable to reverse it.55 Such a defeatist attitude was anathema to Thatcher, who sought an assessment from Chief of the Naval Staff Sir Henry Leach. Leach recommended the immediate assembly of a naval task force, which he was confident could retake the islands. While the prime minister received the support from the House of Commons for sending the task force, she was aware that members approved of her policy for different reasons. She wondered, as she wrote in her memoirs, “how long could a coalition of opinion survive that was composed of warriors, negotiators and even virtual pacifists?”56 Despite attaining the backing of the House of Commons for her policy on April 3, Thatcher understood the precarious nature of her political support. She realized, she wrote later, “as most MPs could not, the full extent of the practical military problems.”57 She anticipated difficulties ahead that would likely lead her support among hawks to wither. As the task force progressed south and the prospect of war grew increasingly real, Thatcher’s political opposition became more critical. For

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example, Foot wrote a letter demanding that Thatcher consult with the House “to judge for itself the nature of the diplomatic settlement available” before launching an attack.58 In Commons, following Foot’s assertion of the House’s right to pass judgment on the proposals prior to a landing, Thatcher responded: “Mr. Foot is constitutionally wrong, practically wrong, and wrong when it comes to judging the interests of our people in the task force and in the Falklands.”59 The quality of her alliterative retort notwithstanding, as long as the opposition failed to challenge the prime minister’s definition of the problem that justified the war of choice, her direction of Falklands policy would continue unimpeded by domestic political debate. Here I characterize media coverage through a content analysis of media frames. Thatcher’s definition of the problem posed by Argentina’s capture of the Falklands, along with her chosen remedy, was subject to scrutiny in the British marketplace of ideas. Whether opposition was just a trickle or an avalanche, its potency can best be measured through a content analysis of media coverage. Thatcher’s framing of the problem necessitating war—that the Argentine seizure of the Falklands was an affront to the rights of the islanders by a regime renowned for its abuses on that score—could be challenged on any number of grounds. The main axis of criticism of her framing of the war decision—of any move by a democracy to war—at its essence must boil down to where on the choice continuum the proposed action belongs. To gauge not only the magnitude of opposition to Thatcher’s presentation of war to dislodge the Argentines from the Falklands but the extent to which any criticism could be politically potent, I analyze the overall direction of each story in the Times and the position of each individual judgment on the framing of the war contained in each item. Owing to its limited duration, the Falklands War meets the criteria for a Type 1 case. Therefore, I sample newspaper coverage at regular periods and do not concentrate my content analysis on potential turning points, as with Type 2 cases. I examined all Falklands-related articles in the London Times at three-week intervals beginning on April 1, 1982. Owing to differences in format, the Sunday Times was not included in my analysis. Juncture 1 (April 1–7) begins on the eve of the Argentine invasion and includes the initial debate in the House of Commons. During this time the government’s problem definition is established in the marketplace of ideas. Next I consider The Times coverage from April 22 to April 28. As the task force steamed toward the Falklands, coverage focused on efforts by the United States to mediate the dispute, along with the Royal Marines retaking South Georgia on April 25, and the concomitant shift (as the Times editorialized) to taking “forceful action, as distinct from threatening it.”60 Juncture 3, Media Coverage

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May 13–19, features much debate over the extent to which Britain should make concessions to avoid war. (British ground troops landed at San Carlos on May 21; the Battle of Goose Green, the first major land battle of the war, occurred on May 28.) Several Conservative MPs railed against media coverage during this interval, especially on the part of the BBC. Reports also surfaced during this period of a split within the cabinet between those wanting to avoid war through compromise and others unwilling to settle for anything but the restoration of full British sovereignty.61 These disputes erupted when it was learned that only Argentine rejection of a Peruvian proposal shelved a settlement to avoid war. As the Times alleged, under the Peruvian plan Thatcher agreed “in the interests of diplomacy to allow at least two of her main positions of principle—the restoration of British administration and the paramountcy of the wishes of the Falklanders—to be undermined.”62 Juncture 4, June 3–9, offers detailed coverage of military engagements and discussion of imminent British victory. My analysis of coverage in the Times confirms the unity of British elites on the government’s approach to the war. Though The Times is generally considered sympathetic to Tory governments, content analysis of its coverage can nevertheless provide a valuable window on how well Thatcher’s framing of the war resonated in the British marketplace of ideas. Other media outlets may be more or less disposed to accept an official characterization, but I assume that in a democracy dissent in the marketplace of ideas will emerge regardless of editorial disposition. I begin by considering the overall tenor of Times items in our database at the level of each individual record (article, opinion piece, or editorial). Table 4.1 reveals that very few articles on the Falklands crisis took on a negative tone. In fact, at the outset of the conflict during Juncture 1, 60 percent of Times coverage took a positive slant on British Falklands policy. Table 4.1 Overall Frequency Count of Coded Items Case

April 1–7, 1982 n April 22–28, 1982 n May 13–19, 1982 n June 3–9, 1982 n Total n

Positive 60.0% 45 40.0% 18 37.7% 29 48.1% 37 47.1% 129

Negative 1.3% 1 2.2% 1 13.0% 10 3.9% 3 5.5% 15

Neutral 38.7% 29 57.8% 26 49.4% 38 48.1% 37 47.4% 130

Total Articles 75

45 77

77

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Britain’s War to Retake the Falklands

119

Thereafter, coverage was perhaps not so enthusiastic, but there was a dearth of items in the Times during the other three time periods that were coded as being hostile to Thatcher’s approach. Given the norm of objective journalism, we would anticipate most news articles adopting a neutral tone. As discussed further later, news articles constitute 75 percent of the Falklands data set, so my expectation would be that overall coverage would skew toward neutral. Indeed, I find neutral the modal category in Junctures 2 and 3. The glow of triumph colored the coverage during Juncture 4, with an equal number of records coded supportive as neutral. The flow of supportive coverage documented in this analysis must have been pleasing to the prime minister’s office, as a leading national media outlet contained very few items that tilted against what the government’s definition of the problem and proposed remedy endeavored to achieve. With Table 4.2 I switch levels of analysis to individual judgments (up to eight) offered in each record. I categorize the sources offering their judgments in the newspaper according to whether they are likely allies (i.e., members of the governing Conservative Party), opponents of the government, or neutral actors such as experts, interest groups, and the public. Across the board, we see support for the government, with even opposition Labour ministers being only slightly less likely to offer positive judgments than negative ones (43.5 percent to 44.4 percent). To this point we see a media environment weighted toward neutral and government sources, with fairly universal support for official policy. I dig more deeply into the coverage and consider whether the frame of each judgment offered conveyed approval or criticism of either the official problem definition, policy, or the prime minister’s leadership. Importantly, we observe in Table 4.3 overwhelming approval of the government’s problem definition in the Falklands crisis. This is crucial.

Table 4.2 Judgments on the War Coded by the Likely Allegiance to the Chief of Government Ally n Enemy n Neutral n Total n

Support 76.0% 237 43.5% 54 60.1% 191 63.9% 482

Oppose 10.9% 34 44.4% 55 26.7% 85 23.1% 174

Neutral 13.1% 41 12.1% 15 13.2% 42 13.0% 98

Total 312

124

318

754

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When Democracies Choose War

Table 4.3 Frames of Coded Judgments on the War Frame

Problem definition column percentagea n = 357 Policy column percentagea n = 174 Leadership column percentagea n = 68 Unclear column percentagea n = 68 None column percentagea n = 87 Total n = 754

Support 83.2% 61.6% 297 41.3% 14.9% 72 41.2% 5.8% 28 57.4% 8.1% 39 52.9% 9.5% 46 482

Oppose 11.2% 23.0% 40 35.1% 35.1% 61 44.1% 17.2% 30 25.0% 9.8% 17 29.9% 14.9% 26 174

Neutral 5.6% 20.4% 20 23.6% 41.8% 41 14.7% 10.2% 10 17.6% 12.2% 12 17.2% 15.3% 15 98

Note: a. See note to Table 3.3 for explanation for “column percentage” data, p. 82.

As indicated in Table 4.3, almost 85 percent of the problem definition judgments were approving of the official justification for war. Thatcher’s diagnosis of the situation in the Falklands and her prescription for dealing with it met with almost universal acclaim in Times coverage. I consider the political perspective of those offering judgments on Thatcher’s framing of the war in Table 4.4. I find that regardless of political stance, consensus levels of those offering judgments approved of Thatcher’s problem definition. For example, of the fifty-six judgments by her political opponents on the problem-definition frame, almost 70 percent were supportive. The judgment frames of political opponents were more critical on policy (44 percent) and leadership (70 percent negative), but still, opponents had little to offer in terms of establishing a counterframe to Thatcher’s narrative of why war was necessary or even how her objectives could best be attained. Neutral observers, who provided over 40 percent of all judgments, were supportive of the government 60 percent of the time. Neutral observers did not contribute much to a counterframing effort either, as 80 percent of their judgments on Thatcher’s problem definition were positive. Indeed, only the barest plurality of neutrals’ judgments on the policy frame were opposed to official policy (42.7 percent negative to 37.3 percent supportive). Opponents offered 16.4 percent of the total judgments, neutrals 42.2 percent, with Thatcher and

121 Table 4.4 Comparison of Frames Coded According to the Individual’s Likely Allegiance to the Chief of Government Source Ally

Neutral

Opponents

Frame

Problem definition n Policy n Leadership n Unclear n None n Total n

Problem definition n Policy n Leadership n Unclear n None n Total n

Problem definition n Policy n Leadership n Unclear n None n Total n

Support

Oppose

Neutral

Total

90.8% 139 48.6% 36 80.0% 12 64.0% 16 75.6% 34 76.0% 237

5.2% 8 24.3% 18 6.7% 1 12.0% 3 8.9% 4 10.9% 34

3.9% 6 27.0% 20 13.3% 2 24.0% 6 15.6% 7 13.1% 41

49.0% 153 23.7% 74 4.8% 15 8.0% 25 14.4% 45

80.4% 119 37.3% 28 52.0% 13 59.4% 19 31.6% 12 60.1% 191

12.2% 18 42.7% 32 36.0% 9 25.0% 8 47.4% 18 26.7% 85

7.4% 11 20.0% 15 12.0% 3 15.6% 5 21.1% 8 13.2% 42

46.5% 148 23.6% 75 7.9% 25 10.1% 32 11.9% 38

69.6% 39 32.0% 8 10.7% 3 36.4% 4 0.0% 0 43.5% 54

25.0% 14 44.0% 11 71.4% 20 54.5% 6 100.0% 4 44.4% 55

5.4% 3 24.0% 6 17.9% 5 9.1% 1 0.0% 0 12.1% 15

45.2% 56 20.2% 25 22.6% 28 8.9% 11 3.2% 4

312

318

124

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When Democracies Choose War

other officials providing the rest. Opposition judgments were not only relatively sparse at 16.4 percent of the total, the low frequency with which Thatcher’s political opponents were permitted entry to the debate represented by the Times translates to less than one-third of the judgments criticizing the government in these data being contributed by the loyal opposition. At the outset, when the basic outline of the British response to Argentina’s assault was being shaped, dissenting judgments rarely appeared in the pages of the Times. Even Thatcher’s political opponents offered few criticisms of her problem definition, as Table 4.4 displays. Coverage reveals a more lively marketplace of ideas on policy choice and Thatcher’s leadership, with unaffiliated sources offering a mix of judgments on policy and opponents clearly taking the prime minister’s leadership to task. Negative sentiment usually came from political opponents over policy and leadership issues, for instance, criticism over the prospect that the Thatcher cabinet would approve a compromise settlement and/or complaint about official denunciation of media coverage that presented the Argentine side of the issue.63 Table 4.5 teases out frame judgments by each juncture of analysis. During the crucial first week, as Thatcher sought to define the problem as justifying the choice of war, critical judgments were absent across the key framing categories. Only during subsequent time periods did some negative counterframing emerge, and this was mostly in the category of leadership, with observers criticizing Thatcher’s level of consultation with Parliament or willingness to cooperate with the United Nations. Negative judgments in the leadership frame constitute a small portion of all judgments across the four time periods; moreover, only in the categories of policy and leadership frames do we see any evidence of engaged debate. Most striking is the broad support for Thatcher’s problem definition, the key frame to generate support for a characterization of a war as nearing the pole of necessity on the choice continuum. Disaggregating the Times coverage by format shows that despite the expectation of journalistic objectivity, a high proportion of news articles were supportive (46.3 percent of 205). Opinion journalism in the Times also leaned toward the government’s position, with 46.2 percent (18 of 39 total) supportive, and less than 10 percent (3 of 39) negative. My findings complement a study of BBC programming touching on task force families from May 1 to June 14 by the Glasgow University Media Group. These researchers found minimal coverage of any doubts among service members’ families about the purposes behind their loved ones’ sacrifice.64 With elites united behind the government’s policy, media coverage apparently shied away from offering a platform for dissenting voices. Moreover, without a counterframe for British action, the concerns of family members about their sacrifices did not fit the consensus narrative that British forces were once again fighting the good fight against an evil foe.

123 Table 4.5 Comparison of Frames of Coded Judgments per Juncture Problem Definition

Policy

Leadership

Unclear

None

Row Total

85.3% 122 8.4% 12 6.3% 9

41.7% 15 33.3% 12 25.0% 9

66.7% 8 16.7% 2 16.7% 2

70.4% 19 18.5% 5 11.1% 3

5.5% 17 35.5% 11 9.7% 3

72.7% 181 16.9% 42 10.4% 26

April 1–7, 1982 Support n Oppose n Neutral n Column total n

57.4% 143

April 22–28, 1982 Support n Oppose n Neutral n Column total n

76.9% 50 16.9% 11 6.1% 4 40.1% 65

May 13–19, 1982

Support n Oppose n Neutral n Column total n

79.1% 53 11.9% 8 9.0% 6

34.9% 67

June 3–9, 1982

Support n Oppose n Neutral n Column total n

87.8% 72 11.0% 9 1.2% 1

54.4% 82

14.5% 36

56.5% 26 26.1% 12 17.4% 8 28.4% 46

33.3% 22 43.9% 29 22.7% 15

34.4% 66

34.6% 9 30.8% 8 34.6% 9

17.2% 26

4.8% 12

40.0% 10 40.0% 10 20.0% 5 15.4% 25

14.3% 3 71.4% 15 14.3% 3

10.9% 21

70.0% 7 30.0% 3 0.0% 0 6.6% 10

10.8% 27

12.4% 31

6.8% 11

9.3% 15

45.5% 5 45.5% 5 9.1% 1

46.7% 7 26.7% 4 26.7% 4 7.8% 15

53.3% 8 20.0% 3 26.7% 4 9.9% 15

60.0% 9 20.0% 3 20.0% 3

34.8% 8 39.1% 9 26.1% 6

12.0% 23

66.7% 12 16.7% 3 16.7% 3 11.9% 18

249

61.7% 100 25.3% 41 13.0% 21 162

48.4% 93 33.9% 65 17.7% 34 192

71.5% 108 17.2% 26 11.3% 17 151

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This was not happenstance. The government succeeded in creating an environment where the airing of negative coverage was labeled unpatriotic. For instance, in May Tory members of Parliament excoriated the BBC for a Panorama broadcast that provided some discussion of the Argentine point of view in the crisis.65 Similarly, Thatcher writes in her memoirs of her unhappiness with “The attempted ‘even-handedness’” of media commentary, along with “the chilling use of the third-person—talk of ‘the British’ and ‘the Argentinians’ on our news programmes.”66 Interestingly, the regular public opinion summary delivered to the prime minister included mention of a May 10 Gallup survey administered on behalf of the Daily Telegraph showing that 62 percent of those questioned found BBC coverage of the Falklands fair. Furthermore, 59 percent of respondents thought the criticism directed at the BBC “for not fairly representing the British point of view” in the war was not justified.67 Irrespective of the efforts of Conservative partisans to lodge these complaints about media coverage, the foregoing analysis demonstrates that the material sampled in the Times was overwhelmingly supportive of Thatcher’s approach to the Falklands situation. Without a resonant counterframe to Thatcher’s problem definition and remedy presented in the news media, oppositional public opinion likely would not be activated. The prime minister effectively put forth her case, the political opposition was sufficiently acquiescent, at least on the key problem-definition frame, and the government successfully managed the marketplace of ideas. Accordingly, one would expect that the public would find little basis to reject Thatcher’s stewardship of the war. Using published polls and secondary analyses, I turn to an examination of British public opinion on the Falklands War itself and the apparent effect Thatcher’s leadership had on the fortunes of her party. Thatcher’s conduct of the war and Britain’s triumph in the Falklands contributed to a rise in her party’s political fortunes, though the degree to which this improvement was a product of broader economic forces remains in dispute. There are at least four studies of the effect of the war on Thatcher’s popularity.68 Whether Thatcher’s conduct of the war bears full, some, or marginal responsibility for her party’s improving political fortunes and her own reputation are matters for others to dissect. Suffice it to say that polling during the war show a marked increase in Conservative Party support between April 12 and May 28, 1982 (see Table 4.6). Another sign of political endorsement for Thatcher’s war policy was delivered in early June, when Conservative Angela Rumbold won a by-election demanded by an incumbent who had been narrowly elected as a Labour candidate in 1979 but wanted to face the voters after he switched to the newly formed Social Public Opinion

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Table 4.6 Party Preference in Next UK General Election (in %)

Party

Conservative Labour Liberal/Social Democratic Party alliance Other

April 14 33 34

30 3

Source: Ipsos MORI.

“How would you vote if there were a general election tomorrow?” April 20–21

April 23–24

May 3–5

May 16

May 25–26

June 21–23

31 3

27 2

28 2

17 2

23 2

23 1

36 30

39 32

38 32

48 33

51 25

51 24

Democratic Party. According to Julian Haviland of the Times, the Conservative victory marked “one of a select few to have registered a by-election gain for a party in power,” the previous time being in March 1960.69 Furthermore, as seen in Table 4.6, the Falklands crisis and Thatcher’s handling of it did nothing to harm the standing of her party, although this outcome could in no way be anticipated when news first reached Downing Street that an Argentine attack force was on its way to the islands. There is certainly evidence here to substantiate the view that this is a case of democratic public opinion agitating for war. After Argentina’s invasion became known, British public opinion demanded a forceful response. Diplomatic efforts alone would not do. As former foreign minister Peter Carrington noted in an interview with Daniel Gibran, “outrage would have directed itself against any government which took so supine an attitude.”70 Labour’s support for Thatcher’s decision reflected not only its internationalist stance and commitment to the idea of self-determination but also an awareness on the part of MPs “that Labour’s popularity depended on its ability to respond to the public mood, which demanded firm action and unity.”71 When asked by the Opinion Research Corporation on April 6 whether “it is right to put the lives of the armed forces at jeopardy to regain the islands?,” 69 percent of respondents said yes (also see Table 4.7). Although there was marked deterioration in support for the martial option when the question was repeated a few days later and two weeks after that, Thatcher was clearly tapping into (if not leading) a public sentiment sympathetic to a military solution, with three-fourths of those surveyed on April 23 agreeing that Britain should “continue to insist that the eighteen hundred Falkland Islanders should be free to determine their own future, even if that means war with Argentina.”72

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Table 4.7 British Public Opinion on Risking the Lives of the Armed Forces (in %)

Is it “right to put the lives of British Armed Forces at risk if this were the only way of regaining the Falkland Islands?”

Yes No

April 5, 1982 69 26

April 8, 1982 36 57

April 23, 1982 41 52

Sources: As reported in Public Opinion Background Note 108, April 12, 1982, 7, Margaret Thatcher Foundation, http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/123619 (accessed June 17, 2014). Data from articles in Times (London): “Public Reaction to Invasion,” April 6, 1982, 3; Staff Reporter, “Poll Finds Most Oppose Risking British Lives,” April 12, 1982, 1; and Our Foreign Staff, “Opinion Poll: 79% Support,” April 26, 1982, 5.

Thatcher understood the military risks involved with deploying the task force along with the transitory nature of public support owing to the rallyround-the-flag effect. As she noted in her memoirs, “Support for the despatch of the Task Force was likely to be strong, but would it fall away as time went on?”73 Her concern falls in line with our understanding of the effects of casualties on public opinion. This sentiment is reflected also in Conservative Party critics of the perceived bias in media coverage. As a Times editorial noted, these critics “are afraid of national morale being sapped by too much prominence being given to Argentine propaganda, and by a degree of detachment on the part of some broadcasters that has been interpreted as according the same weight to the Argentine as to the British cause.”74 This mirrors a view common in democracies following the US experience in Vietnam—that it was a hostile media that doomed the US effort. As the first major democratic war of choice following Vietnam, Thatcher and her supporters feared the British will would be undermined by negative coverage, as they believed happened in the Vietnam case. The public’s endorsement of Britain’s use of force confirms that democracies are not pacifistic. At the same time, the poll data in Table 4.8 reveal at least 40 percent of respondents endorsing a solution to the crisis through UN administration of the Falklands, while strong majorities oppose the bombing of Argentine military bases. This suggests a willingness to use force under normative constraints consistent with liberal democratic expectations. Moreover, Table 4.8 shows that a plurality of Britons surveyed on April 14 (49 percent) thought restoring British sovereignty not worth the loss of lives (44 percent believed the principle important enough). From this point, just eleven days after Thatcher’s initial speech in Parliament, polling support for sacrificing British service personnel to retake the Falk-

127 Table 4.8 British Public Opinion on the Falklands War (in %)

“Do you think in their handling of the situation in the Falklands the government has been too willing to use military force, not willing enough or has it been about right?” April 30

Too willing Not willing enough About right Don’t know

May 3–5

18 16 62 4

May 25–26

25 7 64 4

16 12 70 2

“Should Britain take/have taken the following measures over the Falklands Islands situation?” April 14

April 20–21

April 23–24

May 3–5

Yes No Don’t know

45 42 13

42 46 12

40 50 10

49 41 10

Yes No Don’t know

28 63 9

34 57 9

33 58 9

38 57 5

Allow the UN to take over administration of the Falkland Islands

Bomb Argentinian military and naval bases

“Do you think that retaining British sovereignty over the Falklands is important enough to justify the loss of British service men’s lives?”

Yes, important enough

No, not important enough

Don’t know

April 14

April 20–21

April 23–24

May 3–5

May 25–26

44

51

58

53

62

49

7

42

8

37

5

43

4

34

4

Source: Ipsos MORI, “The Falklands War: Panel Survey,” June 1982, https://www.ipsos.com /ipsos-mori/en-uk/falklands-war-panel-survey.

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lands climbed to majority levels, perhaps an indication of public responsiveness to the dearth of elite debate challenging official policy, and the effective framing of Britain’s actions by the government. Normative Change?

Britain fought the Falklands War over a tremendous distance and at great cost to defend democratic principles. Regardless of Thatcher’s interpretation of national interests, British society viewed the Falklanders as sharing British identity and deserving of self-determination. Moreover, the Argentine state was seen as an aggressor and violator of human rights. The British action was thus framed by the government, accepted by elites, and endorsed by public opinion. As the New Left Review noted, “the Falklands was not just Thatcher’s war.”75 Although no normative change resulted, the Labour Party began to rethink its stance on foreign policy. Writing in the January 1983 issue of Marxism Today, Eric Hobsbawm sought to refocus the left’s view of public opinion and international affairs. According to Clive Christie’s encapsulation of Hobsbawm’s indictment: “the surge of national sentiment during the war had been tapped rather than manufactured by the Tories: the crisis, he wrote, had evoked a deep-rooted and genuine, not simply media-manufactured, sense of ‘outrage and humiliation’. Those on the Left who were not aware of this, he continued, ‘ought seriously to consider their capacity to assess politics’” (emphasis in original).76 For Thatcher, the Falklands crisis “rekindled that spirit which has fired”77 Britain throughout its history. Her leadership during the war may have bolstered her political standing, but the martial spirit that resurfaced during the first half of 1982 did not define British foreign policy for the rest of her time in office, nor did it signal a return to the glory days of the British empire. At the thirtieth anniversary of the war, The Economist offered a contrary view, opining that victory “may have affected Britain’s appetite” in favor of intervention in the Gulf War and Kosovo, with any such enthusiasm for war curbed by the experience of Afghanistan and Iraq.78 The degree to which the Falklands experience shaped British foreign policy cannot be resolved here. Certainly, though, the prime minister had an outsized role in shaping her nation’s response to Argentina’s seizure of the islands. In a twenty-fifth anniversary retrospective, Paul Reynolds of the BBC declared that “the British prevailed because of Margaret Thatcher.”79 Perhaps her leadership, drive, and commitment to fulfill her vision of the British national interest determined the outcome of this crisis. Certainly, the public was responsive to her vision. It would be wrong to conclude, however, that this case confirms Spiro’s assertion that “leaders can and do mobilize public opinion for wars that the leaders wish to initiate.”80 Thatcher did not manufacture

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the popular desire to reclaim the Falklands by force of arms. Rather, she was able to shape debate in a manner that was responsive to British sensibilities, a set of values that even the bulk of her Labour opposition shared. In sum, this case affirms a few key characteristics of democratic wars of choice. As we observed with France, identity matters. Thatcher did not emphasize the colonial ties between the Falkland Islands and Britain. Nor did she stress the war as an opportunity to restore imperial glory. She succeeded where her French colleagues failed because she framed the effort to retake the islands in terms that resonated with the modern British liberal democratic identity. The British armada sailed to the South Atlantic to protect the self-determination of islanders who shared British identity against a brutal, alien dictatorship that did not respect the strong preferences of the islanders. Moreover, the Argentine government sought to change the status quo through force or arms, not a legal or diplomatic process. As with all democratic COGs, Thatcher was compelled to present her decision as falling as close to the pole of necessity on the choice continuum as possible. That her constituents and political opponents largely shared her perception of this being more necessity than choice does not mean that there were no other options than those she chose. Instead, her skill at framing the war to fit the confines of what constituted a legitimate cause of war to her compatriots left little opportunity for a counterframe to emerge or a theme around which dissenting opinion could rally. Owing to its ignominious defeat in the Falklands War, the Argentine military dictatorship collapsed and was replaced by a liberal democratic government. The Falklanders were granted full British citizenship and jurisdiction over a 200-mile economic zone.81 Commemorating the twentieth anniversary of Britain’s triumph, Prime Minister Tony Blair addressed the islanders and reiterated the essence of London’s position on the Falklands that had held constant since Thatcher threw down the gauntlet in response to Argentina’s provocation: In all our dealings with Argentina, however, we are absolutely clear that the sovereignty, security and right of self-determination of the Falkland Islands and its people are not open to negotiation or compromise. The Islands will be British for as long as you wish them to remain so. It is this commitment which should allow you to co-operate with your neighbours in a climate of confidence and trust.82

More recently, when the David Cameron government announced its decision in the fall of 2010 to scrap Britain’s lone aircraft carrier in an austerity move, a group of retired admirals argue in a letter to the Times that with this decision “Argentina is practically invited to inflict on us a national humiliation.”83 So Britain’s commitment to the Falklands endures despite

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other changes in circumstances at the level of leadership, British politics, and the international system. The most potent legacy of the Falklands conflict for the study of democracy and war pertains to the reasons democracies fight and why any particular decision for war resonates in the marketplace of ideas. The ever-present tension between the national security interest and liberal aims had created a sense among many politicians and analysts in the aftermath of Vietnam that democracies could not fight wars requiring sacrifice. Simon Jenkins, the political editor of the Economist, wrote in the Times at the end of the war that the British experience in the Falklands demonstrates the fallacy of that view, but he cautioned about the “treachery” of officials vilifying as treasonous opponents of British war policy, such as Tony Benn. Jenkins warned against abusing “as traitors those who are merely democrats.”84 Perhaps, then, the Falklands case illustrates that democracies can fight successfully wars of choice, but only when domestic political opponents are neutralized. The question remains as to whether democracies can succeed in war with an open and robust marketplace of ideas. Can democracies choosing war sustain support for belligerence without the opposition being cowed? Examination of my other cases will help us address this question. Conclusion

Coincidentally, June 1982 marked the convergence of three events central to our discussion: the end of the Falklands War, of course; the beginning of Israel’s war in Lebanon; and the appearance of foundational scholarship on the relationship between democracy and war. As the war in the South Atlantic drew to a close (the Argentine garrison at Port Stanley surrendered on June 14), US president Reagan’s speech to Parliament on June 8, 1982, praising democracy and condemning communism to “the ash-heap of history,” referenced the normative purposes behind the British fight in the Falklands. The British armed forces do not fight “for mere real estate,” the president declared, but “for a cause” that aggression should not succeed, “and that people must participate in the decisions of government under the rule of law.”85 With this speech Reagan drew public attention once again to the argument that democracy leaves a legacy on international affairs, as well as provided Michael Doyle with a hook for his seminal work on democracy and war.86 Two days before Reagan’s speech, Israel invaded Lebanon, an action Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin identified as a “war of choice.” How a democracy with a different political structure processed this choice to use force is the focus of the next chapter.

Britain’s War to Retake the Falklands

Notes

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1. A fine overview of the conflict is provided by Lawrence Freedman and Virginia Gamba-Stonehouse, Signals of War: The Falklands Conflict of 1982 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991). For the authoritative account, see Lawrence Freedman, The Official History of the Falklands Campaign, Volume 1: The Origins of the Falklands War and Volume 2: War and Diplomacy (London: Routledge, 2005). For a survey of the military campaigns, see Robin Neillands, A Fighting Retreat: The British Empire, 1947–1997 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1966), 466–518. Decisionmaking is the focus of John Greenaway, Steve Smith, and John Street, Deciding Factors in British Politics (London: Routledge, 1992), 92–115. 2. Miles Kahler, Decolonization in Britain and France: The Domestic Consequences of International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984); M. E. Chamberlain, Decolonization: The Fate of the European Empires, 2nd ed., (Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell, 1999); Tony Smith, “A Comparative Study of French and British Decolonization,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 20, no. 1 (January 1978): 70–102. 3. Kenneth Morgan contends that “the end of empire did not generate the kind of overwhelming strains in Great Britain visible in France in the retreat from Indo-China or Algeria. . . . The civilised way in which the world-wide empire was dissolved relatively peacefully between 1945 and 1979 provoked national satisfaction and international congratulation.” Kenneth O. Morgan, “The Second World War and British Culture,” in Brian Brivati and Harriet Jones, eds., From Reconstruction to Integration: Britain and Europe since 1945 (London: Leicester University Press, 1993), 40–41. This “minimal impact thesis” is rejected by Stuart Ward, “Introduction,” in Stuart Ward, ed., British Culture and the End of Empire (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 1–20, esp. 2–5. 4. Freedman refers to this as a “farcical episode,” Lawrence Freedman, “How Did the Democratic Process Affect Britain’s Decision to Reoccupy the Falkland Islands?,” in Miriam Fendius Elman, ed., Paths to Peace: Is Democracy the Answer? (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 235–266. 5. “Release of MT’s Private Files for 1982—the Falklands War (2),” Margaret Thatcher Foundation, http://www.margaretthatcher.org/archive/1982cac2.asp (accessed June 19, 2014). 6. As D. George Boyce, The Falklands War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 44, writes: “There was no alternative for a Government thus circumstanced.” 7. Miriam Fendius Elman, “Unpacking Democracy: Presidentialism, Parliamentarism, and Theories of Democratic Peace,” Security Studies, 9, no. 4 (Summer 2000): 91–126; Mark Schafer and Stephen G. Walker, “Democratic Leaders and the Democratic Peace: The Operational Codes of Tony Blair and Bill Clinton,” International Studies Quarterly, 50, no. 3 (September 2006): 561–583; Arend Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999). 8. Schafer and Walker, “Democratic Leaders and the Democratic Peace,” 564. 9. Jack L. Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991). 10. Elman, “Unpacking Democracy,” 101. 11. In Greenaway, Smith, and Street, Deciding Factors in British Politics, 102. 12. David A. Lake, “Powerful Pacifists: Democratic States and War,” American Political Science Review, 86, no. 1 (March 1992): 24–37.

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13. According to the BBC tally, http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth /uk/2002/falklands/guide6.stm (accessed October 2, 2011). 14. See discussion in James Lee Ray, Democracy and International Conflict: An Evaluation of the Democratic Peace Proposition (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995); also Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), argues that to reject it for inclusion being so close to the threshold would be “splitting hairs” (12). 15. Dan Reiter and Allan C. Stam, Democracies at War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 197. 16. David L. Rousseau, Christopher Gelpi, Dan Reiter, and Paul Huth, “Assessing the Dyadic Nature of the Democratic Peace, 1918–1988, “American Political Science Review, 90, no. 3 (September 1996): 525. 17. Reiter and Stam, Democracies at War, 148. 18. Reiter and Stam, Democracies at War, 23. 19. Reiter and Stam, Democracies at War, 101, note that autocrats see the democratic need for consent as an indication that democratic leaders are “handcuffed.” 20. Freedman and Gamba-Stonehouse, Signals of War, 76. 21. Daniel K. Gibran, The Falklands War: Britain Versus the Past in the South Atlantic (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 1998), 81. 22. Reiter and Stam, Democracies at War, 90–91. 149. 23. In Freedman and Gamba-Stonehouse, Signals of War, 175. 24. Freedman and Gamba-Stonehouse, Signals of War, 97. 25. Message from the prime minister to President Reagan, April 16, 1982, Margaret Thatcher Foundation, http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/122860. 26. Stephen Van Evera, Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), 29. 27. Philip Webster, “Thatcher Warns of Winter Ploy,” The Times, April 27, 1982, 1. 28. Philip Webster, “Thatcher Faces Hostile Commons House in Crisis Session Today,” The Times, April 3, 1982, 1. 29. Webster, “Thatcher Faces hostile Commons House,” 1. 30. From Margaret Thatcher, House of Commons Speech on the Falkland Islands, April 3, 1982, Margaret Thatcher Foundation, http://www.margaretthatcher.org /document/104910 (accessed August 9, 2011). 31. “Commons: Falklands-Bound Task Force Stocked and Armed for War,” London Times, April 5, 1982, 6. Also, see Gibran, The Falklands War, 106. 32. “Commons: Falklands-Bound Task Force Stocked.” 33. All quotes from Margaret Thatcher, House of Commons Speech on the Falkland Islands, April 3, 1982, Margaret Thatcher Foundation, http://www.margaretthatcher .org/document/104910 (accessed August 9, 2011). 34. Editorial, “We Don’t Have the Ships but by Jingo,” The Times, April 1, 1982, 11. 35. Editorial, “Naked Aggression,” The Times, April 3, 1982, 7. 36. Editorial, “Naked Aggression.” 37. Freedman, Official History of the Falklands Campaign, Vol. 2, 16. 38. See Sheila Oakes, “The British Peace Movement and the Falklands War,” in Guido Grünewald and Peter van den Dungen, eds., Twentieth-Century Peace Movements: Successes and Failures (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1995), 209–230. 39. London Press Association, “Cabinet Reportedly Split over Falklands Policy,” April 22, 1982, from Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports, April 23, 1982, FBIS-WEU-82-079. 40. Boyce, The Falklands War, 51–52.

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41. In Boyce, The Falklands War, 47. 42. Ulf Jonas Bjork, “Excitement Tinged with Jingoism: British Public Opinion and the Falklands in Four News Magazines,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Memphis, TN, August 3–6, 1985, 7. 43. Gibran, The Falklands War, 111. 44. Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), 173. 45. Gibran, The Falklands War, 118. 46. Freedman, Official History of the Falklands Campaign, Vol. 2, 15. 47. Quoted in Editorial, “Naked Aggression.” 48. Freedman, Official History of the Falklands Campaign, Vol. 2, 19. 49. Clive J. Christie, “Nationalism and Internationalism: Britain’s Left and Policy towards the Falkland Islands, 1982–1984,” Hull Papers in Politics, no. 37 (April 1985): 4–5. 50. Freedman and Gamba-Stonehouse, Signals of War, 122. 51. Julian Haviland, “Nott Offer to Quit Rejected by Mrs Thatcher,” The Times, April 6, 1982, p. 1. 52. Haviland, “Nott Offer to Quit,” 1. 53. Julian Haviland, “Tories Uneasy over Pym’s Attitude,” The Times, May 13, 1982, 1. 54. All quotes from Margaret Thatcher, House of Commons Speech on the Falkland Islands, 1982 April 3, Margaret Thatcher Foundation, http://www.margaretthatcher.org /document/104910 (accessed August 9, 2011). 55. Thatcher, Downing Street Years, 179. 56. Thatcher, Downing Street Years, 184. 57. Thatcher, Downing Street Years, 184. 58. “Critical Week But No Military Option Closed: Falklands,” Times, May 19, 1982, 6. 59. “Critical Week But No Military Option Closed.” 60. “Time to Take Sides,” Times, April 26, 1982, 9. 61. Julian Haviland, “Crisis Puts Cabinet Unity under Strain,” Times, May 14, 1982, 1. 62. David Watt, “Us, Them and Some Awkward Democratic Truths,” Times, May 14, 1982, 10. 63. For example, see Haviland, “Tories Uneasy over Pym’s Attitude” and Julian Haviland, “A Duty to Inform,” The Times, May 13, 1982, 13: “All the signs are that the British public are soberly aware of the principles at stake, that they are prepared if necessary to fight for those principles, and that they will not be weakened in that resolve by the expression of a few contrary opinions on the television or in the press.” “This is after all a conflict over the right of people to live in freedom, which must include the freedom to express opinions even when these are not to the liking of the political authorities. If this freedom were not acknowledged in the spirit as well as the letter, the Falklands issue would degenerate from the defence of a principle into a dispute over territory. That must not be allowed to happen.” 64. Glasgow University Media Group, War and Peace News (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1985), 93–104, 95. 65. Anthony Bevins, “BBC Men Grilled by Tory MPs,” The Times, May 13, 1982, 1. 66. Thatcher, Downing Street Years, 181. The Times (May 17, 1982, 4) reports a poll on BBC coverage in which 81 percent found the coverage fair and that the BBC acted responsibly in presenting the full range of opinion. 67. Public Opinion Background note 113, May 17, 1982, Margaret Thatcher Foundation, http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/123625 (accessed June 16, 2014).

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68. For a review, see David Sanders, Hugh Ward, and David Marsh (with Tony Fletcher), “Government Popularity and the Falklands War: A Reassessment,” British Journal of Political Science, 17, no. 3 (July 1987): 281–313. 69. Julian Haviland, “Mitcham More than War Vote, Tories Consider,” Times, June 5, 1982, 2. 70. Gibran, The Falklands War, 105. 71. Christie, “Nationalism and Internationalism,” 6. 72. Public Opinion Background note 110, April 25, 1982, 7, Margaret Thatcher Foundation, http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/123622 (accessed June 17, 2014). 73. Thatcher, Downing Street Years, 181. 74. Haviland, “A Duty to Inform,” 13. 75. Bjork, “Excitement Tinged with Jingoism,” 5. 76. Christie, “Nationalism and Internationalism,” 29. 77. Margaret Thatcher, “Speech to Conservative Rally at Cheltenham,” July 3, 1982, Margaret Thatcher Foundation, http://www.margaretthatcher.com/speeches /displaydocument.asp?docid=104989 (accessed July 15, 2011). 78. “Short, Victorious War,” The Economist, March 31, 2012, http://www.economist .com/node/21551493/print (accessed June 16, 2014). 79. Paul Reynolds, “Falklands: Has Anything Changed?,” BBC News, April 2, 2007, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6513871.stm (accessed April 4, 2007). 80. David E. Spiro, “The Insignificance of the Liberal Peace,” International Security 19, no. 2 (Fall 1994): 50–86, 53. 81. Larry Rohter, “25 Years After War, Wealth Transforms Falklands,” New York Times, April 1, 2007, sect. 1, 1. 82. Tony Blair, “Calling the Falklands,” BBC World Service, June 14, 2002, http://en.mercopress.com/2002/06/14/prime-minister-s-address-for-the-20th-anniversary -of-the-falklands-conflict (accessed August 6, 2012). 83. John F. Burns, “Officers Tie British Cuts and Risk to Falklands,” New York Times, November 11, 2010, A12. 84. Simon Jenkins, “Treachery: The Taunt That Cows the Critics,” The Times, June 9, 1982, 10. 85. David Cross, “Reagan Praised for Crusading Freedom Speech,” The Times, June 9, 1982, 1. 86. Doyle opened his article with a mention of Reagan’s trumpeting of liberal democracies’ “restraint” and “peaceful intentions.” Michael W. Doyle, “Liberalism and World Politics,” American Political Science Review, 80, no. 4 (December 1986): 1151.

5 Israel’s 1982 Invasion of Lebanon to Secure Peace in the Galilee

As the British naval task force successfully completed its 1982 mission in the Falkland Islands to the widespread acclaim of Britons and the broader liberal democratic community, Israel launched an attack across its northern border, generating much consternation among Israelis and condemnation among fellow democracies. Beginning on June 6, 1982, Israel’s invasion of Lebanon was ostensibly prompted by security considerations of a relatively narrow sort. Shelling of Israel’s northern settlements by the Lebanon-based Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) posed a direct danger to Israeli lives, so the invasion was initially directed to this threat. Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and defense minister Ariel Sharon ordered the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) beyond the range of PLO artillery, however. Instead of a limited operation to curb rocket attacks over the near term, they aspired to rid Lebanon of the PLO and Syrian military forces, while delivering Lebanon to its Christian minority to advance the long-term security of Israel. Furthermore, by installing a sympathetic regime to the north, Begin and Sharon anticipated that Lebanon would become the second Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel.1 Thus, the agenda for Operation Peace for Galilee entailed more than its name implied. An expansive list of goals for the invasion included eradication of the PLO as a meaningful entity in either international diplomacy or in the hearts and minds of its constituents in the occupied West Bank. The PLO established its presence in Lebanon following its expulsion from Jordan in 1970 and owing to the disarray of the Lebanese Civil War, which began in 1975, was able to create a substantial political and military infrastructure, leading many analysts to refer to it as “a state within a state.” By destroying the PLO in Lebanon, Begin and Sharon aspired to achieve the long-term pacification of what they referred to as 135

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Judea and Samaria, leaving the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan as the best hope for the fulfillment of Palestinian nationalism.2 I begin my analysis of this case with a consideration of the democratic context, assessing the degree to which Israel’s invasion met the criteria for a war of choice. I present an overview of the nature of the Israeli political system and place this case into the wider democracy and war literature. Once I have provided this context, I turn to a content analysis of the framing of Israel’s invasion. The Democratic Context Analysts can debate interminably whether any particular war fought was one of choice; indeed, in the extreme position every war may be seen as a choice as surrender is an option every time. Among the cases presented in this book, however, there can be no disputing that Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon was a war of choice. After all, Begin actually applied the term in a July 1982 speech to disabled veterans in Tel Aviv, distinguishing between wars where Israel had no alternative and the Lebanon War. Drawing on the Talmud, Begin justified the choice of war with the adage: “Whoever comes to kill you—kill him first—and this we did.”3 Begin drew a contrast between Israel’s 1948 war of independence (Arab-Israeli War), the 1973 October War (Yom Kippur War), and the 1967–1970 War of Attrition, where Israel had to fight to survive, and other instances such as the war in Lebanon, where by taking military action Israel sought to avoid worse calamities in the future. In a similar speech a few weeks later, Begin argued, “there is no moral imperative that a nation must, or is entitled to fight only when its back is to the sea, or to the abyss.”4 Clearly, Begin saw the security benefits of choosing war in this case. His efforts to justify his decision, though, created the impression that going to war in Lebanon was not too far from the necessity end of the choice continuum. Whether Israeli society concurred with his judgment would be determined in large measure by how persuasive contestants in the marketplace of ideas found his framing of the definition of the problem. As Netanel Lorch wrote for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, “for the first time in the history of Israel not only was the conduct of war debated—for this there had been ample precedent—but the very justification of the war.”5 A War of Choice?

Democratic Structure: Coalitional Parliamentary Democracy

As a coalitional parliamentary democracy, Israel’s political system magnifies the importance of small parties. No Israeli political party has ever been

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137

able to hold a governing majority in the Knesset without relying on support from junior coalition partners. Elman predicts that such less majoritarian systems would be prone to more peaceful and moderate foreign policies when the executive is more hawkish than the legislature, as was clearly the circumstance here, yet this expected outcome was not produced.6 Instead, as a result of the 1981 Knesset elections, Likud (itself a coalition of three parties)7 gained enough seats to occupy key foreign and defense policy posts in the cabinet along with the prime minister’s office. Thus, hawkish Likud ministers in key positions could pursue an aggressive strategy in Lebanon with minimal concern for the structural checks that typically characterize this democratic subtype. The circumstances under which the 1982 invasion took shape were unique in that some of the usual internal constraints on the use of Israeli power were either absent, ignored, or subverted. For the first time, the prime minister, along with those holding the key military and foreign affairs positions, were united in their hawkish views and willingness to employ the IDF for objectives beyond Israel’s narrow security interests. If the hallmark of a democratic structure is a system of checks and balances, this Begin cabinet, his second following the 1981 elections, was lacking in ministers experienced in military affairs and able to counter with authority the pro-interventionist arguments of the defense minister and Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan.8 Alternatively, Kirsten Schulze contends that the ill-fated invasion was not merely the product of deception by one or a few top officials or the like-mindedness of key actors. Instead, she explains the progress of the war through the lens of groupthink, with a cohesive decisionmaking group closing the door to dissenting voices and alternate paths to resolving the situation in Lebanon.9 Resistance among senior officials, though ineffectual against the momentum in favor of an assault on the PLO in Lebanon, presented enough of an obstacle that the architects of the invasion used deception to prevent the cabinet from derailing fulfillment of their strategic vision.10 The full scope of Sharon’s ambition was first revealed to the cabinet on December 20, 1981, when the plan for “Big Pines” was introduced. Big Pines went beyond the mere creation of a security zone or the eradication of a PLO threat to northern Israel. The grandiose plan outlined to the ministers encompassed Israeli thrusts into Lebanon by land, from the Mediterranean, along with assaults by heli-borne units and paratroopers. The objective of the plan was PLO-controlled West Beirut. Several members of the cabinet objected and Begin retreated. From this point, the cabinet did not again consider Big Pines in its totality. Instead, they were presented with a series of scaled-down plans, which Sharon and to some extent Begin deceptively proffered as the limit of their design. During the first four months of 1982, the cabinet was presented with plans for air strikes on PLO positions in Lebanon as a response to various

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terrorist acts against Israeli targets. In each instance, the cabinet rejected authorization for the air strikes. On April 11, permission for a raid was granted as retaliation for the assassination of an Israeli diplomat in Paris. For Begin and Sharon, the reprisal was necessary to provide a pretext for an invasion of Lebanon. The use of air power was meant to provoke a PLO response, namely, the shelling of northern Israeli settlements, deterred by cease-fire since July 26, 1981. When air power was applied April 21, and later on May 9, the PLO refused to follow Begin and Sharon’s script. For various reasons, the PLO did not cooperate by launching rocket attacks sufficient to rouse an Israeli invasion.11 On May 10, a plan midway in scope between Big Pines and a limited twenty-five-mile incursion was rejected by seven of eighteen cabinet ministers, a level of disapproval Begin considered too high for implementing such an assertive policy.12 The pieces began to come together for the advocates of preventive war following the attempt to assassinate Israel’s ambassador to Great Britain, Shlomo Argov, on June 3. After the PLO responded to the provocation delivered by the Israeli Air Force, the cabinet approved an invasion of Lebanon on June 5, but to an extent of only twenty-five miles. When the cabinet was called on to make the determination to invade, it is significant that, as Feldman declares, “the operational plan presented was limited to the 25-mile depth.”13 As with the British war in the Falklands, I categorize Israel’s invasion of Lebanon as a Type 1 war of choice based on the duration of the fighting. Like the British war against Argentina, Israel’s invasion of Lebanon provides no direct insight into the dyadic finding that democracies do not fight other democracies, as according to one of the standard references on the subject, neither Argentina nor Lebanon were democracies at the time of these wars, while Britain and Israel were.14 Still, by highlighting how democratic norms and identities shape the choice of war, we gain an appreciation for how democracy operates to effect state behavior. Miriam Elman argues that domestic mechanisms such as “leadership orientation, intra-regime changes, and the nature of civil-military relations,” and not officials’ adherence to democratic norms of peaceful conflict resolution, are the most significant features of this case. However, she finds modest support for the monadic thesis that democracies are more peaceful since increasing protest in the Knesset and public forced the government to seek an end to the war.15 The offensive in Lebanon, launched out of security concerns identified by key government officials, brought Israeli society into contention over national identity and democratic norms. To build on Elman’s observation regarding the monadic aspects of this case, I trace the process Democracy and War: The Lebanon Case

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whereby Israeli democracy weighed the justification for this war, turning to coverage in the Jerusalem Post (considered a left-leaning, broadly influential English-language daily in 1982) at four evenly spaced intervals.16 As a surrogate for the marketplace of ideas, content analysis of the Post’s coverage promises to provide a window into how the leadership’s assertion of the national interest was conditioned by the democratic process, and how that, in turn, regulates fulfillment of democratic identity. Michael Barnett describes Israeli identity as being composed of four elements: Judaism, Zionism, the Holocaust, and liberalism.17 To Barnett, identity “does not cause action but rather makes some action legitimate and intelligible and others not so.”18 Therefore, the question to be answered here is how the invasion of Lebanon squared with these components of Israeli identity. Was Begin able to present the foray in a manner consistent with Israeli society’s conception of state identity? Or, once it became clear that action was for purposes beyond silencing PLO fire, was debate engendered over whether the choice of a preventive war was appropriate? Given Jewish values, the Zionist ethos to establish a viable national homeland, the Holocaust-generated mantra that “never again” would Jews be victimized by their stateless powerlessness, along with the notion that liberal states respect human rights and democratic decisionmaking procedures, framing the siege of Beirut as comporting with these aspects of Israeli identity would challenge the Begin government. While Israel maintained a presence in Lebanon through June 1985 and even retained a residual force in south Lebanon until May 2000, I concentrate on the period Gil Merom describes as “the dynamic phase” of the war and others denote as the “conventional portion” or the “offensive phase,” when the IDF suffered half its total deaths.19 With the arrival of the Multinational Force in Lebanon (MNF) to oversee the evacuation of the PLO from Beirut on August 24, the war as initially envisioned by its architects was over. Throughout this time, according to Merom, “the government and the state could count on support arising from the reality they had created.”20 By examining debate in the Israeli marketplace of ideas during four periods of the war’s dynamic phase: June 6–11, June 27–July 2, July 18–23, and August 8–13, 1982, I explore this “reality” and determine the degree to which the marketplace of ideas challenged or accepted it. Lebanon remained a matter of political contention in Israeli politics through elections on July 23, 1984, but the grandiose war of choice implemented by Begin and Sharon in 1982 had few advocates at the outset and the number of supporters dwindled as the war wore on. Indeed, according to Lorch’s history of Israel’s wars on the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, “The failure of Operation Peace of [sic] Galilee to achieve its objective prevailed upon the new national coalition government, which took office in 1984, to withdraw forthwith from Lebanon.”21

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I argue that the decision to go to war was effected by leaders acting contrary to liberal democratic norms that held some resonance in Israeli identity, a widespread societal belief that decisions to use force ought to reflect democratic procedures and that arms should be used only to address palpable threats, not distant possibilities. The reaction of Israeli democracy to Begin and Sharon’s choices led to a reversal of their policy, and I contend that concerns over the violation of these norms and Israeli identity was the cause of this pressure. As Elman observes, Israeli officials, primarily Sharon, enjoyed the power of political preemption, a feature common to any checks-and-balances political structure.22 Even in democracies, as many democratic peace adherents such as Doyle and Risse-Kappen have argued, illiberal leaders may drive policy in directions contrary to liberal norms.23 Certainly, as Elman puts it, Begin and Sharon subscribed to the use of “force as the best means of ensuring national security.”24 Indeed, in arguing that this was not a war of “no alternative,” Begin made his view clear: invading Lebanon was an efficacious means of advancing long-term Israeli interests. The issue to address here is whether Israeli democracy responded to this preemption with a rejection of Begin’s problem definition, the policy prescription to deal with it, and the manner in which his government implemented its preferences. I address this task with my content analysis of the debate in the Israeli marketplace of ideas. Before commencing, I detail Begin’s definition of the problem that justified this war of choice. Making the Appeal: The Government’s Frame

Leaders must persuade their society of the necessity for going to war, no matter where the decision actually falls on the choice continuum. Often, to make a war seem closer to necessity, officials use rather embellished rhetoric to overcome resistance in the marketplace of ideas. Begin certainly did not refrain from hyperbole on this score, at one point drawing an analogy between his actions in Lebanon and the French failure to challenge Hitler’s remilitarization of the Rhineland on March 7, 1936, according to Begin the day World War II “actually began.”25 In his August 8 presentation to the National Defense College, Begin contended that if only Hitler had been confronted then, when he was more politically vulnerable and Germany less militarily formidable, the calamity of World War II could have been avoided with a relatively painless display of determination. Drawing the comparison, he claimed that by choosing to invade Lebanon, he would prevent the PLO from ever becoming an existential threat to Israel, and therefore the action was reasonable and prudent, not reckless and self-aggrandizing. Begin’s definition of the problem requiring the choice of war relied on equal measures of national history and elevation of threat. Few Israelis would

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dispute the problem defined narrowly in terms of Palestinian shelling of northern villages. A consensus solution to this problem was a military operation to evict PLO units from a zone extending forty kilometers (about twenty-five miles) north of the Israeli border. Of course, Begin’s characterization of the problem was far broader and his proposed solution remarkably ambitious, requiring presentation of some rather tendentious logic to bring Israeli society to accept the legitimacy and efficacy of his interpretation. Facing a no-confidence motion introduced by the Communist Party two days after the war began, Begin framed the choice of war as a deliberate, carefully thought-out reaction to a threat for which “there was no other way” to respond.26 He cloaked Israel’s invasion in the mantle of selfdefense, invoking Margaret Thatcher’s application of Article 51 of the UN Charter to justify the Falklands War as equally suitable for Israel defending itself from the threat posed by the PLO. He drew a sardonic contrast between the international support accorded Britain for its war of self-defense 8,000 miles away and the global community dismissing Israel’s need to address terrorists killing its citizens from a few miles away. For good measure, Begin referenced historical Jewish exclusion from the laws applicable to others, exclaiming that “no more” would the Jewish people accept such second-class treatment. For Begin, Israel’s effort in Lebanon was no different than Britain’s in the Falklands, reasoning that “the right of self-defense accorded to all other nations is also accorded to us.”27 As the debate waged in the Knesset, Israeli forces clashed with the Syrian military in Lebanon. Claiming during the June 8 session, “we do not want war with Syria,” Begin professed the modest goal of only ensuring the safety of Israeli citizens in the Galilee. Accordingly, Begin assured his audience, “if we achieve the 40 kilometer line from our northern border, the job is done, all fighting will cease.”28 Interestingly, despite these ostensibly limited ambitions, Begin concluded his remarks by envisioning a day when Israel “will renew negotiations with the legitimate government of Lebanon and propose a peace treaty.”29 How that would be accomplished without moving beyond the confines of a limited operation remained to be seen. Three weeks later Begin once again addressed the Knesset, this time in the face of growing criticism of Israel’s actions in Lebanon from friends abroad and citizens at home. In this June 29 speech, he reiterated the claim of self-defense based on Article 51 but devoted much of his invective to countering the impression that the IDF engaged in morally questionable tactics, and that because of Israel’s actions in Lebanon it was losing the support of its friends in the United States and elsewhere. Begin sought to absolve the state of guilt for any of the transgressions charged by its critics by framing the IDF’s mission as “to ensure that men, women and children will be able to live their lives” without worry about the threat from “antihuman,” “despicable” terrorists. Begin characterized the IDF as engaging in

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“one of the most noble campaigns ever waged in the history of humanity— to ensure peace for citizens, for human beings.” He parried claims of IDF violations of morality in war by boasting that “there has never been an army in the world that acted with the humanity shown by the I.D.F. in Operation Peace for Galilee.” Owing to what he characterized as pervasive lies in the international media, Begin alerted his supporters that this was not solely a military battle but “a battle over the truth.”30 Facing increasing contention as Israel’s invasion of Lebanon approached the one-month mark, the prime minister continued to frame Operation Peace for Galilee as a prudent and morally defensible response to a real and growing threat. Begin dismissed criticisms of the conduct of Israeli soldiers or accusations of a rift between Israel and its supporters abroad as fabrications of unfriendly governments and a hostile media. At an Oval Office meeting with President Ronald Reagan, who had warned Begin he was losing the support of the US people, Begin countered with “the facts,” explaining not only the strong military imperatives behind some of the IDF’s controversial actions but also the outpouring of support he had received from millions of Americans. To bolster his claims, during his June 29 Knesset speech, Begin touted Harris’s findings, declaring that 57 percent of Americans surveyed supported Israel’s “operation to ensure peace for the Galilee, peace for Israel and peace for Lebanon.”31 Begin reiterated that once the IDF removed the PLO from the fortykilometer zone north of the border, the operation would be complete. Yet his remarks to the Knesset addressed concerns about Israeli altercations with the Syrians and the prospect that the IDF would enter Beirut, steps that contradicted Begin’s declaration that the advance into Lebanon was limited to the forty-kilometer zone. Begin explained away the anxieties of his critics with a baffling synopsis of “what developed” on the battlefield that led to Israeli forces encamped on the outskirts of Beirut with the PLO trapped inside and the Syrian presence in Lebanon neutralized. In essence, he argued that tactically Israel had no choice but to engage the Syrians, who would not abide by Israel’s unilateral cease-fire, and now the IDF could not pass up the opportunity to evict the PLO from Beirut. No doubt aware of the explosiveness of these circumstances, Begin invoked the national unity that had been displayed previously in Israeli politics when he was in the opposition. He pleaded to his follow members of the Knesset: “National unity need not be disrupted, and I really want to thank MK Peres and also MK Rabin [leaders of the opposition Labour party] for the fine things they said regarding national unity, which is a necessity.”32 Little elite debate was generated as long as the official frame of the war was to eradicate PLO harassment of Israel’s north. However, even from the

Elite Debate

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outset, the Jerusalem Post editorialized its concern that the problem of the PLO was a political one not resolvable by military means alone. Moreover, only the moderate, publicly framed goals of Operation Peace for Galilee were endorsed by the Post, and as events began to indicate the scope of the government’s ambition, the tenor of editorials changed. On June 10, for example, the Post expressed its concern: “Through the fog of war, artificially spread by the government, one fact emerges with absolute clarity: the original aims of Operation Peace for Galilee have been abandoned.”33 The next day, the paper condemned Sharon’s “illusions,” accusing him of being “drunk with the IDFs stupendous successes” and in need of being reined in.34 The Post’s editorial team advised that Sharon be “told that enough is enough” and stop “over-extending the war.”35 As the war continued, Post editorials began to vigorously question the course of the war. For example, on June 29, 1982, the Post inveighed against the government’s credibility on the operation, and expressed discomfort with how the war was calling into question Israel’s “fidelity to the rules of war and the norms of humanity.”36 A few days later, Post reporter Charles Hoffman observed that the “war has shattered, or at least thoroughly shaken, some of Israel’s basic moral and political assumptions.”37 Elite debate grew more vigorous as reserve soldiers were released from service in Lebanon and their voices of opposition to the war became a focal point of government critics.38 In early July, the daily Ha’aretz quoted a letter to the prime minister from some special operations reserve soldiers: It was always clear to me that if I went to war, it would be a just war fought over our life and existence as a people. Today, it is clear to me that I was deceived and called (to serve) in the first war in the history of Israel that was not a defensive war but rather a dangerous gamble over achieving political aims. All that while paying heavily with IDF casualties, and while harming innocent civilians.39

Relatedly, a group, Soldiers Against Silence, featured Lt. Abraham Burg, a reserve paratrooper and the son of a senior minister. Burg argued that Sharon had to resign because he “was using the IDF to pursue political ends rather than to ensure the security of the state.” Moreover, he noted that military service was based on the idea of a “no-choice war,” and therefore in Lebanon, Sharon was causing “a crisis of confidence and motivation” in the ranks.40 In the Israeli political system, the cabinet plays an essential executive function. Other political parties in Likud’s governing coalition secured ministry portfolios in the cabinet as a price for supporting the government in the Knesset. Margins are usually so narrow in Israel’s coalitional parliamentary system that the defection of one or two cabinet members from a decision Government Institutions

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can threaten the stability of the governing majority in the legislature. Therefore, Begin’s hold on a Knesset majority was not so firm that he could ignore dissent from coalition partners. Of course, with important information withheld and the true intentions of the war policy kept hidden, members of the cabinet were powerless to forestall the implementation of Sharon’s agenda. Instead, opponents of an expanded operation had to wait until a complete picture of his design began to emerge. Begin was first confronted with a cabinet crisis when the possibility that the IDF might enter West Beirut became clear in July. The ministers of Interior and Education, coalition partners from the National Religious Party, told Begin they strongly opposed the prospect that the IDF would enter Beirut. Their position was bolstered by a mandate from another small party coalition member, Agudat Yisrael. Reportedly, the ministers from the National Religious Party cautioned Begin that this was “a Cabinet composed of factions, not just individuals.”41 Given an implicit threat to bring down the government, Begin and Sharon opted instead to order the IDF to begin a siege of Beirut. Pursuit of Begin and Sharon’s expansive goals became increasingly problematic as the war dragged on. The voices of opposition within the cabinet grew more numerous and effective as the siege of West Beirut continued. On August 8, Sharon asked authorization to carry out a specific operation. When the cabinet voted 10–8 in favor, Begin ruled it out owing to the strong opposition. Sharon then opted to give orders for some operations without cabinet approval.42 On August 12, the cabinet had another opportunity to discuss a possible operation in Beirut as heavy shelling of Muslim sectors was under way. Growing casualties and increasing opposition in the cabinet, along with concern about the US reaction, led Begin to finally side with Sharon’s critics and vote against his Defense minister (two in favor, fifteen against).43 For the most part, the dissent emanating from the Begin cabinet centered on disputes over tactics, not the desirability of the operation’s goals. To the advocates of Big Pines, Israel’s long-term security could be ensured through military means. The opponents, on the contrary, believed Israeli military power ill-suited for tackling problems that were essentially of a political nature. This theme was emphasized in Jerusalem Post editorials from the outset of the operation. For example, in an editorial published on the day the operation began, the Post’s editorial board acknowledged the need to quash the threat posed by PLO guns but asserted “the answer to the problem must be political.”44 This basic disagreement caused many controversies throughout the duration of the war, leading some to dub the war “the Battle on the Government Front.”45 At two points during the war, dissent within Begin’s ruling coalition forced a policy reversal. First, as noted already, during the initial stages,

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resistance to an IDF assault on Beirut by dovish members of the liberal component of the Likud and the National Religious Party led to a slowdown in the army’s advance.46 Second, Begin agreed to appoint a commission to investigate the development of war policy after the National Religious Party threatened to cause a coalitional crisis unless the government retreated from its morally untenable position in opposition to such an inquiry.47 In addition to Begin’s retreat on appointing the Kahan Commission, Merom points out another instance when the military preferences of policymakers were thwarted by concerns about domestic reaction. In July, while the war was still popular, a reserve paratroop brigade slotted to assist in the advance on Beirut was not mobilized owing to Sharon’s concern that negativity about the possible deployment among these reservists could spread and affect other units.48 As in previous cases, I offer a brief characterization of media coverage here, followed by presentation of my content analysis findings. In his treatment of Israeli democracy’s response to the Lebanon war, Merom offers persuasive evidence that media coverage became critical owing to the dissent of soldiers. Because of Israel’s dependence on a significant reserve component for its armed forces, citizen soldiers serving in units mobilized for the invasion of Lebanon returned once their mission was complete. According to Merom, these soldiers “demanded directly that journalists tell the public about the real purpose of the war,” their “persistent demands” leading to a level of critical reportage that left government officials dismayed.49 For example, Eitan wrote in his memoirs that during the war, Israel’s media abandoned its “national responsibility.”50 The seeds of norm-based challenge to policy may be sown by questioning the legitimacy of key decisionmakers. Such was the case with coverage of Sharon. A front-page story in the Post on the conflict’s third day introduced the theme of the Defense minister’s deception, reporting the concerns of an opposition Labour/Mapam alignment leader that Sharon may not have been totally forthcoming when briefing the cabinet. The reporter’s source notes concern that as a result, “the cabinet might be influenced to take decisions on the basis of incomplete information.”51 Indeed, there was much negative coverage of Sharon’s conduct throughout the four intervals of my content analysis. The first period examined begins with the Jerusalem Post edition published on June 6 (the day the war started). I consider six days of coverage (the Post did not publish on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath), at three-week intervals. The fourth and final installment extends from August 8 to August 13, one month before the assassination of Lebanese president Bachir Gemayel

Media Coverage

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and the consequent unraveling of the Big Pines strategy. It was also during this interval that, as discussed , the cabinet rejected Sharon’s proposals. As seen in Table 5.1, for the most part, overall coverage of the war in Lebanon in the Jerusalem Post was neutral or positive. I consider the tone of each individual news story, editorial, or other missive in the data set.52 The Begin government would probably not view the tenor of Lebanonrelated items appearing in the Post during the first three junctures as problematic. After all, only about a quarter of the Post’s coverage of the war was negative over these three intervals, indicating that Begin’s framing of the war had sufficient resonance during this early period to set the agenda and dominate the marketplace of ideas. Only during the final interval analyzed did overall coverage take on a negative tinge, and even then, the percentage of negative stories (40 percent) equaled that of neutral ones. Turning to consideration of individual judgments on the war—each coded reference to Lebanon appearing in an item—we see in Table 5.2 that across all junctures, a majority of judgments were opposed to the war. That those coded as allies of Begin offered mostly supportive judgments (55 percent) is not surprising. Nor is it unusual that three-fourths of the judgments offered by Begin’s political adversaries were negative. Crucially, though, sources labeled “neutrals” offered mostly negative judgments on the war. These views of independent experts, citizens, and the like are expected to have disproportionate influence on public opinion.53 Importantly, in this sample, these neutrals accounted for almost half of all judgments (48.8 percent) and more than half of the total negative judgments (54.8 percent). To what extent did these judgments resonate in the debate over Israel’s invasion? To gain a sense of how Israeli democracy engaged in questioning the purposes and legitimacy of Israel’s war of choice, I turn the analytic spotlight to consider how Israel’s action in Lebanon was framed. Again, Table 5.1 Overall Frequency Count of Coded Items Case

June 6–11, 1982 n June 27–July 2, 1982 n July 18–23, 1982 n August 8–13, 1982 n Total n

Positive 31.7% 33 27.0% 31 38.2% 26 20.5% 16 29.0% 106

Negative 24.0% 25 28.7% 33 25.0% 17 39.7% 31 29.0% 106

Neutral 44.2% 46 44.3% 51 36.8% 25 39.7% 31 42.0% 153

Total of Articles 104 115 68

78

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Table 5.2 Judgments on the War Coded by the Likely Allegiance to the Chief of Government Ally n Enemy n Neutral n Total n

Support 54.5% 203 24.6% 41 33.0% 170 39.2% 414

Oppose 37.3% 139 73.7% 123 61.4% 316 54.8% 578

Neutral 8.3% 31 1.8% 3 5.6% 29 6.0% 63

Total

35.4% 373 15.8% 167 48.8% 515 1,055

there are three issue areas subject to frame contestation in the marketplace of ideas: problem definition, policy, and leadership. Officials frame the choice of war in terms of challenges that must be overcome. The closer the leader’s proposed solution to the problem matches with the expectations and experience of society, the more likely the envisioned course of action will be endorsed. State leaders advocate a policy to address the problem. Sometimes the definition of the problem articulated by officials is not contested, but the specific course of action adopted is. Finally, all societies have standards for the fulfillment of state policymaking. When leaders fall short of these expectations, a counterframe emerges that takes issue with the suitability of current leadership. Was there support for the government’s characterization of the choice for war, how it explained the conduct of the war, and its navigation of the political expectations and norms of Israeli democracy? Do we detect the emergence of a framing contest in the Post’s coverage, which makes problematic the government’s fulfillment of its interventionist aims, or did Begin succeed in dominating debate over the framing of this war of choice? Table 5.3 reveals that overall, 55 percent of judgments approved of the official problem-definition frame of the war. This contrasts starkly with the overwhelmingly negative aggregate judgments on frames of policy (64 percent) and leadership (75 percent). Who offered supportive framing of the government’s approach to Lebanon? In Table 5.4 we see that government allies were overwhelmingly positive (75 percent of problem definition judgments) but critical of policy and leadership (53 percent and 60 percent of judgments in these frames were negative, respectively). Importantly, government allies were more likely than opponents to get their judgments in print. There were more than twice as many judgments offered by allies as opponents in the coverage. Negative judgments on policy and leadership came from sources across the board and were consistent across the periods of my analysis.

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Table 5.3 Frames of Coded Judgments on the War Frame

Support

Oppose

Neutral

Policy column percentagea n = 406

28.8% 28.3% 117

64.3% 45.2% 261

6.9% 44.4% 28

Problem definition column percentagea n = 437

55.4% 58.5% 242

40.0% 30.3% 175

Leadership column percentagea n = 96

19.8% 4.6% 19

75.0% 12.5% 72

None column percentagea n = 82

32.9% 6.5% 27

59.8% 8.5% 49

Unclear column percentagea n = 34 Total n = 1,055

26.5% 2.2% 9 414

4.6% 31.7% 20 5.2% 7.9% 5

61.8% 3.6% 21

11.8% 6.3% 4

578

63

7.3% 9.5% 6

Note: a. See note to Table 3.3 for explanation for “column percentage” data, p. 82.

Table 5.5 details the evolution of the framing contest over the four junctures studied. Across the intervals, from a third to half of the frames fit the problem definition category. At the outset, more than three-fifths (62.4 percent) of judgments framing Begin’s problem definition were supportive. That is, a consensus among those offering judgments on the nature of the threat Israel faced and the appropriateness of a military response concurred with Begin’s justification for the war. A majority of problem definition judgments supported Begin’s frame over the next two junctures as well. During the final week of the data set, however, a majority of coded judgments (53 percent) contest Begin’s framing of the problem that justified war. Breaking down the Post’s coverage by item type reveals that at each juncture the modal characteristic of news articles was neutrality. Thus, as journalistic norms expect, news items tended to be neutral, with at least 40 percent of stories so coded at each juncture. The balance of supportive versus oppositional tone for news stories was roughly equal at junctures two and three (24.1 percent support to 25.3 percent against, and 31.8 percent support to 29.6 percent against, respectively). Interestingly, at the first juncture, the frequency of news articles coded as supportive was higher than those against (31.7 percent to 23.2 percent), and at the last juncture the dis-

149 Table 5.4 Comparison of Frames Coded According to the Individual’s Likely Allegiance to the Chief of Government Source Ally

Neutral

Opponent

Frame

Problem definition n Policy n Leadership n Unclear n None n Total n

Problem definition n Policy n Leadership n Unclear n None n Total n

Problem definition n Policy n Leadership n Unclear n None n Total n

Support

Oppose

Neutral

Total

74.7% 118 37.7% 58 39.3% 11 30.8% 4 60.0% 12 54.4% 203

19.0% 30 53.3% 82 60.7% 17 46.2% 6 20.0% 4 37.3% 139

6.3% 10 9.1% 14 0.0% 0 23.1% 3 20.0% 4 8.3% 31

42.4% 158 41.3% 154 7.5% 28 3.5% 13 5.4% 20

45.6% 99 27.4% 49 9.4% 5 21.4% 3 26.9% 14 33.0% 170

49.8% 108 66.5% 119 81.1% 43 71.4% 10 69.2% 36 61.4% 316

4.6% 10 6.2% 11 9.4% 5 7.1% 1 3.9% 2 5.6% 29

42.1% 217 34.8% 179 10.3% 53 2.7% 14 10.1% 52

40.3% 25 13.7% 10 20.0% 3 28.6% 2 10.0% 1 24.6% 41

59.7% 37 82.2% 60 80.0% 12 71.4% 5 90.0% 9 73.7% 123

0.0% 0 4.1% 3 0.0% 0 0.0% 0 0.0% 0 1.8% 3

37.1% 62 43.7% 73 9.0% 15 4.2% 7 6.0% 10

373

515

167

150 Table 5.5 Comparison of Frames of Coded Judgments by Juncture Problem Definition

Policy

Leadership

Unclear

None

Row Total

62.4% 83 29.3% 39 8.3% 11

29.8% 34 62.3% 71 7.9% 9

22.7% 5 59.1% 13 18.2% 4

9.1% 1 72.7% 8 18.2% 4

24.2% 8 60.6% 20 15.2% 5

41.9% 131 48.2% 151 9.9% 31

June 6–11, 1982

Support n Oppose n Neutral n Column total n

42.5% 133

June 27–July 2, 1982

Support n Oppose n Neutral n Column total n

53.4% 86 44.1% 71 2.5% 4

44.8% 161

July 18–23, 1982

Support n Oppose n Neutral n Column total n

57.4% 39 36.8% 25 5.9% 4

47.2% 68

August 8–13, 1982

Support n Oppose n Neutral n Column total n

45.3% 34 53.3% 40 1.3% 1

31.4% 75

36.4% 114

26.4% 32 65.3% 79 8.3% 10

33.7% 121

26.7% 16 68.3% 41 5.0% 3

41.7% 60

31.5% 35 63.1% 70 5.4% 6

46.4% 111

6.1% 22

17.1% 6 80.0% 28 2.9% 1 9.7% 35

44.4% 4 55.6% 5 0.0% 0 6.3% 9

13.5% 4 86.7% 26 0.0% 0

12.6% 30

3.5% 11

10.5% 33

4.2% 15

7.5% 27

46.7% 7 40.0% 6 13.3% 2

0.0% 0 0.0% 0 0.0% 0

0.0% 0

12.5% 1 87.5% 7 0.0% 0 3.3% 8

51.9% 14 48.1% 13 0.0% 0

28.6% 2 57.1% 4 14.3% 1 4.9% 7

20.0% 3 80.0% 12 0.0% 0 6.3% 15

313

40.4% 145 54.9% 197 4.7% 17 359

42.4% 61 52.0% 75 5.6% 8 144

32.2% 77 64.9% 155 2.9% 7 239

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tribution was reversed, as only 19.3 percent of news items supported the official position and 33.3 percent were opposed. Opinion pieces and Post editorials constitute a small portion of my data set. Post editorials were balanced, with a total of five supportive of Israel’s invasion and six opposed (thirteen were coded as neutral). Opinion pieces appearing in the paper were slightly more likely to be positive, with nineteen being so coded, and nine were identified as negative (thirteen were neutral). Importantly, during the first and last weeks of the data set, the Post only published editorials that the Begin government would consider hostile (three negative in the first week, five negative during the last juncture, no favorable editorials during either period). Approving judgments of the government’s problem definition were far more frequent than oppositional judgments until the final week of analysis. Even then, the number of problem-definition frames offered by proponents and opponents were roughly equal. Still, Begin’s definition of the problem that led him to war in Lebanon was under challenge. This, combined with the heavy criticism of the policy the government was pursuing, curtailed the prime minister’s ability to pursue his ambition in Lebanon and accordingly led to a shift in approach. As our understanding of the role of debate in the marketplace of ideas predicts, Israeli public opinion was activated by the contestation represented in our sample of coverage in the Jerusalem Post. I consider how that public opinion activation affected policymakers. The foregoing sampling of media coverage of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon shows that the Israeli marketplace of ideas was engaged in a framing contest over key elements of the war. To varying degrees, all three types of frames— leadership, policy, and problem-definition—were contested. Evidence from the foregoing analysis confirms especially potent contestation over the framing of the government’s leadership, with even allies portraying top officials as running afoul of the tolerance of friends abroad and internal norms of democratic practice. For example, following Begin’s appearance before United Jewish Appeal fundraisers in the Knesset, Post writer Benny Morris chastised the prime minister for “a succession of inaccuracies” that “transparently enhance a particular train of justification and explanation.” Morris condemned Begin’s “attempt to revise history” and “change the content and the context of events that happened a mere minute ago.”54 Furthermore, the data presented here reveal a framing contest on policy grounds between the government case that the IDF behaved with unprecedented prudence and care and critics who framed policy as violating societal standards to achieve goals beyond the bounds of Israeli tradition. A fairly typical policy critique was provided by Labour leader Yitzhak Rabin Public Opinion

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during negotiations to arrange a multinational force to supervise the withdrawal of PLO fighters from Beirut. While diplomats jockeyed over the composition of the team, Israel bombarded Palestinian strongholds, leading Rabin to complain to Mark Segal of the Post, “I fail to grasp why there should be an intensification of military activities these days, because the PLO is not an address for clarifying matters on the current agenda.”55 Most important, as the war continued, Begin’s framing of the problem posed by the PLO and his preferred solution came under challenge. Jonathan Frankel’s June 27 op-ed piece is representative of this type of framing, contrasting the contentious domestic reaction to Operation Peace for Galilee with past experience, arguing there was unity behind all of Israel’s previous wars because “there was a general feeling here that the country was fighting for nothing more and nothing less than its survival.”56 Shortly thereafter, Begin took a new tack and explicitly stated that the war in Lebanon was a war of choice, not survival. Nevertheless, Begin continued to frame the operation as a reasonable and responsible application of military power, needed to improve Israel’s security. While this and the samples of elite frame contestation pervaded the marketplace of ideas, the question remains whether these efforts at counterframing had an impact on public opinion measured by protests and polls. Two members of Begin’s cabinet, Minister of Education Zevulun Hammer of the National Religious Party and Minister of Welfare Aharon Abuhatzeira of the Tami Party, were reportedly central in getting Begin to accept the establishment of an independent commission of inquiry to delve into the genesis of war policy. Their change, from being supportive of the prime minister’s initial refusal to appoint such a commission to becoming critical, was a shift motivated by the huge public outcry against the war in Lebanon, elevated in the aftermath of the massacre of Palestinians by the Phalange militia in the Sabra neighborhood and Shatila refugee camp.57 Although Begin may have remained unaffected by popular pressure, cabinet officials and others were moved by a demonstration in Tel Aviv on September 25 sponsored by the antiwar group Peace Now. Approximately 400,000 people (12 percent of the Israeli population) attended the rally, a clear manifestation of popular distress with Israel’s effort in Lebanon but just one indication of the state of Israeli public opinion on this question.58 As one might expect, Israeli opinion responded to the initial assertion of the national identity in war with a rally effect. Furthermore, support for Begin’s policy eroded in proportion to the casualty levels, as John Mueller first noted in his study of US public opinion and the wars in Vietnam and Korea.59 Israeli opinion reacted in typical fashion at the outset, and as the war continued, public opinion had a pernicious effect on the government’s diplomatic strategy, as is characteristic of democracies engaged in arduous interventions abroad. Popular opposition to an international course of

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action will be muted when an operation commences owing to the rally effect as well as the ability of the government to control the flow of information in its favor during the early stages of engagement. In this case, public opinion as reflected in surveys provided Begin with sufficient support at the beginning. When it came time to convert military success into diplomatic achievements, however, popular opposition had a deleterious impact on Begin’s efforts to compel concessions from Syria and the Lebanese.60 Merom observes that though Israel’s antiwar coalition was “resourceful, creative, highly mobilized, and effective,” it remained a minority.61 Most Israeli citizens continued to support the objectives of the government, but Merom concludes that the assorted educated middle class, intellectuals, and journalists that constituted the engaged antiwar constituency succeeded in stripping “the government of the mantle that an active security policy had provided, and shook the overwhelming popular support it had initially enjoyed.”62 Merom credits “the ingenuity” of the antiwar contingent in “denying the importance of the causes and achievements of” Operation Peace for Galilee.63 The protests “reduced Israel’s freedom of action . . . and forced on Begin, Sharon, and their government decisions they dearly wished to avoid.”64 The content analysis provides confirmation of the extent of dissent in the marketplace of ideas and foreshadows the consequent leverage this had on curtailing Begin and Sharon’s ambition. Both the initial rally effect and the later deterioration in popular support for Operation Peace for Galilee come across in the pair of public opinion surveys in Table 5.6. Although Table 5.6 provides a straightforward encapsulation of the aggregate policy preferences of Israeli respondents, the information contained in Table 5.7 reveals quite a bit about Israeli norms. Few respondents dismissed the legitimacy of using Israeli power to silence the PLO threat to the northern border. The issue about which Israelis differed appeared to be the legitimacy of using power to prevent a threat that remained hypothetical. While Begin and Sharon’s vision had substantial popular support throughout the painful Lebanese ordeal,65 the bifurcated nature of Israeli public opinion rendered statecraft to achieve the goals of the Big Pines operation moribund. As Merom writes, antiwar sentiment “succeeded in turning the cost of war, its moral consequences, and the legitimacy of the decision-making process before and during the war into major items on the national agenda.”66 The portion of the Israeli public opposed to the government’s policy as reflected in these tables was provided with ample political voice in the Knesset by the opposition Labour Party. In fact, the divisions in public opinion on Lebanon corresponded closely to the Labour/Likud breakdown of the electorate.67 Thus, while Begin continued to enjoy the support of his natural constituency, he did not have much political leeway given the rather close competition between the blocs for a parliamentary majority.

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Table 5.6 Israeli Public Preferences on Lebanon (in %)

In light of what you know now, are you for an IDF withdrawal from Lebanon?

Yes, unconditionally Yes, but on condition of security arrangements Yes, but on condition that the Syrian army quits too Yes, on other conditions No, against any pullout Undecided

October 1982

January 1983

August 1983

34.9

37.0

38.9

13.0

44.7 2.2 3.5 1.7

21.5

32.4 1.9 5.0 2.2

15.5

29.3 2.9 — 11.9

Sources: Jerusalem Post, Modi’in Ezrachi Research Institute Surveys, published on October 15, 1982, January 30, 1983, and June 24, 1983. From Avner Yaniv, Dilemmas of Security: Politics, Strategy, and the Israeli Experience in Lebanon (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 196.

What insights, if any, does this case provide into the role of norms in democratic wars of choice? Did Operation Peace for Galilee lead to changes in the norms that guide Israeli foreign policy? To what degree was Israeli identity challenged or shaped during the debate over the war? In the aggregate the Israeli public rendered an equivocal verdict on the invasion of Lebanon, but there was sufficient ferment in the marketplace of ideas to reject a shift in national identity necessary to accommodate the type of war Begin and Sharon advocated. Was Israel a liberal democratic state that used its military for self-defense, with restraint, and according to established procedures, or was it besieged and surrounded by hostile forces that necessitated an opportunistic practice of advancing state power, no matter the cost to self-image and international reputation? Writing in 2002, Michael Barnett observed an Israeli identity where the liberal component has become problematic owing to the weight of demography and the longevity of the occupation from the Six-Day War.68 Arguably, with the war in Lebanon, Israeli society first confronted the contradictions its power presented to its liberal identity. This initial reckoning was not about the antidemocratic nature of occupation, for at that point the problem still seemed solvable (indeed, one goal of the operation was to resolve the West Bank problem). Rather, Israeli behavior in war was presented to the home front as being a paragon of liberal and Jewish values. Moreover, the IDF was portrayed as the vanguard of the Zionist program and the cudgel that gave effect to the Holocaust origins of the state’s unofficial credo, Normative Change?

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Table 5.7 Judging Israel’s Invasion of Lebanon (in %)

Do you or don’t you justify today Israel’s actions in Lebanon?

Justify only removal of terrorists 40 kilometers from the border Justify all of Israel’s actions in Lebanon Do not justify at all any part of Israel’s actions Other answers/no opinion

July 1982

Oct. 1982

Dec. 1982

Jan. 1983

March 1983

Jan. 1984

24

37

49

38

40

38

66 5 5

45 9 9

34

10 7

41

11 10

41 11 8

31

27 4

Sources: Elizabeth Hann Hastings and Philip K. Hastings, eds., Index to International Public Opinion, 1982–1983 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983), 232–234; Elizabeth Hann Hastings and Philip K. Hastings, eds., Index to International Public Opinion, 1983–1984 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985), 192 (slightly different wording).

“never again.” The problem with Israel’s adventure in Lebanon was that it did not advance any of these values. Though Israeli identity may have shifted further toward hyperrealism in following years, at that point significant elements of society were still unwilling to dispense with holding Israeli foreign policy to liberal norms, and this undercut the IDF’s ability to achieve the expansive aims of the original mission. The Begin government justified the war by stressing national security concerns intertwined with promotive ambitions. That is, the objective of curtailing the threat posed by PLO rockets was supplanted in short order by the goal of effecting internal political change in Lebanon and altering the Palestinian political calculus as a by-product. Officials and critics alike framed the IDF as an opportunistic instrument that could remake Lebanon and remedy the Palestinian problem, the two sides differing over whether this was what the Israeli military ought to be used to achieve. Furthermore, many voices outside the upper echelons of government condemned the fact that the expanded objectives were pursued in contravention of Israeli democratic decisionmaking norms. These complaints were directed against pursuits that fell outside the bounds of the collective sense of Israel’s identity, because they violated what had been accepted norms of Israel’s approach to war. Israel invaded Lebanon to evict the PLO and Syria and wound up retreating to a security zone in the south when the limits of Israeli tolerance were confronted by the bitter internal antagonisms of Lebanese society. Victimized by internecine warfare and the lethal enmity of Shi’ite funda-

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mentalists, the Begin government lacked the domestic strength to carry on in pursuit of objectives that appeared unattainable by the end of summer 1982. At the end of August 1983, the IDF began a redeployment to the Awali River, a line commensurate with the initial aims approved by the cabinet on June 5, 1982. The Jerusalem Post concluded that “the new line in Lebanon was the result of political pressure, not military logic. The Government had to do something in the face of domestic criticism, growing louder with each new casualty, each new incident in Lebanon.”69 Not only did this withdrawal mark the end of any effort to remake Lebanon to Israel’s advantage, but Begin announced his resignation toward the end of August, with the war serving as one of the factors in his retreat from public life, along with his grief over the death of his wife, his own health, and the state of the economy.70 Six months earlier, Sharon was forced to resign to become minister without portfolio in February 1983 as a consequence of the findings of the Kahan Commission. Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir was chosen to lead Likud and consequently the state following Begin’s resignation. After seven months as prime minister, Shamir was forced to call for new elections more than a year ahead of schedule. Shamir’s difficulties in holding together a majority coalition in the Knesset were primarily a product of Israel’s troubled economy. By the time the elections were held on July 23, 1984, concern over Lebanon had been overshadowed by a deep economic crisis.71 Nevertheless, the popularity of Likud had begun to fall in the wake of the Sabra and Shatila massacres, yet Labour hardly benefited from Likud’s misfortune. Labour finally took a lead in the polls after the October 1983 Israeli stock market crash. But Labour’s lead remained ambiguous, according to Zvi Schuldiner, “relating more to the state of the economy and withdrawal from Lebanon, while the Likud was still favored on the question of the occupied territories.”72 During the campaign, debate on Lebanon was somewhat muted, partly a reflection of the major parties’ commitment to get out with security for the north, along with their joint (if not equivalent) complicity in originally approving the debacle. Given its lead in most polls, Labour tried to play it safe during the campaign. An internal poll to help the party define campaign issues revealed that 50 percent of respondents would have a negative reaction if Labour emphasized Lebanon.73 The party thus refrained from attacks on Likud’s policy and proposed a withdrawal timetable of three to six months with a strategy of “portable defense” in southern Lebanon. Likud refused to set deadlines for withdrawal but pledged to do so once the northern border was secure.74 Likud also sought to dissociate itself from the calamity, claiming that the invasion had been necessary while hinting that any failures were caused by traitorous behavior by the political opposition.75 With Likud trailing in the polls on the eve of the elections, Shamir changed tactics and began to advocate the formation of a national unity

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government of the two major blocs. Given the depths of the Israeli economic crisis, this suggestion had some appeal.76 Israeli national identity reflects the adage “never again,” the idea that the passivity of the Jewish people in the face of the Holocaust would not be repeated. Using the IDF as an instrument to defend the state was uncontroversial; sending the military to conduct what was at its most modest a preventive war was not. This was a war of choice that did not have the endorsement of the Israeli political system, for more grandiose purposes than the national self-image could abide, requiring tactics that violated society’s sense of liberal norms. As Merom writes, by the war’s first anniversary, “Israel’s political elite all but admitted that it had reached the end of its political capacity to pursue its ambitious war objectives in Lebanon.”77 Not since then has the IDF been used to effect political change in another state. Indeed, Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 2006 reflected more the pattern of its other forays north than the ill-fated Operation Peace for Galilee. Conclusion

A characteristic of democracies that choose war is that concern over potential public reaction to casualties or tolerance for lengthy involvement in war leads officials to adopt military tactics intended to lower the profile of the conflict on the home front but paradoxically wind up fomenting more rancorous domestic dissent or again two-level diplomacy reversed. As in the French case, where domestic impatience compelled the government to gamble on the prospect of victory at Dien Bien Phu, the Israeli government sought to lower the domestic footprint of the war and still achieve its objectives in Lebanon by limiting its reliance on tactics that endangered its soldiers and pilots. This included aerial and artillery bombardment, siege tactics, and the use of the Christian Phalange militia to perform functions that would probably result in an increase in Israeli casualties. Instead, internal and international condemnation, along with the calamity of the massacres in the Sabra neighborhood and Shatila refugee camp, were the devastating result for Begin’s choices. Without delving into the intricacies of the Israeli party system and the various factors that contributed to the results of the July 23, 1984, election, Labour emerged as the less than decisive winner. Indeed, both major parties lost support from the previous election, with the small parties on either side of the political spectrum realizing gains. Likud lost seven seats, Labour lost three; the number of seats accruing to parties to the right of Likud and left of Labour were five each. In August, Labour and Likud formed a national unity government with Shimon Peres and Shamir rotating the prime minister’s slot after twenty-five months. Extrication of the IDF from Lebanon,

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along with a new economic policy, was considered one of the main functions of the new government. Peres and his defense minister, Yitzhak Rabin, presented a three-stage withdrawal plan, which was approved with the support of one member of Likud and some smaller coalition partners on January 14, 1985.78 The process of terminating Israel’s Vietnam had begun, and the accomplishments of the original invasion proved to be quite opposite of what its architects intended.79 Notes

1. Miriam Fendius Elman, “Israel’s Invasion of Lebanon, 1982: Regime Change and War Decisions,” in Miriam Fendius Elman, ed., Paths to Peace: Is Democracy the Answer, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 301–334; Gil Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Yair Evron, War and Intervention in Lebanon: The Israeli-Syrian Deterrence Dialogue (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987); Avner Yaniv, Dilemmas of Security: Politics, Strategy, and the Israeli Experience in Lebanon (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Shai Feldman and Heda Rechnitz-Kijner, Deception, Consensus and War: Israel in Lebanon, Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Paper No. 27 (October 1984); Ze’ev Schiff and Ehud Ya’ari, Israel’s Lebanon War, trans. Ina Friedman (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984). 2. Feldman and Rechnitz-Kijner, Deception, Consensus and War, 3; Evron, War and Intervention in Lebanon, 161. I will not discriminate between the motives, ambitions, and approach of Begin and Sharon. For my purposes, they are teamed as advocates of an assertive preventive policy. 3. Menaghem Begin, “Security Dictates Choosing When to Fight,” Jerusalem Post, July 19, 1982, 2. 4. Menachem Begin, “Address by Prime Minister Begin at the National Defense College, 8 August 1982,” Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Foreign %20Relations/Israels%20Foreign%20Relations%20since%201947/1982-1984 /55%20Address%20by%20Prime%20Minister%20Begin%20at%20the%20National (accessed January 13, 2012). Also, Richard Haass, War of Necessity: War of Choice (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009), 10. 5. Netanel Lorch, “The Arab-Israeli Wars,” Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, September 2, 2003, http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/History/Modern+History/Centenary +of+Zionism/The+Arab-Israeli+Wars.htm (accessed January 13, 2012). 6. Miriam Fendius Elman, “Unpacking Democracy: Presidentialism, Parliamentarism, and Theories of Democratic Peace,” Security Studies, 9, no. 4 (Summer 2000): 94. 7. See http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Politics/LikudParty.html (accessed February 4, 2012). 8. Schiff and Ya’ari, Israel’s Lebanon War, 38–39. Also Elman, “Israel’s Invasion of Lebanon, 1982,” 334; Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars, 159. 9. Kirsten E. Schulze, “Israel Crisis Decision-Making in the Lebanon War: Group Madness or Individual Ambition?” Israel Studies, 3, no. 2 (Fall 1998): 215–237. 10. Feldman and Rechnitz-Kijner, Deception, Consensus and War, 5 11. These various acts of terrorism were launched by dissident factions within the PLO. The eventual PLO retaliation for Israeli air strikes was approved while Yassir Arafat was out of Lebanon.

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12. Yaniv, Dilemmas of Security, 109 13. Feldman and Rechnitz-Kijner, Deception, Consensus and War, 29. 14. See Polity IV Project: Dataset Users’ Manual, 17, http://www.systemicpeace .org/inscr/p4manualv2012.pdf (accessed January 8, 2014). 15. Elman, Paths to Peace, 332, 303, though on 492 she notes that domestic politics in this case posed “ex post constraints” only after the choice of war was made and costs became an issue for Israeli society; also see R. M. Siverson, “Democracies and War Participation: In Defense of the Institutional Constraints Argument,” European Journal of International Relations, 1, No. 4 (December 1995): 481–489, esp. 486–487. 16. Sabra Chartrand, “Editor’s Note; Outcry Erupts at The Jerusalem Post over New Publisher’s Editorial Bent,” New York Times, January 2, 1990. 17. Michael N. Barnett, “The Israeli Identity and the Peace Process: Recreating the Unthinkable,” in Shibley Telhami and Michael N. Barnett, eds., Identity and Foreign Policy in the Middle East (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002): 58–87. 18. Barnett, “The Israeli Identity and the Peace Process,” 63. 19. Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars, 165 and 178. In the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs history, Lorch refers to a two-phase war, the conventional portion lasting from June 6 through August 23, 1982, http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/AboutIsrael /History/Pages/Operation%20Peace%20for%20Galilee%20-%201982.aspx (accessed January 28, 2014); Reuven Erlich, “The Road to the First Lebanon War,” August 1, 2012, paper prepared for the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center. Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars, 178, presents the following breakdown of fatalities: 214 (32 percent) during the first twelve days of the war; 118 (18 percent) from June 19 to August 23; 168 (25 percent) from August 24, the war’s first anniversary; and 164 (25 percent) through June 1985. 20. Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars, 196–197. 21. Lorch, “The Arab-Israeli Wars.” 22. Elman, “Israel’s Invasion of Lebanon, 1982,” 321. 23. See the foreing discussion. Even Elman, not a democratic peace enthusiast, notes that “even in democracies there are always likely to be elites who view force as the best means of ensuring national security.” Elman, “Israel’s Invasion of Lebanon, 1982,” 301–334, 331. 24. Elman, “Israel’s Invasion of Lebanon, 1982,” 331. 25. Begin at the National Defense College, August 8, 1982. 26. Begin, “Statement in the Knesset by Prime Minister Begin, 8 June 1982,” http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/ForeignPolicy/MFADocuments/Yearbook6/Pages/7%20 Statement%20in%20the%20Knesset%20by%20Prime%20Minister%20Begin.aspx (accessed January 27, 1982). 27. Begin, “Statement in the Knesset,” June 8. Indeed, right-wing commentators urged the promotion of nationalism, and suggested that like their British media counterparts with the Falklands, cover Lebanon “glamorously”; Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars, 201. 28. Begin, “Statement in the Knesset,” June 8. 29. Begin, “Statement in the Knesset,” June 8. 30. Menachem Begin, “Address in the Knesset by Prime Minister Begin, 29 June 1982,” Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/ForeignPolicy/MFADocuments /Yearbook6/Pages/36%20Address%20in%20the%20Knesset%20by%20Prime%20Minister %20Begin-.aspx (accessed January 27, 2012). 31. Begin, “Address in the Knesset,” June 29. 32. Begin, “Address in the Knesset,” June 29. 33. “A New, Expanded War,” Jerusalem Post, June 10, 1982, 8.

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34. “Time to Call a Halt,” Jerusalem Post, June 11, 1982, 18. 35. “Time to Call a Halt.” 36. “Morale and Truth,” Jerusalem Post, June 29, 1982, 10. 37. Charles Hoffman, “Nagging Thoughts,” Jerusalem Post, July 2, 1982, 7. 38. Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars, 172–173. 39. Quoted in Ha’aretz, July 9, 1982, in Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars, 181–82. 40. In David Richardson, “Personal Protest,” Jerusalem Post, August 13, 1982, 7. 41. Feldman and Rechnitz-Kijner, Deception, Consensus and War, 38; Schiff and Ya’ari, Israel’s Lebanon War, 213. 42. Feldman and Rechnitz-Kijner, Deception, Consensus and War, 39. 43. Evron, War and Intervention in Lebanon, 149; and Feldman and Rechnitz Kijner, Deception, Consensus and War, 40. 44. Editorial, “The Voice of the Gun,” Jerusalem Post, June 6, 1982, 8. 45. Yael Yishai, “Dissent in Israel: Opinions on the Lebanon War,” Middle East Review (Winter 1983–1984): 40. 46. Yaniv, Dilemmas of Security, 125. Evron, War and Intervention in Lebanon, 140 and 146. 47. Schiff and Ya’ari, Israel’s Lebanon War, 282. In addition, see Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars,175m 220–224. 48. Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars, 173–175, 220–222. 49. Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars, 172, also, 216. 50. From Rafael Eitan, in Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars, 200. 51. Asher Wallfish, “Sharon’s Report Worries Alignment,” Jerusalem Post, June 8, 1982, 1. 52. I did not include letters to the editor or advertisements. The Post places paid death notices in the paper, and I concluded these ought not be part of the analysis. 53. Benjamin Page, Robert Y. Shapiro, and Glenn Dempsey, “What Moves Public Opinion,” American Political Science Review, 81, no. 1 (March 1987): 23–44. 54. Benny Morris, “Rewriting History,” Jerusalem Post, August 11, 1982, 10. 55. Mark Segal, “Rabin: Begin Got the World Preoccupied with Palestinians,” Jerusalem Post, August 13, 1982, 3. 56. Jonathan Frankel, “Negation of Democracy,” Jerusalem Post, June 27, 1982, 8. 57. Yaniv, Dilemmas of Security, 156; See Yadin Kaufmann, “Israel’s Flexible Voters,” Foreign Policy (Winter 1985–86), 120, for the effect of the war on some religious nationalists, especially Hammer. On the establishment of the commission following massacre and subsequent protest, see Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars, 218–222. 58. In response to the July 3 Peace Now demonstration, Likud organized a progovernment rally; see Martin Gilbert, Israel: A History (New York: Morrow, 1998), 507, and Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars, 196. 59. Feldman and Rechnitz-Kijner, Deception, Consensus and War, 61; John Mueller, War, Presidents, and Public Opinion (New York: John Wiley, 1973). 60. Feldman and Rechnitz-Kijner, Deception, Consensus and War, 61–62. 61. Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars, 213. 62. Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars, 213 and 208. 63. Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars, 179. 64. Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars, 224. 65. Begin’s popularity remained relatively high, see Yaniv, Dilemmas of Security, 194; also see Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars, 208–213. 66. Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars, 225.

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67. Yaniv, Dilemmas of Security, 195. 68. Barnett, “The Israeli Identity and the Peace Process,” 69. 69. Jerusalem Post, July 31, 1983 quoted in Yaniv, Dilemmas of Security, 216; also, see Schiff and Ya’ari, Israel’s Lebanon War, 298. 70. See C. Paul Bradley, Parliamentary Elections in Israel: Three Case Studies (Grantham, NH: Tompson and Rutter, 1985), 143. 71. Bradley, Parliamentary Elections in Israel, 144–148; Zvi Schuldiner, “Israel’s ‘National Unity,’” MERIP Reports, no. 129 (January 1985): 24. 72. Schuldiner, “Israel’s ‘National Unity,’” 24–25. 73. Yaniv, Dilemmas of Security, 249. 74. Bradley, Parliamentary Elections in Israel, 163–164. 75. Schuldiner, “Israel’s ‘National Unity,’” 25. 76. Bradley, Parliamentary Elections in Israel, 164. 77. Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars, 163. 78. Evron, War and Intervention in Lebanon, 168; Yaniv, Dilemmas of Security, 276. 79. See Kaufmann, “Israel’s Flexible Voters,” 118–119 and 123.

6 War as a “New Product”: Marketing Operation Iraqi Freedom

For almost three decades following the US withdrawal, the long shadow of the Vietnam War permeated virtually all American debates over the use of force. Whenever officials contemplated the deployment of US military assets, the specter of Vietnam was raised, either by those opposed to intervention who would warn of an impending quagmire or by advocates, eager to be able to declare, as George H. W. Bush did after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, to have “kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.”1 Vietnam served as a marker to measure the declining potency of anti-interventionist sentiment, as with each use of force following the US withdrawal from Southeast Asia, the observation invariably was offered that this latest military involvement was “the largest since Vietnam.” Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, however, whatever Vietnam-inspired reticence that remained seemed to evaporate. In this chapter I consider the George W. Bush administration’s campaign in favor of war in the marketplace of ideas. Not only did the president and his lieutenants present war in Iraq as being as close as possible to the pole of necessity on the continuum of choice, they sought to frame it as an endeavor echoing the normative and prudential characteristics of earlier triumphs of US foreign policy, not as a repeat of the Vietnam experience. In his March 19, 2003, address to the nation announcing the invasion of Iraq, President Bush proclaimed that the United States would “not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder.” His call to “meet that threat now” with US military might to avoid having “to meet it later . . . on the streets of our cities” with ambulances and fire trucks framed the menace posed by Saddam Hussein’s unchecked ambition in the most dire and immediate terms.2 Certainly, prior experience provided sufficient background for US citizens to appreciate 163

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that Saddam was a threat; Bush did not need to wholly fabricate a frightening image of the potential harm Iraq might cause US interests. Making the case for this war of choice meant elevating the perception of danger to overcome domestic political resistance to waging preventive war to deal with a threat that was more potential than real. Democratic Context

Bush’s advocacy of war against Iraq faced historical, moral, and policy hurdles in the marketplace of ideas. Embarking on a war against Iraq would breach the distinction between preemptive and preventive war, as well as challenge widely held assumptions about democratic behavior in general and with American identity in particular. Though he did not label it as such, Bush’s call to arms fit the definition of a preventive war of choice. That is, the president was making war even though no attack by Iraq on the United States was imminent and the survival of the nation was not at stake.3 This was not just a war of choice, Haass maintains, “but the first preventive war launched by the United States in its history.”4 Democratic peace research suggests that democracies are less likely than other regime types to engage in preventive war.5 This finding is certainly consistent with popular mythology that the United States does not start wars, a view reflected in Newsweek’s declaration in 1999 that “America has not started a war in this century.”6 Furthermore, as David Greenberg wrote in Slate as the debate over Iraq intensified in October 2002, the absence of “an unambiguous casus belli” caused many people unease with the prospect that the United States might strike first, since “we imagine that we go to war only when provoked.”7 Surely the historical record is more complicated,8 but for our purposes the details of historical reality are largely irrelevant; rather, it is the widespread perception that the United States rarely (if ever) initiates war that matters. Going to war against Iraq required that the president prevail in the marketplace of ideas without the benefit of a handy analogical precedent arguing in favor of acting, democratic norms providing a ready justification for intervention, or an American identity consistent with preventive war. To succeed in the marketplace of ideas, the Bush administration needed to frame war against Iraq not as a choice but as essential to the national security of the United States. By placing the war in the “necessity” frame—as far away from the choice pole as possible—Bush and his aides promulgated a narrative compelling enough not only to propel the nation to war but to color debate about Iraq for years to come. Their success may reveal a great deal about how a determined chief of government (COG) can overcome liberal inhibitions about wars of choice.

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There is no shortage of scholarship arguing that war was enabled by the Bush administration’s mastery of the marketplace of ideas.9 Several authors have made the case that advocates for war prevailed owing to a dysfunctional marketplace, where through informational advantages, supplemented by skillful framing, the president and his aides successfully inflated the threat posed by Saddam, while the political opposition was ineffectual in response.10 Chaim Kaufmann observes that those expected “to check the ability of those in power to control foreign policy debate—especially the press, independent experts, and opposition parties—failed to do so,” depriving the marketplace of the type of vigorous deliberation necessary to counter administration claims.11 He maintains that if the domestic audience had been aware of “the weakness of the evidence” in the administration’s brief to indict Saddam, the president’s team “probably could not have made a persuasive case for war.”12 Jane Cramer rejects the idea that information advantages accruing to the administration, or shortcomings of Congress and the media, explain the failure of the pre–Iraq War marketplace. Instead, she proposes that a “militarized patriotism” led to “widespread endorsement of strong national security policies to the exclusion of other options.”13 For her, these Cold War norms favoring toughness and deference to the president explain why Bush was able to take the country to war with inconsequential resistance. Krebs and Lobasz offer an alternative perspective, arguing that the “war on terror narrative” emerged as dominant after 9/11, and along “with the existing portrait of Saddam Hussein as evil and as a terrorist, deprived leading Democrats of socially sustainable arguments with which to oppose the administration.”14 Opponents were “rhetorically coerced” under this dominant narrative, they assert, with even critics like Barack Obama reproducing the war on terror narrative while attacking Iraq War policy.15 Trevor Thrall offers a different view of the marketplace of ideas, contending that its role is not to evaluate the veracity of competing assertions but to sort the public with elites whose “claims resonate more deeply with their value systems, beliefs, and cherished identities.”16 Thus, what he calls the “marketplace of values” puts the focus on framing, where competing characterizations of the purposes behind a use of force are proffered by elites. As Thrall sees it, in a healthy marketplace of values, those on opposing sides of an issue congregate around elites and media sources, which affirm their worldview. During the run-up to the US invasion, Bush effectively tapped into values shared by many citizens, but as the war wore on, “and opposing elites spoke up in greater numbers, the polarization process picked up steam as the marketplace divided the public into warring factions.”17 Was the marketplace dysfunctional because of differentials in capabilities among the pro- and antiwar factions, or was the invasion of Iraq facilitated because proponents tapped into a norm or narrative which the populace was

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powerless to resist? Did the Bush administration offer a better characterization or framing for how war to depose Saddam would protect US interests in a competitive marketplace, or did the White House triumph by default? I propose that only by analyzing framing efforts of the administration and its opponents—not just at the outset of the war but at selected intervals throughout—can we evaluate the operation of the marketplace of ideas. In contrast to these accounts of marketplace dysfunction, Frank Harvey depicts a smoothly functioning marketplace of ideas during the period before the war, with “widespread consensus on the nature of the threat” posed by Iraq and how best to respond.18 In Explaining the Iraq War: Counterfactual Theory, Logic and Evidence, Harvey asserts that the decision to go to war reflected a healthy debate between those advocating a preemptive, unilateral response to an imminent threat (neoconservatives), and officials who proposed a deliberate path of prior congressional approval and multilateral engagement to check Saddam’s pursuit of weapons of mass destruction (Democrats and old-school Republicans). Harvey finds the conventional wisdom that a cabal of neoconservatives hijacked US foreign policy misguided and instead counters with an interpretation that emphasizes the primacy of domestic and structural factors that propelled the nation toward war during the eighteen-month period between 9/11 and March 2003. In Harvey’s view, there was broad agreement across the political spectrum at home and abroad that a coercive strategy was necessary to eliminate the threat posed by Saddam’s long-running weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program, and that had Al Gore been elected president in 2000, he too would have been compelled by these circumstances to take the nation to war. Regardless of whether the marketplace functioned well, there were certainly many reasons to choose war against Iraq, including its failure to abide strictly by the requirements of UN resolutions, its human rights record, Saddam’s use of chemical weapons against Iranians and Iraqi Kurds, and Iraq’s well-earned reputation as a regional threat. But according to Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, the threat of weapons of mass destruction was sufficiently compelling to bring the bureaucracy together and, one presumes, sell to the people.19 Thus, the choice of war was not for liberal purposes of human rights or democracy promotion, although both figured in the speeches of government officials. Rather, the White House entered the marketplace of ideas with the claim that the national interest required a preventive war irrespective of taboo because the threat of international terrorism with weapons of mass destruction posed risks no leader could tolerate.20 Of course, no WMDs were found by inspectors following the invasion. Yet once US forces were committed, regardless of the reasons that first justified the deployment, the future of post-Saddam Iraq became a significant US national security interest. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s inaccurate

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invocation of the “Pottery Barn rule”—“you break it you own it”21—made clear the long-term implications of a US invasion. Toppling Saddam’s regime meant that the United States would bear responsibility for the welfare of the Iraqi people. In its own way, the Pottery Barn rule represents a norm of behavior—assuming ownership of damage caused by one’s actions. Thus, once Saddam was out of the picture, American debates over Iraq policy could not escape the consequences of the Bush administration’s initial designation of it as a national security interest during the six-month period between September 2002 and February 2003. Accordingly, I commence this study of the Iraq War with a review of the original case for war, then consider how debate evolved in the marketplace as the conflict progressed. Before beginning my analysis, I specify the parameters of this inquiry. Case Selection

I begin my study of US domestic politics and the Iraq War with a look at the arguments Bush administration officials made during the lead-up to war prior to the congressional vote granting authority on October 16, 2002. My goal here is twofold. First, I establish the frame the administration promoted to build public and congressional support for a war of choice. Second, I consider whether a viable counterframe to Bush’s characterization of the Iraqi threat requiring war emerged during the initial congressional debate. How the Bush administration fared in presenting its case for war to the public is just a preliminary part of my inquiry here. Following consideration of the Bush administration’s initial framing of Operation Iraqi Freedom, I turn to an analysis of domestic debate on the war at four potential turning points. The Iraq War constitutes a Type 2 case. Therefore, its enduring presence on the national political agenda argues in favor of evaluating the debate in the marketplace of ideas through a content analysis of newspaper coverage at four potentially meaningful junctures. Juncture 1 incorporates Powell’s presentation in favor of war before the UN Security Council on February 5, 2003. I take as a point of departure for juncture 2 the November 17, 2005, introduction of an antiwar resolution in the House of Representatives by reliably hawkish representative John Murtha (D-PA) that the war in Iraq was unwinnable, one year prior to the 2006 midterm elections which resulted in both houses of Congress changing hands to the Democratic opposition. Juncture 3 surrounds the June 25, 2007, Senate floor speech of GOP foreign policy stalwart senator Richard Lugar (IN) advocating a change in the direction of US Iraq policy. My interest in Murtha and Lugar concerns their articulation of a potential counterframe and their standing as well-regarded members of the Washington foreign policy elite. Through a content analysis of media coverage, I assess how their critiques

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fared in the marketplace of ideas. Finally, I consider the debate during the crucial testimony by key officials before Congress regarding the “surge” in September 2007. At each of these junctures we would expect a spike in news media coverage, as a significant Iraq-related policy proposal was advanced by a prominent news maker. Such instances are propitious for a counterframe to emerge. My model predicts that when credible actors on the national scene articulate a counterframe to official policy, it will resonate across the political spectrum as long as it receives media coverage and taps into key aspects of the national identity. When these criteria are met, I anticipate that public and institutionally based opposition to prevailing policy will intensify. Given my discussion of democratic wars of choice up to now, the interaction of domestic dissent and policy during the Iraq War presents something of an anomaly.22 Sure, the decision to go to war was well supported at the outset.23 Figure 6.1 displays poll data illustrating the rally effect during the “major combat operations” portion of the war’s duration. What appears different about this democratic war of choice is that despite its increasing unpopularity, the COG remained unresponsive to domestic dissent. Indeed, Bush not only ignored calls to reverse course in Iraq, he escalated US involvement. Unlike COGs faced with democratic opposition in the previous cases examined, who either reversed course (Begin) or altered strategy to make continuation of the war to achieve lesser ends possible (Nixon), Bush doubled down, increasing the US troop commitment despite widespread, politically potent dissent. Why wasn’t this democratic war of choice similarly affected? Indeed, Iraq policy in large measure followed the preferences of the US COG, as the contrary preferences of public opinion, Congress, key bureaucratic actors, and a bipartisan blue-ribbon commission were seemingly disregarded in favor of the president’s inclination to escalate the military commitment with the “surge.” Background: Developing the Necessity Frame

US forces invaded Iraq for reasons that were well articulated and absorbed by the body politic. Not surprisingly, just prior to the start of the war, 59 percent of respondents favored the military option, with 35 percent opposed.24 Once the “shock and awe” campaign commenced, and the rally effect took hold, the voices of prewar skeptics were muted. However, widespread doubts about the official rationale for the war began percolating shortly after Bush declared on May 1, 2003, that all combat operations in Iraq had ended. Most prominently, the administration’s principal case for war came under intensified scrutiny following publication of former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s New York Times op-ed piece on July 6, 2003. Wilson undermined

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Figure 6.1 Approval of President Bush's Handling of the Iraq War 80

70

Jo Joseph seph W ilson Wilson

Capture off Capture o Saddam Saddam

60

Percentage Percentage

50

40 Abu Abu Ghraib Ghraib

30

Vo Vote te fo for or N New ew Iraqi Iraqi Pa rliament Parliament

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Surge Su rge Sp eech Speech

Ap Approve prove % Disapprove % Disapprove

0

Source: ABC News/Washington Post.

a crucial component of Bush’s justification for war by claiming that while on a CIA-requested fact-finding trip, he found and reported no evidence of Iraqi efforts to secure fissile material from Niger, contradicting the president’s declaration in his State of the Union address.25 Moreover, by summer 2003 it became undeniable that the United States faced a full-blown insurgency in Iraq and the relatively low costs of defeating Iraq’s regular military would be compounded exponentially as the United States struggled to pacify the country.26 Over the next few years, the war became increasingly unpopular and the volume of congressional dissent rose. Furthermore, the revelation of human rights abuses at the hands of US soldiers at Abu Ghraib, along with other instances of possible misconduct in Iraq,27 brought into public debate whether the United States was violating democratic norms more than advancing them.28 Before I evaluate the resonance of these developments and others on the domestic audience, however, I detail the Bush administration’s efforts to promote the Iraq War option. Then I explore whether critiques of these government goals, strategy, and tactics penetrated the broader marketplace of ideas.

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There were two key elements to the framing success of the Bush administration during the lead-up to the war: tying the threat of Iraq to the experience of 9/11 and White House mastery of the craft of public relations. Arguably, while the Bush team’s acumen with public relations waned over time, its willingness to invoke 9/11 never ebbed. From the day of the attack, “9/11” formed the core of Bush national security thinking; when Bush turned his attention toward Iraq, 9/11 remained the guidepost for war strategy and the centerpiece of the narrative that framed the war as necessary.29 Labeled the “Iraq-as-war-on-terror frame” by Gershkoff and Kushner,30 the Bush administration was unrelenting in its association of the war in Iraq with the security dangers from terrorism made manifest on 9/11. The 9/11 refrain tapped into the public’s mental schema that associated passivity in the face of emerging threats with mortal danger. The Bush team adroitly exploited cognitive links between the sense of vulnerability Americans felt on 9/11 with what they characterized as the misguided proclivity for erring on the side of caution and restraint in the face of potential threats. With this the White House also tapped into the fear that the Middle East was the regional cauldron that generated the forces that attacked the United States on September 11. By eliminating Saddam Hussein, the conditions that made possible such terrorist acts could be one step closer to eradication. Importantly, their framing of the war as necessary was resonant with the lessons of Munich, a cognitive script indelibly imprinted on generations of people that appeasement never works and it’s best to confront dangers before they blossom into existential threats.31 Members of the Bush team arrived at the pinnacle of power in Washington harboring concerns about Iraq with an urgency not shared by the outgoing Clinton administration.32 A few weeks before inauguration, Vice President-elect Dick Cheney sought a Pentagon briefing for his running mate, with Iraq as “Topic A,” telling Secretary of Defense William Cohen to provide Bush with a serious “discussion about Iraq and different options.”33 Close Bush advisers expressed dissatisfaction with the Iraq containment regime dating back to the administration of the president-elect’s father, but these more hawkish officials nevertheless lacked a domestic political imperative that would enable the new team to launch an attack fierce enough to dislodge Saddam without provocation.34 Of course, 9/11 provided a compelling strategic rationale for armed confrontation with Iraq as well as a foreboding backdrop to develop political support for war. Strategically, the 9/11 attacks solidified the view among officials and their allies that containment of Iraq was no longer an option. For the president, 9/11 made all of Saddam’s “terrible features ... much more threatening.” Consequently, Bush concluded that “keeping Saddam in a box looked less and less feasible.”35 Administration officials, according to CIA Director George Tenet, “seized on the emotional impact of 9/11 and created a

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psychological connection between the failure to act decisively against alQa’ida and the danger posed by Iraq’s WMD programs.”36 Cheney made explicit the link between the Iraqi threat brewing on the horizon and the failure to anticipate the 9/11 attacks, asserting in an August 26, 2002, address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars that if the United States could have preempted 9/11, it would have, and so the United States could not afford to wait and absorb a possible blow from Saddam’s WMDs program.37 Furthermore, contemporaneous news accounts report that administration officials thought 9/11 a “transformative moment,” which politically “increased the public’s willingness to accept military casualties as well as preemptive action.”38 Al-Qaeda’s attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, along with its seizure of Flight 93 (presumably bound for Washington, DC), undoubtedly facilitated the Bush White House’s ability to turn toward war to remove Saddam, but it is important to note that even before these horrific incidents, a majority of the public surveyed in February 2001 by Gallup (52 percent) favored the reintroduction of US troops to remove the Iraqi leader. In November 2001, shortly after 9/11, support for using force to rid Iraq of Saddam peaked at 74 percent of respondents. Thereafter, as detailed in Figure 6.2, support for the use of force fluctuated, remaining mostly in the 60–69 percent range, though dipping as low as 55 percent of respondents following congressional hearings in late October 2002.39 Thomas Graham characterizes consistent polling results in the 60–69 percent range as “consensus,” indicating a

Figure 6.2 Support for the Use of US Force Against Iraq 80

Pe Percent rcent o off R Respondents espondents

70 60 50

F Favor avor Oppose O ppose

40 30 20 10 0 Feb-01 Nov-01 Feb-01 Nov-01

Jan-02 Jan-02

Ju Jun-02 n-02

Au Aug-02 g-02 Se Sep-02 p-02

Source: Foyle, "Leading the Public to War?" (

(

(

(

( (

Early Early Oct-02 Oct-02

Late O Oct-02 ct-02

Nov-02 Nov-02 Dec-02 Dec-02

Ja Jan-03 n-03

F Feb-03 eb-03

Ma Mar-03 r-03

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magnitude of public opinion sufficiently potent to influence “the policy process even if powerful bureaucratic interests have to be overruled.”40 Graham labels public opinion at the next highest decile “preponderant,” which, he argues, “not only ‘causes’ the political system to act according to its dictates but also deters political opposition from challenging a specific decision.”41 Though early polling could only be seen as encouraging to a White House intent on dealing forcefully with Saddam, the Bush administration took no chances with the domestic audience and sought to build support for the war option toward “preponderant” levels through a detailed, highly coordinated public relations campaign. During a May 2008 interview with National Public Radio to promote his memoir, former White House press secretary Scott McClellan described “a massive political operation” set up for “shaping and manipulating the narrative in the media” as a permanent part of the administration’s approach to governing.42 Gaining public and congressional support for going to war against Iraq, McClellan revealed, was no different than the approach taken to get any other issue through Congress. Following “a meticulously planned strategy” developed well in advance of its post–Labor Day 2002 roll-out, the White House effort to persuade the nation of the necessity for war culminated in Bush delivering a televised address to the nation on the first anniversary of 9/11 from Ellis Island, using a floodlit Statue of Liberty as a poignant backdrop.43 White House public relations operatives managed more than speech venues and camera angles in their effort to dominate the marketplace of ideas. The timing of Bush’s speeches, when congressional hearings should be held, as well as the themes to be emphasized to various audiences were central parts of the planning process.44 The history of Saddam’s defiance of the United Nations would be a key component of the president’s September 12 address to the United Nations, while the White House strategy toward Congress, according to New York Times correspondent Elizabeth Bumiller, “would include not-so-subtle mentions of the regrets experienced by those lawmakers, like former Senator Sam Nunn (D, GA), who did not vote for the 1991 ‘use of force’ resolution before the Persian Gulf war.”45 With the wreckage of the Twin Towers still smoldering, a White House decision to warn state supporters of terrorism in Bush’s first public remarks following the tragedy set the predicate for a future war against Saddam’s regime. Members of the Bush team, several already inclined to consider Iraq a primary national security threat, wondered about whether Iraq played a role.46 Speculation, informed or idle, became relevant to policy when Richard Perle, chair of the Defense Policy Board and longtime neoconservative maven on foreign policy, succeeded in inserting language into the president’s first address that linked state supporters of terrorism to the threat made manifest on the morning of September 11. In conversation with

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White House speech writer David Frum, Perle asserted that the United States would not be able “to deal effectively with global terrorism if states can support, sponsor, and harbor terrorists without penalty.”47 Perle’s view, shared by other senior officials, was placed in a draft of the president’s speech. Arriving back at the White House on the evening of 9/11, Bush asked National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice if he should include Perle’s line. Reasoning that “first moments matter most,” Rice argued in favor of its inclusion.48 Thus, on the evening of the most devastating attack on US soil, the president broadcasted to the nation and the world his response: “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”49 White House attention on Afghanistan during the months following 9/11 kept the media spotlight off Iraq for a while, though the likelihood that Iraq would be the next target in the global war on terror was never far from the surface. Behind the scenes, planning for war against Iraq proceeded. On December 18, 2001, the New York Times reported that among administration officials and key Middle Eastern allies the war option against Iraq “has gained significant ground in recent weeks.”50 A few days later, following a National Security Council meeting, the president asked Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld privately about the status of the military’s Iraq war plans. According to Bob Woodward, Bush ordered Rumsfeld to keep his request quiet to avoid “enormous international angst and domestic speculation.” In his interview with Woodward in 2003, Bush confessed he “knew what would happen if people thought we were developing a potential or a war plan for Iraq.”51 By placing Iraq in the tripartite “axis of evil” along with Iran and North Korea in his January 29, 2002, State of the Union address, Bush only encouraged speculation that Baghdad would be the next front in the war on terror. Sporadic news reports through the first few months of 2002 further solidified expectations that the White House was moving toward armed confrontation with Saddam’s regime. For example, during testimony before the Senate Budget Committee on February 12, 2002, Powell delivered a not-too-oblique warning to Iraq by differentiating it from Iran and North Korea and relaying that against the latter two states the United States had “no plans to start a war.”52 Powell’s public message was supplemented with a series of leaks from unnamed officials conveying information that led journalists Michael Gordon and David Sanger to report that “a consensus was emerging that it is important to take on the Iraqi leaders, with the help of allies if possible, and without them if necessary.”53 As the calendar moved toward summer, the administration made its plans more explicit, though still without directly declaring its intention to pursue the war option. The president’s June 1, 2002, commencement speech to the graduates at West Point, where Bush enunciated the doctrine on preemption

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that would provide justification for the war against Iraq, made the prospect of conflict with Saddam seem increasingly close. Uttering words intended to reach an audience far beyond the confines of the military academy, Bush used language foreshadowing his eventual justification for war: “If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long.”54 Unease among some congressional Democrats and, importantly, questioning by establishment Republicans about the apparent rush toward war colored Washington conversation during July and August.55 On August 16, Bush sought to reassure critics, pledging that he would continue to seek the counsel of various voices, yet saying he would in the end decide Iraq policy “based upon the latest intelligence and how best to protect our country plus our friends and allies.”56 Not only did the White House feel buffeted by criticism from without, Powell served as a forceful internal advocate for a more cautious approach, leading many observers to wonder whether Iraq policymaking was in disarray. Cheney, seeking to forestall any incipient momentum in favor of slowing the march to war, offered a hard-edged assessment of the threat posed by Saddam to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Nashville on August 26. Corresponding to what he believed needed to be advanced as the administration’s view of the Iraqi threat, Cheney insisted that Saddam be removed and lambasted the prospect of seeking a UN resolution to force the return of inspectors, since “Saddam has perfected the game of shoot and retreat, and is very skilled in the art of denial and deception.”57 The inability of the White House to control debate during that time led Bush to call August “the miserable month.”58 White House dominance over message and the debate in the marketplace of ideas was restored with the establishment of the White House Iraq Group under the coordination of White House chief of staff Andrew Card. Card believed “selling and marketing” to be one of the three key components of his portfolio as chief of staff. Given the widespread impression that the White House had “pretty much blown August,” Card resolved that September and October would be “organized, coordinated and focused.”59 Deferring to Cheney, with his congressional experience and constitutional role as president of the Senate, the White House agreed that unlike in 1991, Congress would be asked to pass a war resolution before going to the United Nations. Cheney proposed that the coming midterm elections provided an opportunity to press members to show voters where they “stood on Saddam Hussein and his dangerous regime.”60 Furthermore, as Card notes, the imprimatur of congressional support gave Bush “more moral authority in moving forward.”61 Persuading the domestic audience of the necessity for war unfolded as part of a threefold public relations effort, what Holsti characterized as a “relentless overt and covert” campaign.62 First, a series of speeches and appearances by administration officials conveyed the nature of the WMD threat presented by the confluence of Saddam and terror. Second, evidence

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was shared to buttress the administration portrait of Iraq as an imminent threat. Last, the White House used the media itself to make and reinforce its case. White House success at messaging came across in a number of especially evocative phrases introduced in coordinated appearances by officials. For example, before the United Nations, Bush defined the problem as Saddam’s noncompliance with previous dictates and the consequent need for the institution to act to preserve its relevance (something Bush pledged the United States would do if the United Nations did not). To skeptics who accused the administration of acting without sufficient evidence of Iraqi malfeasance, Rice warned: “We don’t want the smoking gun to become a mushroom cloud.”63 White House officials were more than willing to distribute whatever evidence that could be presented to make their case, usually with the most ominous of interpretations. Aluminum tubes, alleged suspect visits of al-Qaeda operatives with Iraqi agents, and the history of Saddam’s duplicity were all wrapped and packaged along with the claim of Iraq’s pursuit of fissile material from Niger as an unacceptable threat in a post-9/11 world. Of course, these claims were suspect at best, inflated at least, and outright fabrications at worst. For example, the charge that Saddam sought high-grade aluminum tubes, suitable only for the process of uranium enrichment essential to producing the fissile material for a nuclear weapon, was rejected by the State Department, which reported two days prior to Powell’s UN testimony that the tolerances of the Iraqi aluminum was equivalent to that used in US conventional ordinance.64 A key part of the White House public relations strategy included injecting official documents supportive of the administration’s claims into the debate. Not only did officials insert crucial output of the federal intelligence community into the marketplace of ideas, critics speculate that White House pressure affected the conclusions drawn by analysts.65 Among the more egregious charges of White House manipulation of the intelligence came those in the form of a white paper, “Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs,” released to the public by the director of the CIA on October 12, 2002. The white paper was in part generated as a response to requests from Congress that the intelligence community make available “an unclassified version” of the secret National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) produced at the behest of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Subsequent concerns that the Bush administration went to war on faulty intelligence led the committee to investigate the degree to which the white paper and NIE reflected the consensus of the intelligence community or were more tidbits of speculation masquerading as facts. The committee determined that the public white paper contained none of the caveats presented in the classified NIE.66 According to Mitchell and Massoud, the October 2002 NIE itself “was based more on opinion than facts: it overstated the case for war and

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was not based on good intelligence.”67 Whatever flaws may be found in the intelligence reflect the administration’s motives, as Paul Pillar argues, to use “intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made.”68 Ricks concurs, condemning it as “shameful,” calling the NIE “a political document,” which nevertheless “succeeded brilliantly” in selling the idea of war to remove the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.69 In conjunction with its selective release of sensitive information supportive of its definition of the problem posed by Saddam, officials provided incriminating material about Saddam’s activities to journalists who then dutifully reported the claims in the news. The White House maximized the impact of this leaked information by referring back to these prompted reports as independently derived and not planted first by the administration. The White House could bolster the impact of these claims, as officials mentioned items in the media implicating Saddam in nefarious activities based on these leaks, as if these claims were “coming from The New York Times, not just us,” as Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, put it.70 Not only did the administration “game” intelligence in this manner, elevating the threat posed by the Iraqi regime, US officials minimized the challenges of deposing Saddam. Ricks details the imperviousness of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and their allies to evidence that ran counter to their preconceived notions of the dangers presented by Saddam and the ease with which a relatively small US force could take control of the country and quickly depart with a stable, pro-Western successor regime taking shape painlessly after the invasion. Repeated “warnings from experts weren’t heeded— or even welcomed,” and those such as Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki, who sought to inject candor into the public debate, potentially disrupting the plans of his superiors, were effectively silenced.71 Congress passed a use-of-force resolution on October 16, 2002, with strong, bipartisan support (77–23 in the Senate with 29 Democrats in favor; 296–133 in the House with 81 Democrats in favor). Armed with the congressional authorization, Bush succeeded in securing a resolution from the UN Security Council that forced the return of weapons inspectors to Iraq. The resolution did not contain an automatic trigger mechanism that would authorize military enforcement if Iraq failed to comply with its terms, however. Instead, UN Security Council Resolution 1441 laid out a number of procedural arms checks designed to “[bring] to full and verified completion disarmament process [in Iraq] established by [previous] resolution 687.”72 The resolution further established that should Iraq not comply with the conditions of its disarmament orders, such actions would be considered a “material breach of Iraq’s obligations”73 and would result in subsequent referral of the issue back to the UN Security Council for immediate action. Despite these herculean efforts, deftly executed, the path to war was still not cleared by late January 2003. Members of the Security Council and

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skeptics in Congress urged that inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency be given more time and that war not be launched without a second, enabling Security Council resolution. The administration effort to make this case forms the first Iraq War content analysis juncture. Before detailing developments during each juncture, I offer an overview of the aggregate results of my analysis of New York Times coverage. Media Coverage

Across the four intervals of my analysis of the New York Times, there are very few entries that provide a positive take on the president’s Iraq efforts. Table 6.1 reveals that at most, not even 15 percent of pieces during the February 4–10 period took a positive tone. Thereafter, close to a majority of the New York Times coverage surveyed took a negative perspective on the war. Turning to Table 6.2, we see that the specific judgments conveyed in articles and editorials provided by sources likely to be opposed to the president, such as Democratic members of Congress, routinely offered negative judgments of the Iraq War (more than 85 percent of the judgments delivered by Bush’s political opponents). Neutral sources were less likely to be oppositional, but only barely, with almost 70 percent of their judgments against Bush’s Iraq policy. Bush’s allies were supportive (more than 60 percent of his allies’ judgments were positive), and they were almost three times more likely to be featured in Times coverage than his political opponents. Table 6.3 reveals parity between positive and negative judgments that fit the problem-definition frame (43 percent versus 48 percent, respectively). There was a strong tendency, on the other hand, for

Table 6.1 Overall Frequency Count of Coded Items Case

February 4–10, 2003 n November 16–22, 2005 n June 24–30, 2007 n September 9–15, 2007 n Total n

Positive 13.9% 16 11.8% 8 0.0% 0 8.5% 6 10.5% 30

Negative 39.1% 45 54.4% 37 50.0% 16 47.9% 34 46.2% 132

Neutral 47.0% 54 33.8% 23 50.0% 16 43.7% 31 43.4% 124

Total of Articles 115 68 32

71

286

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Table 6.2 Judgments on the War Coded by the Likely Allegiance to the Chief of Government Ally n Enemy n Neutral n Total n

Support 63.4% 203 8.8% 10 18.9% 98 32.6% 311

Oppose 29.7% 95 87.7% 100 71.0% 369 59.1% 564

Neutral 6.9% 22 3.5% 4 10.2% 53 8.3% 79

Total

33.5% 320 11.9% 114 54.5% 520 954

judgments corresponding to the policy and leadership frames to be negative (two-thirds of the policy and 75 percent of the leadership frame judgments). Bush’s allies did not even provide a majority of judgments supporting the president in terms of leadership as Table 6.4 reveals, only 47 percent offered encouragement on this score. Sources who were political opponents of the president and those who were identified as neutral were strongly opposed to the official problem definition, as more than 75 percent of the opponents and 60 percent of the neutral sources judgments were negative. The tendency of these groups to oppose the president was even stronger on policy and leadership frames (over 90 percent on both for the opponents, and over 70 percent for neutral sources). The failure of likely opponents to deliver sustained criticism of the president’s problem definition is where we may locate an explanation for why Bush was able to persist with his Iraq policy despite such strong opposition. With only 53 percent of respondents surveyed in early January believing that “the situation in Iraq is worth going to war over,” and 42 percent thinking it wasn’t, a final public relations push was necessary to secure UN support and to assuage domestic skeptics.74 On three separate occasions between January 23 and February 2, 2003, Gallup polled on whether Bush had made a “convincing case” for war. The three polls occurred around Bush’s January 28, 2003, State of the Union address, in which he built his case for war in part by uttering sixteen factually problematic words: “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”75 Prior to the speech, respondents were evenly divided (49 percent yes, 48 percent no) on whether the president had made a Iraq War Juncture 1: February 4–10, 2003

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Table 6.3 Frames of Coded Judgments on the War Frame

Problem definition column percentagea n = 494 Policy column percentagea n = 281 Leadership column percentagea n = 106 Unclear column percentagea n = 42 None column percentagea n = 31 Total n = 954

Suport 42.9% 68.2% 212 27.0% 24.4% 76 13.2% 4.5% 14 11.9% 1.6% 5 12.9% 1.3% 4 311

Oppose 48.2% 42.2% 238 66.9% 33.3% 188 75.5% 14.2% 80 73.8% 5.5% 31 87.1% 4.8% 27 564

179

Neutral 8.9% 55.7% 44 6.0% 21.5% 17 11.3% 15.2% 12 14.3% 7.6% 6 0% 0% 0 79

Note: a. See note to Table 3.3 for explanation for “column percentage” data, p. 82.

convincing case. On the night of the speech, 67 percent thought he had hit the mark, but when the survey was repeated between January 31 and February 2, the view was again mixed, with 53 percent indicating Bush had made a convincing case and 44 percent thinking he had not.76 It fell to Colin Powell to deliver the administration’s closing argument for war before the UN Security Council. As New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller notes, “Powell was the most credible member of the administration” and White House officials were banking on “his credibility to sell this.”77 Powell went before his diplomatic colleagues and the world on February 5, 2003, armed with evidence of Iraqi transgressions that in retrospect he admitted strained credulity.78 With George Tenet seated conspicuously behind him, Powell outlined the case for war through a presentation laden with communications intercepts, satellite imagery, and the testimony of Iraqi defectors. In the end though, as Maureen Dowd put it, “the case was less persuasive than the presenter.”79 Ricks observes that much of what Powell declared in his speech “wasn’t solid,” that those in the intelligence community doubted much of it, “and that some of it was flatly false.”80 Powell himself came to regret his performance, sharing in a 20/20 interview with Barbara Walters that aired on September 8, 2005, that he felt “terrible” about it, calling it “a blot” on his record.81

180 Table 6.4 Comparison of Frames Coded According to the Individual’s Likely Allegiance to the Chief of Government Source Ally

Neutral

Opponent

Frame

Problem definition n Policy n Leadership n Unclear n None n Total n

Problem definition n Policy n Leadership n Unclear n None n Total n

Problem definition n Policy n Leadership n Unclear n None n Total n

Support

Oppose

Neutral

Total

73.7% 137 52.0% 52 47.1% 8 40.0% 4 28.6% 2 63.4% 203

20.4% 38 43.0% 43 29.4% 5 40.0% 4 71.4% 5 29.7% 95

5.9% 11 5.0% 5 23.5% 4 20.0% 2 0.0% 0 6.9% 22

58.1% 186 31.3% 100 5.3% 17 3.2% 10 2.2% 7

26.0% 67 17.0% 23 6.7% 5 3.3% 1 9.1% 2 18.9% 98

62.8% 162 74.1% 100 82.7% 62 83.3% 25 90.9% 20 71.0% 369

11.2% 29 8.9% 12 10.7% 8 13.3% 4 0.0% 0 10.2% 53

49.6% 258 26.0% 135 14.4% 75 5.8% 30 4.2% 22

16.0% 8 2.2% 1 7.1% 1 0.0% 0 0.0% 0 8.8% 10

76.0% 38 97.8% 45 92.9% 13 100.0% 2 100.0% 2 87.7% 100

8.0% 4 0.0% 0 0.0% 0 0.0% 0 0.0% 0 3.5% 4

43.6% 50 40.4% 46 12.3% 14 1.8% 2 1.8% 2

320

520

114

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Concluding that “leaving Saddam in possession of weapons of mass destruction is not an option, not in a post-9/11 world,”82 Powell succeeded in framing the threat as one necessitating war. Though his testimony lacked the proverbial smoking gun, Powell, according to New York Times chief military correspondent Michael Gordon, overwhelmed his audience with a “comprehensive and detailed case” of secret Iraqi weapons programs and “a pattern of Iraqi deceit.”83 Indeed, the secretary of State’s performance earned editorial and polling approval.84 Despite Powell’s credentials and credibility, however, as displayed in Table 6.1, the tenor of coverage of all items in the New York Times during the week of his UN address contained more than a tinge of negativity. Considering the overall impression conveyed by each coded item in the Times, only 14 percent painted a positive portrayal of the administration’s approach, and almost 40 percent of pieces were negative. Even the flavor of news stories, ostensibly neutral and objective characterizations of events, had a negative hue. As Table 6.5 shows, almost one-third (28.6 percent) of articles on the news pages during this period were negative, with only 10 percent supportive (61.4 percent were coded as neutral). In Table 6.6 we see that opinion journalism in the Times during this interval was quite negative, with almost 60 percent of editorials and opinion pieces appearing in the newspaper opposed to Bush’s Iraq plans. A core purpose of Powell’s UN mission was to present the administration’s problem definition to the widest possible audience. To measure his success at this task, I turn to an examination of the published judgments regarding the official problem-definition frame, using as the unit of analysis each singular stand on the administration’s articulation for why war was necessary (positive, negative, or neutral) that appears in an item, coded by whether the source of the judgment was a likely supporter, opponent, or independent of the president. Powell’s credibility, his air of authority on military matters stemming from his reputation acquired in previous conflicts, Table 6.5 Overall Tenor of New York Times News Articles Case

February 4–10, 2003 n November 16–22, 2005 n June 24–30, 2007 n September 9–15, 2007 n

Support 10.0% 7 10.8% 4 — 0 5.7% 2

Oppose 28.6% 20 48.6% 18 38.9% 7 34.3% 12

Neutral 61.4% 43 40.5% 15 61.1% 11 60.0% 21

Total 70

37

18 35

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Table 6.6 New York Times Op-Ed Sentiment Case

February 4–10, 2003 November 16–22, 2005 June 24–30, 2007 September 9–15, 2007

Type

Opinion Editorial Total Opinion Editorial Total Opinion Editorial Total Opinion Editorial Total

Support 2 2 4 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0

Oppose 10 3 13 2 3 5 3 3 6 9 3 12

Neutral 5 0 5 2 2 4 0 0 0 0 1 1

Total 17 5 22 5 5 10 3 3 6 9 4 13

along with his notoriety as an in-house skeptic, gave his Security Council presentation added weight in the marketplace of ideas.85 As seen in Table 6.7, 71 percent of the coded judgments during this period reflected on the administration’s problem definition. This is not surprising given the focus at this stage of debate was on whether Iraq posed a threat requiring war. Almost 60 percent of the judgments on the administration’s problem definition during this week came from neutral sources, and close to 60 percent of these were negative. Powell and other administration voices, combined with likely political allies, provided approximately 30 percent of the judgments on the definition of the problem posed by alleged Iraqi WMD programs. Not surprisingly, almost three-fourths of these statements were supportive of the White House case for war. Only 10 percent of the problem definition judgments during this period came from Bush’s political adversaries. While these were overwhelmingly negative (almost 75 percent), they made up just 8 percent of all problem definition judgments during this time frame. At this point policy judgments would be limited to matters involving strategy and tactics, not whether the United States should use force against Iraq. Still, more than three-quarters of all the judgments on Bush’s policy toward Iraq were negative, regardless of source. Since Powell had fulfilled the desire of many critics for incorporating the United Nations in US Iraq policy, there was little criticism that the administration was not following leadership expectations regarding norms of consultation and adherence to constitutional requirements at this juncture. Still, of the approximately 10 percent of total judgments in the leadership category, more than half were negative.

183 Table 6.7 Comparison of Frames of Coded Judgments by Juncture Problem Definition

Policy

Leadership

Unclear

None

Row Total

39.5% 115 46.7% 136 13.7% 40

10.5% 6 77.2% 44 12.3% 7

20.0% 9 55.5% 25 24.4% 11

27.3% 3 27.3% 3 45.5% 5

25.0% 1 75.0% 3 0.0% 0

32.8% 134 51.7% 211 15.4% 63

February 4–10, 2003 Support n Oppose n Neutral n Column total n

71.3% 291

November 16–22, 2005

Support n Oppose n Neutral n Column total n

53.7% 29 46.3% 25 0.0% 0 30.3% 54

June 24–30, 2007

Support n Oppose n Neutral n Column total n

43.5% 10 52.2% 12 4.4% 1

33.8% 23

September 9–15, 2007

Support n Oppose n Neutral n Column total n

46.0% 58 51.6% 65 2.4% 3

42.0% 126

14.0% 57

30.7% 27 68.2% 60 1.1% 1 49.4% 88

17.4% 4 69.6% 16 13.0% 3

33.8% 23

34.5% 39 60.2% 68 5.3% 6

37.7% 113

11.0% 45

19.1% 4 81.0% 17 0.0% 0 11.8% 21

0.0% 0 100.0% 3 0.0% 0 4.4% 3

2.7% 1 94.6% 35 2.7% 1

12.3% 37

2.7% 11

0.0% 0 100.0% 9 0.0% 0 5.1% 9

0.0% 0 80.0% 4 20.0% 1 7.4% 5

11.8% 2 88.2% 15 0.0% 0 5.7% 17

1.0% 4

0.0% 0 100.0% 6 0.0% 0 3.4% 6

21.4% 6 78.6% 11 0.0% 0

20.6% 14

0.0% 0 100.0% 7 0.0% 0 2.3% 7

408

33.7% 60 65.7% 117 0.6% 1 178

25.0% 17 67.7% 46 7.4% 5 68

33.3% 100 63.3% 190 3.3% 10 300

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On March 20, 2003, six weeks after Powell’s UN appearance, the United States commenced military operations against Iraq. Powell’s presentation had failed to persuade Security Council colleagues to adopt a second resolution authorizing war, nor did he succeed in silencing elite critics at home of the administration’s plans. My analysis of news coverage during the week of his testimony shows the lower magnitude of statements by administration adversaries, with hardly 10 percent of coded judgments coming from the president’s likely political opponents, while almost 30 percent were by administration members and allies. Accordingly, although public disapproval of what critics labeled a rush toward war peaked at the 37 percent level in one survey conducted three weeks prior to the initiation of hostilities,86 no counterframe seems to have taken hold to offer an alternate narrative about the danger posed by Saddam and the most effective remedy to address the purported threat. Though public opinion polling revealed support among people surveyed for going to war at the level Graham labels “consensus” (polls from Gallup and Pew range from 52 percent to 68 percent approval), the Gallup International Iraq Poll conducted just prior to the US invasion provides a stark contrast with sentiments abroad vehemently opposed to war. Of the 30,000 citizens surveyed by Gallup International, few supported unilateral US intervention in Iraq. While 33 percent of Americans surveyed favored unilateral military action against Iraq by the United States and its allies, the next highest level of approval among the forty countries in the study for that option was 20 percent of Ugandans surveyed.87 Meanwhile, there was a significant outpouring of protest against the prospect of war at home and abroad. On February 15, 2003, opponents of war gathered in worldwide protest rallies against Bush’s rush toward war. Though the size of these demonstrations and the diversity of locales sent a powerful message to the Bush administration, the mere presence of this mass dissent did nothing to advance a counterframe to the president’s message that Saddam’s possession of WMDs posed an immediate threat. Whether opposing war out of moral concerns or prudential ones, dissenters presented an array of arguments against war, none of them proving to be sufficiently compelling to facilitate potent opposition. Perhaps French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin encapsulated the most prevalent critique of Bush’s intent to go to war sooner rather than give UN-sanctioned inspections time, arguing before the Security Council the folly of asserting “that the path of war will be shorter than that of the inspections.” He also presciently warned that although the war option “might seem a priori to be the swiftest,” he reminded his audience “that having won the war, one has to build the peace,” a process that “will be long and difficult because it will be necessary to preserve Iraq’s unity and restore stability in a lasting way in a country and region harshly affected by the intrusion of force.”88

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On March 21, two days into the war, thousands of demonstrators crowded in front of US embassies around the world to protest.89 In Berlin 50,000 protesters marched past the US embassy and through the Brandenburg Gate, in Melbourne 40,000 protesters stopped traffic, in Athens 100,000 people marched to the US embassy, and in Paris 10,000 demonstrated in the Place de la Concorde. Slogans shouted included “No to war” and “No war for oil. Stop the USA.” Globally, many cried that the US invasion was a violation of the UN Charter as well as the basic norms of international law.90 Opposition was widespread, even in countries that had pledged to stand beside the United States. Again, the critiques of opponents, at home or abroad, did not provide a counterframe around which domestic opposition to the president’s case for war could coalesce. Neither the moral argument against war in general, the economic case that the United States was concerned primarily with oil interests, nor the prudential claim that Bush’s course had unforeseen costs could trump the administration’s case in the marketplace of ideas that leaving Saddam in power with access to WMDs risked an even more consequential US vulnerability than had been the case on 9/11. Harvey claims that public support for the president’s Iraq policies during the run-up to war reflects their perception that Bush was “adopting their preferred approach to the problem.”91 His conclusion does not account for the evidence presented here that oppositional frames were boxed out of the marketplace of ideas. Critiques of the White House case for war were certainly to be found, but to accept Harvey’s contention that there was consensus since the administration’s intelligence claims were “never seriously challenged” strains credulity. Gelpi, Feaver, and Reifler conclude that “elite consensus may have persuaded members of the public that using force was the right thing because they might have concluded that if opinion leaders in both the Democratic and Republican parties could have agreed that a mission was in the national interest, then it must have been a good idea” (emphasis in original). 92 From his review of Newsweek during the period from February 2002 through the 2004 presidential elections, Berinsky finds the opposition party “lacked a clear agenda for how to proceed” on Iraq.93 The Democrats not only failed to articulate an alternate plan for Iraq, the evidence displayed here shows their limited penetration of the marketplace of ideas. Once the White House rolled out its campaign in favor of war after Labor Day 2002, through the end of combat operations phase of the engagement, the Bush administration achieved frame dominance over the definition of the problem as one requiring armed conflict. Through their command of the marketplace of ideas, proponents for war succeeded in framing the problem definition on their terms, so that those who thought an invasion of Iraq rash and not worth the risk failed to gain traction to shape debate.

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When Democracies Choose War

Bush’s ostentatious landing and exultant speech aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln to mark the “liberation of Iraq” on May 1, 2003, affirmed the White House frame of the necessity for war. Announcing an end to combat operations and “mission accomplished,” Bush declared the war “a crucial advance in the campaign against terror.”94 The president went on to reiterate the problem definition that made this a war of necessity, warning other “outlaw” regimes with “ties to terrorist groups” in the hunt or possessing WMDs that they will be confronted as “a grave danger to the civilized world.”95 Bush’s triumphant tone and bellicose stance proved misplaced, however, as occupying Iraq proved a much thornier problem than administration rhetoric had indicated it would be. White House euphoria about the success of Operation Iraqi Freedom began to evaporate under the weight of a situation on the ground the United States seemed powerless to control. Douglas Feith, former undersecretary of Defense for Policy, claims that a new White House communication strategy during the September 12, 2003–September 12, 2004, period “changed the definition of success” for the US action in Iraq and thereby led to increased public dissatisfaction with the war. The shift from an emphasis on the dangers posed by Saddam to a focus on democracy had “enormous strategic consequences,” argues Feith, as it left the White House open to being held accountable for an Iraqi transformation it proved difficult to achieve.96 But Feith ignores the Pottery Barn implications of the initial intervention and the related fact that leaving behind an unstable Iraq, regardless of any change in rhetoric, would have exposed US interests to dangers Bush was in no position to ignore. Whether this putative alternate framing had the extensive “strategic consequences” Feith asserts cannot be assessed here. What is clear from the evidence is that opposition voices continued to receive very limited airing in the marketplace of ideas, even, as I detail next, when a prominent, normally hawkish Democratic voice on foreign affairs promoted an antiwar counterframe, as occurred in November 2005 when John Murtha presented an end-the-war resolution in the House. On November 17, 2005, Murtha, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Marines and the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, introduced a joint resolution calling for the immediate withdrawal of US forces from Iraq. Though this resolution was not the first of its kind, its introduction made a powerful statement of opposition.97 Claiming the war “is not going as advertised,” Murtha insisted the “public is way ahead of members of Congress” in appreciating Bush’s approach as “a flawed policy wrapped in an illusion.”98 Murtha had voted in favor of the October 2002 congressional resolution authorizing military action against Saddam. His Iraq War Juncture 2: November 16–22, 2005

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shift to war opponent was potentially momentous, as now the antiwar contingent had a member of Congress among their ranks with an impeccable hawkish reputation. Whether he could advance a viable counterframe, for instance, that Iraq was a Vietnam-like quagmire and US withdrawal would have fewer adverse consequences than staying in, remained to be seen. Murtha’s antiwar stance did not emerge in a void. Critics had been calling for a withdrawal timetable and charging the administration with manipulating intelligence to prevail in the prewar debate. Thus, the administration was already engaged in damage control before Murtha entered the fray. On the day he introduced his bill, for example, the commander of the Third Infantry Division in Baghdad, Major General William G. Webster, Jr., argued against a withdrawal schedule before reporters in Baghdad, claiming that if US troops were to depart Iraq prematurely, the soldiers in his unit who had died in combat would have lost their lives “in vain.”99 That same day, Dick Cheney railed against the “dishonest and reprehensible charges” leveled by critics regarding the administration’s use of intelligence.100 These comments were responses to criticisms already in the pipeline (so to speak) before Murtha rose up in opposition. Given his imposing physical presence and his reputation as a close ally of the uniformed ranks, Murtha’s resolution required the White House to gear up with a much fiercer and sustained response than had been offered to that point. Concerned that criticism of the war had reached “critical mass,” administration spokespersons responded with attacks on the motives and character of opponents and the dire import of their proposals. For example, Scott McClellan tried to link Murtha to left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore in an effort to discredit the Representative as espousing positions of “the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic Party.”101 White House operatives began to refer to their critics by name, intimating that their actions gave “aid and comfort to the terrorists.” White House counselor Dan Bartlett, a key member of the Iraq communications effort, admitted that debate on the war had reached “a tipping point.” Consequently, the Bush team endeavored to inoculate themselves from charges of falsifying or exaggerating evidence that Iraq possessed WMDs, issuing “Setting the Record Straight” rebuttals to indicate that today’s critics believed the same intelligence as the administration during the run-up to war.102 The White House skillfully sought to neutralize any effort at counterframing by ostensibly welcoming give and take in the marketplace of ideas, all the while labeling critics naive or worse. For example, Cheney, during a speech at the American Enterprise Institute, conceded that “disagreement, argument and debate are the essence of democracy, and none of us should want it any other way.” Yet he continued to accuse opponents of making “dishonest and reprehensible” charges, as well as being foolhardy for not appreciating the perilous consequences of an early US withdrawal from

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When Democracies Choose War

Iraq, which he opined included the emergence of a “radical Islamic empire,” WMDs in terrorists’ hands, the destruction of Israel, and “mass death” in the United States.103 While White House officials worked to discredit the arguments of their opponents, Murtha’s entrance into the debate had limited impact in the marketplace of ideas. In Table 6.7 we saw that there were about half as many Iraq War judgments recorded during the week surrounding his resolution as when Powell delivered his UN testimony (178 versus 408). The president’s political opponents registered a higher proportion of those offering judgments, with Murtha and other Democrats constituting almost 20 percent of the total judgments on the war. Still, the administration and its supporters contributed twice as many judgments to the debate, while almost half the judgments during this interval came from neutral sources. Interestingly, most of the judgments put forth by opponents and neutrals were framed in terms of policy. Seventy percent of opponents’ judgments appearing in the Times, and 43.5 percent of those offered by neutrals, reflected on the administration’s implementation of its decision to go to war. Commentators either took issue with military-political strategy, whether public opinion polls reflected support or opposition to Iraq policy, or targeted some other aspect of the Bush administration’s effort to deliver on its commitment to Iraq. Importantly, only about a quarter of the judgments of those most likely to offer a counterframe (i.e., political adversaries and neutrals) tackled the White House problem definition for why the war needed to be fought. In terms of the magnitude of opposition judgments and the focus of these critiques, Murtha’s indictment of Bush’s Iraq problem definition did not provide an adequate platform in the marketplace of ideas for reversing the direction of the war. Though the debate did not generate a counterframing narrative sufficiently compelling to link opposition to the war, a withdrawal strategy, and the protection of vital national security interests, disillusion with the war did have broader implications for US foreign policy. For example, a Pew survey of the public and elites conducted during September and October 2005 revealed a return of isolationist sentiments among the public reminiscent of those found after Vietnam and the end of the Cold War. Moreover, the poll found a public retreat from unilateralism. As Meg Bortin’s synopsis in the Times put it, Pew concluded that Iraq “‘has had a profound impact’ on the way opinion leaders and the public, ‘view America’s global role, looming international threats, and the Bush administration’s stewardship of the nation’s foreign policy.’”104 Furthermore, because it presented Iraq as a war of necessity and pulled out all the tools of public relations at its disposal to make that case, a “hideous consequence” of the administration’s campaign, columnist Frank Rich declared, is that the public, “having rejected” Iraq, “automatically rejects” the necessary war on terrorism that began on 9/11.105

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Over the next two years, public support for the Iraq War continued to decline, with 58 percent of people considering it a mistake by late 2006.106 Democrats, using opposition to the ongoing war as a rallying cry, gained thirty-two seats in the House and seven seats in the Senate during the 2006 midterm elections. Moreover, as a result of political pressure, Bush conceded to the congressional creation and appointment of an Iraq Study Group on March 15, 2006.107 After independent examination of the situation in Iraq, the panel delivered a harsh rebuke to the administration’s approach in its December 6, 2006, final report. While Bush replaced Rumsfeld as secretary of Defense in response to these sentiments, he refused to retreat from his commitment to his Iraq policy, choosing to increase the US troop presence through the surge, instead of withdrawing and reaching out to regional actors to effect a diplomatic settlement as the Iraq Study Group and other critics recommended.108 Democratic victories in the November 2006 midterms made pursuit of Bush’s Iraq agenda more difficult, but by no means did the GOP’s loss of the House and Senate majority wrest frame dominance from the president. Certainly some Democrats, such as Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman, agreed with Bush that defeating al-Qaeda in Iraq was now a war of necessity.109 Rejected by his party’s voters in the Connecticut Senate primary, largely owing to his position on Iraq, Lieberman ultimately triumphed in his bid for reelection as an independent, thus his voice in the marketplace of ideas continued to vouch for the official frame and helped ensure its ascendance, even in the face of a rising sense of buyer’s remorse evident in opinion polls. For example, a New York Times/CBS News poll taken at the start of 2007 revealed 58 percent of those surveyed agreeing that the United States should have stayed out of Iraq. Another installment of that poll, conducted May 18–23, 2007, found the public increasingly negative about US prospects in Iraq, as well as souring on the president and the direction of the country, with 61 percent of respondents believing the United States should have stayed out of Iraq and 76 percent considering the war going badly or very badly.110 During these months, the marketplace of ideas was filled with comparisons of Iraq with Vietnam. During an October 18, 2006, ABC News interview with George Stephanopoulos, Bush admitted the accuracy of the Vietnam-Iraq comparisons.111 Public Broadcasting’s Newshour invited four analysts to consider the parallels between Vietnam and Iraq on November 23, 2006.112 Typically, Gideon Rose, writing for the online journal Slate in January 2007, placed the Iraq War at the 1969–1970 stage of the Vietnam timeline, with Bush facing a local ally with inadequate cohesiveness and strength, Iraq War Juncture 3: June 24–30, 2007

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and a public disenchanted with the effort.113 Similarly, in May, Stewart M. Powell interviewed five historians on whether Iraq was “Vietnam II.”114 With conditions worsening, the administration shifted strategy to the surge, designed to reverse momentum on the battlefield and salvage the effort in Iraq. Conventional wisdom, and some inside the administration, argued that such a move would be roundly rejected by the public, seeing the 2006 midterms as a vivid rebuke of Bush’s Iraq War. “President Bush and his top political advisors,” former White House official Peter Feaver indicated, already “preferred the contrarian view” coincidentally advanced in scholarship he coauthored with Christopher Gelpi and Jason Reifler, “that the public tends to respond favorably to the prospects for success in war.”115 Feaver had been a National Security Council aide since June 2005, reportedly involved in White House efforts during the later half of 2005 to build domestic support for the defunct stand up/stand down strategy.116 Unlike the short-lived “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq,” the surge, by placing the United States on the offensive and stabilizing the violence in Iraq, provided a real-world test of the premise advanced in Feaver’s academic writing.117 For example, in Paying the Human Cost of War, Feaver and his coauthors conclude that “public opinion is best thought of as a constraint on policymakers, but it is not so limiting a constraint as to preclude even a fairly hawkish foreign policy—so long as that hawkish policy is perceived as successful.”118 This research signaled to Feaver “that sufficient public support could be sustained for the surge, provided that it actually did reverse the trajectory on the battlefield.” In his account, “the president and key advisors had reached the same conclusion.”119 Illustrating this logic in operation, the new US operational commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General Raymond T. Odierno, told the New York Times early in 2007 that he believed if the people “feel we are making progress, they will have the patience.”120 This is a propitious moment to consider what exactly “success” could mean at this stage of the war. Perhaps the surge and other tactics, such as supporting the so-called Sunni awakening, could bring some stability to Iraq, but such achievements would be a far cry from the vision presented in the months leading up to the invasion. By 1987, the goal of US policy was not to lose and see Iraq descend further into chaos if not dissolution. Gone was the talk of spreading democracy and building an integrated, pluralistic society that could finance its own redevelopment and be a regional model. Though the administration’s goals had become more modest, domestic dissent did not disappear. In June 2007, Senator Richard G. Lugar, a leading foreign policy voice in the GOP, took to the Senate floor to call for a dramatic change of direction in Iraq policy. Charging that Bush’s course in Iraq “has lost contact with our vital national interests,” Lugar joined those calling for downsizing the US military footprint in Iraq. Arguing that US efforts to create a unified state out

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of disparate groups were futile because “Iraqis don’t want to be Iraqis,” Lugar began his speech with an indictment of the nation-building component of the military mission. Without political reconciliation among the three main Iraqi factions, he explained, it would be “almost impossible for the United States to engineer a stable, multi-sectarian government in Iraq in a reasonable time frame.”121 Echoing the concerns of many military analysts,122 he bemoaned the “growing stress on our military” resulting from the unsustainable pace of troop deployments. Combined with limitations imposed “by our own domestic political debate,” Lugar claimed these conditions necessitated a rapid adjustment to prevailing policy. With the 2008 presidential election on the horizon, Lugar advocated “a sustainable bipartisan strategy” before political campaigning closed any option for achieving “a rational course adjustment in Iraq” that would protect wider US interests.123 Lugar’s three-pronged critique of the war held much potential for constructing a counterframe to the official rationale for continued intervention. Indeed, his remarks resonated with narratives that developed in opposition to previous US wars. His observation that Iraqi “sectarian factionalism will not abate anytime soon and probably cannot be controlled from the top” was tantamount to a declaration that until the Iraqis reconciled their fundamental divisions, further US sacrifice would be a waste of resources. Although Lugar did not draw an explicit comparison to Vietnam, opponents to that war often derided the national failings of the South Vietnamese government, and even prior to the escalation of the US commitment, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson emphasized (as Kennedy notably declared), “in the final analysis it’s their war” to fight.124 More directly, the senator’s concerns about the degree to which Iraq was draining US military capability sound eerily similar to General Omar Bradley’s admonition that the Korean War was “the wrong war, at the wrong place, against the wrong enemy.” Like Bradley, Lugar made the case that the war of the moment was really a sideshow draining national capacity to address the real threat. His reflection on how the domestic divisions emerging from the Iraq debate made the current course unsustainable, paralleling observations of Vietnam-era critics that continued involvement in Vietnam would so wrench the country that nothing productive could come from further effort. Despite offering a serious, well-reasoned, and balanced case in favor of reducing the US military presence in Iraq, however, Lugar’s speech did not attract coverage sufficient to nurture a counterframe around which political opposition could coalesce. Surprisingly, Lugar’s speech generated little sustained debate in the marketplace of ideas. In fact, of the four Iraq War junctures studied here, his speech generated by far the least coverage. In terms of journalistic attention, only thirty-two total pieces concerning Iraq appeared in the New York Times during this interval, or 11 percent of the number across all four

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junctures. My expectation that the marketplace of ideas would be enlivened by the antiwar floor speech of a prominent senator of the president’s party is not borne out by the evidence. As revealed in Table 6.7, few judgments were issued during this period—only 7 percent of the total number of judgments in the Iraq data set. Slightly more than half of the judgments were offered by neutral sources, though these were overwhelmingly negative regarding Bush’s stance (75 percent). Almost 45 percent of the judgments came from Bush’s putative political allies, but these tended toward the negative, by a 55 percent to 40 percent margin. Opposition to Bush on Iraq among Republicans was not typical, this case being the exception as most of the negative judgments emanating from supporters came from Lugar. The limited impact of Lugar’s defection from the president’s Iraq policy can be confirmed through an examination of public opinion polling. According to Berinsky’s elite cue theory, public opinion on the war reflects the partisan leanings of respondents. Relying on survey data through January 2007, Berinsky (with a nod to Gary Jacobson) detailed the partisanbased chasm in public opinion, a difference in support for the war Jacobson called “wide and stable.”125 In his analysis of public opinion on the Iraq War, Holsti wonders “whether Republicans and Democrats were in fact describing the same war.”126 Writing in 2009, Berinsky speculated whether “the fading of unity on the wisdom of involvement among prominent Republican politicians should lead to the withdrawal of support among some Republican identifiers.”127 To the contrary, Eshbaugh-Soha and Linebarger report that Republicans were “virtually impervious to any external stimuli,” their research confirming that for GOP identifiers, neither casualties nor negative media coverage led to a significant change in support for the war.128 Indeed, Republican support was consistently high through 2006, sliding below the 70 percent threshold following the midterm elections. Yet Lugar—a prominent Republican on issues of foreign policy— did not tip GOP partisans further against the war. Using weighted poll results, Figure 6.3 illuminates the relatively static nature of the public opinion divide on the war during the latter stages of the Bush presidency, regardless of Lugar’s shift to the antiwar camp. His speech did not produce a corresponding decline in the approval of Bush’s handling of the war among GOP identifiers. Indeed, that approval increased in the wake of Lugar’s defection. Other significant elite contributions to discourse in the marketplace of ideas did not have the expected effect during the president’s final sixteen months in office. As I detail next, the September 2007 testimony of General David Petraeus actually produced a decline in public approval for Bush’s handling of Iraq among Republicans and Democrats. Although Bush’s surge speech in January 2007 began a very modest increase in approval among Democrats, it had the opposite effect on Republicans over the following three months.

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Interestingly, self-identified independents responded positively to the surge speech, while the nadir of Democratic support coincided with the president’s announcement of the troop increase. To develop a counterframe, the marketplace of ideas must be saturated with alternative problem definition narratives that resonate with available schema reflecting the experiences and understandings of the public.129 For an alternate framing to gain traction, there ought to be some distribution of dissent toward the official problem definition across the political spectrum. Bush’s supporters offered eight of the ten positive judgments on the administration’s problem definition but only half (six of twelve) of the negative judgments at this juncture. Although Lugar made some contribution to the antiwar side of the ledger in the national debate, his alternative problem definition alone was insufficient to overcome the dominance of the administration narrative that withdrawal from Iraq before the job was done would embolden and strengthen terrorists, thus endangering national security.

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Whereas opposition framing during the Vietnam War tapped into concerns that the United States was wasting valuable resources on an undeserving ally, in the Iraq case the consequences of withdrawal loomed large as a hurdle impeding the articulation of a counterframe. Nixon emphasized the damage a loss of US honor would cause to the nation’s international reputation and its self-image. Though Lugar offered compelling logic for why the United States needed to change course in Iraq, the costs for failing to adopt the policy correction he recommended were not as grave, dire, or immediate as what administration officials contended would happen should the United States abandon the fight to stabilize Iraq. Furthermore, the greater magnitude of bipartisan oppositional judgments in the marketplace of ideas during the earlier conflict explains the relative ineffectualness of opposition framing in the Iraq case. Bush’s emphasis on the cataclysmic consequences of abandoning Iraq could not be countered by a single speech offered by a lone Republican senator, no matter how respected, unless the critique was echoed by voices sufficient to countervail the magnitude of pro–White House opinion. Tellingly, although likely allies of each administration made up approximately onethird of the total judgments coded in each case, the marketplace of ideas during the Vietnam War was more open to opposition voices, as almost 22 percent of the total judgments recorded consisted of putative Nixon adversaries, whereas only 12 percent of those expected to be against Bush had their views voiced during the Iraq War junctures. Moreover, judgments framed against the president’s problem definition among likely opponents and allies were roughly equivalent for the two wars (Bush’s probable allies offered a greater proportion of negative judgments on his problem definition, 20.9 percent, compared to Nixon’s 13.2 percent; likely opponents were a bit more vociferous in their criticism of Nixon’s problem definition at 79.6 percent than Bush’s adversaries on this frame, 76.5 percent), but those categorized as neutrals were more negative toward Nixon’s problem definition of Vietnam (74.4 percent) than Bush’s for Iraq (60.9 percent). Even though these conditions did not allow for a viable counterframe to emerge, dissent did not subside. After eight months of pursuing the surge, the president turned to Petraeus to cement this framing of his strategy before Congress and the people. Throughout the summer of 2007, Washington eagerly awaited the congressional testimony of the commander of US forces in Iraq, General David Petraeus, who was to report on the progress of the surge strategy. With poll results showing low public trust in either Bush’s ability to resolve the war (5 percent), or of Congress for that matter (21 percent), it is not surprising Iraq War Juncture 4: September 9–15, 2007

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that the White House would take advantage of the much greater faith the public had in military commanders to do the job (68 percent) by putting Petraeus up front as the point person to explain and defend the surge strategy. Appearing on Capitol Hill alongside ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, the White House presented the pair of officials “as unbiased professionals, not Bush partisans.”130 At this point, 60 percent of those surveyed said “administration officials deliberately misled the public in making a case for the war,” and one-third still believed that “Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.”131 Such is the power of effective framing. Although Bush could no longer advance the case for war owing to the deterioration of his political standing, using Petraeus as a surrogate allowed the White House to tap into the general’s credibility to combat the antiwar argument. Nevertheless, the administration was moving away from promoting the type of victory Bush described in the days when Murtha first assumed the antiwar mantle, where Iraq would be “peaceful, united, stable, democratic, and secure, where Iraqis have the institutions and resources they need to govern themselves justly and provide security for their country.”132 Now officials began presenting the continued US presence as necessary to help a fledgling democracy contain common enemies. Antiwar forces welcomed the opportunity to challenge Petraeus and discredit the logic of the surge. Tom Matzzie, campaign manager for the antiwar group Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, described the upcoming Petraeus testimony in terms resonant with the nature of a battle to control the marketplace of ideas: “We have to frame his statements before he makes them. He’s not Saint Petraeus—he’s General Petraeus.”133 The leftwing group MoveOn.org placed an advertisement in the New York Times captioning the general’s photograph with “General Betray-Us.”134 Likely Democratic presidential candidates Senators Hillary Clinton (NY), Joe Biden (DE), and Barack Obama (IL) prepared to pepper Petraeus with tough questions.135 Both sides anticipated that the testimony would prove to be the denouement of the Iraq debate in the marketplace of ideas. In the end, the general’s unflappable demeanor, missteps by the opposition, and the absence of a compelling counterframe to undermine the administration’s narrative left the White House in a position where its approach to Iraq could continue largely unimpeded by domestic interference. Congressional Republicans vented outrage at MoveOn’s tactics, with House GOP leader John Boehner (OH) leading the charge on “this cheap and shameful attack” on the general’s integrity and patriotism.136 The response of Republican members to MoveOn’s ad, calling on Democrats to disavow an independent organization’s tactics, created a situation in the hearing room where “Petraeus won the first day of hearings before his microphone was turned on.”137

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By dominating the battle in the marketplace of ideas, the White House minimized the weight of opposition in Congress and public opinion. When a congressionally mandated report was issued simultaneous to the Petraeus hearings questioning progress on agreed-on Iraqi benchmarks, “the administration more or less changed the subject.” Instead, as Steven Lee Myers noted, “it argued that measurements concocted in offices in Washington did not adequately reflect recent improvements on the ground in Iraq.”138 In an address to the nation three days following the start of Petraeus’s appearances, Bush emphasized the supporting role of the United States in helping “Iraq’s young democracy . . . turn back these enemies” that seek “to topple Iraq’s government, dominate the region, and attack us here at home.”139 As Nixon and Kissinger argued during the Vietnam War, deliberate policy, not a response to internal or external pressure, would guide Bush in Iraq. During an appearance earlier in the day at the Gerald R. Ford Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Cheney repeated the refrain of executive branch officials that Bush would “make his decisions based on the national interest and nothing else—not by artificial measures, not by political calculations, certainly not by poll numbers.’”140 Of course, by effectively neutralizing the political opposition and framing the problem of Iraq in resonant terms, the administration was able to pursue its overall strategy, tacking ever so slightly to maintain policy momentum. “If we were to be driven out of Iraq,” Bush warned extremists of all strains would be emboldened. Al Qaeda could gain new recruits and new sanctuaries. Iran would benefit from the chaos and would be encouraged in its efforts to gain nuclear weapons and dominate the region. Extremists could control a key part of the global energy supply. Iraq could face a humanitarian nightmare. Democracy movements would be violently reversed. We would leave our children to face a far more dangerous world. And as we saw on September the 11th, 2001, those dangers can reach our cities and kill our people.141

To sustain a modicum of domestic support to prevent an Iraqi government collapse, Bush included language echoing Gelpi, Feaver, and Reifler’s research on public opinion and war: “The principle guiding my decisions on troop levels in Iraq is ‘return on success.’ The more successful we are, the more American troops can return home.”142 As with Nixon’s peace with honor policy, success in Iraq now meant stability, where with the help of US forces, the local ally could contain threats to its existence. Unlike Nixon’s situation, however, the president and in the end the local ally would determine the extent of the US presence, not Congress.143 Recall that in the Vietnam case, Nixon and his supporters did not dominate the marketplace of ideas. As I detail next, Bush’s opponents barely made a mark in framing the debate even during the latter stages of a

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presidency that was widely unpopular, with 62 percent disapproving of Bush’s job performance in the USA Today/Gallup Poll at this juncture. More than twice the volume of pieces on Iraq appeared in the New York Times during this stage (seventy-one) as when Lugar announced his opposition, with the total number of news articles, opinion pieces, and the like slightly surpassing those published when Murtha came out against the war. Less than 10 percent of the items were coded overall as positive toward the administration’s position in Iraq, 48 percent were negative, and 44 percent neutral (see Table 6.1). Turning to consideration of individual judgments on the war, one sees in Table 6.7 that almost a third of all such statements across the four junctures occur during this interval (300 of a total of 954). As with the other Iraq intervals, opponents were seldom featured during the period around the Petraeus testimony, with only 13 percent of the judgments coming from likely Bush opponents. Of course, these judgments were overwhelmingly negative (95 percent), as were the judgments of neutrals, which constituted almost half of all sources at this point (48 percent), with more than 80 percent negative. Likely administration allies provided almost 40 percent of the judgments, two-thirds of which were positive. An explanation for the inability of the antiwar argument to gain traction may be found when breaking down the frame category of these judgments. Crucial for the development of a counterframe is an alternate definition of the problem that diagnoses the malady and prescribes a remedy. At this juncture, there was an almost even balance of judgments on Bush’s problem definition (46 percent positive; 52 percent negative). Instead, most of the negative judgments concentrated on policy critiques (i.e., 60 percent of the policy judgments finding fault with military deployments or the suitability of using force in a particular circumstance) or on Bush’s failings as a leader (e.g., 95 percent of remarks providing criticism that Bush was not being responsive to public opinion, or mindful of Congress, and the like). Here is evidence of the president’s triumph in the marketplace of ideas as his problem definition emerged from a prominent week of debate largely unscathed, with media coverage reflecting a balance of positive and negative judgments on his framing of the problem and his prescribed solution. Conclusion

Arguably, Bush’s surge strategy succeeded in forestalling domestic critics from effecting a policy in line with what Democrats in Congress, other critics, or the Iraq Study Group recommended. So instead of rapidly reducing the US footprint in Iraq and reaching out to hostile regional actors as detractors encouraged, Bush bought time for the armed forces to stabilize the conflict with the surge and ultimately set a timetable for withdrawal.144

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The US military presence continued through the first three years of the Obama presidency, though with a casualty rate that barely rippled in the US media environment.145 When Obama was elected on November 4, 2008, the US casualty toll stood at 4,505; on November 4, 2011 that figure stood at 4,798. On December 18, 2011, the last US combat troops departed Iraq, only to return in the guise of advisers and special forces teams as the Islamic State threatened the integrity of the Baghdad government’s hold on territorial sovereignty beginning in 2014.146 Contrary to any notion that democracies do not go to war, public opinion and Congress initially supported Bush’s choice for war. Domestic political endorsement of this war of choice is certainly consistent with the view that democracies fight against opponents perceived as threats, and threatening is surely what the Bush administration succeeded in making Iraq appear to be. Moreover, Bush managed to characterize the threat from Iraq as so menacing that he was able to garner domestic support sufficient to violate the norm against democratic preventive war. As various models of the public opinion and war relationship would predict, when the justification for a war of choice collapsed in the summer of 2003, support for the war declined. Yet Bush’s policy barely changed in response. At no point was this clearer than when he announced the surge in the face of a triple dose of domestic opposition, consisting of public disenchantment with the war as evidenced in public opinion polls, strong Democratic gains in the midterm elections, and a critical report from the Iraq Study Group (to which we can add a fourth, the appointment of a new, skeptical secretary of Defense). In combination, these marked societal rejection of this war of choice yet did not presage a change in policy direction owing to the failure of a counterframe to emerge. Despite political opposition, the Bush administration’s continued dominance of the marketplace of ideas gave no opportunity for critics to generate an alternative narrative for how immediate withdrawal from Iraq served the national interest.147 Woodward argues that Bush’s singular focus, coupled with the institutional power of the presidency, allowed him to push through the surge despite the relatively scant support for that option in the military, the executive branch, in Congress, or among the public.148 Indeed, Bush’s dogged persistence on salvaging victory from Iraq caused consternation among the military, Republican operatives, and the White House.149 To the president, the war was an ideological struggle with titanic stakes—for example, he told the Iraq Study Group that defeat “would be a disaster for future generations.”150 While some of his closest aides, including Condoleezza Rice, bemoaned the concentrated attention on Iraq, contending that “it wasn’t a national survival war, but a war of choice,”151 Bush remained focused, perhaps even monomaniacal in his insistence on viewing Iraq as part of a global ideological struggle necessary for the United States to win.

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Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Peter Pace articulated the view that public support constituted the “center of gravity” of the US effort, and with a more able public relations campaign, the administration could turn things around.152 Bush offered a more sanguine argument to the Iraq Study Group that “most Americans don’t want to leave.” Rather, channeling the success thesis, they “want to support a plan that is working.” Regardless of democratic constraint, Bush declared “we will be in Iraq for the duration of my presidency.”153 Woodward’s account, like most scholarly examinations of the marketplace of ideas, obscures the failure of Bush’s opponents to frame an alternative to official policy. From the outset, Bush framed the Iraq War in terms of security. Even as the underlying threat morphed from weapons of mass destruction to state-sponsored terrorism to regional instability to Islamistbased radicalism, the White House honed in on US security. Opponents never countered with alternative framing that would have resonated with cognitive maps held by Americans. Persistence in Iraq might have been framed as an unsustainable drain on resources, counterproductive to the national interest, or perhaps even a quagmire, but none of these potential counterframes took hold. Perhaps by encompassing themes that presented US involvement as a misguided intrusion into what was actually an internecine battle between Shiite and Sunni, a regional power struggle that was beyond the ability of the United States to resolve, or (like Vietnam) an ongoing contest that the country needed to recognize it was not in the national interest to fight, a counterframe might have resonated in the marketplace. As this analysis shows, however, the power and magnitude with which such counterframes were advanced nowhere matched that propagated by the White House and its allies. In part, Bush’s success in effecting the surge was the product of a politically craven opposition that failed to disseminate a viable counterframe before troops entered Iraq. Opposition voices were also limited in their effectiveness owing to the partisan polarization of US politics, where few Republicans were willing to question the assumptions of Bush’s Iraq policy until Lugar’s case against the war in 2007. Still, there were very few like Lugar on the political right to provide broad-based support for a counterframe, and no icons of nonpartisanship (e.g., Walter Cronkite or George Kennan) to monitor truth and enforce societal norms as was the case during the Vietnam War. Instead, the polarization of public and news media reinforced divisions and perpetuated diametrically opposed views of reality.154 In essence, the US separation of powers structure came to replicate a Westminster-type system as the party that controlled the White House could count on its partisans to neutralize even a modest oversight role for the ostensibly independent legislative branch.155 At the same time, sympathetic news outlets ensured at least some access in the marketplace of ideas to the White House frame of the war, its goals, and the legitimacy of its leadership.

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Prominent Republicans outside of Congress did not directly and emphatically challenge the president’s course. The uniformed military feared the consequences if the surge were to falter, which would leave conscription as the only option to avoid failure. Tellingly, a return to the draft was a topic the armed services avoided because to broach the subject “was to invite the ghosts of Vietnam” into the conversation, perhaps the one counterframe resonant enough to activate domestic opposition.156 A polarized Congress, media environment, and country conspired to afford a committed president the opportunity to take the US democracy to war; without a functioning marketplace of ideas to debate this choice, one must wonder how much democracy was involved in the choice at all. Thus, it was not so much threat inflation or deception,157 but sophisticated marketing strategies without challenge that persuaded the public to endorse what might have first seemed an unpopular foreign policy choice. Bush never recanted on the initial justifications for war; his policy ostensibly maintained fealty to key aspects of US identity and norms, while his insistence that national security was at stake, that the sacrifices of soldiers could not be for naught, and that US leadership in a dangerous world required persistence in Iraq was largely presented without contradiction. To be viable, a counterframe to the administration’s problem definition would have to not only have greater magnitude in the marketplace and be propagated by actors with power sufficient to penetrate the competitive media environment but also have to better reflect than the frame it was contesting liberal norms. Gelpi, Feaver, and Reifler identify a contingent of respondents in their surveys of public opinion on the Iraq War who thought the decision to go to war was wrong but nevertheless found it essential to persevere. Labeled “Pottery Barn” voters, they comprised approximately 15 percent of Gelpi, Feaver, and Reifler’s sample. 158 To reach these voters, critics of the war had to frame a substitute policy as less damaging to the national interest than persistence with the commitment. On the other hand, to turn the 8 percent of those surveyed who viewed the war as a “noble failure”—finding the war right, but feeling the United States would lose regardless—critics had to present an indictment of the rationale that first justified the war. The challenge of succeeding at either task proved difficult for the war’s opponents to surmount. During his 2004 reelection campaign, Bush “was able to persuade a majority of the public” that going to war against Iraq was the right thing to do and that the United States would succeed.159 The opposite case, that the national interest was being harmed the longer the United States stayed in Iraq, that American sacrifices should be abandoned, and that the United States could leave the Iraqis to sort out their problems despite Washington’s responsibility for setting these developments in motion, were frames not given sufficient voice or outside the consensus view of

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American identity and democratic norms of behavior. Gelpi, Feaver, and Reifler suggest that John Kerry might have triumphed in his bid to unseat Bush had he appealed to Pottery Barn imagery “that the war was wrong, but we could (and would) win it.”160 Perhaps. In the final analysis though, it seems the Pottery Barn rule was a norm the US political system writ large simply could not countenance breaking. Notes

1. See Maureen Dowd, “After the War: White House Memo; War Introduces a Tougher Bush to Nation,” New York Times, March 2, 1991, A1. 2. Press release, President Bush Addresses the Nation, “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” March 19, 2003, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030319-17.html (accessed April 24, 2008). 3. Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1975) on distinction between preemptive and preventive. Jack S. Levy, “Preventive War and the Bush Doctrine,” in Stanley A. Renshon and Peter Suedfeld, eds., Understanding the Bush Doctrine: Psychology and Strategy in an Age of Terrorism (New York: Routledge, 2007), 175–200. Also, Joseph S. Nye Jr. and David A. Welch, Understanding Global Conflict and Cooperation: An Introduction to Theory and History, 9th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2013), 212. David A. Lake, “Two Cheers for Bargaining Theory: Assessing Rationalist Explanations of the Iraq War,” International Security, 35, no. 3 (Winter 2010–11): 7–52, calls it “one of the first preventive wars in history” (7). 4. Richard N. Haass, War of Necessity: War of Choice (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009), 246. 5. Randall L. Schweller, “Domestic Structure and Preventive War: Are Democracies More Pacific?,” World Politics, 44, no. 2 (January 1992): 235–269; Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991). 6. Kenneth Auchincloss, “Voices of the Century: Americans at War,” Newsweek (March 8, 1999), 32. 7. David Greenberg, “Does the United States Start Wars? Would an American Invasion of Iraq Be Unprecedented?,” Slate, October 8, 2002, http://www.slate.com/articles /news_and_politics/history_lesson/2002/10/does_the_united_statesstart_wars.html (accessed October 18, 2011). 8. See John Lewis Gaddis, Surprise, Security, and the American Experience (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004). 9. See A. Trevor Thrall and Jane Kellett Cramer, eds., American Foreign Policy and the Politics of Fear: Threat Inflation since 9/11 (New York: Routledge, 2009); also John Prados, Hoodwinked: The Documents That Reveal How Bush Sold the War (New York: Cite, 2004). 10. Jon Western, Selling Intervention and War: The Presidency, the Media, and the American Public (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 178, 217, and 218. Chaim Kaufmann, “Threat Inflation and the Failure of the Marketplace of Ideas: The Selling of the Iraq War,” International Security, 29, no. 1 (Summer 2004): 5–48. 11. Kaufmann, “Threat Inflation and the Marketplace of Ideas,” 8. 12. Kaufmann, “Threat Inflation and the Marketplace of Ideas,” 31. 13. Jane Kellett Cramer, “Militarized Patriotism: Why the Marketplace of Ideas Failed Before the Iraq War,” Security Studies, 16, no. 3 (July–September 2007): 495.

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14. Ronald R. Krebs and Jennifer Lobasz, “The Sound of Silence: Rhetorical Coercion, Democratic Acquiescence, and the Iraq War,” in Trevor A. Thrall and Jane Kellett Cramer, eds., American Foreign Policy and the Politics of Fear: Threat Inflation Since 9/11 (New York: Routledge, 2009), 126. 15. Krebs and Lobasz, “The Sound of Silence,” 130. 16. A. Trevor Thrall, “Framing Iraq: Threat Inflation in the Marketplace of Values,” in A. Trevor Thrall and Jane Kellett Cramer, eds., American Foreign Policy and the Politics of Fear: Threat Inflation Since 9/11 (New York: Routledge, 2009) p. 177. 17. Thrall, “Framing Iraq,” 187. 18. Frank P. Harvey, Explaining the Iraq War: Counterfactual Theory, Logic and Evidence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 33. 19. Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz Inerview with Sam Tennenhaus, Vanity Fair, US Department of Defense News Transcript, May 9, 2003, http://www.defense .gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=2594 (accessed March 22, 2010); also George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA (New York: HarperCollins, 2007); Steve A. Yetiv, The Absence of Grand Strategy: The United States in the Persian Gulf, 1972–2005 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 125. 20. This changed. See remarks by Stephen Hadley during a January 8, 2005, interview at the dawn of Bush’s second term: “For liberty to be secure at home, liberty has to be on the march abroad.” Quoted in Bob Woodward, The War Within (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009), 27. 21. See Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), 150. Pottery Barn actually has no such rule. 22. Sarah Kreps, “Elite Consensus as a Determinant of Alliance Cohesion: Why Public Opinion Hardly Matters for NATO-Led Operations in Afghanistan,” Foreign Policy Analysis, 6, no. 3 (July 2010): 191–215. 23. As we would expect, owing to the rally-round-the-flag effect. 24. ABC News Poll, March 5–9, 2003, iPOLL Databank, Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut. http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/data _access/ipoll/ipoll.html (accessed October 1, 2010). 25. Joseph C. Wilson IV, “What I Didn’t Find in Africa,” New York Times, July 6, 2003. Also see Joseph C. Wilson IV, The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies That Led to War and Betrayed My Wife’s CIA Identity; A Diplomat’s Memoir (New York: Avalon, 2004). 26. Frontline, Bush’s War: Part 2, Chapter 5, “No Weapons of Mass Destruction,” PBS documentary, 2008. See the discussion in Daniel Byman, “An Autopsy of the Iraq Debacle: Policy Failure or Bridge Too Far?,” Security Studies, 17, no. 4 (October–December 2008): 599–643. 27. For example, Blackwater employees shot and killed seventeen Iraqi civilians in 2007. See Mark Landler and Mark Mazzetti, “US Still Using Security Firm, the Former Blackwater, That It Publicly Broke With,” New York Times, August 22, 2009, 6. The US Army investigated over ninety alleged incidents of abuse both in prisons and civilian settings during 2003–2004. See Bradley Graham, “Army Investigates Wider Iraq Offenses; Cases Include Deaths, Assaults Outside Prisons,” Washington Post, June 1, 2004, A1. 28. Colin Kahl, “In the Crossfire or the Crosshairs? Norms, Civilian Casualties, and US Conduct in Iraq,” International Security, 32, no. 1 (Summer 2007): 7–46, argues that the United States follows the norm of noncombat immunity in Iraq. 29. Stanley A. Renshon, “The Bush Doctrine Considered,” in Stanley A. Renshon and Peter Suedfeld, eds., Understanding the Bush Doctrine: Psychology and Strategy in an Age of Terrorism (New York: Routledge, 2007), 22.

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30. Amy Gershkoff and Shana Kushner, “Shaping Public Opinion: The 9/11-Iraq Connection in the Bush Administration’s Rhetoric,” Perspectives on Politics, 3, no. 3 (September 2005): 525–537. 31. See Yuen Fhoong Khong, Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992); Deborah Welch Larson, “The Role of Belief Systems and Schemas in Foreign Policy Decision-Making,” Political Psychology, 15, no. 1 (March 1994)(special issue): 17–33; David Patrick Houghton, The Decision Point (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 218–247. 32. Many members of the administration were affiliated with the Project for a New American Century, which advocated a more muscular foreign policy. Also see James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (New York: Penguin, 2004); Lake, “Two Cheers for Bargaining Theory.” 33. In Woodward, Plan of Attack, 9. 34. David Mitchell and Tansa George Massoud, “Anatomy of Failure: Bush’s Decision Making Process and the Iraq War,” Foreign Policy Analysis, 5, no. 3 (July 2009): 274. 35. Quoted in Woodward, Plan of Attack, 27; Yetiv, The Absence of Grand Strategy, 123. 36. Tenet, At the Center of the Storm, 305; also Yetiv, The Absence of Grand Strategy, 121. 37. Vice President Dick Cheney, “The Risks of Inaction Are Far Greater Than the Risk of Action,” in Micah L. Sifry and Christopher Cerf, eds., Iraq War Reader: History, Documents, Opinions (New York: Touchstone, 2003), 299. “Should we be able to prevent another, much more devastating attack, we will, no question. This nation will not live at the mercy of terrorists or terror regimes.” 38. Douglas C. Foyle, “Leading the Public to War? The Influence of American Public Opinion on the Bush Administration’s Decision to Go to War in Iraq,” International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 16, no. 3 (2004): 274. 39. Foyle, “Leading the Public to War?,” 273. 40. Thomas W. Graham, “Public Opinion and US Foreign Policy Decision Making,” in David A. Deese, The New Politics of American Foreign Policy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), p. 196. 41. Graham, “Public Opinion and US Foreign Policy Decision Making,” 196 42. Scott McClellan, interview with Renee Montagne, Morning Edition, NPR, May 29, 2008, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90923282 (accessed October 18, 2011). 43. Elisabeth Bumiller, “Traces of Terror: The Strategy; Bush Aides Set Strategy to Sell Policy on Iraq,” New York Times, September 7, 2002 (accessed online September 22, 2006). 44. Bumiller, “Traces of Terror”; also see Elisabeth Bumiller, “Keepers of Bush Image,” New York Times, October 16, 2003. 45. Bumiller, “Traces of Terror.” 46. For example, see Woodward, Plan of Attack, 24–25 regarding Rumsfeld’s remarks at a meeting with staff the day the Pentagon was hit. 47. Frontline, Bush’s War Part 1, Chapter 1: “Within Hours of the 9/11 Attacks.” 48. Frontline, Bush’s War Part 1, Chapter 1. 49. George W. Bush, address to the nation, CNN US, September 11, 2011, http:// articles.cnn.com/2001-09-11/us/bush.speech.text_1_attacks-deadly-terrorist-acts -despicable-acts?_s=PM:US (accessed October 18, 2011). 50. Patrick E. Tyler, “A Nation Challenged: Iraq; US Again Placing Focus on Hussein,” New York Times, December 18, 2001. 51. In Woodward, Plan of Attack, 3. Also, see Mitchell and Massoud, “Anatomy of Failure,” 275.

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52. Quoted in Michael R. Gordon and David E. Sanger, “A Nation Challenged: Iraq; Powell Says US Is Weighing Ways to Topple Hussein,” New York Times, February 13, 2002 (accessed August 4, 2010). 53. Gordon and Sanger, “A Nation Challenged.” 54. President Bush Delivers Graduation Speech at West Point, June 1, 2002, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/06/print/20020601 -3.html (accessed August 11, 2010). 55. For example, James Dao, “Call in Congress for Full Airing of Iraq Policy,” New York Times, July 18, 2002; Todd S. Purdum and Patrick E. Tyler, “Top Republicans Break with Bush on Iraq Strategy,” New York Times, August 16, 2002; Elisabeth Bumiller, “President Notes Dissent on Iraq, Vowing to Listen,” New York Times, August 17, 2002. 56. Quoted in Bumiller, “President Notes Dissent on Iraq.” 57. In Elisabeth Bumiller and James Dao, “Eyes on Iraq; Cheney Says Peril of Nuclear Iraq Justifies Attack,” New York Times, August 27, 2002. Also, see Woodward, Plan of Attack, 163–164. 58. Woodward, Plan of Attack, 165. 59. Woodward, Plan of Attack, 169. 60. Woodward, Plan of Attack, 168. 61. Quoted in Woodward,Plan of Attack, 169. 62. Ole Holsti, American Public Opinion on the Iraq War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011), 4–5, 133. 63. In Frontline, Bush’s War Part 1, Chapter 12: “The CIA National Intelligence Estimate on WMD.” 64. Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2003 to 2005 (New York: Penguin Books, 2007), 90–91. 65. See Paul Pillar, “Intelligence Policy and the War in Iraq,” Foreign Affairs, 85, no. 2 (March/April 2006):15–26. Also see Dina Badie, “Groupthink, Iraq, and the War on Terror: Explaining US Policy Shift toward Iraq,” Foreign Policy Analysis, 6, no. 4 (October 2010): 277–399. 66. See http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB129 (accessed April 15, 2012). 67. Mitchell and Massoud, “Anatomy of Failure,” 280. 68. Pillar, “Intelligence Policy and the War in Iraq,” 18; Mitchell and Massoud, “Anatomy of Failure,” 280. 69. Ricks, Fiasco, 52–3. 70. In Frontline, Bush’s War Part 1, Chapter 12: “The CIA National Intelligence Estimate on WMD.” 71. Ricks, Fiasco, 73; also Holsti, American Public Opinion on the Iraq War, 52. 72. United Nations Security Council (UNSC), Resolution 1441, November 8, 2002, 4644th meeting (accessed October 5, 2010). 73. UNSC, Resolution 1441. 74. Gallup/CNN/USA Today Poll, January 2003, iPOLL Databank, Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut. http://www.ropercenter.uconn .edu/data_access/ipoll/ipoll.html (accessed October 1, 2010). In a poll conducted March 24–25, 2003, 68 percent of those surveyed thought the just commenced war worth it, 29 percent not worth it, and 3 percent had no opinion. Also see discussion in Western, Selling Intervention and War, 213. 75. George W. Bush, “Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the State of the Union,” January 28, 2003, GPO Access, http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov /cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=2003_presidential_documents&docid=pd03fe03 _txt-6.pdf (accessed November 22, 2010), 115.

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76. Gallup/CNN/USA Today Poll, January 31, 2003–February 2, 2003, iPOLL Databank, Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut, http://www .ropercenter.uconn.edu/data_access/ipoll/ipoll.html (accessed October 1, 2010). 77. Frontline, Bush’s War Part 1, Chapter 14: “Powell Makes the Case for War at the UN.” 78. Steven R. Weisman, “Powell Calls his U.N. Speech a Lasting Blot on His Record,” New York Times, September 9, 2005, online. 79. Maureen Dowd, “Desert Spring, Sprung,” New York Times, February 9, 2003, A15. 80. Ricks, Fiasco, 90. 81. ABC News, “Colin Powell on Iraq, Race, and Hurricane Relief,” September 8, 2005, http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Politics/story?id=1105979&page=1 (accessed January 3, 2017). 82. Frontline, Bush’s War Part 1, Chapter 14. 83. Michael R. Gordon, “Threats and Responses: News Analysis; Powell’s Trademark: Overwhelm Them,” New York Times, February 6, 2003, A1. 84. Western, Selling Intervention and War, 214. Also, Gershkoff and Kushner, “Shaping Public Opinion,” cite an LA Times opinion survey that 10 percent changed from not supporting to supporting the war following hearing Powell’s UN speech (530–531). The gain in war support was highest among Democrats. In addition, they note a 30 percent jump in number of respondents convinced of link between Saddam and al-Qaeda following the speech, adding that the rate of increase was highest among Democrats (531). 85. Woodward, Plan of Attack, 291. 86. ABC News/Washington Post Poll, February 26–March 2, 2003, iPOLL Databank, Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut, http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/data_access/ipoll/ipoll.html (accessed October 13, 2010). “The Bush administration says it will move soon to disarm Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power, by war if necessary, working with countries that are willing to assist, even without the support of the United Nations. Overall, do you support or oppose this policy?” Supporters made up 59 percent of the respondents to this survey, 4 percent had no opinion. 87. Gallup International Poll, 2003, “Iraq 2003 International Results,” http://www .openheidoverirak.nu/dossierspdf/Iraq%202003%20International%20Results.pdf (accessed August 10, 2012). 88. Dominique de Villepin, “Address on Iraq,” UN Security Council, New York, February 14, 2003, PBS.org, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/iraq/france _2-14.html (accessed October 18, 2011). Also see Patrick E. Tyler, “Threats and Responses: News Analysis; A New Power in the Streets,” New York Times online, February 17, 2003. 89. Robert J. McCartney, “Thousands Worldwide Protest Start of Iraq War; Many Groups Mass Near US Embassies,” Washington Post, March 21, 2003, 11. 90. McCartney, “Thousands Worldwide Protest.” 91. Harvey, Explaining the Iraq War, 184–185. 92. Christopher Gelpi, Peter D. Feaver, and Jason Reifler, Paying the Human Costs of War: American Public Opinion and Casualties in Military Conflicts (Princeton ,NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 207. 93. Adam J. Berinsky, In Time of War: Understanding American Public Opinion from World War II to Iraq (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 30. 94. George W. Bush, “Address to the Nation on Iraq from the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln,” May 1, 2003, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=68675 &st=Lincoln&st1= (accessed April 8, 2013).

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95. Bush, “Address to the Nation,” May 1. 96. Douglas J. Feith, “How Bush Sold the War,” Wall Street Journal online, May 27, 2008, http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB121184655427621367 (accessed February 6, 2013). 97. Eric Schmitt, “Fast Withdrawal of G.I.’s Is Urged by Key Democrat,” New York Times online, November 18, 2005 (accessed February 16, 2010). 98. Quoted in Edward Epstein, “Murtha Calls for Immediate Withdrawal of US Troops from Iraq,” SFGate.com, November 17, 2005, http://www.sfgate.com/news /article/Murtha-calls-for-immediate-withdrawal-of-U-S-2560627.php (accessed September 28, 2010). 99. In John F. Burns, “General Rejects Any Call for Timetable for Withdrawal of Troops,” New York Times, November 17, 2005, A16. 100. In Elisabeth Bumiller, “Cheney Says Senate War Critics Make ‘Reprehensible Charges,’” New York Times, November 17, 2005, A20. 101. In David E. Sanger, “Iraq Dogs President as He Crosses Asia to Promote Trade,” New York Times, November 18, 2005, A16. 102. Sanger, “Iraq Dogs President.” 103. Quotes in Elisabeth Bumiller, “Cheney Sees ‘Shameless’ Revisionism on War,” New York Times, November 22, 2005, A1. 104. Meg Bortin, “Survey Finds Deep Discontent with American Foreign Policy,” New York Times, November 18, 2005, A16. 105. Frank Rich, “One War Lost, Another to Go,” New York Times, November 20, 2005, sect. 4, 13. 106. “Do you think the United States made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq?,” Gallup International, October 20–22, 2006. 107. Ted Barret, “Congress Forms Panel to Study Iraq War: Panel to Recommend Iraq Policy to Congress, White House,” CNN.com, March 15, 2006 (accessed Feburary 10, 2010). 108. Interestingly, the Iraq Study Group did express a willingness to “support a short term redeployment or surge of American combat forces to stabilize Baghdad” or to accelerate training, but the impression one gets from the report is a small deployment to facilitate a takeover by the Iraqi army of responsibility for its security. See Report of the Iraq Study Group, December 6, 2006, http://bakerinstitute.org/files/1044, 48–50. Early reporting corroborates this more conservative vision of a surge than the 30,000 troop increase adopted by Bush. See David Sanger, “Panel Urges Basic Shift in U.S. Policy in Iraq,” New York Times, December 7, 2006, and David E. Sanger and Michael R. Gordon, “Options Weighed for Surge in G.I.’s to Stabilize Iraq,” New York Times, December 16, 2006, online. 109. Kate Zernike, “Senate Democrats Are Divided in Debate over Iraq War,” New York Times, June 22, 2006, A12. 110. New York Times/CBS News poll, New York Times, May 25, 2007, A16. 111. Ed O’Keefe, “Bush Accepts Iraq-Vietnam Comparison,” ABC News, http:// abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=2583579 (accessed October 19, 2006). 112. “Analysts Discuss Possible Iraq-Vietnam Parallels,” Online Newshour, http:// www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/july-dec06/vietnam_11-23.html (accessed October 19, 2006). 113. Gideon Rose, “How Vietnam Really Ended,” Slate, January 22, 2007. 114. Stewart M. Powell, “Is it Vietnam II?,” Columbus Dispatch, May 13, 2007, http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/insight/2007/05/13/Iraq_and_Vietnam.ART _ART_05-13-07_G1_7L6MPR7.html (accessed January 23, 2011). 115. Personal communication with Peter D. Feaver, May 27, 2014.

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116. In spring 2005, Feaver was appointed special advisor for strategic planning and institutional reform on the National Security Council. See Berinsky, In Time of War, 1–2; Scott Shane, “Bush’s Speech on Iraq Echoes Analysts Voice,” New York Times, December 4, 2005, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=F6081EF639550C778CDDAB 0994DD404482&smid=pl-share (accessed August 8, 2010). Also Peter D. Feaver, “The Right to Be Right: Civil-Military Relations and the Iraq Surge Decision,” International Security, 35, no. 4 (Spring 2011): 99–101; and Peter Feaver, “Re-Rethinking Iraq: Anatomy of the Surge,” Commentary, 125, no. 4 (April 2008): 25. 117. Christopher Gelpi, Peter D. Feaver, and Jason Reifler, “Success Matters: Casualty Sensitivity and the War in Iraq,” International Security, 30, no. 3 (Winter 2005– 2006): 7–46; Gelpi, Feaver, and Reifler, Paying the Human Costs of War. 118. Gelpi, Feaver, and Reifler, Paying the Human Costs of War, 261. 119. Personal communication with Peter D. Feaver, May 27, 2014. 120. John F. Burns, “War Could Last Years, Commander Says,” New York Times, January 8, 2007, A9. 121. Press release of Senator Richard Lugar, “Lugar Senate Floor Speech Calls for Course Change in Iraq Connecting Our Iraq Strategy to Our Vital Interests,” Monday, June 25, 2007. 122. Fred Gedrich and Paul E. Vallely, “To Win in Iraq: Changes in Tactics Essential,” Washington Times, December 28, 2006, A19. Also see Walter Pincus, “Assessments Made in 2003 Foretold Situation in Iraq; Intelligence Studies List Internal Violence, Terrorist Activity,” Washington Post, May 20, 2007, A06. 123. Lugar press release, June 25, 2007. 124. John F. Kennedy, interview by Walter Cronkite, CBS Television News, CBS, September 2, 1963, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=9388#axzz1Z gC5TpAF (accessed October 18, 2011). 125. Gary C. Jacobson, A Divider, Not a Uniter: George W. Bush and the American People (New York: Pearson, 2008), 268. 126. Holsti, American Public Opinion on the Iraq War, 92. 127. Berinsky, In Time of War, 111. 128. Matthew Eshbaugh-Soha and Christopher Linebarger, “Presidential and Media Leadership of Public Opinion on Iraq,” Foreign Policy Analysis, 10, no. 4 (October 2014): 364. 129. Robert M. Entman, Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion, and US Foreign Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); also see Khong, Analogies at War. 130. Steven Lee Myers and Megan Thee, “Americans Feel Military Is Best at Ending War,” New York Times, September 10, 2007, A1. 131. New York Times/CBS News Poll, September 4–September 9, 2007. 132. David E. Sanger, “Redefining Goals: Less Talk of Victory Now,” News Analysis, New York Times, September 10, 2007, A8; National Security Council, National Strategy for Victory in Iraq, November 2005, 3, http://www.washingtonpost.com /wp-srv/nation/documents/Iraqnationalstrategy11-30-05.pdf. 133. Quoted in Michael Crowley, “Can Lobbyists Stop the War?,” New York Times Magazine, September 9, 2007, 54. 134. Jake Tapper, “MoveOn.org Ad Takes Aim at Petraeus,” ABC.com, September 10, 2007 (accessed March 25, 2011). 135. “2008 Politics Woven Through Iraq Hearings,” CNN.com, September 11, 2007 (accessed March 29, 2011). 136. Quoted in Carl Hulse, “Political Fault Line Emphasized by Timing of Hearings,” New York Times, September 11, 2007, A18.

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137. Alessandra Stanley, “Winning the Hearing Battle with No Sound Coming Out,” New York Times, September 11, 2007, A18. 138. Steven Lee Myers, “In Report, White House Offers Mixed Review of Progress by Iraqi Leaders,” New York Times, September 15, 2007, A6. 139. “In Bush’s Words: Assessing the War Today, and the Risks to Avoid Tomorrow,” New York Times, September 14, 2007, 8. 140. Quoted in Myers, “In Report, White House Offers Mixed Review.” 141. “In Bush’s Words.” 142. “In Bush’s Words.” 143. For an interesting take on parallels with Vietnam and Iraq, see Paul Krugman, “A Surge, and Then a Stab,” New York Times, September 14, 2007, A21. 144. Bush’s agreement with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki December 14, 2008, called for withdrawal by the end of 2011; Obama’s speech at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, on February 27, 2009, pledged withdrawal of all but a “transitional force” of 35,000 to 50,000 troops by August 31, 2010. The last combat brigade left Iraq on August 19, 2010. See “Fact Sheet: the Strategic Framework Agreement and the Security Agreement with Iraq,” White House, President George W. Bush, http://georgewbush -whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/iraq/; Peter Baker, “With Pledges to Troops and Iraqis, Obama Details Pullout,” New York Times, February 27, 2009, http://www .nytimes.com/2009/02/28/washington/28troops.html (accessed October 18, 2011). 145. Owing to the inability of the United States and Iraq to reach agreement on the legal immunity of US forces, the US troops’ presence was to end by December 31, 2011. See Mark Landler, “US Troops to Leave Iraq by Year’s End, Obama Says,” New York Times, October 21, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/22/world/middleeast /president-obama-announces-end-of-war-in-iraq.html. 146. See Peter Baker, “Obama, with Reluctance, Returns to Action in Iraq,” New York Times, August 7, 2014, http://nyti.ms/1mrnaIr; Michael R. Gordon and Julie Hirschfeld Davis, “In Shift, U.S. Will Send 450 Advisers to Help Iraq Fight ISIS,” New York Times, June 10, 2015, http://nyti.ms/1dvOzeg (accessed February 5, 2016). 147. Interestingly, Feaver suggests that in labeling as “an escalation” what the White House referred to as “reinforcements,” Democrats were adopting language that polling and focus groups informed them would make the surge unpalatable; Feaver, “Re-Rethinking Iraq: Anatomy of the Surge,” 27. 148. Woodward, The War Within, 317. 149. Woodward, The War Within, 189, 190, 193, 232, 244. 150. Quoted in Woodward, The War Within, 211, also 209. 151. Woodward, The War Within, 189. 152. Woodward, The War Within, 173. 153. In Woodward, The War Within, 214. 154. Steven Kull, Clay Ramsay, and Evan Lewis, “Misperceptions, the Media, and the Iraq War,” Political Science Quarterly, 118, no. 4 (Winter 2003–2004): 569–598. 155. Douglas L. Kriner, After the Rubicon: Congress, Presidents, and the Politics of Waging War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010). 156. Woodward, The War Within, 249. 157. John M. Schuessler, Deceit on the Road to War: Presidents, Politics, and American Democracy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015). 158. Gelpi, Feaver, and Reifler, Paying the Human Costs of War, 186. According to their research, the “Bush base” constituted 49 percent of the electorate in 2004, while those subscribing to the “Vietnam Syndrome” interpretation made up 29 percent. 159. Gelpi, Feaver, and Reifler, Paying the Human Costs of War, 186. 160. Gelpi, Feaver, and Reifler, Paying the Human Costs of War, 240.

7 Toward a Better Understanding of Democracies at War?

Democratic peace research provides an alternate paradigm for explaining international behavior by linking threat perception to the internal characteristics of states. I shed light on the key anomaly of democratic peace research—why democracies do not fight other democracies but readily war against other regime types—by unpacking how leaders seek to gain support for the use of force in five post–World War II democratic wars of choice against illiberal targets. I open a window to an improved understanding of the development of liberal resistance to war against fellow democracies by highlighting the process elected officials must master to successfully effect the choice of war. Liberal norms play a critical role in my observations of the justificatory process in these wars of choice. If these norms play an important part in the legitimation of a sample of wars of choice against nondemocracies, it is not much of a stretch to propose that any chief of government (COG) contemplating war against a fellow democracy would soon dismiss the thought from consideration knowing the insurmountable hurdle they would face. Although states of all types go through some sort of justification process when force is used, democracies offer an array of opportunities for societal dissent to register. I interrogate the process of deliberation in the marketplace of ideas when the state is engaged in a war of choice to illuminate the causal pathways that inhibit certain democratic behaviors and permit others. In short, when democracies choose war, the characterization of the threat and the explanation for why force must be used in response—the problem definition—has outsized significance. It is the reception that the COG’s problem definition finds in the marketplace of ideas that determines the success of the proposed use of force, because without domestic support, the war effort will crumble. Domestic support also dictates the normative 209

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legacy of the resulting war. This is because contestation over the COG’s problem definition reflects competing visions of appropriate liberal norms and expectations for national identity, with opponents advancing what they believe to be a superior grounding in society’s conception of the legitimate purposes for which the state fights. What counts as “liberal” is then resolved through debate in the marketplace of ideas. In this concluding chapter I elaborate on the operation of the causal mechanisms that regulate democratic war. I first offer a summary of my research. Next, I highlight three findings of this study that advance our understanding of democratic state behavior in war. I then offer some consolidated observations from my content analysis of the Falklands, Lebanon, Vietnam, and Iraq cases. I close with remaining questions regarding the phenomenon of liberal war for future research. Summary

The point of departure for this inquiry is the hypothesis that elite criticism of the normative foundation of democratic wars of choice leads to activation of oppositional public opinion. In Table 7.1, I summarize my findings. In the French and US wars in Southeast Asia, the problem necessitating the use of force was packaged around the concept of honor. For Laniel, Bidault, and French officials who were attached to the idea of empire, the commitment of the French military foreclosed the prospect of a collapse in its position in Indochina, thereby preserving national honor and French identity as a great power. Similarly, Nixon claimed that failure in Vietnam would cause a loss of honor or prestige. By ending US participation “with honor,” Nixon pledged that the United States would be better off in terms of security, stature, and, most important in his rhetoric, societal stability than if it just “bugged out.” In contrast, for Israel in Lebanon and the United States in Iraq, the problem calling for the use of force can best be classified as preventive war. Despite the reluctance of either leader to use this label, these wars were actually examples of preventive war, as each proponent used force to forestall the emergence of potential threats. Their justifications for war hewed closely to a script that emphasized the need to act against nascent threats before it became too late, as Begin and Bush invoked the failure to stop Hitler before Munich as a central image in their justification.1 Furthermore, Begin openly characterized the effort as a war of choice, whereas the term entered the US foreign policy lexicon in reaction to Bush’s actions. Finally, in the Falklands case, Thatcher elevated liberal democratic norms practically to a casus belli, bringing her society along with her in the campaign to protect the self-determination of the Falkland Islanders.

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Table 7.1 War Outcomes and Framing Contests Case

French Indochina Vietnam Falklands Lebanon Iraq

Problem Definition

Honor Honor Self-determination Preventive Preventive

Framing Contest? Yes Yes No Yes Yes

Support?a

Note: a. Public support for the COG’s initial problem definition.

No No Yes No Yes

Outcome Failure Failure Success Adjusted Adjusted

Leaders rarely frame an event in a singular fashion. Table 7.1 simply lists the most prominent theme conveyed in the COG’s problem definition. Ancillary themes can buttress the COG’s principal point, but owing to the need to maintain cognitive consistency, these rarely contradict the main thrust of the case for war. Problem-definition frames may also be implicit, as when George W. Bush referred to the consequences of US failure in Iraq while never invoking the Pottery Barn rule. Of the five COGs studied here, only Thatcher emphasized liberal norms in her problem definition. Importantly, frame contestation does not automatically yield viable counterframes. That is, opponents certainly criticize, and may endeavor to offer a counterframe, but without sufficient power to ensure its propagation in the media and magnitude in terms of the frequency with which this alternate frame appears in the marketplace of ideas, a prospective counterframe will not attain sufficient exposure to be actualized. As indicated in Table 7.1, frame contestation occurred in four of the cases, but a resonant counterframe did not emerge in the Iraq case. Unlike in the other three cases, where opponents coalesced around a culturally congruent counterframe, those critical of the Iraq War were unable to advance a coherent narrative that linked an indictment of the original rationale for the invasion with a solution to the disarray that administration supporters predicted would result from a US withdrawal. Moreover, opponents did not contest vigorously the preventive war aspect of Bush’s choice and how it violated US traditions or compromised liberal norms (Robert Kennedy’s admonition to his brother during the Cuban Missile Crisis, “I now know how Tojo felt,” might have been invoked to craft a counterframe). French critics of the war in Indochina could peg their dissent onto characterizations of the dirty colonial war, while Israeli naysayers could unite around the notion that the Israel Defense Forces were an instrument only for defense and not used for questionably approved opportunistic adventures. Characterization of the

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Vietnam War as a mistake, the Saigon government unworthy, and the adverse consequences of withdrawal as localized provided the basis for a counterframe that resonated beyond the narrow confines of the antiwar movement. By contrast, a similar framing of the Iraq War never gained traction, not even the simplistic “it’s another Vietnam.” Though polling organizations rarely ask direct questions allowing us to tap into the level of popular support for the COGs’ problem definition, available evidence suggests that among those studied here only Thatcher presented a problem definition that was universally acclaimed. In the other cases, the COG received equivocal support at most, with sufficient quantities of oppositional public opinion activated to derail achievement of the leadership’s aims. This is perhaps best exemplified by Nixon, who framed his level of public support by coining the term “silent majority” and did achieve an impressive reelection victory predicated partly on his handling of the Vietnam War. But Nixon could not count on public support sufficient to attain his initial requirements for peace with honor. Thus, as with the French two decades earlier, the United States had to depart from the region without meeting its goals. Begin and Bush enjoyed public support at the outset of their wars, but in the former case this was not based on approval for the preventive war problem definition, which remained unarticulated. In contrast, Bush did have public support for going to war against Iraq absent a direct casus belli. In the Lebanon and Iraq cases, initially ambitious aims were scaled down to more modest ones in reaction to debate in the marketplace of ideas. Placement of the Iraq War in the “adjusted” category is a complicated call. Essentially, there were two Iraq Wars—the first was to get rid of the regime of Saddam Hussein, and the second, what Ricks labels the “real war” to decide Iraq’s political disposition, began on August 7, 2003.2 Owing to the administration’s failure to fully weigh the potential consequences of the March 23 invasion, as the 3rd Infantry Division’s after-action review charges, “there was no timely plan prepared for the obvious consequences of a regime change.”3 So similar to the Begin government’s predicament in Lebanon, inadequately vetted decisions taken in the first phase of the war had consequences later. For political and strategic reasons, it was easier for Israel to adopt a defensive position in southern Lebanon as a policy adjustment. For the United States in Iraq, on the other hand, the original policy failed to fulfill top decisionmakers’ expectations of easy regime change, vindicating Powell’s “Pottery Barn” warning, but leaving a situation on the ground from which it was difficult to extricate the US military. Thus, considering the persistence of the US commitment to Iraq, I argue that policy, no matter how failed the assumptions underlying the original invasion, was “adjusted.” Again, only Thatcher can be said to have enjoyed successful accomplishment of the goals set out in her initial problem definition.

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Three Findings

Common to all five cases are three attributes that reveal a great deal about democracies and war:

1. Democratic deliberation regarding war is not necessarily a function of varying structural subtypes but of how the institutions of democracy interact. This is best illuminated by the divergence of the two US cases, where despite identical structures of governance, the willingness of the congressional opponents (regardless of party) to challenge the executive is what mattered. The choices made by political agents, and not the underlying structure, therefore, seem of greater consequence. 2. How the COG frames the war is crucial, with the evidence indicating that it is imperative to frame the war in normatively appropriate language. 3. When this does not occur, and the “selling” of the war is contested, the media serves as the conduit for dissent and is the vehicle through which elites may propagate a counterframe.

I elaborate on each of these three themes in turn. First, democratic deliberation is a key component of the choice of war. Obviously, leaders are important and not just the COG. It’s hard to imagine any of the wars under study here unfolding in similar fashion without a Thatcher, Begin, Nixon, or Bush. At the same time, ministers such as Bidault, Kissinger, and Sharon shaped state action in each case. But owing to the institutions of democratic governance, strong, assertive leadership was moderated in each instance. However the obstacles are made manifest, they reflect the input of competing democratic institutions and/or the restraining influence of liberal norms. Neither Laniel nor his colonialist predecessors could pursue unhindered their preferred approach to reclaiming Indochina. Even Thatcher, the leader least encumbered by liberal opposition among those studied here, had to tread within the confines of what British society would permit. Requisite engagement in diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict short of war, as well as the exclusion of targets in Argentina from the military theater of operations, show that even a determined leader who enjoys the support of the opposition must navigate around some domestically imposed requirements on the path to achievement of their aims. Begin, Nixon, and Bush faced institutional opposition to their preferred courses of action. Despite operating under different democratic structures, in all five cases, institutions common to democracy imposed restraints on leaders. The varying efficacy of these efforts reflect the deftness with which representatives of competing institutions functioned. As I explore more fully, the axis of contention across institutions often revolved around the applicability of liberal norms.

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Second, framing is a crucial part of any successful effort to choose war. What elements are essential to constructing a frame that will garner societal support? The use of force may be presented as a solution to a situation that threatens security, while either promoting or not violating deeply held societal norms. These norms reflect national experience and aspirations of society in meeting the behavioral expectations of ascriptive groups. Without delving too deeply into social identity theory, it is reasonable to argue that citizens in a democratic state see themselves as being a part of a transnational community of liberals and feel some internally directed pressure to conform to group norms.4 This explains, perhaps, why the US public is more likely to support uses of force that enjoy multilateral support.5 The scope of activities that constitute the range of liberal norms is shaped by norm entrepreneurs and debate occasioned by state behavior that runs afoul of what elites and the public considers acceptable. Accordingly, the COG must present a narrative that encompasses a definition of threat, a remedy for the problem, and a moral underpinning for the choice of war. This problem definition is often framed in terms of a normative injunction that reflects national identity. For example, justifying US involvement in World War I to “make the world safe for democracy” or “to end all wars” were propagandistic slogans to be sure, but they resonated positively in the neural networks of early twentieth-century Americans.6 Unless a critical mass of societal elites reject the official problem definition and offer a counterframing of the state’s choice for war that better reflects society’s sense of norms and identity, public opinion will remain quiescent in the choice of war. Third, to build a political coalition broad enough to sustain war, a democratic COG must win the central framing contest that characterizes the choice to use force. Counterframes may emerge from a number of potential sources in a democratic state. For example, in Israel, returning army reservists gave voice to an alternate frame to the invasion of Lebanon. By contrast, in the Falklands case, the ringing endorsement by opposition Labour leader Michael Foot deprived the nascent antiwar contingent a voice with the magnitude that might have generated a counterframe. A comparison of the two US cases is also telling on this score. During Vietnam, Congress was an assertive actor in the marketplace of ideas. Even during the Johnson administration, voices were raised in an effort to influence policy and frame the debate. With Nixon having reframed the purposes behind continued US involvement in the conflict, doves in Congress were more effectual in their effort to provide a counterframe. Not so during the Iraq War; when opposition among Democrats was ineffectual, Republicans largely formed a chorus of support for the White House, and a cable news network often doubled as an apostle of the administration’s position. Any COG promoting the choice of war would want to avoid a framing contest. There are a couple of ways to do so. First, the choice of war must

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be presented as being as close to the pole of necessity as possible. This is easier in some circumstances than others; not every potential threat can be elevated to a nearly existential one. Second, it is incumbent on the COG to define the problem in normatively appropriate language. The further the war seems from the pole of necessity, the greater the imperative for the COG to frame the problem in liberal terms. After all, since the definition of what constitutes “liberal” is open to debate and interpretation, a framing contest over the necessity and suitability of the war in such cases is almost inevitable. Here is where the Bush administration provides a most cautionary tale. The war in Iraq was presented by the administration as being as close to the pole of necessity as conceivable. By characterizing Saddam Hussein as a threat via weapons of mass destruction and terrorism, Bush partisans succeeded in minimizing the need to highlight how the intervention would advance liberal purposes. Regardless of substantive emphasis, the White House framed the choice of war with a sophisticated campaign; part of that effort was to neutralize any potential opposition. Bush and his lieutenants effectively used power to foreclose alternate framings and dominate the marketplace of ideas. The White House was aided not only by an opposition that was ineffectual and ineffective at best but by fellow partisans and sympathetic news outlets that championed its framing efforts. Andrew Card’s comment shared at the outset of this project reflects an awareness that for the choice of war to be successful, democratic leaders must dominate the marketplace of ideas by using the tools at their disposal to overpower competing voices and master the framing for why the state fights. The Bush administration surpassed this goal beyond all expectations. Consolidated Observations from Content Analyses

Figure 7.1 presents the relationship between coded stances on the COG’s frames and the likely affiliation of those offering judgments in the Falklands, Lebanon, Vietnam, and Iraq cases. We see the embodiment of what makes democratic involvement in war unique. Those expected to be allies of the COG are more likely to offer positive judgments on the leader’s framing of the choice of war; those of the opposition political party are shown to be more critical. Although it is beyond the bounds of this inquiry to speculate on why this is the case, the finding verifies that the marketplace of ideas is animated not so much by differing evaluations of the security environment but by domestic political allegiances, a finding consistent with Berinsky’s work.7 This confirms that partisan domestic political cleavages color democratic decisions to use force. Furthermore, the evidence presented in this figure substantiates a defining feature of the checks and

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balances fundamental to democratic governance: foreign policy, in this case wars of choice, is contested in the marketplace of ideas. Figure 7.2 charts the frequency of supportive and oppositional judgments of the COGs’ problem-definition frame in the four cases where we have data. The Falklands data show minimal negative judgments toward Thatcher’s problem definition. It is not surprising, then, that the prime minister also enjoyed public support for her approach to the situation. Also striking is the close fit between the two lines for Iraq coverage. Such balance in the frequency of positive and negative judgments on Bush’s problem definition helps explain why he was able to persist in Iraq and why a counterframe never took hold. Even during periods when opponents should have been able to dominate news coverage, the White House was able to ensure that its side of the story achieved equivalent magnitude with those trying to muster an effective critique. Clearly, given the hubris displayed by Card in his declaration during the prewar period, the White House understood the importance of having its supporters tout the president’s problem definition and derogate that of the competition in the spirit of all successful marketing campaigns.

Figure 7.1 Polarization of Coded Stands 1 Opponents Neutral Ally

Mean of Stance

0.5

0

-0.5

-1 Vietnam

Falklands

Lebanon

Likely Allegiance of Opinion Source

Iraq

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Future Research

My coverage of five wars of choice is by no means exhaustive, neither in terms of the depth of the individual case studies nor as examples of the phenomenon of democratic wars in general. Leaving these obvious shortcomings aside, there are a few important outstanding questions provoked by this research. First, there is the issue of how to study what it is difficult to observe. Until we have an unequivocal case of democratic war (and here perhaps is part of the difficulty of scholarship in this area as proponents of democratic peace would assuredly find some reason to discredit a war skeptics designate as one between democracies), democratic wars against nondemocratic states provide the best opportunity to locate whether there are generalizable attributes to democracies that might explain why evidence of dyadic war is scarce at best. Future researchers should try to identify cases when leaders are inclined to choose war and fail to bring society along or determine whether the inability to persuade society leads the COG to abandon the prospect. Reagan and his effort to undermine the Nicaraguan government and Obama’s unrealized threats against Syria’s use of chemical weapons are two possible cases that could help establish the degree to which democratic leaders are constrained by society. However, we cannot know if these leaders would have escalated to war barring domestic resistance. It is not at all clear how to disentangle the direction of the causal

Figure 7.2 Frequency of Problem-Definition Frames in Database

Number Number of of Judgments Judgments

140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0

Vietnam

Falklands Positive Positive Positive Positive

Negative Negative Negative Negative

Lebanon

Iraq

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arrow in cases of democratic war: do liberal norms come to influence leaders’ behavior, or do those in power shape the norms embraced by society? The evidence collected here points toward some form of interaction between norms, leaders, and those led, but why the current of influence sometimes runs from top down while at other times moves in the opposite direction is not clear and ripe for further exploration. Second, just a small slice of media coverage was analyzed for each case. One of the main themes of this project is that liberal norms evolve. So does the media landscape. This feature was highlighted in the French case, what with the proliferation of new media outlets (i.e., the establishment of L’Express), and the greater willingness of established players to challenge state policy (e.g., Le Monde). Sixty years following the fall of Dien Bien Phu, analysts must consider the rise of social media and the need for combatants in the marketplace of ideas to account for the perpetual news cycle, often through nontraditional media. Indeed, future researchers must more carefully parse what we mean by “the media.” Also, what if officials make the choice of war, but it does not generate sustained media coverage? In other words, what if media coverage is indifferent to the choice of war? Future research must account for the prospect that the media as an institution might be closed to penetration by a representative diversity of opinion. If it is dominated by only those supportive of government policy (what Entman labels the “hegemony model”),8 then the marketplace of ideas cannot be said to function. Perhaps in such instances we ought to ask whether a political system without the attribute of an open media, with few barriers to entry, is really still a democracy. Last, political psychology has much to contribute to our understanding of public opinion and the role of liberal identity in shaping democratic wars. For example, how can we best measure the urge to conform to group identity when it comes to democratic peace? We know that so-called adversarialidentity framing leads recipients of this type of messaging to be more sympathetic to “us” and antagonistic toward “them.”9 What are the consequences of this variety of framing in cases of democratic war? In the final analysis, wars of choice not only have greater likelihood of being successful when they are brief in duration but perhaps also when proponents have command of the marketplace of ideas gained by a sophisticated understanding of what motivates citizen beliefs. By using techniques such as adversarial-identity framing, proponents of war have an advantage in garnering support in the marketplace of ideas. The experience of the Iraq War shows how an administration’s mastery over the art of framing, along with the deft use of political power, can succeed in inhibiting political opposition and facilitating the choice of war. In some respects, policy choices that insulate the vast majority of citizens from the burdens of warfare may protect policymakers from the consequences of

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democracy as well.10 Ending conscription, of course, removes large elements of society from intimate concern about the use of force. However it is achieved, how does taking democracy out of the process of going to war short-circuit those liberal attributes that render Kant’s observations regarding democratic reluctance to fight operable? An intrinsic characteristic of democratic states is deliberation among stakeholders over the legitimacy of what the state does in the name of its citizens. Liberal norms have evolved over the past century or more to shape the range of acceptable international behavior of democratic states to reflect core values. Not making war on a fellow democracy is of course among the more prominent of these norms. So is the democratic rejection of the normative right to rule others, the tendency to deliberately inflict casualties on civilians, the refusal to subject the state’s military to suffering large losses of life, and the need to renounce selfish motives as the driving force behind the choice for war. Perhaps this is all a form of mass self-delusion, and that what has changed is not democratic behavior per se but the skill with which officials make their case to the public. Going to war has become increasingly sanitized for the home front, with a small slice of the population directly suffering the deprivations of war and the battlefield largely sealed from scrutiny. Measures taken by democratic officials to inoculate their societies from the costs of war does not mean that they have outlawed the marketplace of ideas, however. An informed and engaged citizenry remains the sine qua non of self-governance; it is incumbent on those who inhabit the liberal institutions of democratic states to engage the debate on whether the choice of war fits the evolving liberal identity and not just the preferences of the governing elite. Notes

1. For Bush’s effort, see Peter Conolly-Smith, “‘Connecting the Dots’: Munich, Iraq, and the Lessons of History,” History Teacher, 43, no. 1 (November 2009): 31–51. 2. Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2003 to 2005 (New York: Penguin Books, 2007), 135, 215. 3. Quoted in Ricks, Fiasco, 151. 4. Rose McDermott, “Psychological Approaches to Identity: Experimentation and Application,” in Rawi Abdelal, Yoshiko M. Herrera, Alastair Iain Johnston, and Rose McDermott, Measuring Identity: A Guide for Social Scientists (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 345–367. 5. Louis Klarevas, “The ‘Essential Domino’ of Military Operations: American Public Opinion and the Use of Force,” International Studies Perspectives, 3, no. 4 (November 2002): 423–434; Steven Kull and I. M. Destler, Misreading the Public: The Myth of a New Isolationism (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1999). 6.. See the discussion in Robert M. Entman, Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 7, 14–17.

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7. Adam J. Berinsky, In Time of War: Understanding American Public Opinion from World War II to Iraq (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). 8. Entman, Projections of Power, 4. 9. See the discussion in Chapter 3. 10. For example, Deborah Avant and Lee Sigelman, “Private Security and Democracy: Lessons from the US in Iraq,” Security Studies, 19, no. 2 (April–June 2010): 507–528.

Appendix

For this project, newspaper articles from four different cases were coded. Coding was conducted by myself along with a number of undergraduate research assistants.1 When this work commenced, neither The Times nor the Jerusalem Post were electronically indexed. Because the wars researched in those papers were of limited duration, all stories mentioning the conflict were collected for six consecutive days of coverage (not including the Sabbath) at three-week intervals beginning with the start of the conflict. For the Vietnam and Iraq cases, I conducted a Proquest keyword search to yield the relevant articles. Because these wars continued for quite some time, relevant items were collected at four weekly periods surrounding key events. For the Falklands War case, a random team of two coders of a group of three read each article, with the third coder resolving conflicts. For the subsequent cases, a student coder and I split the items and jointly coded a random 10 percent to check reliability. The results of intercoder reliability testing show decent results, with an average Cohen’s kappa of 0.45 across the three cases (Ronald Krebs identifies average coder agreement measuring 0.49 as “moderate”2). In addition to background information (date, placement in the newspaper, length, author, item type), each piece was coded at two units of analysis: whether overall the piece itself supported, opposed, or was neutral toward the chief of government’s choice of war and the characteristics of each individual judgment presented in the story (up to the first eight). The source of each of these judgments was identified (i.e., COG, member of the administration, member of the legislature, uniformed military, “man in the street”), along with the direction of the judgment (in support of the COG’s position, neutral, or opposed), and the judgmental frame if applicable. Using Entman as a guide, the coding protocol established 221

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three categories of frame: problem definition, policy, and leadership. I included a mixed category and one for no frame present. In determining the frame, coders used the following guidelines: problem identification was coded for remarks focusing on the justification for the war of choice, reflecting on whether there was a moral imperative that “we ought to fight” or “ought not fight”; items were coded as policy judgments when the tactics in the war are questioned; and the leadership frame was reserved for judgments that addressed the procedures used by leaders in executing the war (were the appropriate institutions consulted, is public opinion being followed). For analytic purposes, I collapsed the source category into three groups reflecting the likelihood of support for the COG, placing members of the executive’s political party from the legislature along with members of the executive branch as allies, opposition party members along with representatives of enemy countries as opponents, and all others, including the public, experts, and representatives of other institutions as neutrals. Notes

1. Guidance was provided by Kimberly A. Neuendorf, The Content Analysis Guidebook (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2002). 2. Ronald R. Krebs, Narrative and the Making of US National Security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 196.

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Index

Abu Ghraib, human rights abuses at, 169 Abuhatzeira, Aharon, 152 accountability inhibiting wars between democracies, 8–9 Afghanistan, 173 Agence France-Press, 51 air strikes in Israel, 137–138, 158(n11) Algeria: public opinion on French decolonization, 42 al-Qaeda, 171–172 Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, 195 appropriateness, logic of, 110 Arab-Israeli War (1948), 136 d’Argenlieu, Georges Thierry, 37–38 Argentina. See Falkland Islands conflict ARVN. See South Vietnamese Army Assemblée Nationale (France), 47–53 Associated States of Indochina, 35, 45, 49–50, 54–55. See also Indochina authoritarian regimes: omnibalancing, 3. See also communist regimes and factions “axis of evil,” 173

Baker, James, 1 Bao Dai (Emperor), 37, 52, 54 Barnett, Michael, 154 Begin, Menachem: coalition politics, 144; framing the war as democratic, 138–140; framing the war as

response to a threat, 20–21, 140– 142; goals and justification of the Lebanon invasion, 135–136; Lebanon as war of choice, 130, 136, 213–214; media condemning the lack of transparency, 151–152; political context of the war, 137; political opposition to Lebanon policy, 146; war outcomes and framing contests, 212 Benn, Wedgwood “Tony,” 115 Bidault, Georges, 43, 45–48, 52–53, 56, 213 Biden, Joe, 195 Big Pines, 137, 144, 146, 153 Boehner, John, 195 Britain: democratic support of the Falklands conflict, 111; elite debate over Thatcher’s Falkland Islands approach, 113–115; experiential development of US-British relations, 12–13; the government framing the response to the Argentine assault, 112–113; government institutions’ debate over Falklands approach, 115–117; parliamentary democracy and the Falklands invasion, 107–108 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 118, 122, 124, 128, 133(n66) Brooke Amendment (1972), 94

241

242

Index

Bumiller, Elizabeth, 172, 179 Bundy, McGeorge, 67 Burg, Abraham, 143 Buron, Robert, 53 Bush, George H.W., 96 Bush, George W.: “axis of evil,” 173; democratic deliberation and wars of choice, 213–214; lack of democracy in Iraq War decisionmaking process, 200–201; marketing the war in Iraq, 6–7; necessity of a framing contest, 215; tying Iraq threat to 9/11, 170– 177; war outcomes and framing contests, 212. See also Iraq War

Calley, William Jr., 79, 84 Cambodia, US bombing and invasion, 76, 78, 90–92 Cameron, David, 129–130 Card, Andrew, 1, 3, 5, 174, 216 Carrington, Peter, 125 casualties: Correlates of War project, 108–109; dynamic phase of Israel’s war in Lebanon, 139; Iraq War, 198 casus belli: Bush’s lack of support for Iraq War, 212; Falklands conflict, 210; Iraq war, 164 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 168– 169 checks and balances: parliamentary democracy and the Falklands invasion, 107–108 chemical weapons, 166, 217 Cheney, Dick, 170–171, 174, 187, 196 chief of government (COG): Bush’s commitment of troops in the face of opposition, 168; choosing and abandoning war, 217–218; framing the Iraq war, 164; importance of framing the war, 213–215; judgments of the Iraq War by allegiance to, 177–178, 178(table), 180(table); justification of the Falkland Islands conflict, 105; justifying wars of choice, 5–6; media coverage comparison of the Falklands conflict, 121(table); mixing democratic institutions and liberal norms, 109; parliamentary democracy and the Falklands invasion, 107–108; polarizations of

coded stands, 215–216; problem definition, 209–210; public opinion and normative change, 18–19; war outcomes and framing contests, 211–213 China: involvement in the French Indochina War, 40–41; Nixon’s opening, 103(n95) choice, wars of: domestic reaction, 2–3; integrated model of democratic politics and, 18–19; interaction of domestic politics and international relations, 5–7; marketplace of ideas, 9–12 choice continuum, 3; government frame of Israel’s war in Lebanon, 140– 142; logic behind US involvement in Vietnam, 66–71; selection of war based on probability of success, 109–111; use of force in the Falklands, 105–107, 109, 117 Christie, Clive, 128 civil war: US “foreign aggression” in Vietnam’s civil conflict, 68 Clinton, Hillary, 195 Clinton administration, 170 coalition governments: democratic context of Israel’s war in Lebanon, 136–138; importance of framing contests in building, 214–215; Israel’s coalitionist democracy, 134, 144–145 Cohen, Bernard, 6 Cohen, William, 170 Cold War, democratic peace during, 34–35 colonialism: driving French policy in Indochina, 52–53, 55–56; French efforts to retain control in Indochina, 31–32; norms justifying state action, 13 Communist Party (Israel), 141 communist regimes and factions: Nixon’s overreaction to North Vietnamese threat, 78; opposing France’s role in Indochina, 52; US commitment to contain, 32; US security policy in Vietnam, 65 Congress, US: call for reductions in Iraq, 190–191; call for withdrawal from Iraq, 186–189; constraining Nixon’s Vietnam policy, 74, 93; elite debate

Index

over ending the Vietnam War, 88– 89; media coverage of the Vietnam War, 80–81; negative judgments of the Iraq War, 177–178; opposition to the war in Iraq, 167; partisan support for Bush’s Iraq policy, 191– 196; US voter response to the Iraq War, 167–168; use-of-force resolution for Iraq, 176 consequences, logic of, 110 Conservative Party (UK), 115, 124–125 constructivism: state behavior as the logic of appropriateness, 11–12 Cooper-Church Amendment (1970), 93 Correlates of War project, 34, 108–109 corruption: French officials in Indochina, 52 coup d’état: Vietnam, 65, 73 Crocker, Ryan, 195 Cuban Missile Crisis, 211

Daily Mirror newspaper, 114 David, Steven, 3 de Gaulle, Charles, 37, 49 decolonization, British, 105–106 Dejean, Maurice, 55 Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), 76–77, 79 democracy: attributes common to democracies and war, 213–215; changing the focus on the Iraq War justification, 186; choice continuum of wars, 3; constraining pursuit of winnable wars, 111; democratic context of the Iraq war, 164–167; democratic structure in British decision in the Falklands, 105; framing Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, 136–140; French Fourth Republic, 33–34; French opening following World War II, 35; as impediment to war, 13; inhibiting and promoting use of force, 1–2; institutional wrangling over Nixon’s Vietnam policy, 89–90; integrated model of democratic politics and wars of choice, 18–19; justifying Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, 138– 140; lack of wars between democracies, 7–9; normative prohibition on wars of choice, 9–12; parliamentary democracy and the

243

British invasion of the Falklands, 107–108; popular opinion in wars of choice, 6–7; as theme for Vietnam War debate, 86–89; theoretical foundations of war, 3–4; US congressional constraint on executive institutions, 72–73 democratic deliberation, 111, 213–214, 219 democratic peace theory: framing, 16– 18; marketplace of ideas, 9–11; monadic and dyadic propositions, 4; norms and the democratic peace, 11–13; origins and development of, 7–9; role of public opinion in, 13– 16; Thatcher’s approach to the Falklands conflict, 111–112 Dien Bien Phu, 39, 42–46, 50, 218 Dillon, Douglas, 49 diplomacy: British negotiation with Argentina over control of the Falklands, 106; domestic politics constraining, 29(n103); elite debate over Thatcher’s approach in the Falklands, 114; interaction of domestic politics and international relations, 5; Kissinger’s secret talks with the North Vietnamese, 88–89, 94–95; negotiating PLO withdrawal from Beirut, 151–152; Nixon framing Vietnam as peace with honor, 75–76, 95–96; Nixon’s attempt at Vietnamization, 76–80; Thatcher’s opposition to a diplomatic approach to the Falklands, 106–107; two-level diplomacy reversed, 36 dirty war, Indochina as, 52 dissent, 209–210. See also public opinion domestic politics: domestic political allegiances coloring use of force, 215–217; evolving norms and democratic peace, 10–11; interaction of international relations and, 5–7; public opinion and use of force, 14–15 domestic politics, Britain: effect of the Falklands conflict on Thatcher’s popularity, 124–128; elite debate over Thatcher’s Falkland Islands approach, 114

244

Index

domestic politics, France: effect of war in Indochina on France’s legislative elections, 49–50; Fourth Republic, 33–34; political parties’ view of fighting for Indochina, 51–56; shaping French Indochina policy, 46–47 domestic politics, Israel: coalitional parliamentary democracy, 136–138; influencing invasion of Lebanon, 138–139; Israel’s retreat from Lebanon, 155–156; opposition to the war in Lebanon, 143–145 domestic politics, US: Bush marketing the Iraq War, 174–175; debate over US escalation in Vietnam, 68–71; Kent State protests against Vietnam, 92; marketing the Iraq War, 174– 175; Nixon cultivating support for Vietnam policy, 90–94; opposition to the Iraq War, 174; partisanship over Bush’s Iraq policy, 192, 193(fig.); shift in US policy in Vietnam, 75 Dulles, John Foster, 43, 45–47, 56 dyadic peace, 4; defining, 16; democratic “near misses,” 31; democratic peace theory, 7; future research in, 217; Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, 138

The Economist, 128 Eisenhower, Dwight: national security policy in Vietnam, 65 Eitan, Rafael, 137 elections: congressional support for Iraq War, 174; effect of the Falklands conflict on Britain’s, 125(table); effect of the Lebanon war on Israel’s, 157–158; effect of war in Indochina on France’s legislative elections, 49; midterm elections as obstacle to Bush’s Iraq agenda, 189–190; reactions to lengthy wars, 157–158; strategizing Bush’s Iraq policy before the 2008 presidential elections, 191–192; US policy in Vietnam, 66; US voter response to the Iraq War, 167–168 electoral systems: France’s Fourth Republic, 33–34

elite cue theory: public opinion on the Iraq War, 192 elite debate: activating oppositional public opinion, 210–212; government framing of policy, 17– 19; importance to democratic peace, 14–15; Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, 142–143; public opinion activation and normative change, 19(fig.); Thatcher’s approach to the Falklands, 113–115; Vietnam War, 86–89 empire, importance to French identity, 43–44, 210 Entman, Robert, 17 Explaining the Iraq War: Counterfactual Theory, Logic and Evidence (Harvey), 166 “extra-state war,” 34

Falkland Islands conflict: Begin framing Israel’s war in Lebanon, 141; Britain’s easy victory, 109; Britain’s parliamentary democracy, 107–108; British government framing the response to the Argentine assault, 112–113; British public opinion on endangering the military, 125–128, 126(table), 133(n63); Correlates of War project, 108–109; debate among British government institutions over Thatcher’s approach, 115–117; democracies’ greater success than nondemocracies in war, 110; effect on Thatcher’s popularity, 124–128; elite debate over Thatcher’s policy, 113–115; framing the war, 20–21; justification of wars of choice, 210; media coverage, 117–124, 133(n66); normative change resulting from, 128–130; position on the choice continuum, 106–107; supportive and oppositional judgments, 216; war outcomes and framing contests, 211(table) Feith, Douglas, 186 First Indochina War, 31 Foot, Michael, 115, 117 Ford, Gerald, 96–97

Index

foreign policy: activating public opinion, 4; framing the rationale for use of force, 16–17 framing, 16–18; British government framing response to the Argentine assault, 112–113; challenging Begin’s framing of the PLO problem, 152; clever framing inhibiting political opposition to the Iraq War, 218–219; congruence with popular culture schemas, 99(n22); connecting the Iraq War to 9/11, 170–177, 195; counterframing the Iraq War, 186–189, 193–194; elite debate over Thatcher’s Falkland Islands approach, 113–115; elite debate over Vietnam War, 86–89; frames of coded judgments on the Iraq War, 179(table); framing Thatcher’s Falklands approach, 129; government frame of Israel’s war in Lebanon, 140–142; importance of the COG framing the war, 213–215; Iraq War as “necessity,” 164–167, 186; Iraq War frames by juncture, 183(table); Iraq War support according to allegiance to the COG, 180(table); Israel’s war in Lebanon, 20–21, 146–151; media coverage of the Falklands, 117–124, 120(table)– 121(table), 122, 123(table), 124; media response to Nixon’s framing of the Vietnam War, 80–86; Nixon’s framing of Vietnam as peace with honor, 75–86, 95–96, 210, 211(table); public opinion of Israel’s war in Lebanon, 151–154; US invasion of Cambodia, 90–92; war outcomes and framing contests, 211–212, 211(table) France: democratic structure, 33–34; evolution of the media landscape, 218; identity and democratic peace, 17; Indochina as an “extra-state war,” 34–35; inevitability of war in Indochina, 32–33; Laniel’s election and procolonial policy, 42–43; the Navarre Plan, 44–47; protests against the Iraq War, 185; public opinion of the French Indochina

245

War, 41–42; Vichy control of Indochina, 36–37. See also Indochina Frankel, Jonathan, 152 French Union, 52, 54 Frum, David, 173 Fulbright, J. William, 69

Galtieri, Leopoldo, 110–111 Gemayel, Bachir, 145–146 Geneva Accords (1954), 65 George, Alexander, 12 Germany: protests against the Iraq War, 185 Giaccobi, Paul, 37 Glasgow University Media Group, 122, 124 goals of war, 2–3, 10, 20 Gore, Al, 166 governance: democratic deliberation and wars of choice, 213–214; preserving the South Vietnamese government, 79–80; responding to societal preferences, 55–56. See also democracy government institutions: Israeli war in Lebanon, 143–145; policy debate over Vietnam, 89–90; Thatcher’s policies towards the Falklands, 115– 117 Griffin, Robert, 94 groupthink resulting in Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, 137 The Guardian newspaper, 114 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (1964), 73

Haass, Richard, 2 Haig, Alexander, 110–111 Haldeman, H.R., 76–77, 91–92 Hammer, Zevulun, 152 Harvey, Frank, 166, 185 Heath, Donald R., 45 Heath, Edward, 114 Hitler, Adolf, 140, 210 Ho Chi Minh, 45 Hobsbawm, Eric, 128 Hoffman, Charles, 143 Holocaust, 139, 154–155, 157 honor, peace with (Vietnam policy frame), 75–86, 95, 210, 211(table)

246

Index

Hoskyns, John, 107 House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, 186–187 human rights: public opinion and use of force, 14; US abuses in Iraq, 169 humanitarian intervention, partisanship and, 28(n78) Hussein, Saddam, 166–167, 170, 195

identity: of British Falkland Islanders, 112–113; clash of France’s colonial and liberal identities over Indochina, 56–57; driving French efforts to retake Indochina, 38–39; elements of Israeli identity, 139, 154–155, 157; empire and grandeur shaping France’s, 51–52, 210; framing process, 16–17; framing Thatcher’s Falklands approach, 129; French empire and democracy, 33 ideology driving Bush’s Iraq policy, 198– 199 imperialism, French efforts in Indochina as legitimation of, 39 India, independence from Britain, 106 Indochina: Assemblée Nationale’s domestic opposition to France’s persistence in, 47–51; clash of France’s colonial and liberal identities regarding, 56–57; colonial history, 31–32; emerging democratic norms, 20; France’s political parties accepting fighting for, 51–56; French public opinion, 41–42, 47–51; Vichy control after World War II, 36–37; war outcomes and framing contests, 211(table). See also France; Vietnam War intelligence community, 175–176, 187 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), 177 international relations: interaction of domestic politics and, 5–7; role of democracy in international affairs, 8 Iran: “axis of evil,” 173 Iraq Study Group, 189, 197–199, 206(n108) Iraq War: analysis elements, 167–168; approval rating, 169(fig.); casualties, 198; commencement of military operations, 184;

comparisons with Vietnam, 189– 190; congressional call for withdrawal, 186–187; democratic context, 164–167; frames of coded judgments on, 179(table); framing as a “necessity,” 164–177; framing to inhibit political opposition, 218– 219; incorporating the UN in US policy, 181–184; lack of democracy in decisionmaking process, 200– 201; marketing the war, 1, 6–7; media coverage analysis, 177–178, 197; partisan approval of Bush’s policy, 191–194, 193(fig.); support for the use of force, 171(fig.); surge strategy, 190–191, 194–195; taking responsibility for the consequences of, 166–167; tying Iraq threat to 9/11, 170–177; using intelligence to justify use of force, 175–176; war outcomes and framing contests, 211(table), 212 Israel Defense Forces (IDF), 20–21, 135, 137, 141–142, 144, 151–152; dissent against the war, 145 Israeli war in Lebanon: cabinet-level dissent, 143–145; democratic context of, 136–140; elite debate over, 142–143; framing, 20–21, 140–142, 146–151; invasion of Lebanon, 20–21, 130, 135; justifying, 154–157; media coverage, 145–151; normative change resulting from, 154–157; public opinion on, 151–154

Jacquet, Marc, 45, 49 Japan: seizing administration of French Indochina, 37–38 Jerusalem Post, 139, 142–147 Johnson, Lyndon: entering and escalating the Vietnam War, 65–70; Nixon justifying continuing US involvement in Vietnam, 71–72; public opinion influencing US policy in Vietnam, 73–74 Jordan, PLO expulsion from, 135–136 Judaism: elements of Israel’s identity, 139 Judea and Samaria, 135–136 justification process for use of force:

Index

Operation Iraqi Freedom, 163–164; societal dissent and, 209–210

Kahan Commission, 145 KAL flight 007, 17 Kant, Immanuel, 1 Kennan, George, 68 Kennedy, John F., 65, 211 Kennedy, Robert, 211 Kent State University protests, 92 Kissinger, Henry, 75, 77, 88–91, 94–95, 213 Knesset, 141–142 Korean War, 40

Labour Party (Israel), 151–152, 156–158 Labour Party (UK), 115, 124–125, 128 Laird, Melvin, 89–90 Laniel, Joseph, 33, 42–47, 49–53, 56, 76, 210, 213 Laos, US incursion into, 79, 84, 93 Le Monde newspaper, 51 Leach, Henry, 116 Lebanese Civil War, 135–136 Lebanon: democratic context of Israel’s invasion, 136–140; war outcomes and framing contests, 211(table). See also Israeli war in Lebanon Leclerc, Philippe, 39 legitimacy: democratic foreign policy, 11–12 Legro, Jeffrey, 12 Letourneau, Jean, 55 liberal peace, 7–9, 53–56 liberalism: elements of Israel’s identity, 139, 154–155; theoretical foundations of war, 4 Lieberman, Joe, 189 Likud Party (Israel), 137, 145, 156–158 lobbyists: Falkland Islands Committee blocking a negotiated resolution, 106 logic of appropriateness, 11, 110 logic of consequences, 11, 110 Lugar, Richard, 167–168, 190–192, 197

Mapam Party (Israel), 134 marketing war, 3; COGs’ responsibility in wars of choice, 6; domestic political allegiances coloring use of force, 215–217; importance of the

247

COG selling the war, 213–215; timing an announcement of war, 6. See also framing; Iraq War marketplace of ideas: Bush administration’s mastery of, 165; factors affecting democratic peace, 9–12; French debate over retaking Indochina, 39–41; necessity of war, 20; strategizing Bush’s Iraq policy before the 2008 presidential elections, 191–192; unacceptability of wars of choice, 66 Martinand-Déplat, Léon, 39 Marxism Today, 128 Matthews, H. Freeman, 43 Matzzie, Tom, 195 Mayer, René, 44 McClellan, Scott, 172, 187 McGovern, George, 84 McKinley, William, 2–3 McNamara, Robert, 67 media: activating public opinion, 17; analysis of the Iraq War, 167, 177– 197; Argentina’s lack of understanding of Britain’s intent in the Falklands, 110; British suppression of negative coverage of the Falklands, 124; Bush marketing the Iraq War, 173; Bush’s selective release of information to justify Iraq War, 176; as conduit for defense and counterframe, 213; editorial debate over the Israeli war in Lebanon, 142–143; elite debate over Thatcher’s approach to the Falklands, 113–115; evolution of the media landscape, 218; Falklands conflict coverage, 117–124, 133(n66); French coverage of the wars in Indochina, 35–36, 51; French media opening following World War II, 35; Iraq War juncture 1, 178–186; Iraq War juncture 2, 186–189; Iraq War juncture 3, 189– 194; Iraq War juncture 4, 194–197; Israeli cabinet opposition to Big Pines, 144–145; Israeli invasion of Lebanon, 139, 145–151; managing war, 20; as mechanism for creating and changing norms, 27(n67); Nixon’s manipulation of public

248

Index

opinion data on Vietnam, 93–94; normative change resulting from the Falklands conflict, 128–130; public opinion and normative change, 18– 19; public opinion opposing the French Indochina War, 40; Vietnam War coverage, 80–86; Vietnam War opinion journalism, 86–89 Mendès-France, Pierre, 47, 49–51, 56 military forces, British public opinion on endangering, 125–128, 126(table), 133(n63) monadic variant of democratic peace, 4, 8, 138–139 Monteil, André, 53 moral questions: US involvement in Vietnam, 74–75 Morgenthau, Hans, 68 Mouvement Républicain Populaire (MRP; France), 53 MoveOn organization, 195 Multinational Force in Lebanon (MNF), 139 Murtha, John, 167–168, 186–188 Muskie, Edmund, 84 Myths of Empire (Snyder), 107–108

National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), 175–176 National Religious Party (Israel), 144– 145, 152 national security: framing Israel’s war in Lebanon, 20–21, 135, 141, 155– 157; framing the War in Iraq, 170–177, 196; inevitability of US involvement in Vietnam, 68–71, 75– 76; interaction of domestic politics and international relations, 5; Iraq war as response to 9/11, 170–177; Israel’s Big Pines plan, 137; justifying wars of choice, 210–211; legacy of the Falklands conflict, 130; South Vietnam’s concerns over US withdrawal, 76–80; Thatcher’s response to the Argentine assault on the Falklands, 112–113; theoretical foundations of war, 3–4; US policy in Vietnam, 65 naval power, British, 106–107, 116, 129– 130 Navarre, Henri, 44, 56

Navarre Plan, 44–47 necessity, wars of, 2–3 negotiation. See diplomacy neocolonialism: French Indochina War, 40 neoconservatives, 166, 172–173 New Left Review, 128 New York Times, 80–89, 88(table), 168– 169, 172–173, 176–197 news media. See media Newsweek magazine, 164 Ngo Dinh Diem, 65, 73 Nicaragua, US involvement in, 41, 217 Nixon, Richard M.: cease-fire in place, 45; congressional influence over presidential war policy, 72–73; correlating popularity with cost of living, 102(n76); deft handling of the Spring Offensive, 94–95; democratic deliberation and wars of choice, 213–214; elite debate over Vietnam, 86–89; framing the US invasion of Cambodia, 90–92; framing the Vietnam War, 75–76; improving relations with North Vietnam, 103(n95); justifying continuing US involvement in Vietnam, 71–72; justifying wars of choice, 210; media coverage of the Vietnam War, 80–81; mediamanaged war, 20; public opinion influencing US policy in Vietnam, 74; two-level diplomacy reversed, 90–94; Vietnamization plan, 76–80. See also Vietnam War norms and institutions: defining, 12; democratic choices in wars, 109– 110; foreign policy legitimacy, 11–12; framing the Iraq war, 165– 167; France’s political parties accepting fighting for Indochina, 51–56; impact on decision to use force, 9; imposing restraints on COG’s in choosing war, 213–214; inhibiting wars between democracies, 8–9; Israel’s invasion of Lebanon running counter to, 140; justifying wars of choice, 209–210; media as mechanism for creating and changing, 27(n67); norm diffusion and illiberal norms,

Index

25(n37); normative change resulting from the Falklands conflict, 128– 130; normative change resulting from the war in Lebanon, 154–157; normative evolution resulting from the Vietnam War, 96–97; public opinion and normative change, 18– 19; shaping leaders’ behavior, 218; Thatcher’s attempts to ratify the war in the Falklands, 111–112 North Africa, loss of Indochina threatening France’s control in, 43 North Korea: “axis of evil,” 173 Nott, John, 116

Obama, Barack, 195, 198, 217 October War (1973), 136 omnibalancing, 3 op-ed journalism, 36, 53, 86–89, 88(table), 152, 168–169, 182(table) Operation Iraqi Freedom. See Iraq War Operation Peace for Galilee, 135–136, 139, 142, 152–153, 157 Opinion Research Corporation (ORC), 92–94, 125

Pace, Peter, 199 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), 20–21, 135, 137–138, 141–143, 151–152, 158(n11) Paris Peace Accords, 95 parliamentary democracy: debate among British government institutions over Thatcher’s approach to the Falklands, 115–117; democratic context of Israel’s war in Lebanon, 136–138; France’s Fourth Republic, 33–34 Paul Conference (1950), 54 Peres, Shimon, 142, 157–158 Perle, Richard, 172–173 Petraeus, David, 194–195 Phalange militia, 152, 157 Pleven, René, 37 policy legitimacy, 11–12 political necessity for war, 2–3; justifying Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, 143; Navarre Plan bolstering Laniel’s plans for Indochina, 45–46

249

political opposition to war: French role in Indochina, 33 political parties. See domestic politics political power, loss of Indochina threatening France’s, 43 political psychology, 218 political structures, societal norm formation and, 9 Pottery Barn rule, 167 Powell, Colin, 166–167, 173–174, 179, 181 preemptive war, 164, 166. See also Iraq War preventive war, 8, 138–139, 157, 164, 210, 211(table). See also Iraq War problem definition, 217(table); domestic support for use of force, 209–210, 211(table), 212; framing in terms of national identity, 214; framing Israel’s war in Lebanon, 147–151; framing the Falklands conflict, 216; media coverage of the Iraq War, 177–178, 177(table), 179–188, 193– 197, 200; Powell’s address to UN Security Council, 181–182 protests: against the Iraq War, 185; popular opposition to the war in Lebanon, 152; against US involvement in Vietnam, 92 public opinion: activating foreign policy formulation, 4; on British media coverage of the Falklands, 124; congressional call for withdrawal from Iraq, 186–189; constraining the selection of wars of choice, 109–110; correlating Nixon’s popularity with cost of living, 102(n76); democracies’ concerns over reactions to lengthy wars, 157– 158; derailing Nixon’s Vietnam policy, 76; division on Bush’s Iraq War, 192–194; effect of the Falklands conflict on Thatcher’s popularity, 124–128; elites activating oppositional public opinion, 210–212; evolution of democratic norms, 13; France’s Navarre Plan, 46–47; France’s persistence in Indochina, 38–39, 47–51; influencing US policy in Vietnam, 73–74, 76, 91–94; Iraq

250

Index

War, 169–170, 169(fig.), 171–172, 178–179, 184–186, 196–198; on Israel’s war in Lebanon, 151–154; Nixon’s attempt to manipulate opinion on Cambodia and Vietnam, 91–94; norms influencing state action, 12; perception of Nixon’s credibility over Vietnam, 87–89g; role in democratic peace, 13–16; of US invasion of Cambodia, 90–91; war outcomes and framing contests, 211(table) Public Opinion and Foreign Policy (Cohen), 6 public relations approach to the use of force, 18–19 Pym, Francis, 114

Rabin, Yitzhak, 151–152 Ramadier, Paul, 40 rationalist models: state behavior as the logic of consequences, 11–12 Reagan, Ronald, 41–42, 96, 111, 130, 142, 217 recolonization: France in Indochina, 31– 32, 34–38 regime type: justifying use of force in non-democratic regimes, 1–3; normative causal mechanism of democratic peace theory, 10–11; theoretical foundations of war, 4. See also democracy; governance; parliamentary democracy Rice, Condoleezza, 173, 175 right-to-protect norm, 2 Rock, Stephen, 12 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 9 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 10 Rumbold, Angela, 124–125 Rumsfeld, Donald, 173 Rusk, Dean, 67 Russell, Richard, 69

Scott, Hugh, 94 Scowcroft, Brent, 1, 22(n1) Segal, Mark, 152 self-determination: of British Falkland Islanders, 20, 112–115; history of, 13; war outcomes and framing contests, 211(table) Senate Budget Committee: Iraq War, 173

Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings, 68 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, 175–176 separation of powers, US, 199–200 September 11, 2001, 163, 170–172, 195 17th parallel as international border, 65, 76–77 Shamir, Yitzhak, 156–158 Sharon, Ariel, 20–21, 135, 138, 143, 145, 213 “shock and awe” campaign in Iraq, 168– 169 silent majority frame for Vietnam War, 72, 77–78, 80, 87–90, 212 Six-Day War, 154 Slate magazine, 164 Social Democratic Party (UK), 124–125 social identity theory, 12 social media, 218 Socialist Party (France): French policy in Indochina, 53–54 Soldiers Against Silence, 143 South Vietnamese Army (ARVN), 78– 79, 88, 90–91, 93 sovereignty, French opposition to Vietnam’s, 52–53 Spain, goals of US war on, 2–3 Spring Offensive (1972; Vietnam), 79, 84, 94–97 state: norms influencing state action, 12 Stephanopoulos, George, 189 Strachan, Gordon C., 93–94 Sunni awakening, 190 surge (Iraq War), 190, 192–195, 197–200 Syria: Israeli invasion of Lebanon, 135, 141; use of chemical weapons, 217

Talmud: used to justify Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, 136 Tami Party (Israel), 152 Tenet, George, 170–171, 179 terrorist acts: PLO attacks on Israel, 137– 138, 158(n11). See also September 11, 2001 Thatcher, Margaret: Begin framing the Israeli war in Lebanon, 141; change in political standing, 128–129; democratic context of the Falklands conflict, 106–107; democratic deliberation and wars of choice,

Index

213–214; democratic peace logic, 111–112; effect of the Falklands conflict on the popularity of, 124– 128; institutional response to Falklands policy, 107–108, 115– 117; media coverage of the Falklands conflict, 117–124; opposition to a negotiated settlement, 114; public opinion on Falklands conflict, 124–128; seeking US help for Falklands conflict, 111; war outcomes and framing contests, 212 Thieu, Nguyen Van, 80, 95 threat perception, 209 Time magazine, 52, 117–118 The Times, 113, 116, 118–119, 122, 124– 125 Timmons, William, 93 20/20 (television program), 179 two-level diplomacy reversed, 36, 42–51, 90–94 Type 1 wars, 21. See also Falkland Islands conflict; Israeli war in Lebanon Type 2 wars, 21, 35–36. See also Indochina; Iraq War; Vietnam War

UN Security Council, 167, 175, 177, 181–185 United Kingdom. See Falkland Islands conflict United States: France’s Navarre Plan, 44; Operation Vulture in Indochina, 50; political support for the French in Indochina, 40–41; relieving France of the burden of Indochina, 32. See also Iraq War; Vietnam War; withdrawal from Vietnam

values: Argentine aggression as assault on liberal democratic values, 116; role of public opinion in democratic peace, 14 Veterans of Foreign Wars, 174 Viet Minh, 37, 43 Vietnam War: approval rating for Nixon’s policy, 89(fig.); bureaucratic debate over Nixon’s policy, 89–90; comparing Iraq War to, 189–190, 194; congressional

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influence over presidential war policy, 72–73; domestic politics versus national security in US involvement, 66–71; domestic side of two-level diplomacy reversed, 90–94; elite debate over, 86–89; inevitability of US involvement, 66–71; Johnson’s decision to escalate US involvement, 65–66; justification of wars of choice, 210; media coverage, 80–86; as mediamanaged war, 20; Navarre Plan calling for Viet Minh withdrawal, 45; Nixon justifying continuing US involvement, 71–72; Nixon’s frame as “peace with honor,” 75–86, 95, 210, 211(table); Nixon’s handling of the Spring Offensive, 94–95; pace of US troop withdrawals, 91(table); political fallout of antiinterventionist thought, 163; public opinion influencing US policy in, 73–75; security implications to South Vietnam of US withdrawal, 76–80; war outcomes and framing contests, 211(table), 212; widespread division over, 29(n105). See also Indochina; withdrawal from Vietnam Villepin, Dominique de, 184 USS Vincennes, 17

Walters, Barbara, 179 War of Attrition (1967–1970), 136 war on terror, 170–177 weapons of mass destruction (WMD), 166–167, 174–175, 181, 186–187 Webster, William G., Jr., 187 West Beirut, Israel targeting, 137 Westminster parliamentary democracy, 107–108, 199 Wicker, Tom, 86–87 Wilson, Joseph, 168–169 Wilson, Woodrow, 13 winnability of wars constraining choice, 109–112 winset, 5 withdrawal from Vietnam: framing themes, 78; institutional debate over, 89–90; negotiation process, 77; pace of US troop withdrawals,

252

Index

91(table); Paris Peace Accords ending US involvement, 95; Spring Offensive, 79 Woodward, Bob, 173, 198–199 World War II, 9, 140

Yom Kippur War (1973), 136

Zionism: elements of Israel’s identity, 139, 154–155

About the Book

What is going on domestically when democracies choose war? Why do some wars of choice generate political opposition while others don’t? Is there an internal mechanism that constrains the behavior of democracies when it comes to war? To answer these questions, Andrew Katz explores the relationship between public support for wars of choice and democratic norms in the marketplace of ideas. With extensive empirical evidence ranging from the French war in Indochina after World War II to Operation Iraqi Freedom, Katz provides new insights on the domestic sources of foreign policy, and especially on the role of public opinion in the decision to go to war. Andrew Z. Katz is associate professor of political science and Class of 1954 Richard G. Lugar Professor in Public Policy at Denison University.

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