If the American public is really as disengaged from foreign policy as we think, how much can they really know—or care—about international law? In reporting on their fascinating and important research on international law and US public support for drone strikes, Sarah Kreps and Geoffrey Wallace find that US citizens are surprisingly receptive to arguments that drones should not be used because they violate international law. Their compelling findings make valuable contributions to debates about the power of international law in everyday politics, but some key omissions leave their conclusions open for debate. Do American voters support drones even when compared to other options? And perhaps even more fundamental, why do they care about international law at all?
Drones compared to…?
Kreps and Wallace are fundamentally interested in the following question: if we tell US voters that using drones violates international law, will they be less likely to support the use of drones? They set up a survey experiment that contrasts international law frames with prompts about the efficacy of drone strikes. Efficacy is chosen as a comparison because there is a robust literature arguing that public opinion is most likely to favor the use of force when the public believes that the political aims of force are achievable.
Missing from Kreps and Wallace’s analysis, however, is how and whether the prospect of casualties incurred—and not just casualties inflicted—might affect public opinion regarding the use of drones. Indeed, the “pretty prudent public” argument—that public opinion on use of force changes depending on the principal objective—was a direct reaction to the casualty aversion thesis—the notion that, the more military casualties are sustained, the lower public support for the use of force. Because Kreps and Wallace do not consider alternative military options—specifically, ground troops—we cannot know to what extent voter preference is driven by respect for international law versus a desire to minimize US casualties.
