What do Americans really think about conflict with nuclear North Korea? The answer is both reassuring and disturbing
Washington and Pyongyang are riding on a nuclear roller coaster. In April 2017, President Donald Trump warned that “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States” or “they will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen” (Baker and Sang-Hun 2017). But in June 2018, after the Singapore summit, he tweeted that “[t]here is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea,” (Trump 2018) and in September he claimed he and Chairman Kim Jong Un had fallen “in love” (BBC News 2018).
At the Hanoi summit in February 2019, the United States walked away from negotiations, leaving full-scope UN Security Council sanctions in place (Trump 2019a). On March 15, Choe Son-hui, the North Korean foreign minister, said that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had created an “atmosphere of hostility and mistrust” and that “the gangster-like stand of the US will eventually put the situation in danger” (Sang-Hun 2019). On March 21, the Treasury Department announced new US sanctions on two Chinese shipping companies (United States, Department of the Treasury 2019), but the president tweeted the very next day that he had ordered their withdrawal (Trump 2019b). As Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, explained, “President Trump likes Chairman Kim, and he doesn’t think these sanctions will be necessary” (Rappeport 2019). (It was later revealed that the new sanctions on Chinese companies would be kept in place and administration officials fabricated a cover story about the rejection of additional sanctions to excuse the president’s “slip of the tweet” (Mohsin, Jacobs, and Wadhams 2019)).
In early May, the North Koreans tested new short-range solid-fuel ballistic missiles capable of hitting South Korea, Japan, and US military bases in the region. Although national security advisor John Bolton stated (Rich 2019) that the North’s missile tests violated UN Security Council resolutions, Trump downplayed the tests, tweeting that “North Korea fired off some small weapons, which disturbed some of my people, and others, but not me” (Trump 2019c), (Panda, and Narang 2019).
No wonder the American public is confused. Is North Korea a threat or not? Are there conditions under which the US public would support using military force to disarm North Korea if sanctions and diplomacy fail to do so? If so, what types of Americans are willing to risk war against Pyongyang today?
Unfortunately, existing polls on North Korea are all over the map, with some finding strong support for attacking North Korea and others revealing very little support. There are three fundamental reasons for this cacophony of results. First, many polls have used vague language to describe the scenarios in which conflict could begin, even when the details are likely to matter a great deal. Second, they often use slightly different wording in the central questions they ask; subtle differences in interpretations of words like “support,” “approve,” or “prefer” can produce significantly different answers. Finally, public polling questions rarely include estimates of fatalities or other consequences of military action, so one does not know if respondents who support the use of force do so because they underestimate the expected fatalities involved, support the attack regardless of the fatalities, or have simply not thought about potential fatalities at all.
For example, in August 2017, CNN (SSRS for CNN 2017) found that 50 percent of Americans would “favor” “the US taking military action against North Korea in response to its development and testing of weapons that could reach the US mainland.” But the same poll also found that 77 percent of Americans thought the North Koreans were already “capable of launching a missile that would be able to hit the United States, including Hawaii.” Did the 50 percent who supported the attack believe that North Korea would be unwilling or unable to retaliate after a US first strike? And did the respondents think “including Hawaii” meant all of the US mainland and Hawaii, or just Hawaii as part of the United States?
In September 2017, Gallup found that 58 percent of the US public would “favor” “using military action against North Korea” if “the United States does not accomplish its goals regarding North Korea with economic and diplomatic efforts ”(Saad 2017). But the poll did not make clear what the US goals were, whether US “military action” was limited in scope or an all-out war, or whether the military action would be conventional or nuclear; the consequences of a US attack were also left undefined. In stark contrast, also in September 2017, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs asked whether the US public would “support or oppose” various “US action[s] to pressure North Korea to stop building its nuclear weapons program” (Friedhoff, and Smeltz 2017). When asked to consider military actions specifically, the Chicago Council found 40 percent supported “airstrikes on nuclear production facilities,” but only 28 percent supported sending “US troops to destroy nuclear facilities,” which implies that a fear of unspecified US military fatalities may have driven down support. Moreover, we still do not know whether those in support of the airstrikes thought such action would be conventional or nuclear. Neither do we know whether respondents believed that North Korea could or would retaliate, including retaliation against US troops stationed in South Korea, or whether respondents failed to consider this possibility.
To address such shortcomings and better understand US public opinion, we designed an original survey experiment that presented respondents with a general scenario of heightened US-North Korea tension, and a variety of information on types of action the United States might take and the results of that action. The non-partisan commercial survey firm YouGov fielded the survey online to a representative sample of 3,000 Americans in February.
The survey produced some reassuring results. Most Americans, for example, do not want the United States to launch a preventive war against North Korea. But our survey also showed that a large hawkish minority lurks within the US public; over a third of respondents approve of a US preventive strike across scenarios. For many of these hawks, support for an attack, even in a preventive war, does not significantly decrease when the story says that the United States would use nuclear weapons that are expected to kill 1 million North Korean civilians.
A more reliable survey experiment
A key feature of our survey was a fictional news article in which North Korea resumed testing of a long-range missile capable of delivering nuclear warheads to the continental United States (see Figure 1). The article reported that decision-makers in Washington were grappling with whether to employ a large-scale “preventive” airstrike in an attempt to destroy North Korea’s nuclear capabilities. Holding this baseline story constant, six randomly selected sub-groups were given different information on the type of US military strike (conventional or nuclear), confidence in the effectiveness of the US strike to destroy North Korea’s ability to retaliate, and estimated American, South Korean, and North Korean fatalities.
Figure 1. Sample news story.
One group was told that a US conventional airstrike had a 90 percent probability of being successful, leaving a 10 percent probability that North Korea could retaliate, but only against US troops and our allies in South Korea (killing up to 13,500 Americans and up to 305,000 South Koreans). Another group was given the same probability of success, but was told the North Koreans were also estimated to have a 10 percent chance of retaliating against three US cities, killing an additional 300,000 Americans. A third group was informed there was only a 50 percent probability that the US conventional airstrike would succeed, placing the three American cities at even greater risk. In all of these conventional-airstrike scenarios, North Korean fatalities were estimated at 5,000 civilians and 10,000 military personnel.
There were two additional scenarios, both of which contemplated a US nuclear preventive strike. Both of these US nuclear strikes were deemed to be 90 percent effective, but one estimated the same number of North Korean fatalities as the conventional strike (5,000 civilians and 10,000 military) and the other increased fatality estimates to 1 million North Korean civilians and 100,000 North Korean military personnel. Finally, a sixth group was told that in addition to the missile test, the North Koreans had attacked a US navy ship off the Korean peninsula. (The full text of these stories are provided in the online appendix1 to this article.)
These complex but realistic scenarios were designed to enable subjects to make more informed decisions. The estimated fatalities were based on historic events and publicly available predictive software, such as NukeMap (Wellerstein 2012-2019). After reading the news story, respondents were asked whether or not they “preferred” to launch the strike and then whether, regardless of their personal preference, they would “approve” of the US strike if the president ordered it. Respondents were also given an opportunity to explain in their own words why they preferred one option over another.
Reassuring, surprising, and disturbing results
Some of the findings are reassuring, but others are surprising and even disturbing. Figure 2 presents the percentage of subjects in each scenario who preferred or approved of the US air strike, along with the associated 95 percent confidence intervals (a standard measure of the certainty of the finding). The first reassuring finding is that the majority of Americans do not want the United States to launch a preventive war against North Korea. In all of the preventive war scenarios, the majority of respondents preferred not to strike, instead of launching a large-scale US conventional or nuclear attack. This was also true for a limited conventional air strike to signal US resolve (not shown in Figure 2), similar to the “bloody nose” strategy reportedly proposed by some US officials last year (La Miere 2017).
Figure 2. Preference and Approval of US Strike Against North Korea by Treatment.
The second piece of good news is that the US public believes in the strength of the US deterrent. When asked whether Kim Jong Un “can be deterred from using nuclear weapons against the United States or South Korea by the threat of devastating US retaliation against North Korea,” 63 percent said yes. A majority (57 percent) also believes the most effective target for a threat of US nuclear retaliation is not the North Korean population, but rather Kim Jong Un’s “personal survival and political power,” a threat that would arguably be more effective against a personalist dictator like Kim Jong Un (Sagan 2018).
And yet, if sufficiently provoked, the public appears not to be intimidated by North Korea. In the scenario in which North Korea attacks a US Navy ship, killing 46 sailors (mirroring the 2010 sinking of a South Korean ship, the Cheonan), 52 percent of the public preferred and 59 percent approved of a massive US conventional retaliation against North Korea, despite being reminded that North Korea could then retaliate against the United States and South Korea. And if South Korea was invaded by North Korea, 69 percent of the respondents favored a conventional retaliation to help defend the South. These findings bolster the credibility of the American extended deterrence commitment to South Korea.
One surprising finding was that a representative sample of the American public acted fundamentally in the same manner when told that the US homeland was threatened as when North Korea was “only” threatening US troops and South Korean allies. Although the effect was not statistically significant, both preference for and approval of a preventive airstrike went up, rather than down, when cities in the US homeland were deemed at risk. Subjects in this condition may have concluded that a North Korean strike against the United States was more likely and, therefore, the need to eliminate this threat was more urgent. As one respondent explained: “Choice is, with strike 10 percent chance of retaliation, without strike, 100 percent chance of future attack.”
Rally ‘round the flag
The first piece of disconcerting news, however, is that a large hawkish minority lurks within the US public; over a third of respondents approve of a US preventive strike across the scenarios and appear insensitive to informational cues that most security experts would expect to reduce such levels of support.
Second, preference for the strike does not significantly decrease when the story says that the United States would use nuclear weapons in its attack; 33 percent preferred a preventive nuclear first-strike. Even more disturbing: There is no significant change in the percentage who would prefer or approve of a US nuclear strike when the number of estimated North Korean fatalities increases from 15,000 to 1.1 million, including 1 million civilians. As we have previously found, the US public exhibits only limited aversion to nuclear weapons use and a shocking willingness to support the killing of enemy civilians (Sagan and Valentino 2017).
Perhaps some of the subjects who preferred one of these US strikes with 90 percent chance of success (and hence a 10 percent chance that North Korean retaliatory strikes would hit American and South Korean cities) were influenced by what Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman call the “pseudocertainty effect,” whereby highly probable events are seen as certain, washing out accurate measures of risk. Some of the absolute language used in explanations by attack supporters – “to stop them from a launch on us,” “to keep them from hi[t]ing us,” and “to rid their weapons so they can’t launch an attack on us” – are indicative of this misperception of risk (Tversky and Kahneman 1986).
It is also alarming that the difference between levels of “preference” and “approval,” as shown in Figure 2, suggests that the American public is significantly swayed by a “rally ‘round the flag” effect: During times of international crisis, support for the president increases. Across all conditions, approval for the US strike is notably (although not always significantly, in a statistical sense) higher than preference, meaning a number of respondents discount their personal preferences in favor of the president’s. For example, while “only” 33 percent of the US public prefer a US preventive nuclear strike that would kill 15,000 North Koreans, 50 percent approve.
Any leader who might find it tempting to incite a real “rally ‘round the flag” should, however, recall that, as history demonstrates (Mueller 1970), support for the president rises at the start of a conflict, but often drops precipitously as US fatalities mount and public confidence in eventual victory wanes (Gelpi, Feaver, and Reifler 2009). The results suggest the US public would be highly sensitive to the reality of the costs of war with North Korea. In the scenario in which we decreased the expected success of the preventive strike from 90 percent to 50 percent, preference for the air strike fell from 41 percent to 23 percent. This is the lowest result recorded across all scenarios and should remind Washington decision-makers that public support for any US first strike is likely to diminish greatly if the attack fails and large numbers of Americans are killed.
The anatomy of hawks and doves
To better understand the hawkish minority of the US public, we examined a number of key demographic traits and belief systems. Across all scenarios, Republicans expressed greater preference for the use of military force than Democrats. This trend becomes even more stark when we tease out those who support President Trump specifically. A majority of Trump supporters prefer the US strike in every scenario, except when confidence in the effectiveness of the US conventional strike is 50 percent. Still, it is important to note that preference for the strike even in this scenario remains at 44 percent among Trump supporters, compared to only 8 percent among non-Trump supporters (see Figure 3).
Figure 3. Preference for US Strike Against North Korea by Respondent Attitudes.
Another key belief driving preferences for the US military strike is opinion on the death penalty. Across all conditions, those who favor the death penalty for convicted murderers are more supportive of the US strike than are those who oppose it. Such a belief may reflect the retributive nature of some respondents, which existing research has found to increase willingness to support the use of torture and war(Liberman 2013; Liberman and Skitka 2017). The most disturbing finding in the poll appears in the US nuclear strike scenarios. When the number of expected North Korean fatalities increased from 15,000 to 1.1 million, preference for using nuclear weapons among respondents who favor the death penalty increased from 38 percent to 49 percent (although this is not a statistically significant change). One respondent who supported the death penalty and the US nuclear strike in this scenario explained, “It’s our best chance of eliminating the North Koreans.” Another simply stated, “to end North Korea.” By contrast, preference for the nuclear strike among those who oppose the death penalty fell from 26 percent to 7 percent across the same two scenarios.
A misinformed public
The final piece of discouraging news is how deeply misinformed Americans are about US offensive and defensive military capabilities. When respondents read a story that did not provide any estimate of the probability that the preventive strike would succeed, a third of respondents indicated that they believed there was at least a 75 percent probability that a US conventional strike “would successfully destroy all of North Korea’s nuclear weapons, eliminating North Korea’s ability to retaliate with nuclear weapons against the United States or South Korea.” This optimism is not shared by defense experts. For example, Siegfried Hecker, the former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, has previously explained: “There is no conceivable way the United States could destroy all North Korean nuclear weapons [with an airstrike]. It is not possible to know where they all are” (Eaves 2017). The US military agrees with this assessment. In late 2017, Rear Adm. Michael Dumont, speaking on behalf of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress that the “only way to “locate and destroy–with complete certainty–all components of North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs” is through a ground invasion (Lieu and Gallego 2017).
Much of the public is also over-optimistic about US missile defense. Seventy-four percent of respondents believe it is highly likely or somewhat likely that, if North Korea were to launch three missiles with nuclear warheads at the United States, “current US missile defenses could successfully destroy all the North Korean missiles before they reach their targets.” You would be hard pressed to find an expert in the US military and technical community who shares such confidence. More concerning is the degree to which this unfounded confidence drives preferences for the US preventive strikes. Those who believe the US strike is very likely to eliminate North Korea’s ability to retaliate are three times more likely to prefer the strike. Those who believe in the impenetrability of US missile defenses are almost twice as likely to prefer the strike. A misinformed public is easily misled into dangerous conflicts.
We also found that Trump supporters are particularly likely to hold these dangerous misperceptions. Among Trump supporters, over 84 percent believed that it is highly or somewhat likely that current US missile defenses could shoot down the North Korean missiles described in the scenarios, compared to 67 percent among non-Trump supporters. Perhaps this is a reflection of Trump’s own words. In October 2017, Trump publicly stated that “we have missiles that can knock out a missile in the air 97 percent of the time, and if you send two of them it’s gonna get knocked out” (Fox News 2017). This is factually incorrect. While it is true that the United States has successfully practiced a “salvo intercept,” using more than one interceptor to shoot down a mock missile warhead, two interceptors do not come close to creating 97 percent effectiveness (Broad and Sanger 2019). Moreover, as experts know, there is a world of difference between the results of an orchestrated test when we know the arc and timing of a missile launch, and the chaotic experience of fighting in the fog of war (Lewis 2017).
The need for nuclear education
This polling exercise demonstrates that the majority of Americans do not want President Trump to return to threats to attack North Korea. But the polls also highlight, for better or worse, a strong retributive streak in US public opinion. And the data confirm that some Americans lack any sense of a nuclear taboo, and some appear to hold a kind of atomic attraction.
The results also display how poorly informed the public is about nuclear weapons, missile defense, and North Korea. Scientists and social scientists are unlikely to be able to change the moral and strategic instincts in the hearts of the American public. But they can communicate the facts and, therefore, influence the calculations of an informed public.
This clearly happened during the Cold War (Kaiser and Wilson 2015). Economists, political scientists, and scientists working together developed the intellectual arguments in favor of nuclear arms control in the early 1960s and convinced the public that agreements were worth pursuing (Sims 1990). Physicists and computer scientists were critical in increasing public support for the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty in the late 1960s and skepticism about the Reagan Administration’s “Star Wars” program in the 1980s (Slayton 2013). The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) and the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs received Nobel Peace Prizes in part for their successful efforts to increase public awareness of the dangers of nuclear weapons (Evangelista 1999).
This survey experiment shows that this mission has not been accomplished. It is time for a renewed effort at mass public nuclear education.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Online appendix available at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/EAF5EJ.
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