Zachary Keck
A sizeable majority of the American people are ready to support the use of nuclear weapons if it saves the lives of U.S. military servicemen and women.
That’s according to a new survey conducted by Scott D. Sagan and Benjamin A. Valentino, the results of which were published in the new issue of International Security (Full disclosure: International Security is published by my former employer, the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs).
The article is rare in being an academic study that is extremely timely given the current tensions between the United States and North Korea. The authors begin by noting that U.S. support for President Harry S. Truman's decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has steadily declined since 1945. Immediately after the war, 85 percent of Americans supported Truman's decision. By 2015, only 45 percent of Americans said dropping atomic bombs on Japan was “the right thing to do.” This has led some scholars to contend that the general public have internalized the taboo against the use of nuclear weapons, while others say that there is a larger norm against targeting noncombatants in war.
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/report-americans-support-use-nuclear-weapons-if-it-saves-21971
