Burbach, “Rally ‘Round the Flag, or Run Away!”
Page 3
correct that the U.S. public can easily lose patience with humanitarian operations, but it is
not the case that support for conflicts involving U.S. interests is fragile.
The paper proceeds as follows: first, evidence is presented that the belief in U.S.
casualty sensitivity and expectation of the “public veto” response is held by decision
makers abroad (and in the U.S.). Then, a simple deterrence model incorporating the role
of public opinion and misperceptions of it is described, and hypotheses from the “public
veto” theory developed. Case selection, coding rules, and statistical specifications are
presented, followed by the results from the regressions. The paper concludes with a
discussion of the implications of the results for U.S. deterrence relationships and
intervention decisions more generally.
“Lessons” from Vietnam, Lebanon, and Somalia:
A Nation Unwilling?
In conflicts with stronger powers, weak states often adopt a strategy of inflicting
painful costs, even if they can not defeat the stronger military directly. Specific strategies
have included the Swiss “hedgehog” approach of combining defensible terrain with
prepared fortifications, Yugoslavia’s readiness for partisan warfare against occupiers, or
the sheer tenaciousness of the North Vietnamese.
2
In any of these cases, the weak state
expects that the attacking state will ultimately find the costs in time, treasure, and blood
not to be worth the benefits, and will either give up the war or be deterred from attacking
in the first place.
2
For discussions of the pain-inflicting strategies of small states, see Ivan Arreguin-Toft, "How the Weak
Win Wars", International Security, vol. 26, no. 1 (2002), pp 93-128; Barry Posen, "The War for Kosovo",
International Security, vol. 24, no. 4 (2000), pp 39-84; John Mearshimer, Conventional Deterrence
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell, 1983).]
Convention