Preventive War and Its Domestic Politics
Preventive War and Its Domestic Politics
As with all actions involving large stakes, decisions to initiate military involvement abroad (and the ultimate course of such action) reflect prevailing domestic political circumstances. Scholarship provides insights on how public support for military intervention responds to its costs (especially in term of US lives) and to perceptions of its effectiveness. We also know that efforts at regime change garner less popular support than attempts to alter external behavior, while protecting US political achievements resonates more than pursuit of new, as yet unrealized, ends. But this is but part of the domestic political context, and we have a much weaker grasp of the impact of interventions on partisan gamesmanship and the nation’s electoral politics. We also know little about the domestic political context of wars that are specifically framed as preventive. This chapter has three objectives: (1) to consider the applicability of what we already know to interventions for which a specifically preventive purpose is claimed; (2) to expand this discussion to include partisan and electoral politics, and, (3) to consider scenarios where major US troop presence abroad is replaced with special operations and drone warfare.
Keywords: Public, Citizens, Domestic, Force, Military, Intervention
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