Doctoral Dissertation Research: Explaining Presidents' Use of Humanitarian Justifications for Military Intervention.

Cornell University, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

General Summary In every military intervention of the past twenty-five years, U.S. presidents have used humanitarian justifications?references to the protection of civilians?to explain military action to the U.S. public. The project focuses on the use of humanitarian claims in interventions driven primarily by national security concerns to better understand how these justifications affect the relationship between the public and war. the PI argues that high levels of public support for humanitarian interventions create an incentive for presidents to stretch the limits of humanitarian claims, which can have two unintended and potentially negative consequences. First, presidents may use humanitarian justifications to convince the public to support otherwise unpopular interventions. Second, the over-use of humanitarian claims may create a skeptical public, making it harder to build support to prevent mass atrocities in the future. The PI investigates the consequences of this use of the humanitarian frame in three ways: 1) she considers how the prominence of humanitarian justifications has changed over time, 2) she examines when presidents are most likely to rely on humanitarian claims, and 3) she examines whether there are limits to the public' willingness to accept humanitarian explanations. The research has implications for when the U.S. will intervene in the future, especially in response to mass atrocities, and for the public's ability to hold presidents accountable for military action. Technical Summary To examine the role of humanitarian justifications in contemporary U.S. military interventions, the PI employs a multi-methods approach with three distinct steps: 1) content analysis of presidential speeches, 2) comparative case studies of interventions, and 3) a survey experiment on the conditions under which individuals support humanitarian appeals. First, the PI uses dictionary-based content analysis of national presidential addresses to construct an original dataset that tracks the frequency of three justification categories for all potential U.S. interventions from 1945 to 2013. Second, she examines three pairs of interventions and non-interventions from three presidential administrations. Using primary sources from the National Security Archives and presidential libraries, these case studies examine when, within cases of intervention, presidents are most likely to emphasize humanitarian claims. The case studies also highlight how and why humanitarian concerns become a part of official justifications for military action and the role of international actors. Third, the PI uses a survey experiment to investigate the conditions under which humanitarian justifications increase support for intervention. In particular, it considers whether support is conditional on the public's belief that humanitarian claims are sincere and that military action is primarily motivated by humanitarian concerns.