A Matter of Principle: How Local Consent Affects U.S. Support for Military Interventions

U.S. policy elites regularly claim that local populations welcome U.S. military intervention in their territory, implying a powerful moral justification for war. Does the consent of the “intervened population” affect U.S. public support for military intervention? The conventional wisdom says that Americans support low-cost interventions that are likely to succeed. But a conjoint survey experiment finds that U.S. respondents do take a moral position regarding military intervention.