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In contemplating the application of military force, a president should consider the degree to which the public values the venture, the degree to which it is willing to tolerate U.S. deaths to accomplish the goal (concerns about foreign casualties are far less significant), and the potential for the political opposition to exploit the situation should American deaths surpass those considered acceptable by the public.

When American troops are sent abroad into dangerous situations, there is usually a "rally round the flag" effect: the commander-in-chief's approval ratings rise abruptly. But this phenomenon tends to be fleeting. Moreover, the public does not seem to be very interested in rewarding-or even remembering-foreign policy success, as George H. W. Bush discovered after the clear and dramatic victory of the 1991 Gulf War. At the same time, military failure is not necessarily devastating politically: there is often considerable acceptance of abandoning military expeditions that become overextended without particularly blaming the administration that sent them in.

The President thus does not necessarily need public support in advance to pull off a military venture. For successful ones-where benefits seem to outweigh the costs-any prewar opposition dissolves and goes on to other issues. For failures, if the instigator can judiciously cut losses and abandon the mission significantly before the next election (Reagan in Lebanon, Clinton in Somalia, even Ford in Vietnam), there will likely be few negative ramifications.

In the current situation, President George W. Bush seems to be attempting to apply in Iraq the approach his predecessors used in Vietnam, Lebanon, and Somalia with some success-at least electorally. Confronted with a difficult situation, he is increasingly turning the military effort over to a patched-together local government and restructuring military tactics to reduce the number of American casualties. With this, the electorate might increasingly turn its attention away from the war in Iraq and on to issues that work better for him.

If the new Iraqi government manages to seem to attain some degree of credibility and effectiveness, and if the American military stand down continues (perhaps even leading to some token withdrawals before November), previous experience suggests this approach might work. A problem for him, however, is that, whereas the electorate had a year and a half to forget Vietnam, a year to forget Lebanon, and three years to forget Somalia, there remain only a few months before his election.

John Mueller is professor of political science at Ohio State University and Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies at the Mershon Center. He can be reached at bbbb@osu.edu and 614-247-6007.

Recent Publications on War and Public Opinion

Feaver, Peter D. and Christopher Gelpi. 2004. Choosing Your Battles : American Civil-Military Relations and the Use of Force. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Holsti, Ole R. 2004. Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy, Revised Edition. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press.

Moore, Will H. and David J. Lanoue. 2003. "Domestic Politics and U.S. Foreign Policy: A Study of Cold War Conflict Behavior." Journal of Politics 65:2 (May).

Witko, C. 2003. "Cold War Belligerence and U.S. Public Opinion toward Defense Spending." American Politics Research 31:4 (July): 379-403.

Feaver, Peter D. and Christopher Gelpi. 2002. "Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick? Veterans in the Political Elite on the American Use of Force." American Political Science Review 96:4 (December): 779-793.

Fordham, Benjamin O. 2002. "Domestic Politics, International Pressure, and the Allocation of American Cold War Military Spending." Journal of Politics 65:1 (February).

Jentleson, Bruce W. 2002. "Use of Force Dilemmas: Policy and Politics." Eagle Rules? Foreign Policy and American Primacy in the 21st Century. Rober J. Lieber, ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Mueller, John. 2002. "Public Support for Military Ventures Abroad: Evidence from the Polls." The Real Lessons of the Vietnam War: Reflections Twenty-Five Years After the Fall of Saigon. Robert T. Turner ed. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.

Sobel, Richard. 2001. The Impact of Public Opinion on U.S. Foreign Policy Since Vietnam: Constraining the Colossus. New York: Oxford University Press.

Kull, Steven, and I. M. Destler. 1999. Misreading the Public: The Myth of a New Isolationism. Washington, DC: Brookings.

Larson, Eric V. 1996. Casualties and Consensus: The Historical Role of Casualties in Domestic Support for U.S. Military Operations. Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation.

Mueller, John. 1994. Policy and Opinion in the Gulf War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Jentleson, Bruce W. 1992. "The Pretty Prudent Public: Post Post-Vietnam American Opinion on the Use of Military Force." International Studies Quarterly 36 (March): 49-74.

Page, Benjamin I. and Robert Y. Shapiro. 1992. The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in American Policy Preferences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.