Polling war and peace
The terrible war in Ukraine and speculation about nuclear horrors reminded me of a conversation I had many years ago with my then boss, Sir Robert Worcester, founder and chairman of MORI. He told me about polling public opinion during the Falklands War and his shock at discovering that one in twenty Britons favoured nuclear attack on Buenos Aires. He recalled walking through a crowded Hyde Park counting every twentieth person in his head.
Public opinion matters during times of conflict. It can embolden leaders on their course of action including the deployment of hard or soft power, or it can reign them in. It can, and should, inform policymaking in response to the impacts of war and endeavours to build peace when that is possible — something proposed by George Gallup in an article in the American Philosophical Society journal as long ago as 1942.
What is public opinion in respect of the appalling aggression of Russia in Ukraine? In Britain, there has been an increase in support for implementing economic sanctions against Russia — this had reached 78% in an Ipsos poll in early March compared to 61% in late February. Support for economic sanctions has hardened even if it leads to increased energy prices, from 49% in late February, to 73%. While support for military interventions is lower than humanitarian, diplomatic and economic action, it rose by 8 percentage points, to 28% following the invasion.
There is strong sympathy for Ukrainians — nine in ten Britons are concerned about civilians in the war-torn country with three-quarters very concerned. A more recent Ipsos poll found three in four people support the UK government making it easier for refugees to come to Britain. YouGov found a similar proportion of people supporting Ukrainian refugees coming to Britain without a visa. The British are not always generous by default in terms of immigration and asylum, but they are hard-wired towards fairness and ‘deserving’ groups and nations.
A majority of Britons would support Ukraine, Finland and Sweden joining NATO should they wish to. In Finland, support for joining NATO increased from 30% to 53% once the war started, and 70,000 people signed a petition lobbying for membership within a few days. Germany has broken its long-standing reluctance to use hard power, has sent weapons to Ukraine and decided to increase defence spending, while also cancelling the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. It simply couldn’t do otherwise in the face of public opinion.
Media coverage of the war in Vietnam fed a ‘credibility gap’ in the United States and, more recently, the electorate tired of their country being the ‘world’s policeman’, particularly after a series of “forever wars”. But the heavy criticism of Joe Biden’s hasty retreat from Afghanistan will make him jittery about getting things wrong, particularly if an impression of indifference contributes to Putin’s continued miscalculations.
Public opinion can change. For example, it is widely held that Tony Blair’s decision to go to war in Iraq was in defiance of strong public opinion but, initially, a majority of Britons were behind British military involvement before support cooled. According to analysis by Rachael Gribble and colleagues, the public became more confused and cynical over time about the objectives and success of missions in Iraq and Afghanistan and “One of the most important legacies…may be the power of public opinion to potentially restrict future foreign policy, with obvious long-term implications for the future security of the UK.”
It is of course hard to gauge public opinion in Russia, but anti-war protests have certainly taken place at scale and the economic and emotional distress wreaked by sanctions in response to Putin’s aggression might yet break his regime. Those sanctions will impact here too and in early March 83% of Britons were concerned about the potential economic impact of the war.
Noah Harari has speculated that we might be seeing a new age of conflict after a long period of peace as geo-political tensions, bubbling up for many years, have spilled over into fighting in eastern Europe. While culture wars have unfortunately been displaced by actual war, culture and public opinion will be important in shaping what happens next.
