The Pretty Pragmatic Public: Japanese Public Opinion During the Afghanistan Evacuation

47 Pages Posted: 31 Aug 2022

See all articles by Yusaku Horiuchi

Yusaku Horiuchi

Dartmouth College - Department of Government

Atsushi Tago

Waseda University - School of Political Science and Economics

Date Written: August 8, 2022

Abstract

Although the need for the U.S. to work with other democracies during a future crisis is ever increasing, we do not yet have a sufficient understanding of what citizens in U.S. allies think about security policies and possible military actions. We leveraged on an extremely rare opportunity in which the Japanese government decided to dispatch its de facto military, the Self-Defense Forces (SDFs), overseas for a high-risk operation, the evacuation from Afghanistan in August 2021. Specifically, we conducted “real-time” survey experiments in this context to test some hypotheses relevant to the theoretical literature on international relations: reliability of alliances, civilian control, and sensitivity to casualty. Our analysis suggests that Japanese citizens are “pretty pragmatic” in their opinions on foreign policy issues. We discuss nuanced differences in their attitudes compared to Americans’ attitudes, which existing studies suggest as “pretty prudent” (Jentleson, 1992; Jentleson and Britton, 1998).

Keywords: alliance, civilian control, casualty sensitivity, Japan, Afghanistan

JEL Classification: D74, F51, F52, H56

Suggested Citation

Horiuchi, Yusaku and Tago, Atsushi, The Pretty Pragmatic Public: Japanese Public Opinion During the Afghanistan Evacuation (August 8, 2022). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4186385 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4186385

Yusaku Horiuchi (Contact Author)

Dartmouth College - Department of Government ( email )

204 Silsby Hall
HB 6108
Hanover, NH 03755
United States

HOME PAGE: http://horiuchi.org

Atsushi Tago

Waseda University - School of Political Science and Economics ( email )

1-6-1 Nishiwaseda
Shinkuku
Tokyo
Japan

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