Socialized Hawks? How Selection Explains Military Attitudes on the Use of Force∗

Do military and civilian attitudes on the use of force differ and, if so, why? Past scholarship linking leaders and bureaucracies to international conflict is divided on whether military actors are more hawkish but is relatively unified in attributing differences to socialization. We contribute to this debate by applying a core intuition from organizational sociology: preexisting attitudes shape the groups into which individuals select as much as, if not more than, group experience subsequently shapes individual attitudes. We test this hypothesis through a unique opportunity to survey incoming officer candidates at the US Military Academy before and after basic training—and pair the results with simultaneous surveys of a nationally representative sample. We show that military individuals are consistently more hawkish than civilians, the gap is evident upon arrival, and neither basic training nor additional socializing experiences explain the gap. An embedded experiment further reveals that while military individuals display elevated sensitivity to war’s cost, this is more than offset by preexisting hawkish dispositions. The findings challenge and solidify assumptions undergirding prominent theories linking individual experiences to foreign policy attitudes and behavior. ∗For helpful feedback, the authors thank Robert Blair, Jessica Blankshain, Sarah Croco, Heidi Demarest, Michael Horowitz, Connor Huff, Iain Johnston, Josh Kertzer, Hugh Liebert, Christopher Lucas, Rose McDermott, Noah Nathan, Rachel Esplin Odell, Reid Pauly, Stephen Rosen, Rochelle Terman, Dustin Tingley, and Ariel White. We also thank audience members at the George Washington University Institute of Security and Conflict Studies, Harvard International Security Conference, MIT Security Studies Working Group, US Military Academy at West Point, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Peace Science Society 2017, APSA 2017, and ISA 2018. West Point IRB Approval No. 17-056; Harvard IRB Approval No. IRB17-0103; Oxford University IRB Approval No. R52024/RE001. The views and opinions of the authors expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of the US Military Academy, the US Department of Defense or the US government. †Postdoctoral Fellow, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, tyler jost@hks.harvard. edu ‡Department of Social Sciences, US Military Academy at West Point, kaine.a. meshkin.mil@mail.mil §Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, robert.schub@unl.edu In his first two years in office, President Donald Trump appointed more current and former military officers to elite advisory roles than any recent predecessor. These nominations span nearly every senior position in the US national security bureaucracy—national security advisor, secretary of defense, secretary of state, and CIA director—as well as other key posts, such as White House chief of staff. To many, this pattern is deeply troubling, largely because of an assumption that governments run by current or former generals are prone to pursue more hawkish foreign policies. Contemporary attention on the military’s influence on foreign policy is neither new nor specific to the United States. A broad literature scrutinizes whether chief executives (Horowitz and Stam, 2014; Kertzer, 2016) and legislators (Gelpi and Feaver, 2002) with military backgrounds, military-dominated cabinets and politburos (Sechser, 2004; Weeks, 2012), as well as military bureaucracies (Snyder, 1989; Feaver, 2003) might be more or less prone to lead their countries to war. An enduring question of politics motivates these inquiries: do civilian and military attitudes toward the use of force differ? Existing research offers strikingly contradictory answers to this question. Some find that actors with military experience hold attitudes more permissive of the use of force, particularly regarding conventional conflicts (Feaver and Gelpi, 2004) and when they lack exposure to combat (Horowitz and Stam, 2014). As such, the propensity for conflict generally increases when actors with military experience gain political influence (Sechser, 2004; Weeks, 2014). Others suggest that military actors, better attuned to war’s toll, are instead voices of prudence and restraint (Huntington, 1957; Gelpi and Feaver, 2002). While offering competing answers to how military and civilian attitudes differ, there is more agreement on why they differ. Much of the political science literature asserts that military attitudes result from socialization, arguing that experience in military organizations changes perceptions of risk, threat, and force efficacy (Huntington, 1957; Snyder, 1989; Legro, 1995; Brecher, 1996; Kier, 1997; Gelpi and Feaver, 2002; Weeks, 2012). Indeed, one contention of the ongoing “behavioral revolution” in international relations is that individuals’ experiences generally—and