Translation of Krus, D. J. & Webb, J. M. (2001) Fur oder gegen ein militarisches Eingreifen: Ist die Einstellung zum Krieg eine Variable der Gesinnung oder des sitationsbedingten Gemutszustands? Zeitschrift fur Sozialpsychologie und Gruppendynamik in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. 26.Jg. Heft 2, 3-8.

Sanctioning a war: a dispositional or situational trait?
David J. Krus
Arizona State University
and
James M. Webb
Kent State University

Abstract.- A News Max / Zogby poll questioned 1,155 Americans and asked “If attacked by another country, should the U.S. help defend militarily, even though it could cost American soldiers their lives, such states as Kosovo, South Korea, Kuwait, Taiwan, and Israel?” Results of this poll were analyzed and used to estimate circumstances under which the attitude toward war appears to be dispositional and to what degree a situational variable.
 

A long-standing problem in psychology is controversy about characterizing variables as traits, states, or state-trait interactions (Allport, 1966; Endler & Magnusson, 1976). With respect to militarism, i.e., support for the idea that use of a military force is an acceptable way of resolving conflicts, a question can be asked whether militarism is a state – a response to a set of circumstances that interact with a trait - or a trait people express in most situations. It may be argued that expressions of attitudes toward war and peace are situational; people might favor one or the other depending upon whether they believe that war, with a prospect of change, or peace, with a prospect of maintaining status quo, benefits or threatens their core values. This 'state' hypothesis can be contrasted with the 'trait' hypothesis, defining persons likely to support a war as patriotic and ethnocentric, likely to proselytize their political and religious values, receptive to the government's reasons for starting a war, and not willing to consider other sides of an issue. The purpose of this paper is to estimate the degree to which militarism is dispositional and to which a situational variable.

Subjects and Method

A News Max / Zogby poll (March 1, 2000) asked 1,155 Americans: “If attacked by another country, should the U.S. help defend militarily, even though it could cost American soldiers their lives, countries as Kosovo, South Korea, Kuwait, Taiwan, and Israel?” The proportion of female and male respondents was about equal and the statistical margin of error for this poll was +/- 3%.

Results

On the basis of mean level of support for US military involvement, the client states can be clustered as Kosovo, South Korea, Kuwait, Taiwan (first group) and Israel (sole member of the group). The mean of the first group is 29% that of Israel is 41%. The average percentage difference between states included in the first group is negligible when contrasted with the 12% difference between the mean of the first group and then mean support for Israel. Thus, attitudes toward war appear to be consistent, except with reference to Israel. This difference was largest for the subjects identifying themselves as “born again Christians,”

Fig. 1. Support for the military defense of the U.S. client states by subjects
identifying themselves as “born again Christians” (triangles) and by
other subjects participating in the poll (bars).

with 30% of subjects in this category supporting military intervention in the case of Kosovo, Kuwait, Taiwan and Korea and 56% in the case of Israel. This was the largest observed difference (26%), as shown in Fig.1.
From the other categories polled, males (34%) tended to support war more than females (28%)

and Republicans (35%) more than Democrats (29%),

both categories separated by about 6%. The difference between respondents with Basic and High School education (23%) and respondents with College and Postgraduate education (31%) was 8%

and that between Hispanics-Whites (36%) and Asians-Blacks (24%) about 12%.

All reported differences are statistically significant.

Discussion

The most militant group within the categories identified by this poll were subjects subscribing to fundamentalist versions of Christianity, a majority of whom endorse military conflict in the case of Israel. The results of the News Max / Zogby poll pertaining to the relationship between fundamentalist Christianity and endorsement of the military conflict with respect to the Middle East can be compared with a poll conducted in 1984 by Yankelovich and discussed in detail by Halsell (1986), who elaborates on the relationship between religious dispensationalism and the probability of the nuclear war in the Middle East. The zeal of fundamentalist Christians is probably best analyzed by Marc Ellis (1997), one of the most profound contemporary Jewish theologians.
 
Within the context of Eli Wiesel’s (Nobel Peace Prize winner, 1986) search for the unifying commonality underlying Holocaust (‘All the killers were Christian.” Wiesel, 1985, p. 33), the paradox of the unconditional support for Israel (higher among the fundamentalist Christians than among the Jewish community), can be explained as follows. Christianity, grafted upon Judaism, frequently defines Jesus Christ as primarily the God and only incidentally a Jew, killed by the Jews. This line of reasoning leads to anti-Semitism. An alternate line of reasoning is that Jesus Christ was primarily a Jew and that Jews are the chosen people, this reasoning leading to philosemitism. The contemporary prevalence of philosemitism within the context of Christianity is due to the Christian encounter with the Holocaust. According to Ellis (1997, p. 51)

“If it is impossible to chart a Christian future that leaves behind the death camps, it is difficult, if not impossible, to envision a positive expression of Christianity with the death camps it helped to construct at its center. Instead, what occurs is an attempt by Christian theologians to use the Holocaust as a way of bypassing the ‘terminal’ condition of Christian belief. If the Holocaust symbolizes the demonization of the Jews and in this way represents the alienation of Christianity from its source, by recovering the beauty of the Judaic faith and by realizing that Israel is chosen and that gentiles are grafted onto that chose ness, the history of Christianity can be confessed and jettisoned. By looking to the Jews as the authentic people and themselves as a secondary, grafted upon people, the history of triumphalism comes to be seen as alien, a detour which is now realized as such.”

The results of the News Max / Zogby poll can be also compared with our previous findings (Krus and Webb, 1993) pertaining to analysis of the Congress vote giving President Bush powers to wage the 1991 War with Iraq (viewed not entirely on behalf of Israel, but not as against Israel’s interests). With respect to the scrutinized religious categories, these percentages are in remarkable agreement.

Table 1. Comparison of the 1991 and 2000 votes on the initiation of a war.

The main question we asked during the analysis of the News Max / Zogby poll was to what degree the attitude toward war is a dispositional and to what degree a situational variable? Available evidence suggests that about 30 percent of Americans support war due to reasons that probably fall into the “trait” category. The religious factor can raise the support for a military solution of a conflict to a vicinity of the decisive 50 percent for countries where religious issues are at stake. Support for an ongoing war, due to situational factors, can reach about 85-95 percent (as toward the end of the 1991 War with Iraq). About 5 to 15 percent of people oppose any war. Thus, along the war-peace continuum, attitudes toward war likely change from that of a pro-war dispositional trait to a circumstantial state variable, and toward its other end from a circumstantial state variable to an anti-war dispositional trait, with segments of this continuum encompassing about 30% - 60% - 10% of population.
 
In the absence of external forces, the natural state of the discussed war-peace continuum should by symmetrical and not skewed in the pro-war direction, as observed here. When decisions with respect to war-peace have to be made and when situational factors can be interpreted as relevant with respect to religious issues, then within the context of religions that may possess strong categorical imperatives against individual killings (murder) but not effective deterrents against killings sponsored by society, the religious factor may decisively tip the balance of this scale toward its pro-war side.
 
As the religious factors are paramount in shaping value systems, one may look for the alternatives to the mainstream religions, to systems that erect barriers against the group-sponsored violence: Eastern religions and philosophies as Confucianism, Buddhism and Hinduism, modern Black and Latin American liberation theologies of James H. Cone and Gustavo Gutierrez, and secular value systems perhaps best represented by Noam Chomsky. Within this framework of opposition toward morality allowing annihilation of civilian populations with impunity from the high altitudes, Marc Ellis is asking whether “after thousands of years of Judaism and Christianity, is it part of our fidelity to abandon these religions, at least as we have known them? In doing this, we explore the truths found in opposition to ancient and modern religious understandings that lead to atrocity, and the hope that might energize us to build a world without barbarism.” (Ellis, 1997, p. xvii)
 
In the new unipolar world, lacking the balance of powers that was keeping relative peace during the last half-of-a-century, questions that might be asked with respect to the war-peace continuum gain renewed urgency and should be at the forefront of social research.
 
References
Allport, G.w.. (1966) Traits revisited. American Psychologist, 21, 1-10.
Ellis, M.H. (1997) Unholy alliance: religion and atrocity in our time. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
Endler, N.S. & Magnusson, D. (1976) Personality and person by situation interactions. In Endler, N.S. & Magnusson, D., (Eds). (1976) Interactional Psychology and Personality. New York: Halsted-Wiley.
Halsell, G. (1986) Prophecy and politics: militant evangelists on the road to nuclear war. Westport, Connecticut: Lawrence Hill.
Krus, D.J. & Webb, J.M. (1993) Quantification of Santayana's cultural schism theory. Psychological Reports, 72, 319-325.
News Max / Zogby (2000) Poll: U.S. Shouldn’t Defend Taiwan, Israel, South Korea. March 1, 2000: www.NewsMax.com
Wiesel, E. (1985, Vol. 1, p.33) in Abrahamson, (Ed.) Against Silence: The Voice and Vision of Elie Wiesel. New York: Holocaust Library.