New research has found a relationship between combat experience and the foreign policy positions of U.S. military veterans. The study, published in Social Science Quarterly, provides evidence that, among those who express regret about their time in the military, veterans with more combat experiences tend to have more dovish foreign policy views.
“I felt that with my experience as a military veteran, I could provide a different approach to studying the effects of combat on political behavior. Prior research had normally coded combat experience as a dichotomous variable: either you were deployed, stationed in a ‘combat zone’, or engaged in gunfire exchanges with the opposition or you weren’t,” said study author Travis W. Endicott, a PhD Candidate in the Political Science department at the University of Mississippi.
“After looking into the traumatic effects of combat in the military psychology literature, I found a way to bridge the gap between what psychologists were saying was important and what social scientists were studying. Ultimately, I knew that including the military psychology literature on combat trauma could be used in a way to disentangle the complex effects of combat on military veterans’ political attitudes.”
Endicott surveyed 999 civilians and 200 veterans regarding their opinions on several foreign policy issues, such as using foreign aid instead of military force. Most of the military veterans were former active duty enlisted individuals.
The participants were also asked to indicate whether they had witnessed the effects of IEDs, engaged in gunfire exchanges while in foreign countries, witnessed the death of enemy combatants, witnessed the death of civilians, and/or witnessed the death of fellow service members. In addition, veterans were asked how strongly they agreed or disagreed with the statement, “I have no regrets about actions I was a part of while deployed.”
Approximately 43% of the veterans indicated they had experienced none of the wartime events, while 21% had experienced all five events.
Endicott found that veterans tended to endorse more hawkish foreign policy positions than the civilian population. However, the more combat experiences and more regret veterans experienced, the less hawkish their positions tended to be.
“Even though military personnel train to engage in combat, not every combat experience is viewed the same by veterans. For those military members who had the most instances of combat (according to my measure) and they had regret about the actions they took part in while in the military, they were less supportive of using military force overseas,” Endicott told PsyPost.
“These instances of regret can come from witnessing the death and destruction of fellow service members or civilians. If these individuals are doing the fighting and dying in the Armed Forces, it would behoove political leaders to listen to those who return and their apprehension to conflict prior to sending members of the military into harm’s way.”
The study — like all research — includes some caveats.
“I think one of the limitations from this research is that I cannot discern what ‘witnessing’ combat is. In the military psychology literature, witnessing combat can be either first-hand experience or hearing/knowing that certain traumatic events have occurred,” Endicott explained.
“Providing more clarity on that issue would help in understanding which type of witnessing of combat events affects political behavior more. In addition, I think physical proximity to combat should also be explored more in-depth. Specifically, does close physical distance increase or decrease the traumatic impact of any of the measures of combat experience for which I control?”
“I do have forthcoming research on combat experience and the effects on veteran social identity. What I find is that the more combat experience that a veteran has the more likely they are to identify as a veteran, as compared to veterans without combat experience. Additionally, military family members are also likely to identify as close to the veteran group, as compared to civilians with no veteran attachment,” Endicott added.
“This is important because with Veterans Day coming up, we tend to forget about the sacrifices that military family members have to make when a family member joins the Armed Forces. Just because the family never said the oath to defend their country or never put on a uniform shouldn’t minimize their contribution to national defense.”
The study, “Combat Experience and the Foreign Policy Positions of Veterans“, was published online June 10, 2020.
