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From its inception and throughout the military sovereignty era, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were endowed with a religious status. In Israeli society, bereaved parents of fallen soldiers enjoyed a special relationship with the army, and their bereavement afforded them a unique place in the shaping of public opinion about security policy. However, as this paper shows, after the first Lebanon War (1982) cracks began to appear in this special union. From the early 1990s, bereaved parents supported by new social movements and a symbiosis of the judicial arena and the media challenged the securitydefense-military arena and its policies of commemoration of the dead, treatment of soldiers, accident prevention, secrecy, and even appointments. Using the High Court and the media to directly influence defense and security policy, civil society succeeded in changing the IDF's tactics, the treatment of Palestinian detainees, and thus elevated human rights and international law over security considerations. Keywords: bereavement; military sovereignty; judicial-media arena; security policy; Israel Defense Forces

The prospects for further development of the European security and defense policy (ESDP) with reference to public salience to European republics and the public's availability of channels of influence have been discussed.

This article is a symposium in which nine political activists on the Left expound on their stand regarding the planned United States' war against Iraq. Most of the members of the symposium argue against the war in light of current political conditions in the United States.

A Gallup poll conducted to find whether the Americans understand United States considering new military action against Iraq revealed that majority of them understand while 44% are uncertain of the reasons involved. The Americans find both Iraq and Saddam Hussein quite objectionable and majority of Americans support a new military incursion in Iraq.

ONE PHRASE often heard since September 11 is that 'the United States has been transformed.' Some significant changes have indeed taken place in the attitudes of Americans to the threat [...]

The General Social Survey shows that American confidence in the press has declined gradually but continuously from 1973 to 2000. Confidence in the military showed a spike of increase following the Persian Gulf War, whereas that for organized religion underwent a dramatic but temporary decline following scandals associated with televangelists Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart. This article shows good predictions of confidence time trends for all three institutions (the press, the military, and organized religion) ([R.sup.2] from 0.61 to 0.82). The InfoTrend computer method was used to score the texts of the stories for coverage explicitly favorable and unfavorable to the three institutions. For the military, additional scores were generated for the Gulf War. For organized religion, the text was also scored for coverage of sex scandals of televangelists and the Roman Catholic clergy. The press content scores were entered into the ideodynamic model to make the successful predictions of the time trends.

What do Americans want? The U.S. public's view of the world has long been a study in what seem like maddening contradictions, at times both altruistic and paranoid, protectionist and [...]

This article examines the United Kindom's policy on nuclear arms control and the public opinion of such policies. The author asserts that there is little public debate over or interest in the issue of disarmament, claiming that nuclear weapons are seen as an unfortunate necessity in an uncertain world, and that forces are maintained based on Britain's technoscepticism and lack persuassive argument for disarmament.

This article examines the role of public opinion surveys in the making of turning-point decisions (TPDs) that lead to peace between enemies. We present hitherto unpublished data from private polls prepared for Yitzhak Rabin in order to gauge public opinion regarding the Oslo peace process. In analyzing these data we suggest a theoretical model that outlines the role of public opinion in policymaking. The model considers Holsti's (1996) four major parameters within the pre-Oslo framework: the issue facing the decisionmaker; the decisionmaker's beliefs in and sensitivity to public opinion; the political and social context of the decision; and the stage of policymaking. We find support for propositions regarding a paradoxical process characterizing Rabin's policy. Rabin used public opinion polls to gauge the public's support for him as a leader and for taking hawkish decisions, termed credibility-building decisions (CBD). These decisions, though seemingly detrimental to the peace process, were perceived as necessary in order to maintain Rabin's image as a tough-minded leader who would bring peace with the Palestinians without sacrificing security. We suggest that public opinion surveys may be important in monitoring the effects of CBDs on the credibility of a leader whose goal is to move a peace process forward in a time of uncertainty and threat.

Studies with several different groups of students over the period from October 1990 to spring 1996 show a consistent set Of relationships between right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and aggressive support for U.S. policy during the Persian Gulf crisis and Gulf War Before the war, high-RWA scorers endorsed more aggressive responses (including the use of nuclear weapons) to hypothetical Iraqi actions. After the war, they expressed relatively more gloating and less regret and, in retrospect, endorsed more aggressive hypothetical U.S. policies. Overall, their opinions tended to be low in complexity, high in certainty, and brief., In this article, we present the results of several studies of American college students to explore the relationship between authoritarianism and attitudes toward the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf crisis and Gulf [...]

We measure the extent to which military spending policy reflects public opinion, while controlling for other reasonable influences on policy. We use survey data as an indicator of aggregate public opinion on military spending and find evidence that changes in public opinion consistently exert an effect on changes in military spending. The influence of public opinion is less important than either Soviet military spending or the gap between U.S. and Soviet military spending and more important than the deficit and the balance of Soviet conflict/cooperation with the United States. We also examine the hypothesis that public opinion does not influence the government but that the government systematically manipulates public opinion. We find no evidence to support this hypothesis.

This article identifies a 'post post Vietnam' pattern in recent American public opinion on the use of military force. Data is drawn from eight cases of limited military force in the 1980s and the 1990-91 Persian Gulf war. Although other factors enter in, particularly the 'halo effect' of quick-strike successes, the variations in public support are best explained by differences in principal policy objectives between force used to coerce foreign policy restraint by an aggressor state, and forced used to influence or impose internal political change within another state. Distinctions are made both among and within the cases, showing the American public to have been much more supportive of the use of force when the principal objective was to restrain rather than remake governments. These findings have theoretical implications for the analysis of public opinion, prescriptive implications for U.S. foreign policy strategy, and normative implications for views of the role of the public in the foreign policy process.

You start thinking you can't be surprised anymore--not when it comes to left-wing opinion-makers, at least--but you end up being surprised nonetheless. Most of their reactions are predictable in broad [...]

In 1973 West Germany's first military universities opened in Hamburg and Munich. Because of the German past, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) has serious reservations about the very idea of military power and armed forces. The founding of the military universities engendered intense public debate over the military's role in a new democratic society and the kind of education its soldiers need. The article examines the historical and political circumstances surrounding the creation of the Bundeswehr universities, the arguments for and against their founding and their curricula and student life. The Bundeswehr continues to face major challenges in legitimizing and maintaining a modern and credible military force in a society that is ultrasensitive to all things military and in which many citizens place an absolute value on peace. The Bundeswehr universities have largely achieved their founders' goals: to attract a sufficient number of talented officers willing to defead their country and able to meet the technological and leadership challenges required by the FRG's armed forces and society.

Contrary to some widespread impressions, public ambivalence about nuclear deterence is not a new phenomenon in Western societies but has existed since at least the mid-1950s. However, mass public acceptance of nuclear deterrence policies does not seem to have eroded significantly, except in West Germany. On the other hand, some delegitimization of nuclear deterrence has emerged in important sectors of the elite and attentive publics in Britain, West Germany, and the United States. Future public support for nuclear deterrence will probably be influenced by factors both outside and within the North Atlantic community, but the choices made by Western leadership elites will be of crucial significance in dealing with the elite-mass public gap on some issues (e.g., first-use policies) and the trends that have tended to delegitimize nuclear deterrence in some sectors of the elite and attentive publics.

Conducted 4/14-19; surveyed 1,930 RVs; margin of error +/- 2.2% (release, 4/22). Obama Handling Foreign Policy - All Dem GOP Ind Men Wom 3/21 2/8 1/11 12/20 12/6 Approve 48% [...]

Conducted 10/30-11/1; surveyed 1,018 adults; margin of error +/- 3.1%. Do You Favor/Oppose The U.S. War In Afghanistan? Now 9/13 8/31 8/3 5/17 4/5 2/19 12/2 7/08 1/07 9/06 Favor [...]