{"id":13813,"date":"2014-05-13T14:00:50","date_gmt":"2014-05-13T04:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=13813"},"modified":"2014-05-14T10:38:53","modified_gmt":"2014-05-14T00:38:53","slug":"did-gallipoli-really-make-australia-unusually-casualty-sensitive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/did-gallipoli-really-make-australia-unusually-casualty-sensitive\/","title":{"rendered":"Did Gallipoli really make Australia unusually casualty sensitive?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Three<\/a><\/p>\n

The Australian public turned against the war in Afghanistan a long time ago. In 2010, I argued<\/a> (PDF) that the mission\u2019s fading prospects for success provided the key explanation. But James Brown has recently argued (in his book ANZAC\u2019s Long Shadow: the cost of our<\/a><\/i> na<\/em><\/a>tional<\/a><\/em> obsession<\/a><\/i>) that a uniquely Australian variable offers a more compelling explanation: Australia\u2019s lower casualty tolerance derived from the traditions of ANZAC, and specifically from the legacy of the Gallipoli operation, which implanted a national myth of Australian lives being sacrificed for the benefit of others in conflicts not directly related to the Australian national interest.<\/p>\n

But just how persuasive is that explanation? First, it doesn\u2019t comport with Australia\u2019s historical record of intervention overseas nor with how Australia is viewed internationally, especially in the United States. As we know, Australia is the only ally to have fought alongside the US in every major American conflict since WWI. By contrast, Canada, for example, didn\u2019t participate in any shooting wars on the ground between Korea and Afghanistan, despite having a small air and naval contingent in Desert Storm.<\/p>\n

Still, the historical record of intervention overseas by a country\u2019s policymakers isn\u2019t necessarily a reflection of their public\u2019s attitudes towards casualties. Perhaps policymakers misjudge the public mood, or perhaps Australia\u2019s greater willingness to intervene overseas relative to Canada is driven by something else besides relative casualty sensitivity. But to understand what the public actually thinks, it\u2019s necessary to consult actual data.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s compare polls run by my colleague Ian McAllister in 2000 on Australia\u2019s casualty tolerance with similar data from the United States gathered by Chris Gelpi and Peter Feaver between 1998 and 1999. Both surveys asked how many casualties their respective publics would tolerate in a range of hypothetical conflicts. \u00a0While the two surveys aren\u2019t directly comparable\u2014the US version named specific countries and didn\u2019t include a question about the direct defence of the American homeland\u2014 two of the questions are similar enough that we can make a rough comparison between the data.<\/p>\n

The average American response to the number of casualties acceptable in the defence of Taiwan was 20,172, whereas the average Australian response to the number of casualties acceptable in the defence of unnamed \u2018allies\u2019 was 1,775. With the US population almost 14 times Australia\u2019s, that suggests Australians are actually less<\/i> casualty sensitive about defending a foreign ally than Americans. In fact, the number cited above understates<\/i> Australian casualty tolerance because it excludes the 10% of respondents who said the ADF should be prepared to take \u2018unlimited\u2019 casualties in that scenario.<\/p>\n

Similarly, for a humanitarian mission to defend \u2018democracy in the Congo\u2019, Feaver and Gelpi found that Americans would be willing to suffer, on average, 6,861 casualties. For a UN peacekeeping mission outside Australia\u2019s home region, McAllister found, Australians would be willing to suffer 1,203. Again, that figure excludes the 6.5% of respondents who stated that they would be willing to take \u2018unlimited\u2019 casualties in such a mission. If we scaled that Australian figure up to the size of the American population, you would get a figure of 16,606\u2014over twice the number of casualties the American respondents said they\u2019d tolerate for a similar mission.<\/p>\n

Of course, it\u2019s one thing to say that you support X casualties in a hypothetical war, especially before Afghanistan and Iraq. But it\u2019s quite another to continue to express support for an ongoing conflict in which real people are dying. So I recently revisited the polls taken in Australia on support for the war in Afghanistan since my 2010 monograph was published. What I found is that those polls provide little support for the argument that Australians exhibit a unique, Gallipoli-influenced sensitivity to casualties.<\/p>\n

Yes, the first few Australian fatalities in Afghanistan apparently caused a sharper drop in support for the war in Australia than the first few American, Canadian or British fatalities did in their respective countries.<\/p>\n

But after that sharp drop off, public opinion on the war stabilised and further casualties had much less impact. For instance, between June 2010 and March 2012, over half of Australia\u2019s current casualty toll was incurred but public support for withdrawal rose by only 3%\u2014from 61 to 64%. Between June and October 2010, moreover, Australia suffered an additional 10 casualties but public support for withdrawal actually fell<\/i> precipitously. That latter fact might have simply been a random fluctuation, but it certainly doesn\u2019t support the idea of a uniquely Australian casualty sensitivity.<\/p>\n

In fact, the trajectory of Australian public opinion on Afghanistan looks very much like that of most other developed democracies in modern war. The first few casualties precipitate a steep drop in support, which then declines more gradually in response to casualties thereafter. That pattern was first identified with respect to the US in the Vietnam War by John Mueller in 1971 and has been observed there again with respect to Iraq and Afghanistan. It\u2019s also broadly speaking the same pattern that I observed in the UK, Canada and France, rather than an effect produced by a uniquely Australian variable. I\u2019m happy to accept that my initial dismissal in 2010 of the \u2018ANZAC\u2019 theory might have been cursory. But no convincing evidence exists that Australians are more sensitive to casualties than their \u2018Anglosphere\u2019 allies. Indeed, the opposite might be true.<\/p>\n

Charles Miller is a lecturer at ANU\u2019s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre. Image courtesy of Department of Defence<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Australian public turned against the war in Afghanistan a long time ago. In 2010, I argued (PDF) that the mission\u2019s fading prospects for success provided the key explanation. But James Brown has recently argued …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":13825,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[43,17,810,66,191,35,31],"class_list":["post-13813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-afghanistan","tag-australia","tag-casualties","tag-history","tag-iraq","tag-risk","tag-united-states"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nDid Gallipoli really make Australia unusually casualty sensitive? | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/did-gallipoli-really-make-australia-unusually-casualty-sensitive\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Did Gallipoli really make Australia unusually casualty sensitive? | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Australian public turned against the war in Afghanistan a long time ago. In 2010, I argued (PDF) that the mission\u2019s fading prospects for success provided the key explanation. But James Brown has recently argued ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/did-gallipoli-really-make-australia-unusually-casualty-sensitive\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ASPI.org\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-05-13T04:00:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-05-14T00:38:53+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/20110923adf8114832_053_smlA.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"3600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"2400\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Charles Miller\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Charles Miller\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/\",\"name\":\"The Strategist\",\"description\":\"ASPI's analysis and commentary site\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/did-gallipoli-really-make-australia-unusually-casualty-sensitive\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/20110923adf8114832_053_smlA.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/20110923adf8114832_053_smlA.jpg\",\"width\":3600,\"height\":2400,\"caption\":\"Three injured soldiers from Mentoring Task Force \u2013 Three (MTF-3) are Aero medical Evacuated (AME) to the medical facilities in Tarin Kot, after an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) attack on a Protected Mobility Vehicle Bushmaster, during a route clearance in the Chora Valley, Southern Afghanistan.\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/did-gallipoli-really-make-australia-unusually-casualty-sensitive\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/did-gallipoli-really-make-australia-unusually-casualty-sensitive\/\",\"name\":\"Did Gallipoli really make Australia unusually casualty sensitive? | The Strategist\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/did-gallipoli-really-make-australia-unusually-casualty-sensitive\/#primaryimage\"},\"datePublished\":\"2014-05-13T04:00:50+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2014-05-14T00:38:53+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#\/schema\/person\/60d4c8f01901350dd03f70d4e8ce9642\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/did-gallipoli-really-make-australia-unusually-casualty-sensitive\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/did-gallipoli-really-make-australia-unusually-casualty-sensitive\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/did-gallipoli-really-make-australia-unusually-casualty-sensitive\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Did Gallipoli really make Australia unusually casualty sensitive?\"}]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#\/schema\/person\/60d4c8f01901350dd03f70d4e8ce9642\",\"name\":\"Charles Miller\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d47090cca3bdcd2591649e12943f4120?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d47090cca3bdcd2591649e12943f4120?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Charles Miller\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/author\/charles-miller\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Did Gallipoli really make Australia unusually casualty sensitive? | The Strategist","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/did-gallipoli-really-make-australia-unusually-casualty-sensitive\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Did Gallipoli really make Australia unusually casualty sensitive? | The Strategist","og_description":"The Australian public turned against the war in Afghanistan a long time ago. In 2010, I argued (PDF) that the mission\u2019s fading prospects for success provided the key explanation. But James Brown has recently argued ...","og_url":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/did-gallipoli-really-make-australia-unusually-casualty-sensitive\/","og_site_name":"The Strategist","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ASPI.org","article_published_time":"2014-05-13T04:00:50+00:00","article_modified_time":"2014-05-14T00:38:53+00:00","og_image":[{"width":3600,"height":2400,"url":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/20110923adf8114832_053_smlA.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Charles Miller","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@ASPI_org","twitter_site":"@ASPI_org","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Charles Miller","Est. reading time":"5 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/","name":"The Strategist","description":"ASPI's analysis and commentary site","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-AU"},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-AU","@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/did-gallipoli-really-make-australia-unusually-casualty-sensitive\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/20110923adf8114832_053_smlA.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/20110923adf8114832_053_smlA.jpg","width":3600,"height":2400,"caption":"Three injured soldiers from Mentoring Task Force \u2013 Three (MTF-3) are Aero medical Evacuated (AME) to the medical facilities in Tarin Kot, after an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) attack on a Protected Mobility Vehicle Bushmaster, during a route clearance in the Chora Valley, Southern Afghanistan."},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/did-gallipoli-really-make-australia-unusually-casualty-sensitive\/","url":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/did-gallipoli-really-make-australia-unusually-casualty-sensitive\/","name":"Did Gallipoli really make Australia unusually casualty sensitive? | The Strategist","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/did-gallipoli-really-make-australia-unusually-casualty-sensitive\/#primaryimage"},"datePublished":"2014-05-13T04:00:50+00:00","dateModified":"2014-05-14T00:38:53+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#\/schema\/person\/60d4c8f01901350dd03f70d4e8ce9642"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/did-gallipoli-really-make-australia-unusually-casualty-sensitive\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-AU","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/did-gallipoli-really-make-australia-unusually-casualty-sensitive\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/did-gallipoli-really-make-australia-unusually-casualty-sensitive\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Did Gallipoli really make Australia unusually casualty sensitive?"}]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#\/schema\/person\/60d4c8f01901350dd03f70d4e8ce9642","name":"Charles Miller","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-AU","@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d47090cca3bdcd2591649e12943f4120?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d47090cca3bdcd2591649e12943f4120?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Charles Miller"},"url":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/author\/charles-miller\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13813"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13813"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13841,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13813\/revisions\/13841"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}