Do Americans Support War Crimes Prosecutions?

Abstract Do Americans support war crimes investigations and prosecutions? Historically, the United States has considered itself a torchbearer of international criminal justice, leading the establishment of tribunals in Nuremberg, Tokyo, the Hague, and Arusha. The United States even participated in the drafting of the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court (ICC). Yet the nation was not a subject of an international criminal tribunal—until the ICC’s Afghanistan investigation, which covers, among others, the Afghan National Security Forces, the Taliban, and US military and intelligence personnel. Previous scholarship shows Americans support the ICC and US membership. However, almost all of this research precedes the Afghanistan investigation, leaving open two important questions: (1) to what extent does the US public support ICC investigations and possible prosecutions of US personnel and (2) what discursive frames (i.e., arguments) support or undermine the ICC’s work? Extending research on US foreign policy public opinion, we propose that human rights arguments will increase and national interest arguments will decrease support for the ICC’s work in Afghanistan. We test this proposition using an online survey experiment. The upshot is Americans are fairly fixed in their opinions and the vast majority support investigations and prosecutions.