Does the uncertainty about the war in Ukraine paves the way to support military action

Uncertainty is a multidimensional phenomenon used to describe a general context, individual and group-level emotional and cognitive states. The current global crises of wars and violent conflicts, political mistrust and populism, climate change, and the health crisis caused by pandemics augmented both contextual, collective, and individual uncertainties, prompting people to seek certainty, security, and safety. The war in Ukraine is one of these severe crises. It has been scaling up these uncertainties while also questioning the peace and the peaceful solutions to conflicts that were believed to have governed Europe after the Second World War. As part of a project investigating the shared meanings that German society has about the ongoing war in Ukraine, we examined how uncertainties associated with the war are related to the support for non-peaceful policies. We collected data through an online survey between May and June 2022. Studies demonstrate that the colossal experienced or predicted changes with crises make people question their epistemic and existential needs to stabilize themselves and feel secure again. This process of questioning involves the individuals’ relation with politics, which generates increased support for defense policies. In our Bielefeld Peace Survey (BIEFrie), we looked at this process within the democratic German society. We tried to reveal how uncertainties harbor the support for military solutions for an ongoing war instead of democratic and diplomatic ones. Our data (N=1048) demonstrate that emotional uncertainties and uncertainties in terms of information about war predict lower support for military policies, while those who are uncertain about how to restore peace tend to support these policies. We discuss the results in terms of the implications for possibilities of generating new political and psychological peace strategies in democratic settings under the influence of uncertainties.