Millennials’ Attitudes on War

The Cato Institute gives a good look to “The Next Generation’s Attitudes toward Foreign Policy And War.” A. Trevor Thrall and Erik Goepner highlight the following:

The Millennial Generation, those roughly 87 million adult men and women born between 1980 and 1997, now represent one-quarter of the U.S. population, outnumbering the Greatest Generation (1913-1924), the Silent Generation (1925-1945), the Baby Boomers (1946- 1964), and Generation Xers (1965-1979).

The rise of the Millennial Generation portends significant changes in public expectations and increased support for a more restrained grand strategy.

Millennials liberalness may stem in large part from their coming of age under Bill Clinton (a popular Democratic president) and George W. Bush (an unpopular Republican president).

Millennials have set aside television and print media as news sources, increasingly looking to the Internet for their news.

Future wars that are judged to be “like Iraq” are likely to suffer lower levels of support, given the general consensus among Millennials that Iraq represents a mistake and was not worth fighting.