by Robert C. DiPrizio
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Product Description
Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. military has found itself embroiled in many "operations other than war." Most controversial of these have been humanitarian interventions, which often lacked a clear majority of either elite or public support. Although the immediate threat represented by the events of September 11, 2001, has coalesced public opinion behind the Bush administration's antiterrorism campaign, it is likely that the debate over humanitarian interventions will again take center stage in the coming years. In this book, political scientist Robert C. DiPrizio examines representative case studies from the recent past to offers insight into how a sitting president might (or should) respond to such future emergencies. DiPrizio examines the factors that lay behind U.S. decisions to send troops into civil conflicts abroad, analyzing both the decision-making process and the domestic and international constraints placed upon them. Focusing on the administrations of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, he shows that the president remains the chief player in such decision making, and through six case studies--northern Iraq, Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo--he looks in detail at both positive and negative intervention decisions. DiPrizio finds that in each of these cases, motivating factors included a different mix of "soft" security concerns (such as refugee flows, regional stability, alliance credibility, and interalliance tensions), true humanitarian concerns, and domestic politics. DiPrizio concludes with a discussion of the possible impact of America's ongoing antiterrorism campaign on the current Bush administration's policy on humanitarian interventions.
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Excellent Overview of US Foreign Policy in the 1990s, 2008-09-10
Given the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and the US's ongoing War on Terror, the idea that the fall of the Soviet Union marked the end of history seems terribly quaint. However, as the US took its first steps into a monopolar world, it found itself confronted with the need to revise its foreign policy for a world without a Communist threat. It finally seemed that the US was free to use its power as a force for good in the world, rather than devoting all its energy to self-defense and ideological warfare.
This book discusses an important decade in US foreign policy, the humanitarian interventions of the 1990s. As the author notes, prior to this book there was no comprehensive examination of these humanitarian missions. All too often, US engagement in Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti and Kosovo are viewed as isolated events. The author discusses each of the major humanitarian missions the US undertook in the 90's, the reasons the US choose to intervene where it did when it did, and the policies and beliefs that consistently undermined or delayed the success of these missions.
I used this book for a paper I wrote some years ago, and was primarily interested in the chapters on Somalia and Bosnia. However, I found that those chapters contained such useful and interesting information, and were so compellingly written, that I ended up reading the book in its entirety. I was so sorry to return it to the library that I promptly bought my own copy. It's an invaluable resource for understanding US foreign policy in the ten years between the fall of the Soviet Union and the terrorist attacks of September 11th.
In addition to being interesting in its own right, understanding this era provides useful insight into the US's current engagement in Iraq. Many of the problems that hindered successful humanitarian intervention in the 1990's are present in the Iraq war. These problems include the conflicting desire to use military force without using ground troops, the lack of a contingency plan for when things did not go as expected, a blind optimism in the belief that freedom can cure all ills, and the lack of a nuanced understanding of the exact nature of the political, civil and religious underpinnings of Iraqi society. Understanding how people interact with each other, apart from their government, is crucial to crafting a successful strategy for engagement. As we saw in Somalia, even Hobbesian anarchy is more complicated in practice than in theory.
I would recommend this book both for its insights into US foreign policy in the 90s, and for the insights you will gain into how that policy has colored the current War on Terror. It's an excellent addition to any library.
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