American Intervention Research Articles

Letting It Go

76 worldliteraturetoday.org reviews This is the stage at which Dunne begins his anthology. He takes sixty works by writers of various generations , which they themselves chose, and arranges the passages selected by the authors in no particular order; the genres are fiction, poetry, drama, and essay. Naturally, the majority fall under the first two headings; he adds children’s and teenage fiction, drama, and essay, but since there are only six examples of the first and three in each of the other two, the distinction seems pointless. It would be invidious to criticize the selection of texts or, indeed, of their authors: Dunne seems, from what he says, to have done a thorough investigation among the writing and critical communities, and the result is exemplary. It is a different matter when it comes to translation. Of those not done by Dunne, Boland is too free, and omits a few lines (printer’s error?); Moure’s version of Pato seems the best; Pereiro’s self-translation is stilted and literal; while Soto makes a host of errors. Now to the editor, who translated fifty-six passages. He knows his Galician very well, but still has trouble with his English, in the sense that there are quite a few jarring collocations and a number of register problems: “Ai señor . . . e aínda parece mentira que un home tan grande coma vostede coma tan pouco” (“Dear sir . . . I can hardly believe a man of your stature would be of a mind to eat so frugally”; my italics). However, all in all Dunne has done a marvelous service to Galician culture with this trilogy: let’s hope it has the desired effect. David Mackenzie University College, Cork, Ireland Miriam Katin. Letting It Go. New York. Drawn & Quarterly / Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 2013. isbn 9781770461031 Seven years ago, Miriam Katin made an impressive debut with the publication of her first graphic novel, We Are On Our Own (see WLT, Mar. 2007, 66), a Holocaust tale of running, hiding, and escape. With Letting It Go, she confirms her place as a significant graphic novelist.Avividstoryteller,Katinmanages to capture interior monologue and external narrative seamlessly with deft and elegant strokes, both verbal and pictorial. Her central character, Miriam, is a middle-aged, married Holocaust survivor and artist whose only son, Ilan, decides to live in Berlin and wants to become a Hungarian citizen, his right because Miriam was born in Hungary. This initiating incident is central to the tale, but it is in the details of the story that we find the surprise and delight M. M. Tawfik candygirl American University in Cairo Press In a novel he translated personally from Arabic to English, Tawfik situates the elements of American interventionism, intellectual identity, and Internet culture within the complex panorama of urban Cairo. An Egyptian scientist known as “the Cerebellum,” formerly of the Iraqi nuclear program, evades a renegade NSA agent while pursuing a virtual love affair with a seductive online avatar. Netica Symonette A Girl Called Nettie Dunham Books This autobiography tells the story of Netica “Nettie” Symonette’s ascent from humble beginnings toward a foundational role in the tourism industry of the Bahamas. She recounts her life with great detail in downto -earth language that contextualizes her simple determination. Symonette expresses patriotism and pride in her accomplishments as a Bahamian woman, always with an appealing sense of humility. July–August 2013 • 77 Nota Bene in this work. An imagined catastrophe resulting from explosions of beautifully designed German products plugged into many American kitchen outlets leaves us with no doubt about the narrator’s fears. Nor is there doubt about her sense of humor. A meditation on procrastination cites Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu and then has her wandering the apartment only to land in front of the refrigerator peering into a container thinking, “A la recherche des sardines perdus.” Katin wears her learning lightly, and in both word and image she conveys humor while revealing buried and not-so-buried fears. There is also a fascinating shift in perspective embedded in the movement of her tale. One moment she tells her son that the ground of Germany is soaked with the...

Cuba’s Wild East: A Literary Geography of Oriente. Peter Hulme. Liverpool, U.K.: Liverpool University Press, 2011. xii + 455 pp. (Cloth £70.00)

Book Reviews Cuba’s Wild East: A Literary Geography of Oriente. Peter Hulme. Liverpool, U.K.: Liverpool University Press, 2011. xii + 455 pp. (Cloth £70.00) In Cuba’s Wild East, Peter Hulme persuasively demonstrates that a substan- tial portion of the English-language fiction and non-fiction written about Cuba has focused on the old Cuban province of Oriente. Given the prolif- eration of Havana-centered writing during the last two decades, this idea seems counter-intuitive; however, Hulme leaves no doubt that the images of Cuba sustained by English readers have been shaped in many ways by travelers, visitors, and writers for whom Oriente province became repre- sentative of the whole of the island. In Cuba it is well known that wars and revolutions always begin at the eastern end of the island, in Oriente. The first major uprising against Spain, the Ten Year War (1868-78), began in Oriente; so did the 1895 Cuban War of Independence, though it was soon truncated by U.S. intervention. The “splendid little war” of 1898, famously involving Theodore Roosevelt among others, took place also in Oriente, primarily around the port cities of San- tiago and Guantanamo. More recently, the guerrilla war led by Fidel Castro against the dictator Fulgencio Batista also developed in the Sierra Maestra and nearby mountains of Oriente. Oriente province’s ruggedness, isolation, and socio-historical differences from Havana and other economic and political centers in Cuba’s west, made the area well-fitted for the foment of revolution, thus converting it into an exciting destination for writers from other parts of the island. Cuban poet and patriot Jose Marti detailed the few weeks he spent in Oriente in a touching campaign diary that doubles as a fascinating prose poem. Writer and activist Pablo de la Torriente Brau also reported in epic tones on Cuban peasant uprisings in Oriente in the 1930s. Hulme details how prominent U.S. correspondents and writers flocked to Oriente to cover the insurgencies and/or to meet with Cuban military lead- ers during the Ten Year War, the Cuban War of Independence, the Spanish- American intervention of 1898, and the 1950s Sierra Maestra guerrilla war led by Fidel Castro. Correspondents and writers like James J. O’Kelly, Rich- ard Harding Davis, Stephen Crane, and Herbert Matthews each traveled to this remote corner of the world in order to report on wars, military leaders, and other significant local individuals. Others like Josephine Herbst and © 2013 Raul Fernandez DOI: 10.1163/22134360-12340039 This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC 3.0) License, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

Turkish Public Opinion towards the United States in the Context of Iraq Qestion

Turkey is a traditional ally of the United States, however, certain events, notably Washington's 2003 military intervention in Iraq and the Turkish response to this, have soured TurkishAmerican relations. Based on opinion polls, this article analyzes and explains the Turkish people's perceptions of the United States during the period between December 2002 and September 2003. The Turkish were displeased by what they saw as an American attitude of pursuing unilateral policies aimed solely at protecting American interests. The Turkish people believed that the U.S. decision on Iraq was taken without regard for Turkey's national interests or bilateral relations. In their eyes, the American intervention, and Turkey's possible participation in it, would be harmful for Turkey, especially in the context of the Kurdish question. Therefore, it was not surprising that the Turkish nation opposed supporting the Americans in Iraq.

Íránské aktivity v Afghánistánu. Konstruktivní nebo destruktivní přístup?

Afghanistan is still not a stable state with strong central government controlling the whole state territory even after eleven years since American intervention and following the pursuit of reconstruction by allied forces. One of the main causes of this situation consists in interferences of foreign powers, which have their own particular and often mutually incompatible interests in Afghanistan. One of the most important external powers in the country is Iran. Therefore, Iranian involvement in Afghanistan is the main topic of this text. The main goal of this article is to identify and interpret major methods of Iranian enforcement of its plans in Afghanistan and also the characterization of those plans. The important issue of this text is also an understanding of effects of Iranian activities in Afghanistan and whether those actions have positive or rather negative contribution.

Before the quagmire: American intervention in Laos, 1954-1961

Before the quagmire: American intervention in Laos, 1954-1961

Woody Guthrie, American Radical

Woody Guthrie, American Radical

Embracing Humanitarian Intervention: Atlanticism and the UK Interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo

This article employs the interpretive approach to show that Britain's embrace of humanitarian intervention in Kosovo in 1999 was less a result of the election of New Labour or the psychology of Tony Blair, as conventional wisdom suggests, and more a consequence of a change in belief among policy-makers in the UK and beyond regarding the use of force for humanitarian ends, which originated prior to 1997 in American intervention in Bosnia in the summer of 1995. The effects of the moralism of the new government and its leader must therefore be viewed within a wider transatlantic context and against the background of the continued importance of the ‘Atlanticist’ tradition in UK foreign policy, with important implications for the study of UK foreign policy beyond the Balkans.

The Afghanistan Experience: Democratization by Force

On 7 October 2001, the Bush administration launched Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) to dislodge al Qaeda forces, neutralize the Taliban in Afghanistan, and decapitate their respective leadership. President Bush insisted that the United States was not at war with the Afghan people or with Islam, and the Afghan civilian population was not identified as the enemy. Therefore, the Pentagon attempted to minimize civilian casualties. OEF toppled the Taliban regime, but did not eliminate the Taliban influence in Afghanistan. The Taliban, although expelled from power, still preserved connections with the rural Pashtun. Following the fall of Kabul in November 2001, the American agenda for Afghanistan rapidly metamorphosed into a nation-building project. In theory, the reconstruction and democratic reform of Afghanistan offered an opportunity to transform one of the poorest countries on earth. Afghanistan had a 90 percent illiteracy rate, one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world, and an average life expectancy of just over forty years. The living conditions for women were particularly harsh and cruel, since the Taliban had restricted their access to education, health care, and work. President Bush justified nation-building in Afghanistan in moral and political terms. After liberating [Afghanistan] from a primitive dictatorship ... we had a moral obligation to leave behind something better. We also had a strategic interest in helping the Afghan people build a free society ... because a democratic Afghanistan would be a hopeful alternative to the vision of the extremists. (1) The idea of liberation played an overwhelming role in President Bush's postwar strategy for Afghanistan. The Bush administration assumed that once freed from the shackles of the Taliban tyranny, the Afghan population would embrace the Western agenda of reconstruction and institutional development. The Western allies put in place an interim government in Kabul led by Hamid Karzai, and the loya jirga approved a new constitution in 2003. The International Security Assistance Force, under British command, began training a new Afghan army, and the United Nations developed a humanitarian assistance plan as well as educational initiatives to combat illiteracy and increase educational opportunities for girls and women. It is evident the ambitious American-led project of democratization faltered. After eleven years of combat, the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies have drastically modified their objectives in Afghanistan. President Obama decided to withdraw the majority of American forces by 2014, and his administration has narrowed the aims of American intervention in the country. The Obama administration's goal is to leave behind native military and police structures that in principle should prevent al Qaeda and other terrorist groups from operating with impunity. Why has the United States been unable to accomplish its original objectives in Afghanistan when it was able to radically transform two formidable enemies, Germany and Japan, following World War II (WWII)? Several competing explanations have been advanced to explain this failure. David Edelstein, Chair of the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, claims that military occupations succeed only if they occur in a threat environment in which the security, survival, and integrity of an occupied territory is menaced. According to Edelstein, in the absence of a strong and believable external threat, the desire for self determination is inevitable, and the emergence of a significant movement of resistance, unavoidable. (2) Dov S. Zakheim, the former Undersecretary of Defense, claims the Bush administration seriously underfunded the reconstruction of Afghanistan because it had become increasingly focused on Iraq. (3) In fact, Afghanistan received less assistance per capita than did postconflict Bosnia and Kosovo, and the budget for the reconstruction of Afghanistan amounted to less than half of what the United States spent in Iraq. …

Nothing Less than War: A New History of America's Entry into World War I

Justus D. Doenecke, best known for his classic study of the anti-interventionists just before World War II (Storm on the Horizon: The Challenge to American Intervention, 1939–1941, 2000), turns his attention here to the domestic controversy leading to American participation in World War I. This is a thrice-told tale, and Doenecke does not aim to break new archival ground. Instead, he offers a comprehensive and elegantly written synthesis of existing scholarship, informed by his own use of the Woodrow Wilson Papers, the Congressional Record, and the contemporary press. In scarcely more than three hundred pages of text, Doenecke chronicles the debates over German and British violations of neutrality that persuaded President Woodrow Wilson to intervene in April 1917—not as an ally, but as a reluctant associate of the entente powers. Graduate students seeking to master the topic quickly will find Doenecke an informed and generally dispassionate guide. In an era when the United States repeatedly sends forces abroad without a formal declaration of war, Wilson's concern for the niceties of neutral rights a century ago seems anachronistic, even quaint. Yet Doenecke confirms the consensus view that, in the American public mind, violations of so-called international law by German submarines and British surface ships loomed larger than either commercial interests or the bonds of sentiment. Although Wilson made a point of not reading the newspapers, he believed in his own genius for leadership and, according to Doenecke, “possessed an uncanny ability to articulate the fears and aspirations of his people” (p. 4). This may be true; still, public discourse and Wilson's interpretation of it remained astonishingly unsophisticated. In retrospect it is astounding that the president stood convinced that “nothing in particular” except a disembodied interlacing of alliances had started the war and that the two sides sought virtually the same objectives (pp. 230, 304).

As mulheres muçulmanas precisam realmente de salvação?: reflexões antropológicas sobre o relativismo cultural e seus outros

Este artigo explora a ética da atual "Guerra ao Terrorismo", perguntando se a antropologia, disciplina dedicada a entender a diferença cultural e a lidar com ela, pode nos fornecer apoio crítico para as justificações feitas sobre a intervenção no Afeganistão em termos de liberar ou salvar mulheres afegãs. Eu observo primeiramente os perigos da cultura de reificação, aparente nas tendências de afixar ícones culturais claros como as mulheres muçulmanas sobre confusas dinâmicas históricas e políticas. Posteriormente, chamando atenção para as ressonâncias entre discursos contemporâneos sobre igualdade, liberdade e direitos com antigos discursos coloniais e retórica missionária sobre mulheres muçulmanas, eu argumento que, em vez disso, nós precisamos desenvolver uma séria avaliação das diferenças entre as mulheres no mundo - como produtos de histórias diferentes, expressões de diferentes circunstâncias e manifestações de desejos distintamente estruturados. Além disso, eu argumento que, em vez de buscar "salvar" outros (com a superioridade que isso implica e as violências que acarretaria), talvez fosse melhor pensarmos em termos de (1) trabalhar com elas nas situações que reconhecemos como sempre sujeitas a transformações históricas e (2) considerar nossas próprias e maiores responsabilidades para indicar as formas de injustiça global que são poderosas formadoras dos mundos nas quais elas se encontram. Eu desenvolvo muito desses argumentos a respeito dos limites do "relativismo cultural" através de uma consideração da burca e dos vários significados dos véus no mundo muçulmano.

The Taliban's Adaptation 2002-11: a Case of Evolution?

The Taliban faced overwhelmingly negative odds in 2002 when they launched their insurgency against the new government installed by American intervention in 2001. They adapted to the challenge in a number of ways. The article argues that some of this efforts to adapt can be described as evolution, although not all of them.

The Reagan Administration and the Origins of the War on Terror: Lebanon and Libya as Case Studies

This article uses recently declassified records to analyze the American intervention in Lebanon between 1982 and 1984 and the confrontation with Libya between 1981 and 1986. In both cases, the US responded to a terrorist attack with military force. Especially after the attacks in Lebanon, members of the administration started to elaborate a comprehensive strategy to fight terrorism which focused on pre-emptive strikes against states deemed to be supporters of terrorism. The strike on Libya in April 1986 was the first implementation of this strategy and, furthermore, regime change had been attempted both before and after this strike. The article argues that the policy of the Reagan administration in the fight against terrorism was a combination of two factors: the global Cold War mindset and the first elaboration of concepts that would later become part of the Bush administration’s War on Terror. Rather than being the beginning of the War on Terror, however, Reagan’s policy should be considered as a source of inspiration for it, albeit one that was deeply influenced by the bipolar confrontation with the Soviet Union.

Regional Insularity and Aesthetic Isolationism: Ellen Glasgow’s The Builders and the First World War

As a Virginian with a hereditary pride the land that produced a Washington and a Jefferson, Ellen Glasgow left behind a rich, unique commentary on the major issues of her era and her region, not the least of which involved the evolution of southern letters from the evasive idealism, as she called it, of the plantation school of literature she so ardently abhorred. Born as she said with a nonconformist mind (What I Believe 219), Glasgow's active involvement women's issues and her protection of animals have been well documented critical collections such as Julius Raper's Ellen Glasgow's Reasonable Doubts and elsewhere, yet she was strangely passive her response to the onset of World War I and American involvement later on. Although general the social injustices and psychological hardships Glasgow deplored--and the technological advancements employed World War I would magnify the devastation beyond prior human comprehension--except for granting an interview or two during the itself, she remained relatively silent both word and action as one of the greatest world-shaping events of her lifetime raged. Glasgow biographer Susan Goodman attributes the author's silence to her overall fatalism about humanity's propensity to hurt the innocent, either human or animal, and Glasgow affirmed some years later on the brink of another that war is always an obscene horror (Woman 229). Of World War I specifically, she would record her memoir, in the beginning, I had shared the general hysteria, but this passed quickly, leaving me with a poignant disgust, more sickening than pain, for a world I would not have created (233). Glasgow knew emotional upheaval often derailed, if not almost altogether obliterated, her artistry at crucial times, as did the penetrating grief resulting from the deaths of her mysterious married lover Gerald B; as her sister Cary has revealed Glasgow feared getting caught up emotionally destruction on such a vast scale. Empathetic to a fault, she simply did not initially have the will to ruminate about present international affairs lest they obscure her artistic sensibilities, as she knew they likely would. Once she did comment on World War I, she chose to eschew actual warfare as her subject, turning instead to the political spirit of the Great War The Builders (1919), a novel composed during her tempestuous relationship and engagement to Richmond lawyer and bon vivant Henry Anderson, and, according to Susan Goodman and Pamela Matthews, heavily influenced by Anderson's political philosophies (147; 93-96, respectively). The narrative explores those days of early national debate about American intervention the two-year old European war, and a sense, given its date of publication novel, versus serial, form, Glasgow offers a post-armistice vision, suggesting to those early American isolationists that the ends of the justify the means. In the text, Glasgow compares Virginia's well-entrenched Democratic political machine to American isolationists who would diminish America's broader influence world affairs, just as the South and Virginia, as Glasgow will argue, had been denied a role shaping American political and cultural affairs by privileging the stifling legacy of the past. It is Glasgow's revolt here against antiquated regional insularity and the residual evasive idealism of southern literature and culture that I am concerned with this essay. As an exploration of The Builders and other Glasgow commentary of the period reveals, Glasgow's assertions about regional insularity parallel her point of view on southern aesthetics, as she on one hand laments war's destruction while simultaneously recognizing its potential for expanding regional influence and artistic boundaries. As an analysis of Glasgow's immediate post-bellum output further demonstrates, by extension, the byproduct of this expansion or broadening for Glasgow resulted changes to her own aesthetic perspective and novelistic method, catalyzed by personal heartbreak directly linked to the events of World War I. …

Transformative Invasions: Western Post-9/11 Counterinsurgency and the Lessons of Colonialism

The shooting side of the business is only 25 percent of the trouble and the other 75 percent lies in getting the people of this country behind us.- British General Gerald Templer, Malaya, 1952'Having someone who can speak Arabic is like having another infantry battalion.- U.S. General John Mattis, 1st Marine Division, Iraq, 20082One of the greatest surprises in the debate over the so-called New World Order in the final decade of the twentieth century was how the concept of won an astonishing new respectability. The word empire, which for decades had possessed a negative connotation (especially in American usage), increasingly took on a positive resonance - and not just among journalists.3 For theorists and policymakers, the notion of a good empire once again became thinkable: as a multicultural, flexible form of power operating across vast distances that could promote (if not guarantee) human rights, development, order, and prosperity.4 In order to justify the use of force, however, this concept good empire required both the development of a suitable new form of warfare and a reformulated narrative legitimation of this warfare.5In the post-Cold War geopolitical environment, American debates over foreign interventions no longer pivoted around the old battle lines of internationalism or isolationism but increasingly around the politically sharpened concept of genocide prevention. In the United States, the belief that military operations could prevent or halt genocides led to an astonishing alliance of left-liberal humanitarian interventionism with neoconservative expansionism.6 On the one hand, neither the Cold War nor the conventional wars of the twentieth century provided usable models for the execution of invasions, which after 9/11 appeared to have become the norm.7 On the other hand, references to humanitarian objectives, human rights, American interventionism, and United Nations mandates were not enough to make sense of this new form of transformative invasion. Instead, this new form of warfare, combining humanism and Machtpolitik, had historical roots in a different, rather unexpected place: in the guerilla wars of late European colonialism, which took place from the late 1940s through the early 1960s.The goal of this essay is to analyze how American and Western European armies have appropriated the operational and conceptual arsenal of European late-colonial warfare and adjusted it to suit their current political objectives. This reception and adaptation of late-colonial approaches to how war is fought, we argue, takes place both in the operational conduct of current Western military interventions and in the portrayal of these wars before a national and international public. Identifying the structural parallels between late-colonial wars and current Western interventions helps to explain why some of today's most important military theorists and planners find themselves attracted to the strategies deployed by European powers during the latecolonial wars.In the decade since 9/11, the formula of to eat soup with a knife (often attributed to Lawrence of Arabia) has become a watchword for the adaptation of Western armies to the altered demands of what at first was called the Global War on Terror but which is now more commonly referred to as the Long War.8 In addition to homegrown American traditions originating with presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, the idea of conducting military-led missions against barbarism, injustice, and underdevelopment has roots in European colonialism.9 Proponents of a systematic appropriation of European late-colonial war experiences criticize the inadequate strategy, tactics, and doctrines of conventional Western armies in combat with guerilla armies in Third World regions. They call for an institutional and political learning process, in which Western democracies integrate their military, development, and propaganda machineries into innovative apparatuses capable of bringing a lasting end to insurgencies - less through firepower than through development programs and aid. …

"Driving Wyoming into My Blood and Marrow and Fixing It There": The Male Body at the Imperial Frontier in the Fiction of Owen Wister

This article examines how concerns about American interventions in Cuba and the Philippines in 1898 are figured through the White male body in Owen Wister’s novels. Lin McLean and The Virginian are contextualized within a contemporary discourse employed by Theodore Roosevelt that connected a corporeal construction of masculinity with strong nationhood. However, Wister’s fiction demonstrates problems in defining the White male body at the frontier and suggests that the desire for conquest stems from fears of bodily weakness, rather than the virile male form. The evasion of violence against the male body throughout both novels suggests that Wister was troubled by the effects of imperial activity on the male body politic and the bodies of individual men.

Remembering the road to World War Two: international history, national identity, collective memory

Introduction: International History and the Memory of the Second World War 1. On Virtue: Stalin's Diplomacy and the Origins of the Great Patriotic War 2. On Guilt: The Federal Republic of Germany and Nazi Aggression 3. On Complicity: Italian Foreign Policy, Fascist Ideology and the Axis 4. On Decadence: French Foreign Policy and the Fall of the Third Republic 5. On Folly: Great Britain, Appeasement and the Romance of Decline 6. On Liberty: FDR, American Intervention and the Empire of Right 7. On Tragedy: The Dark Valley of Imperial Japan Conclusion: History, Identity, Memory

Greece and the U.S. during the Cold War

Following its liberation from Axis occupation in 1944, Greece plunged into a civil war that ended in 1949 with the victory of the royalist Right over the Communists, thanks to American intervention beginning with the Truman Doctrine. Post–civil war Greece acquired a quasi-democratic polity marred by frequent circumventions of constitutional rights designed to block the activities of the political center and the Left. Greece became a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member and close ally to the United States whose presence in Greece was pervasive. With this status quo facing serious challenges in the 1960s from the Center party headed by George Papandreou, the system collapsed and was replaced by a pro-American anti-Communist dictatorship that ruled until 1974. The Greek junta's failed attempt to engineer a nationalist coup on Cyprus, an independent country with an ethnic Greek majority and a Turkish minority, brought Turkey's retaliation: an invasion and occupation of the northern part of the island. The Greek dictatorship collapsed, and the country experienced a smooth transition to democracy epitomized by its entry into the European Union and the election of a socialist government under Andreas Papandreou, whose campaign relied heavily on blaming the United States for Greece's political woes between 1950 and 1974.

Asia del Pacífico ante Estados Unidos : un enfoque heterodoxo

For most analysts, September 11 marks a drastic turn in the evolution of the international relations system: the North American interventions did not have an efficient opposition from the secondary powers and would have contributed to the unipolar consolidation of the international order. The present work offers a different interpretation: based on recent crucial events, it argues that “the global order” is marked by a contradictory situation. On the one hand, the US government is capable of imposing its interests globally, but this imposition is carried out at the cost of international crises; on the other hand, the international crises caused affect the interests of the regional powers, forcing them to oppose and dispute influence in their own geographical areas. Despite acrimonious disputes, none of the secondary national powers is in a position to displace the Americans. The international order, consequently, will evolve from crisis to crisis.

The Peacekeeping Mission: Bringing Stability to a Chaotic Scene

This article examines the military intervention called the peacekeeping mission. This article argues that this particular intervention is qualitatively different than war and crisis rhetoric. A tentative model of the rhetoric of peacekeeping that involves 2 elements is proffered. First, it is found that peacekeeping mission rhetors emphasize a chaotic scene that drives American action. Second, and perhaps most important, American intervention is characterized as facilitating security to allow larger political, economic, and cultural stability to take hold within a particular state. Further, peacekeeping mission rhetors highlight the constraints of the intervention to make it more palpable to the American public. Exploring peacekeeping mission rhetoric has implications related to presidential justifications for the use of military force and U.S. foreign policy in general.

How wars end: why we always fight the last battle: a history of American intervention from World War I to Afghanistan

IN 1991 THE UNITED STATES trounced the Iraqi army in battle only to stumble blindly into postwar turmoil. Then in 2003 the United States did it again. How could this happen? How could the strongest power in modern history fight two wars against the same opponent in just over a decade, win lightning victories both times, and yet still be woefully unprepared for the aftermath? Because Americans always forget the political aspects of war. Time and again, argues Gideon Rose in this penetrating look at American wars over the last century, our leaders have focused more on beating up the enemy than on creating a stable postwar environment. What happened in Iraq was only the most prominent example of this phenomenon, not an exception to the rule. Woodrow Wilson fought a war to make the world safe for democracy but never asked himself what democracy actually meant and then dithered as Germany slipped into chaos. Franklin Roosevelt resolved not to repeat Wilson's mistakes but never considered what would happen to his own elaborate postwar arrangements should America's wartime marriage of convenience with Stalin break up after the shooting stopped. The Truman administration casually established voluntary prisoner repatriation as a key American war aim in Korea without exploring whether it would block an armistice--which it did for almost a year and a half. The Kennedy and Johnson administrations dug themselves deeper and deeper into Vietnam without any plans for how to get out, making it impossible for Nixon and Ford to escape unscathed. And the list goes on. Drawing on vast research, including extensive interviews with participants in recent wars, Rose re-creates the choices that presidents and their advisers have confronted during the final stages of each major conflict from World War I through Iraq. He puts readers in the room with U.S. officials as they make decisions that affect millions of lives and shape the modern world--seeing what they saw, hearing what they heard, feeling what they felt. American leaders, Rose argues, have repeatedly ignored the need for careful postwar planning. But they can and must do a better job next time around--making the creation of a stable and sustainable local political outcome the goal of all wartime plans, rather than an afterthought to be dealt with once the real military work is over.