The Uses and Limits of Small-Scale Military Interventions
Abstract
The enormous costs of the American interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan have inevitably sparked a backlash against military interventions generally, especially as the magnitude of the American fiscal crisis has become apparent. While many critics of nation-building argue that the United States should abandon military interventions altogether, others continue to accept that such interventions may be necessary to secure U.S. interests. Where the United States went wrong, these latter critics claim, is in the scale of its ambitions and the concomitant ways and means adopted to achieve them. These critics argue that, rather than seeking to transform the domestic politics of foreign countries a utopian or at least prohibitively costly goal the United States should commit only the minimum resources necessary to stabilize the target state. Such small-scale interventions what we in this volume term minimalist stabilization supposedly offer the opportunity to secure core U.S. interests at vastly less cost than larger nation-building missions. At stake in this debate are not only future decisions about military interventions but also present-day choices about U.S. force reductions. Despite these enormous stakes, the debate remains poorly structured, and little systematic empirical evidence has been offered in support of many of the claims on either side.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2012
- Accession Number
- ADA582408
Entities
People
- Caroline Baxter
- Christopher Rizzi
- Molly Dunigan
- Stephen Watts
Organizations
- RAND Corporation