Foreign Military Intervention and Conflict Resolution: An American Legacy

The only legitimate reason for foreign military intervention, to create conditions of harmonious order through administration of conflict resolution in order to build a just, durable peace, a popularized public justification among political elites, is tested against American experience. This study examines 34 major U.S. interventions from mid-1945 through 2015, the first seventy years of “America, the superpower,” to address a central issue: the United States’ conflict resolution record from the perspective of military intervention legacy. Results show that short-term conflict termination is far easier to achieve than conflict transformation, an outcome emerging in just seven cases yielding mutual gains for internal and international security. Thus, in 25 countries where the U.S. has intervened, local politics and conflict have not progressed to this level. Further, in just over half of the cases where transformation has occurred, U.S. military presence continues.