Constructing Order amid Violence: Comparative Military Interventions in the Era of Peacekeeping and Counter-Terrorism

Abstract

This study is motivated by two questions: To what extent are countries engaged in military interventions willing to use force to promote democracy? And what are the likely consequences of such actions? Interveners face a dilemma in seeking to impose democracy through military interventions: They can either accommodate armed factions in the target state by bringing them into a powersharing government with little democratic accountability, or they can seek to impose higher-order democracy at the risk of violent confrontation. The course of action chosen depends on the interveners' regime types, strategic cultures, and resource constraints. Coalitions dominated by committed democracies with militarized strategic cultures have proven vastly more successful in promoting democratic change through interventions than coalitions dominated by less militarized, less committed, or less democratic states. They do so, however, at the risk of provoking international crises and unsustainable escalations of violence. These claims are investigated through both a medium-N, fuzzy-set analysis of all military interventions in the post-Cold War era and a series of controlled, focused comparisons between the policies of the United States, Germany, and Russia in interventions in the Balkans and Central Asia. This study has implications for both theory and policy. It advances the argument that both rationalist and constructivist theories of international relations, taken separately, fail to predict either state behavior or the outcomes of states' policy choices; rather, only by integrating these perspectives can we understand patterns of military interventions. These patterns reveal that policy-makers must commit to one of three basic models of intervention; pursuing the goals of one while providing the means appropriate to another typically yields disastrous outcomes.