From Bosnia to Baghdad: The Tension between Unilateralism and Transformation

In: The Forum: a journal of applied research in contemporary politics, Volume 3, Issue 1

Abstract

By the early 1990s, the Great Powers had developed a de facto division of labor for international conflict, with the U.S. taking the lead for combat operations while its allies focused on peace-keeping duties. By eschewing responsibility for post-conflict peacekeeping and nation-building, the transformation of the American military under Secretary Rumsfeld has exacerbated U.S. dependency on foreign expertise in these crucial "soft" areas. The Bush administration's decision to go it alone in Iraq in 2003, followed by its calamitous mismanagement of the post-conflict situation in that country, has exposed this dependency, raising important questions about the future direction of American neo-imperial ambitions.