Description
Book SynopsisThe decision to mount an armed foreign intervention is one of the most consequential that a US president can take. This book sets out to explain why and when presidents choose to use force. The book examines decisions to use force throughout the post-Cold War period, via flashpoints including the Balkans, the ‘War on Terror’ and the Middle East. It develops new explanations for variation in the use of force in US foreign policy by theorizing and demonstrating the effects of the displacement and repression of ideas within and across different US presidential administrations, from George H.W. Bush to Donald Trump. For students, scholars and anyone with an interest in international relations and global security, this book is an original perspective on a defining issue of recent decades.
Table of ContentsPart 1: Disaggregating Ideas in American Foreign Policy 1. Ideas and the Use of Force in American Foreign Policy Part 2: US Foreign Policy and Mass Atrocities in the Balkans 2. ‘We Don’t Have a Dog in the Fight’: Ethnic Cleansing in Bosnia 3. ‘What Should I Tell My Daughter?’: The Massacre at Srebrenica Part 3: US Foreign Policy and Terrorism 4. ‘Wag the Dog’: Terrorism in the 1990s 5. ‘America Is Under Attack’: From the War on Terror to Iraq Part 4: Obama and Mass Atrocities in the Middle East 6. ‘This Is Like Rwanda’: How the Road to Libya Ran Through Rwanda 7. Syria: ‘There Was No Benghazi To Be Saved’ Part 5: ‘America First’ and the Use of Force 8. From ‘America First’ to Saving ‘Beautiful Babies’ in Syria 9. The 2020 Iranian Crisis: De-escalating from the Use of Force Part 6: Conclusions 10. Ideas and Foreign Policy Variation
