The Sugar High of Unipolarity: Why U.S. Military Interventions Increased after the Cold War

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“Of the approximately 400 military interventions the U.S. has conducted since 1776, half occurred between 1950-2019, and more than 25 percent occurred in the post-Cold War period. This startling statistic is according to a “new, comprehensive dataset of all U.S. military interventions since the country’s founding” that Sidita Kushi and Monica Duffy Toft unveiled in a recent article published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution.

This dataset contains “over 200 variables that allow scholars to evaluate theoretical propositions on drivers and outcomes of intervention…[and] doubles the universe of cases, integrates a range of military intervention definitions and sources, expands the timeline of analysis, and offers more transparency of sourcing through historically-documented case narratives of every U.S. military intervention included in the dataset.”

Why did the frequency of U.S. military interventions increase after it had defeated the Soviet Union and American safety was at its height during the “unipolar moment?” Do we intervene because we have to — or because we can? Can this militaristic American grand strategy continue as the international system shifts to multipolarity? Join our conversation with Monica Duffy Toft, Professor of International Politics at Tufts University, and Sidita Kushi, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Bridgewater State University, and John Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. QI Executive Vice President Trita Parsi will moderate.”

2 thoughts on “The Sugar High of Unipolarity: Why U.S. Military Interventions Increased after the Cold War”

  1. The difference between the Cold War/post-war Cold War era and now is that the U.S. has lost a lot of credibility in the eyes of the world. There was a time when the fear of communism led countries to gravitate west for protection. Push come to shove now, and a large percentage of the world will opt for Russia and China. Americans may fall for the rationale that we intervene for the sake of democracy and human rights. Fewer and fewer people worldwide are willing to buy that lie.

    Ukraine does not constitute a U.S. intervention? Who does this young lady think is running the show?

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