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"In Mission Failure, Mandelbaum argues that, in the past 25 years, U.S. foreign policy has undergone a significant shift. Historically, U.S. foreign policy was oriented primarily toward threat reduction, but the U.S. military has turned in recent years to missions that are largely humanitarian and socio-political. Mandelbaum argues that ideologically-driven foreign policy--that which seeks to reconstruct societies along Western lines--generally leads to mission failure"-- "America's decision in 1991 to provide air defense to oppressed Kurds in Iraq after the Gulf War ushered in an entirely new era in American foreign policy. Until that moment, the United States had only used military power to defend against threats that its leaders thought would either weaken America's position in the world order or--in the worst case--threaten the homeland. But with this offer to the Kurds, the United States for the first time ever was now militarily involved in states that represented no threat, and with missions that were largely humanitarian and socio-political. After establishing the Kurdish no-fly zone, the US in quick succession intervened in Somalia, Haiti, and Kosovo. Even after 9/11, it decided that it had a duty to not just invade Iraq, but reconstruct Iraqi society along Western lines. In Mission Failure, the eminent scholar Michael Mandelbaum provides a comprehensive history of post-Cold War American foreign policy to show why this new approach was doomed to failure. Mandelbaum argues that all major foreign policy initiatives, both before and after September 11, 2001, had a ba…
Themes & subjects
IdeologyHistoryHumanitarian interventionRealismPhilosophyMilitary policy
Setting
United States1989-20th century21st century
About the author
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