Minding Our Own Business: The Case for American Non-Participation in International Peacekeeping/Peacemaking Operations

The end of the Cold War triggered a remarkable surge of optimism about the future of international politics. Concerning Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and East Central Europe, the same arguments were advanced repeatedly: by taking the lead in collective interventions, nominally under the aegis of the United Nations and/or NATO, the United States can root out the causes of global instability (aggression, nationalism, ethnic turmoil, humanitarian disasters, and ‘failed states’) and thereby create a favourable international climate in which the ‘zone of peace’ based on democracy and free-market economics can be ‘enlarged’. There is, of course, nothing really new in this optimistic view of the future of international politics: this is nothing more than the old wine of classical liberal international relations theory in a new post-Cold War bottle.