A new summary of the history of US military interventions

If history is persuasive, the US arguably is militarily aggressive and belligerent. A recent research article, Introducing the Military Intervention Project: A New Dataset on US Military Interventions, 1776–2019 (senior author, Monica Toft), updates the scholarship. The abstract:

While scholars have made many claims about US military interventions, they have not come to a consensus on main trends and consequences. This article introduces a new, comprehensive dataset of all US military interventions since the country’s founding, alongside over 200 variables that allow scholars to evaluate theoretical propositions on drivers and outcomes of intervention. It compares the new Military Intervention Project (MIP) dataset to the current leading dataset, the Militarized Interstate Disputes (MID). In sum, MIP 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 US military intervention included in the dataset. According to MIP, the US has undertaken almost 400 military interventions since 1776, with half of these operations undertaken between 1950 and 2019. Over 25% of them have occurred in the post-Cold War period.

The post-Cold War period ended on Dec. 26, 1991, when the Soviet Union dissolved. The MIP definition of military intervention is broader than the MID definition. Because of that the MIP analysis shows there have been more military interventions than MID analysis. Data from the two definitions is shown below.

The paper’s conclusion includes these comments:

Preliminary results from MIP show that the US has increased its military usage of force abroad since the end of the Cold War. Over this period the US has preferred the direct usage of force over threats or displays of force, increasing its hostility levels while its target states have decreased theirs. Along the way, the regions of interest have changed as well. Up until World War II, the US frequently intervened in Latin America and Europe, but beginning in the 1950s, the US moved into the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). By the 1990s, it doubled down on MENA and directed its focus to Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia as well.  

We intend that the MIP data set and the analysis that follows provide an important resource to those interested in understanding the dynamics of US interventions historically and into the future. We contend that better data will lead to better theory testing, and ideally better policy formulation, on the subject of US military intervention.

The website for the academic center at Tufts University that created the MIP database makes these comments:

With its extensive defense budget and capabilities, the US remains a military leader in contemporary international politics – but can this military advantage ever become a long-run disadvantage for our foreign policy? According to our data, the US has undertaken over 500 international military interventions since 1776, with nearly 60% undertaken between 1950 and 2017. What’s more, over one-third of these missions occurred after 1999.[2] With the end of the Cold War era, we would expect the US to decrease its military interventions abroad, assuming lower threats and interests at stake. But these patterns reveal the opposite – the US has increased its military involvements abroad.

Perhaps as we exclusively focus on maintaining our military might, we elevate the usage of force over other strategies of international policymaking, to the detriment of our own interests. As it stands, the US seems to operate without any clear guidelines for when it employs force abroad, and the consequences of such interventions remain blurred and contradictory. [3]

In fact, Monica Toft has labeled the current trend of US military engagements as kinetic diplomacy, diplomacy solely via armed force. As traditional diplomacy withers away, growing in its place are shadowy special operation missions, drone strikes, and/or readily utilized conventional military deployments. As of this year, “while US ambassadors are operating in one-third of the world’s countries, US special operators are active in three-fourths.”[4]

Research into military interventions seems to be in flux and immature. Other kinds of analyses of military conflict give different results because they rely on different definitions. For example, this site lists factors that were not included in its 1890-2019 analysis. The list is long and it includes these considerations: mobilizations of the National Guard, offshore shows of naval strength, reinforcements of embassy personnel and military exercises. 

Given the high stakes of a nuclear war that spins out of control, i.e., collapse of modern civilization and death of billions of people, this topic merits more attention than it currently gets.

Q: Is it reasonable to assert that in recent decades, traditional diplomacy has significantly or mostly withered away, and it was replaced with special operation missions, drone strikes, and/or conventional military deployments?