Author: Donald M. Snow

Publisher:

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 60

ISBN-13:

The search for the appropriate uses of military force in the post-cold war international system has commenced. During the cold war, the use of force by the major powers was tied clearly to their political and ideological competition; deterrence of major conflicts between them served the most fundamental national interest, survival. Vital interests revolved around preventing the other side from gaining undue influences in important places such as the Persian Gulf. The post-cold war system is not so simple. The order and predictability of the cold war system have been replaced by the disorder, even chaos, of the new order, what one observer has called "the old world disorder in new configurations."1 East-West competition has evaporated and can no longer form the anchor that tethers policy and strategy together. As Leslie H. Gelb noted recently, the "old hawk-dove divide"2 no longer serves to inform where military action will and will not occur. No alternative structure has taken its place. We are left instead with vague entreaties that forces must serve the national interest, and apparently innocuous but potentially precedential and systemically upsetting notions of the "humanitarian use of force"3 and "humanitarian intervention,"4 to mention two recent designations. Lacking a framework of where and when to use force to provide guidance for "a more anarchical and competitive world order,"5 both the United States and the world at large are forced to consider situations on a case-by-case basis where the criteria for evaluation are often vague. On a piecemeal basis, the United States has mounted a post-Gulf War operation in Iraq (Operation PROVIDE COMFORT/SOUTHERN WATCH) and in Somalia (RESTORE HOPE), leading General Powell to conclude: "Peacekeeping and humanitarian operations are a given."6 What--if anything--should be done about ethno-religious fighting in Bosnia or Nagorno Karabakh? How much do we care about the Tamils in Sri Lanka? What patterns, if any, are emerging?