Abstract
In America's Wars: Interventions, Regime Change, and Insurgencies after the Cold War, Thomas Henriksen has written an overview of 30 years of US liberal interventionism, chronicling civilian-driven military efforts to support democracy and aid the suffering. His work spans military interventions from the removal of Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega to the Gulf War and its aftermath; interventions into conflicts in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo; the US and partner invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq; and more recent wars which rarely make the US national news but have high costs for civilians and fighters in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Finally he returns to Afghanistan and Iraq and adds Syria to the mix in looking ahead to the return of great power competition.
The book is a concise look at the conflicts in which the United States sent military forces across 30 years. Henriksen says he recognises what Henry Kissinger calls the US missionary impulse. The book records civilian efforts to make the world safer for the United States, using the military as its major tool. He chronicles the military's frustration with missions such as peacekeeping, stability operations, government restoration and decapitation, and what the military calls ‘military operations other than war.’ These expeditions have kept US forces on a war footing for much of the past three decades, he notes, although most of these conflicts and interventions occurred outside the awareness of the average US citizen.
Henriksen recognises what many authors prefer to avoid: the belief of US policymakers and military leaders that the United States exerts great power over events worldwide. In discussing the US effort to end the war in Kosovo, for example, he writes that US diplomat Richard Holbrooke returned to talks with Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević in order to ‘bend Milosevic to his will’ (p. 93). Yet, despite the severe and even sardonic tone he uses in describing these humanitarian and democratising efforts, Henriksen himself advocates fighting small wars everywhere in order to keep the United States safe at home. The memory of the Al Qaida Central attacks on September 11 2001 permeates this book. He chafes at the military's impatience with so-called small wars and denounces the media for spreading the belief that the United States should reduce its overseas efforts to battle terrorists and terrorism (p. 264). He applauds the Special Forces’ efforts to train locals in Mocímboa da Praia in northern Mozambique to suppress Islamic terrorists there (p. 264). The town with a population of about 127,000 hosts a port on the Indian Ocean, but Henriksen does not tell the reader that, nor gives any reason for its apparently important role in US security.
Henriksen's premise is that many of these interventions are important to US security, no matter how small they are. Referring to conflicts in places such as Somalia, Syria, and Yemen, he writes, ‘The small footprint conflicts spanning the globe are not wars of choice, but many Americans see them that way. Preventing or disrupting terrorist bases is defense of the homeland at a distance’ (p. 264). He argues that a worldwide US military presence is necessary: ‘DOD will be unable to walk away from its “9/11 wars” in the near term’ (p. 264).
The book begins with an acidic look at civilians’ use of the US military to solve political problems on the global periphery. It ends with the assumption that ‘terminating the Pentagon's counterterrorism partnerships in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East … would likely heighten the risk of terrorists striking the U.S. mainland in a dramatic fashion’ (p. 13). The book provides much fodder for arguments among participants in these wars, students, and interested private individuals.