A Comparative Study Of US Foreign Military Intervention After The Cold War

Intervening or deploying additional combat troops in a region for clear purposes,military intervention is a kind of behaviors of safeguarding national interests beyondnormal training or scheduled arrangements. Military intervention is a long-standingforeign policy of the United States.“Monroe Doctrine”,“Open-door Policy” and“Truman Doctrine” guided the U.S. to intervene and control other countries. But thefailure of the Vietnam War gave a heavy blow to interference policy of America,whose intervention restrained. After the Cold War, world pattern changed into “onlysuper power and multi-great powers” pattern from bipolar pattern. The U.S. becamethe only super power of the world, and no one single country can compete with it.Coupled with frequent races and religions conflicts, border disputes, spread ofweapons of mass destruction and the threat of terrorism, the United States began backmilitary intervention frequently.Since the Cold War, the United States saw four presidents’ ruling. Every presidentin his tenure conducted large and small military interventions, which shows that thepost-Cold War world is not peaceful. The U.S. plays a key role in several influentialinternational conflicts. We can see that American military interventions haveimportant impacts on the world’s peace and stability. Therefore, it is necessary tomake a comparative study about post-cold war military interventions of the UnitedStates. Finding the characteristics and trends of military interventions, we can provideourselves with theoretical foundations to deal with military interventions of theUnited States.This paper is divided into four chapters. The first chapter describes therepresentative cases of military interventions during the four presidents’ tenure,combining their foreign strategy. The second chapter first gives a definition ofmilitary intervention, and then makes a comparative study from two aspects: factorsaffecting military intervention decision and factors affecting military interventionactions. The third chapter points out that American military intervention has thefollowing characteristics: first, the purposes of military interventions are covert;second, military interventions insist on pragmatism and effectiveness maximization;third, the results of military interventions are not consistent with its expectations. Thefourth chapter makes summaries and reflections. It predicts the trend of Americanmilitary interventions: first, the purposes of interventions are more subtle; second, the U.S. is inclined to cooperate with international community, reducing unilateral actions.Finally, this paper gives advice about international community and China’s responseto America’s military interventions. We should take measures to restrain itshegemonic interferences and build a harmonious world.