U.S. Military Intervention in Crisis, 1945-1994

Abstract

One compelling aspect of U.S. foreign policy during the cold war was the propensity of policy makers to seek harmony between the pursuit of security objectives and a stated American belief in enduring values of peace and justice. One need look no further than campaign monikers such as "Operation Just Cause" and "Operation Restore Hope" or declarations of the existence of an "axis of evil" for more recent anecdotal evidence of the moral justifications for U.S. military actions. The question of whether this "rhetoric of justice," which has been pressed into service as a public rationale for U.S. military intervention, might consist of more than mere rhetoric is addressed. The historically grounded, yet timely, theory of the "just war" is applied to a set of U.S. military intervention decisions to assess conditions in which considerations of justice may have driven U.S. decisions to employ military force in international crisis.

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