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[1] Cook, S. A. (2026, June 16). After Iran, it’s time for the United States to leave the Middle East. Foreign Policy. https://www.foreignpolicy.com.  “U.S. President Donald Trump’s Operation Epic Fury achieved nothing strategically. In typical Roy Cohn fashion, the president has declared victory. But the reported terms of the U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding tell a different story. It seems that Washington and Tehran will now negotiate over Iran’s nuclear program, Iran will be able to export oil under a special waiver for 60 days, and the Strait of Hormuz will reopen. The last issue remains murky, however. Although Trump has triumphantly declared freedom of navigation in the strait-a return to the prewar status quo-Iranian officials claim that this only applies to the two months covered in the MOU.”

[2] Cook, S. A. (2026, June 16). After Iran, it’s time for the United States to leave the Middle East. Foreign Policy. https://www.foreignpolicy.com. “Over the weekend, Trump stated that if Iran did not honor its commitments in the MOU, the United States would be the “guardian of the Middle East.” In fact, Trump’s failure in Iran is likely to trigger something else altogether: a U.S. withdrawal. It is not just the president who is likely to use the MOU to disengage Washington from the Middle East. There are few members of Congress, presidential candidates, government officials, and would-be government officials who will now want to spend the political, military, and financial resources to stay. The circumstances are different, but it feels like December 1971 all over again.”

[3] Boot, M. (2026, July 13). Trump’s Iran deal has collapsed, leaving the U.S. with few good options. Council on Foreign Relations. https://www.cfr.org. “On March 1, President Donald Trump said that the U.S.- Israeli war against Iran would last ‘four to five weeks’ at most. More than four months later, after a brief lull, the war is reigniting and showing no sign of ending.”

[4] Boot, M. (2026, July 13). Trump’s Iran deal has collapsed, leaving the U.S. with few good options. Council on Foreign Relations. https://www.cfr.org. “Trump pledged many billions of dollars in economic relief for Iran by lifting sanctions, unfreezing Iranian funds, and providing reconstruction assistance. In return, all Iran had to do was allow normal commercial traffic to flow through the strait, as it did before the war, and enter into negotiations with the United States over the status of its nuclear program. This deal was widely criticized as an act of appeasement on Trump’s part after failing to reopen the waterway by military force or to achieve his other military objectives-the overthrow of the Iranian regime and the abandonment of its nuclear program, its missile program, and its support for terrorist proxies across the region.”

[5] Boot, M. (2026, July 13). Trump’s Iran deal has collapsed, leaving the U.S. with few good options. Council on Foreign Relations. https://www.cfr.org. “Trump’s threat to collect tolls is probably just bluster, but the bombing and the blockade are real. The question is what will they accomplish? The United States and Israel bombed Iran for thirty-nine days (February 28–April 8) without overthrowing the regime or forcing it to give in to U.S. and Israeli demands. Iran ultimately made Trump back down and agree to a humiliating MOU by holding the Strait of Hormuz and the energy infrastructure of U.S. Persian Gulf allies hostage. Trump is in a weaker position to pressure Iran today, after having let the regime cash in on his temporary lifting of sanctions; by one estimate, Iran earned at least $5 billion in oil exports since the United States lifted its blockade on June 17.”

[6] Boot, M. (2026, July 13). Trump’s Iran deal has collapsed, leaving the U.S. with few good options. Council on Foreign Relations. https://www.cfr.org. “The fundamental problem, as I previously noted, is that for all of Trump’s bluster-and that of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth-they have no good military options to bring Iran to its knees. Truly defeating Iran and overthrowing its regime would require an invasion by hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops. This contingency is impossible to imagine given how unpopular the war already is with the American public. In one recent poll, 60 percent of those surveyed said the Iran war was not worth it.”

[7] Boot, M. (2026, July 13). Trump’s Iran deal has collapsed, leaving the U.S. with few good options. Council on Foreign Relations. https://www.cfr.org. “Trump is left facing the same dilemma as many of his predecessors in the Oval Office: He is fighting a limited war with limited means and, not surprisingly, achieving limited results, at best. The most that can be said for Trump’s war is that it has degraded Iranian military capabilities, but Iranian drones and missiles remain as much of a threat as ever, and Iran has actually increased its ability to blackmail the world since the war began. Even after the signing of the MOU, maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz never returned to prewar levels. Now, with Iran claiming the waterway is closed, even fewer ships are likely to pass through it. Trump is left with an unpalatable choice: Either acquiesce to Iran charging a toll for traffic through the strait or else run the significant risks of military escalation. More than four months in, the Iran war once again shows why presidents should be wary of starting wars of choice based on wishful thinking and without an obvious exit strategy.”

[8] Minor, A. (2024). How the US could have prevented the Yemen War: And what it tells us about improving the United States' ability to prevent conflict. Brookings Institution. https://www.brookings.edu. “The decisions the United States made (or in one case, failed to make) during these windows reflected three persistent, problematic tendencies in U.S. policymaking that manifest in many other crises: 1) A failure to weigh the medium-term consequences of their decisions alongside short-term imperatives. 2) The difficulty of updating U.S. assumptions and corresponding policy positions in response to rapidly shifting dynamics on the ground, in part due to a bias toward wishful thinking. 3) Insufficient high-level attention to enable decisive U.S. policy action. In other words, U.S. failures during this period were not the result of officials simply choosing the wrong policy option; they were the result of systemic impediments to effective preventative action. Overcoming these tendencies and seizing the opportunities the U.S. had to prevent the Yemen conflict would have required systemic change and greater prioritization of conflict prevention principles by policymakers. Further, U.S. policymaking was characterized by a tendency to prioritize proximate policy goals-including counterterrorism, the Iran nuclear deal, and the U.S.-Saudi bilateral relationship-over considerations of Yemen’s stability, and U.S. policy often relied heavily on a single individual, including Saleh prior to 2011 and Hadi after 2012. All of these problematic tendencies ultimately exacerbated threats to U.S. interests over the medium term and should provide lessons for U.S. engagement in similar contexts.” (p. 3)

[9] Minor, A. (2024). How the US could have prevented the Yemen War: And what it tells us about improving the United States' ability to prevent conflict. Brookings Institution. https://www.brookings.edu. “While U.S. officials may have underestimated the Houthi threat at the time, policymakers-including those most capable of influencing the U.S. response to the Saudi request-were aware that the Saudi campaign lacked a realistic strategy or endgame. By 2015, Brennan had become the director of the CIA, the head of the U.S. agency responsible for anticipating threats and consequences emanating from global events. Brennan reports that he spoke with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) before the war began and found MbS’s articulation of the campaign strategy so unrealistic that he recalled, “…wonder[ing] to myself what [MbS] had been smoking.”107 Even after the United States announced its support for the campaign, the commander overseeing the Middle East, General Lloyd Austin, admitted he did not know its goals or objectives.108 The fact that these concerns from President Obama’s top foreign policy advisors were not reflected in the U.S. response to the Saudis illustrates the extent to which U.S. decisionmaking was driven by the JCPOA and Saudi-U.S. bilateral relationship, not consideration of the Saudi campaign’s impact on Yemen itself.” (p. 25)

[10] Minor, A. (2024). How the US could have prevented the Yemen War: And what it tells us about improving the United States' ability to prevent conflict. Brookings Institution. https://www.brookings.edu. “Between 2011 and 2015, the United States consistently failed to align its policy with emerging threats, even when those threats were acknowledged by policymakers or were otherwise obvious. In 2011, the United States failed to sufficiently anticipate the threat Saleh would pose to any transition process and adjust its approach accordingly, even though the two leading policymakers on Yemen at the time reported knowing that Saleh would do whatever he could to regain power.119 In 2014, the United States failed to anticipate that Hadi’s six-region map would put him in a direct conflict with the Houthis that he would undoubtedly lose, even after the Houthis had taken over the capital, exposing Hadi’s lack of effective power. The U.S. failure to anticipate the threat posed by the Houthis even in the face of overwhelming evidence continued in March 2015 and contributed to the U.S. failure to grasp the consequences of their response to the Saudi request for support for their campaign. These failures stem in part from a bias toward wishful thinking: Optimism over Yemen’s transition process combined with a hesitancy to acknowledge the extent of a new threat (the Houthis) consistently led the United States to adopt policy positions that aligned with a more friendly reality than the actual reality in Yemen at the time, which is a world where Yemen could undergo a major transition without any meaningful consequences for U.S. counterterrorism cooperation with Yemen’s existing elites; a world in which Hadi could banish the threat to U.S. objectives posed by both the Houthis and southern secessionists, absent any real power or influence on the ground; and a world in which an untested Saudi air force could somehow force a Houthi surrender after the Houthis had captured most of Yemen’s military assets and proven themselves to be a formidable fighting force.” (p. 35)

[11] Minor, A. (2024). How the US could have prevented the Yemen War: And what it tells us about improving the United States' ability to prevent conflict. Brookings Institution. https://www.brookings.edu. “At both the structural and operational stages, the impact of foreign assistance is ultimately shaped by the policy-enabling environment within which it exists. During 2011, U.S. assistance was still centered around bolstering the capabilities of Saleh’s government to counter AQAP, including by stabilizing those areas most vulnerable to terrorist recruitment. As such, it was simply not equipped to help respond to a popular protest movement or support the development of a transition process. If U.S. security assistance prior to 2011 had been focused on professionalization of Yemen’s military and reducing the role of elite forces that can be most easily co-opted, it would have significantly reduced both the tools available to spoilers like Saleh and constraints on U.S. policy in 2011 while empowering Yemen’s democratically elected leaders. In other words, the obstacles to the United States’ ability to seize windows of opportunity to mitigate the Yemen conflict were not foreign assistance problems; they were policy problems.” (p. 42)

[12] Minor, A. (2024). How the US could have prevented the Yemen War: And what it tells us about improving the United States' ability to prevent conflict. Brookings Institution. https://www.brookings.edu. “Seizing the windows of opportunity the United States had to prevent the Yemen conflict required more systemic reforms that confronted the political and bureaucratic impediments to preventative action. I argue that a calibrated crisis prevention approach could help accomplish this goal: Narrow, more strategic targeting of prevention efforts around a compelling national security rationale can help secure the necessary support from foreign policy leaders; centering implementation around creating adaptive, responsive policymaking processes can help overcome the tendency to projectize initiatives and ensure the United States is prepared to seize the brief windows of opportunity that emerge; and a focus on operational resources can provide the appropriate incentives and tools necessary to sustain buy-in and support those responsive processes. For more information on these recommendations, please see my paper, “Implementing prevention: A practical guide for improving the U.S. approach to violent conflict in a changing world. ” The Yemen case is not unique. It typifies the ways in which violent conflicts can threaten U.S. national security interests even when they occur in countries that are not traditional U.S. foreign policy priorities: They are used by revisionist actors to threaten the United States and the rules-based international order, they exhaust U.S. military, diplomatic, and financial bandwidth, and they undermine specific U.S. priorities such as global trade. While the level of U.S. influence and the specific levers it has to shape the trajectory of conflict will vary, the impediments to using those levers are likely to be similar. For this reason, the U.S. failure to prevent the Yemen conflict can provide valuable lessons for the many other crises around the corner.” (p. 44)

[13] Robinson, L. (2023, March 20). The long shadow of the Iraq War: Lessons and legacies twenty years later. Council on Foreign Relations. https://www.cfr.org. “The decision to go to war was the initial and most grievous error, though a subsequent series of poor decisions greatly compounded its effects. As was subsequently discovered, the justification for going to war was based on scanty and deeply flawed intelligence: Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, and the U.S. intelligence community knew that “Curveball,” a principal source of that bad intelligence, was not reliable.”

[14] Robinson, L. (2023, March 20). The long shadow of the Iraq War: Lessons and legacies twenty years later. Council on Foreign Relations. https://www.cfr.org. “The Iraq War did not involve a clearly demonstrated vital interest; clear and obtainable goals and an exit strategy were not established; the risks and costs were not fully analyzed; and nonmilitary means were not exhausted. If the executive branch cannot apply these guidelines, Congress should.”

[15] Robinson, L. (2023, March 20). The long shadow of the Iraq War: Lessons and legacies twenty years later. Council on Foreign Relations. https://www.cfr.org. “The error of the invasion was immediately compounded by the absence of an agreed exit strategy and the decision to embark on a massive, open-ended nation-building project. The occupation authority’s first acts were to disband the Iraqi army and the Ba’athist governing party, igniting what would become a lethal, long-running insurgency and eventually a multinational terrorist organization that took over most of the country. A sectarian government stacked with elite politicians took root, along with a patronage system to divide the spoils of the hydrocarbon industry, further supercharging the insurgency.”

[16] Robinson, L. (2023, March 20). The long shadow of the Iraq War: Lessons and legacies twenty years later. Council on Foreign Relations. https://www.cfr.org. “By 2007 Iraq was on fire, and after numerous deliberations, the third major erroneous decision was reached, to double down on a military strategy with a “surge” of U.S. troops. This effort achieved a short-lived effect of dampening the violence but did not address the root causes of violence, which was the lack of a governance arrangement that Iraqis would accept.”

[17] Robinson, L. (2023, March 20). The long shadow of the Iraq War: Lessons and legacies twenty years later. Council on Foreign Relations. https://www.cfr.org. “The long shadow of Iraq extends beyond these quantifiable effects. The toll the war’s decision-making has taken on U.S. democracy has been equally grievous. The absence of any formal reckoning eats at our soul. No leader has stepped forward with a full and honest mea culpa, as Robert McNamara did after the Vietnam War. Instead, a Vietnam era–like erosion of public confidence continues, stoking a current of isolationism that calls for no foreign involvement at all, and even more corrosive, a culture of brazen, arrogant mendacity that infects American politics.”

[18] Connable, B. (2013, March 21). The deeply mixed results of the Iraq War. RAND Corporation. https://www.rand.org. “By the standards set in Bush's strategy, the Iraq war was at best a tenuous, qualified success. Iraq is not in open conflict with its neighbors, but terrorism and limited insurgency continue across the country. Iraq is united under a constitutional government for now, but some view Kurdish or even Sunni secession as inevitable. Compared to conditions in Syria-admittedly a low standard-Iraq is stable, but it is in a state of metastability. In other words, it bears many of the hallmarks of a potentially unstable state, to include shaky government institutions, social, political, and economic inequality, ethnic and sectarian friction, and the abuse of minorities. Iraq is more accepted as a regional and global actor now than under the Hussein regime, but it is still regarded with suspicion by its closest neighbors. And while Iraq has a cooperative relationship with the U.S., it is and probably never will be a meaningful partner in the U.S. effort to defeat global terror networks. It is best to view Iraq as two separate wars. The U.S. clearly defeated the Iraqi military in 2003, and in a somewhat convoluted interpretation of its stated intent the U.S. achieved one objective: the removal of the potential, long-term threat of WMD. Al-Qaida affiliates still exist in Iraq but have not conducted operations against the U.S. homeland from Iraqi soil. In that sense, the U.S. can claim a thin, qualified victory for the first Iraq war, even though the absence of WMD, the total collapse of the Iraqi state, and the ensuing insurgency made that victory bittersweet and of questionable strategic value.”

[19] O'Hanlon, M. E., and Windholz, L. (2021, August 27). Do not take the war on terror’s big success for granted. Brookings Institution. https://www.brookings.edu.

“The human and financial toll of the struggle against extremism and terrorism also has exceeded what its architects imagined. The price of the combined campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan totals $2 trillion in direct costs, but perhaps closer to $4 trillion once the inevitable (largely future) costs of caring for war veterans and their survivors, as well as other indirect costs, are included as well. More than have died in the two countries. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans died too, though it is hard to know, of course, what would have happened absent the U.S.-led interventions. And we will soon find out what the future of Afghanistan will be like under Taliban rule 2.0. 7,000 Americans However, to date what George W. Bush called the global war on terror has succeeded remarkably, if provisionally, in its single most important goal from an American national security perspective: protecting the homeland, and Americans therein, from attack. This accomplishment has become internalized in our consciousness, almost mundane in our thoughts.”

[20] “But things became calmer in America. After a fall of anthrax attacks, other WMD anxieties, an attempted “shoe bombing” on an airline in U.S. skies, and National Guard personnel posted at iconic sites and airports and other key transportation nodes around the country, things started to settle down for the most part. The nation has generally been safe...Yes, there have been many tragedies, especially between 2009 and 2017 - the November 5, 2009 Fort Hood shooting in which thirteen died, the December 2, 2015 San Bernardino shootings that claimed 14 lives, the horrible June 12, 2016 Orlando night club massacre in which 49 perished, the October 31, 2017 New York killings in which a truck mowed down eight innocents. There were other deaths from “Salafist” or jihadi attacks linked to al- Qaida or ISIS too, mostly in that same period, in Little Rock, Oklahoma, Chattanooga, Pensacola, Philadelphia, and Boston. There were other attempts, as at Times Square in 2010, as well as the attempted printer-cartridge bombings of 2010 and the “underwear bomber” the year before.”

[21] Sargent, M., Campbell, J. H., Evans, A. T., McCulloch, C., Reimer, J. R., and Girven, R. S. (2023). Staying the unfavorable course: National Security Council decisionmaking and the inertia of U.S. Afghanistan policy, 2001-2016 (Report No. RR-A808-1). RAND Corporation. https://www.rand.org. “From 2001 to 2021, the United States pursued an unchanging policy objective in Afghanistan: to prevent a terrorist group from using the country as a safe haven in which to plan or launch an attack on the United States. However, despite deteriorating conditions and no apparent hope of military victory, the U.S. goal remained constant even as successive leaders experimented with different strategies to achieve it.”

[22] Sargent, M., Campbell, J. H., Evans, A. T., McCulloch, C., Reimer, J. R., and Girven, R. S. (2023). Staying the unfavorable course: National Security Council decisionmaking and the inertia of U.S. Afghanistan policy, 2001-2016 (Report No. RR-A808-1). RAND Corporation. https://www.rand.org. “As this analysis details, decisions for how to navigate de-escalation from a conflict under conditions short of victory are tremendously difficult, both practically and politically. With no clear definition of success, bureaucratic inertia took hold, extending the conflict and enabling focus on mechanical details of its execution rather than its ultimate intent.”

[23] Sargent, M., Campbell, J. H., Evans, A. T., McCulloch, C., Reimer, J. R., and Girven, R. S. (2023). Staying the unfavorable course: National Security Council decisionmaking and the inertia of U.S. Afghanistan policy, 2001-2016 (Report No. RR-A808-1). RAND Corporation. https://www.rand.org. “The expanding, open-ended mission in Afghanistan led America into a policy trap in which victory was seemingly impossible to achieve but withdrawal was not politically or psychologically palatable. The absence of clear, achievable metrics for success led to strategic scope creep as decisionmakers sought a strategy that would secure a positive outcome.”

[24] Sargent, M., Campbell, J. H., Evans, A. T., McCulloch, C., Reimer, J. R., and Girven, R. S. (2023). Staying the unfavorable course: National Security Council decisionmaking and the inertia of U.S. Afghanistan policy, 2001-2016 (Report No. RR-A808-1). RAND Corporation. https://www.rand.org. “When the Iraq conflict took precedence during the Bush Administration, the lack of institutional safeguards to ensure that resources were reserved for monitoring Afghanistan meant that basic assumptions were not questioned, early signs of Taliban resurgence were overlooked, and potential correctives were not formulated.”

[25] “Tension and mistrust characterized civil-military relations. The nature of the conflict forced the military into areas beyond its traditional expertise and resulted in significant civilian involvement in military strategy and resourcing. Because the military felt that it was the stakeholder with the most to lose, it carefully controlled the options that were presented to civilian leaders and often seemed to box decisionmakers into a narrow set of options.”

[26] Kavanagh, J., Frederick, B., Stark, A., Chandler, N., Smith, M. L., Povlock, M., Davis, L. E., and Geist, E. (2019). Characteristics of successful U.S. military interventions (Report No. RR-3062-A). RAND Corporation. https://www.rand.org. “With the political objectives coded, we then assessed the degree to which the United States was able to achieve these objectives over the course of its intervention. While in some cases determining the extent to which one of the United States’ political objectives was achieved was reasonably easy, in others it was difficult, and specifying a coding has an unavoidable degree of subjectivity. To minimize these difficulties, we opted for a relatively simple taxonomy of success involving three categories: • • • Success: The objective was fully or largely achieved. Some success: The objective was partly achieved. No success: The objective was not achieved to any substantial degree. While this taxonomy limits the precision with which we can specify the degree of success, it is also realistic about the difficulties of doing so and helps to avoid a false degree of precision that could accompany a larger five- or ten-point scale. Despite the limited categories, this scheme still allows us to separate objectives that were most clearly achieved from those that were most clearly not, without forcing coders to choose only one of those categories.” (p. 42)

[27] Kavanagh, J., Frederick, B., Stark, A., Chandler, N., Smith, M. L., Povlock, M., Davis, L. E., and Geist, E. (2019). Characteristics of successful U.S. military interventions (Report No. RR-3062-A). RAND Corporation. https://www.rand.org. “Although difficult to capture systematically in our data, it is our impression that much of this shift toward lower degrees of success over time has to do with an expand- ing degree of ambition in setting these political objectives, as partly reflected in their increasingly regional (rather than in-country) focus. In the pre-1945 era, for exam- ple, many objectives involved relatively limited goals, such as protecting U.S. citizens or commercial interests. In the post–Cold War era, much more expansive objectives, such as creating and maintaining regional stability and partnerships and defeating transnational terrorism, have become more common. ” (p. 44)

[28] Kavanagh, J., Frederick, B., Stark, A., Chandler, N., Smith, M. L., Povlock, M., Davis, L. E., and Geist, E. (2019). Characteristics of successful U.S. military interventions (Report No. RR-3062-A). RAND Corporation. https://www.rand.org. “Before 1945, about 80 percent of regional objectives aimed at narrow U.S. interests and 60 percent of broad regional objectives were successfully achieved. These rates of success dropped to 50 percent and just over 30 percent in the Cold War period and less than 40 percent and 0 percent after the Cold War, respectively. The decline has been less significant for objectives that focus on more limited in-country goals. ” (p. 44-45)

[29] Kavanagh, J., Frederick, B., Stark, A., Chandler, N., Smith, M. L., Povlock, M., Davis, L. E., and Geist, E. (2019). Characteristics of successful U.S. military interventions (Report No. RR-3062-A). RAND Corporation. https://www.rand.org. “The extent to which U.S. political objectives were successfully achieved has also varied by the type of activity in which U.S. forces were primarily engaged, as shown in Figure 3.11. We focused our assessment of the relationship between activity type and objec- tives on the three primary activity types that appear most often in the data: combat or COIN, stability operations, and deterrence. Combat and COIN operations have been most successful in achieving in-country objectives and somewhat less successful when aiming at regional objectives. Stability operations have had higher rates of success on regional and global objectives interventions and similar success rates with in-country objectives when compared with combat and COIN interventions. Notably, however, stability operations have been used almost exclusively to pursue regional objectives involving narrower U.S. interests. Both combat or COIN and stability operations are more frequently successful in pursuit of narrow U.S. interests than more broadly defined interests. Finally, deterrence missions (also not used generally for norm promotion) have been highly successful at achieving in-country objectives and less successful at achieving narrowly defined U.S. objectives at the regional and global level. This is significant because about 70 percent of objectives included in deterrence missions fall into this category.” (p. 47-49) [p. 48 is a single graph]

[30] Kavanagh, J., Frederick, B., Stark, A., Chandler, N., Smith, M. L., Povlock, M., Davis, L. E., and Geist, E. (2019). Characteristics of successful U.S. military interventions (Report No. RR-3062-A). RAND Corporation. https://www.rand.org. “The extent to which political objectives were successfully achieved has also varied according to the size of the intervention, especially when we consider specific objective categories, as shown in Figure 3.12. At an aggregate level, differences in success rates have been relatively small. Large interventions have achieved about 63 percent of their political objectives, medium interventions have achieved 64 percent, and small interventions have achieved 61 percent. Looking at specific types of objectives, how- ever, reveals some more-significant differences. Small interventions appear to be most effective at achieving in-country objectives. It is likely that these objectives are narrowly defined and so can be achieved with a relatively small number of personnel. Medium and large interventions, however, appear more effective at successfully achiev- ing regional objectives that aim at narrow U.S. interests-for instance, containing communism or preventing the spread of terrorism. This makes intuitive sense, as these often more expansive objectives are more likely to require additional forces. When interpreting these trends, however, it is worth noting that a review of the specific objectives that fall into each size category generally suggests that as the scope of U.S. objectives and the challenge associated with achieving them increases, so too does the size of the intervention. This relationship may operate in either direction, with objectives expanding depending on available capabilities or forces being roughly matched to meet the objectives set.” (p. 49)

[31] Crocker, C. A. (1995). The lessons of Somalia: Not everything went wrong. Foreign Affairs, 74(3), 2-8. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20047117. “Under the protection of a U.S. military umbrella, the United Nations extricated itself from Somalia in early March 1995. The exit went well and may serve as a model for pulling U.N. peacekeepers out of the former Yugoslavia and other places where they run into trouble. But what lessons is the United States drawing from the "failed" Somalia enterprise? Is "failure" the right term to describe the U.S. and U.N. military intervention? If so, what is it that failed?” (p. 2)

[32] Crocker, C. A. (1995). The lessons of Somalia: Not everything went wrong. Foreign Affairs, 74(3), 2-8. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20047117. “United Task Force (UNITAF), December 1992–April 1993, a multinational force led by the United States and approved by the United Nations, which quickly provided that safety, started a low-key political process, and maintained working relationships with all Somali factions and groups;  U.N. Operation in Somalia II (UNOSOM II), May 1993–March 1995, the U.N.-led operation that comprised an overreaching, "nation-building" phase (May–October 1993) and a scaled-back, accommodative phase (November 1993 to March 1995) triggered by the October 3, 1993, firefight in Mogadishu.” (p. 4)

[33] Crocker, C. A. (1995). The lessons of Somalia: Not everything went wrong. Foreign Affairs, 74(3), 2-8. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20047117. “"Is it any wonder that things turned sour? Why expect a seamless transition to U.N.-led peacekeeping to flow from a rancorous argument between Washington and U.N. headquarters about whether the transfer should even take place and whether the United States had completed its initial task? Such changes of leadership, tradition, doctrine, personal chemistry, operating procedures, policy instincts, and bureaucratic systems were bound to disrupt the effectiveness and credibility of the military presence.” (p. 4-5)

[34] Crocker, C. A. (1995). The lessons of Somalia: Not everything went wrong. Foreign Affairs, 74(3), 2-8. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20047117. “The "Somalia "failure" was less a failure of either humanitarian intervention or muscular peacekeeping than a failure to apply them steadily and wisely. The failure was of another order: strategic confusion followed by a collapse of political will when the confusion led to combat casualties."” (p. 5)

[35] Recchia, S. (2018). Pragmatism over principle: US intervention and burden shifting in Somalia, 1992-1993. Journal of Strategic Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2018.1488708. “The conventional wisdom about Operation Restore Hope, the 1992 US intervention in Somalia, goes as follows: First, this was a quintessentially humanitarian mission driven by normative concerns, with no traditional US national interests involved. Second, the intervention was pushed by President George H. W. Bush, who was personally affected by the humanitarian tragedy. Third, to the extent that strategic motives influenced the decision, American leaders chose to intervene in Somalia in order to reduce pressure for US intervention in Bosnia, which they thought would involve far greater risks.”

[36] Recchia, S. (2018). Pragmatism over principle: US intervention and burden shifting in Somalia, 1992-1993. Journal of Strategic Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2018.1488708. “New evidence presented in this article raises serious questions about all three of these interpretations. First, declassified National Security Council (NSC) documents indicate that the deployment of US troops to Somalia was not driven primarily by humanitarian considerations. Instead, high-ranking Bush administration officials were motivated by pragmatic concerns: senior American generals, in particular, worried that because of prior US actions, if the small United Nations Operation in Somalia (known as UNOSOM) imploded under attacks from hostile militias, US troops might have to be brought in to extract the UN peacekeepers. The United States might then be left with primary responsibility for dealing with the famine and civil war, without a clear exit strategy. The generals viewed an immediate US intervention aimed at restoring a modicum of stability, followed by a handoff to a strengthened UN mission, as a preferable alternative. Second, the Somalia intervention was not pushed by President Bush; instead, it was recommended and indeed conceived by the US military under the leadership of General Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Third, the documents indicate that Bush initially envisioned Restore Hope as a short-term operation of only a few weeks. But such a temporally limited operation would have done little to diminish pressure for US intervention in Bosnia–hence, the Somalia-for-Bosnia argument is problematic.” (p. 2)

[37] Recchia, S. (2018). Pragmatism over principle: US intervention and burden shifting in Somalia, 1992-1993. Journal of Strategic Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2018.1488708. “In November 1992, UNOSOM was under siege, while tens of thousands of Somalis remained at risk of starvation. General Powell thus recommended a massive but temporally limited US intervention under national command to facilitate the delivery of relief supplies and prevent a wholesale collapse of the UN mission. The JCS expected that this would (a) allow the United States to retain the initiative, minimising the risk to American forces, and (b) offer the UN the necessary breathing space to assemble a larger and more capable peacekeeping force that would take over as soon as possible. Powell persuaded Bush that this would be a low-risk course of action. Consequently, Bush launched a large-scale US intervention that reflected the military’s preferences in December 1992. In the short run, Operation Restore Hope was able to somewhat stabilise the situation and drastically reduce civilian deaths. But the transfer to UN troops, formally completed in May 1993, was implemented too hastily: it was driven by a political timetable in Washington more than by progress on the ground, and US forces withdrew before the follow-on UN mission (UNOSOM II) was fully staffed. To complicate matters, UNOSOM II’s ambitious new enforcement mandate drew the ire of Somali warlords, resulting in frequent attacks on the peacekeepers and increasingly turning the UN into a belligerent in the country’s civil war.” (p. 2)

[38] Recchia, S. (2018). Pragmatism over principle: US intervention and burden shifting in Somalia, 1992-1993. Journal of Strategic Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2018.1488708. “During the summer of 1993, US combat troops went back into Somalia to support the UN in its pursuit of hostile militia leaders. The mission ended in failure after 13 American soldiers were killed during the infamous "Black Hawk down" incident in October, which led first US and then also UN authorities to mandate a scaled withdrawal of all international forces.” (p. 2-3)

[39] Recchia, S. (2018). Pragmatism over principle: US intervention and burden shifting in Somalia, 1992-1993. Journal of Strategic Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2018.1488708. “On 29 January 1993, General Johnston, under pressure from authorities in Washington, declared that US troops had accomplished their mission and recommended a transition to UNOSOM II – significantly earlier than the original CENTCOM plans had foreseen. Boutros‑Ghali, however, repeatedly delayed the transfer to UNOSOM II, insisting that the conditions were not yet right. In a 3 March report to the Security Council, the UN secretary‑general pointed out that the security situation remained volatile; for that reason, he recommended a robust mandate for the follow‑on mission that ought to "include disarmament." Serious planning for the transfer could begin only after the Security Council accepted this recommendation in Resolution 814 of 26 March.” (p.18)

[40] Recchia, S. (2018). Pragmatism over principle: US intervention and burden shifting in Somalia, 1992-1993. Journal of Strategic Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2018.1488708. “The transfer finally occurred on 4 May, when UNOSOM II took over and Operation Restore Hope was terminated. Yet the deployment of the strengthened UN peacekeeping force was still far from complete: at the time of the transfer, UNOSOM II comprised only about 16,000 troops – significantly short of its authorised strength of 28,000. Furthermore, the mandate for UNOSOM II, enshrined in Resolution 814, included disarming the Somali factions, as requested by Boutros‑Ghali; but this put the UN troops on a path of collision with Aideed, the most recalcitrant of Somalia’s warlords.  After 24 Pakistani peacekeepers were killed in an ambush by Aideed’s militia in June 1993, UNOSOM II began to request frequent support from the QRF, and US forces became engaged in a manhunt for Aideed. In August, lobbying by Admiral Howe, who had been appointed as the UN’s new special envoy for Somalia, persuaded the Clinton administration to deploy US Army Rangers and Delta Force commandos to the country, resulting in a further escalation of the violence. In short, far from achieving a smooth handoff, American troops were increasingly drawn back in to support a mission that was now largely defined at UN headquarters in New York.  Things came to a head on 3 October 1993, when Somali militias shot down a US Black Hawk helicopter, Rangers sent on a rescue mission were ambushed, and 18 US soldiers died in the ensuing firefight. A few days after the "Black Hawk down" incident, President Clinton, under strong pressure from Congress, announced that he would pull all US troops out of Somalia over a 5‑month period. The hunt for Aideed was effectively over, and the UNSC formally suspended all efforts to apprehend Somali militia leaders. Without American support, the UN mission was no longer viable, and Boutros‑Ghali concluded that all UN forces should be withdrawn by the spring of 1995.” (p. 19)

[41] Recchia, S. (2018). Pragmatism over principle: US intervention and burden shifting in Somalia, 1992-1993. Journal of Strategic Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2018.1488708. “Because coalition forces in Operation Restore Hope declined to take on politically sensitive tasks, by the time of the handoff in May 1993, many of the underlying sources of the conflict continued to persist. "The US military's view was, we'll accomplish our limited military objectives and be done," explains Colonel William Flavin, who was involved in planning for Restore Hope. By contrast, today, partially as a result of the experience in Somalia, "the question you ask is, how are those military objectives nested inside the overall political-military objective?"” (p. 21)

[42] Recchia, S. (2018). Pragmatism over principle: US intervention and burden shifting in Somalia, 1992-1993. Journal of Strategic Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2018.1488708. “Finally, the US military learned from Somalia that the United States should obtain clearer commitments from relevant multilateral bodies that there will indeed be a rapid handoff to adequately equipped follow-on missions. Disagreement between UN and US authorities on the objectives of Operation Restore Hope (notably, on the subject of disarming the militias) in late 1992 made Boutros‑Ghali and his staff reluctant to firmly commit to a UN handoff, and it subsequently hampered planning for the transition. On the day before American forces landed in Somalia, Boutros‑Ghali had insisted in a letter to President Bush that without disarmament of the factions, he did "not believe that it will be possible… to create conditions in which… the task of protecting humanitarian activities can safely be transferred" to UN peacekeepers. After Bush declined to make disarmament part of the US‑led mission, the UN secretary general repeatedly delayed the transfer – until the Americans accepted in UNSC Resolution 814 that disarming the militias would be part of the mandate for UNOSOM II, with a beefed‑up US QRF to support it.” (p. 21-22)

[43] White House. (2026, April 1). President Trump’s clear and unchanging objectives drive decisive success against Iranian regime [Press release]. https://www.whitehouse.gov. “From day one, the objectives have been clear: obliterate Iran’s missiles and production, annihilate its navy, sever its support for terrorist proxies, and ensure it never acquires a nuclear weapon.”

[44] Office of the Press Secretary. (2015, March 25). Statement by NSC Spokesperson Bernadette Meehan on the situation in Yemen [Press release]. The White House. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov. “The United States has been in close contact with President Hadi and our regional partners. In response to the deteriorating security situation, Saudi Arabia, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members, and others will undertake military action to defend Saudi Arabia’s border and to protect Yemen’s legitimate government. As announced by GCC members earlier tonight, they are taking this action at the request of Yemeni President Abdo Rabbo Mansour Hadi.”

[45] Office of the Press Secretary. (2015, March 25). Statement by NSC Spokesperson Bernadette Meehan on the situation in Yemen [Press release]. The White House. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov. “The United States has been in close contact with President Hadi and our regional partners. In response to the deteriorating security situation, Saudi Arabia, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members, and others will undertake military action to defend Saudi Arabia’s border and to protect Yemen’s legitimate government. As announced by GCC members earlier tonight, they are taking this action at the request of Yemeni President Abdo Rabbo Mansour Hadi.”

[46] Bush, G. W. (2002, October 16). Remarks on signing the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002. Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, 38(42), 1777-1779. U.S. Government Publishing Office. https://www.gpo.gov. “The resolution I'm about to sign symbolizes the united purpose of our Nation, expresses the considered judgment of the Congress, and marks an important event in the life of America. The 107th Congress is one of the few called by history to authorize military action to defend our country and the cause of peace.”

[47] Bush, G. W. (2002, October 16). Remarks on signing the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002. Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, 38(42), 1777-1779. U.S. Government Publishing Office. https://www.gpo.gov.

 “With this resolution, Congress has now authorized the use of force. I have not ordered the use of force. I hope the use of force will not become necessary. Yet, confronting the threat posed by Iraq is necessary, by whatever means that requires. Either the Iraqi regime will give up its weapons of mass destruction, or for the sake of peace, the United States will lead a global coalition to disarm that regime. If any doubt our Nation's resolve, our determination, they would be unwise to test it. The Iraqi regime is a serious and growing threat to peace. On the commands of a dictator, the regime is armed with biological and chemical weapons, possesses ballistic missiles, promotes international terror, and seeks nuclear weapons. The same dictator has a history of mass murder, of striking other nations without warning, of intense hatred for America, and of contempt for the demands of the civilized world. If Iraq gains even greater destructive power, nations in the Middle East would face blackmail, intimidation, or attack. Chaos in that region would be felt in Europe and beyond. And Iraq's combination of weapons of mass destruction and ties to terrorist groups and ballistic missiles would threaten the peace and security of many nations. Those who choose to live in denial may eventually be forced to live in fear. Every nation that shares in the benefits of peace also shares in the duty of defending the peace. The time has arrived once again for the United Nations to live up to the purposes of its founding to protect our common security. The time has arrived once again for free nations to face up to our global responsibilities and confront a gathering danger.”

[48] Bush, G. W. (2002, October 16). Remarks on signing the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002. Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, 38(42), 1777-1779. U.S. Government Publishing Office. https://www.gpo.gov.

“Our goal is not merely to limit Iraq's violations of Security Council resolutions or to slow down its weapons program. Our goal is to fully and finally remove a real threat to world peace and to America. Hopefully, this can be done peacefully. Hopefully, we can do this without any military action. Yet, if Iraq is to avoid military action by the international community, it has the obligation to prove compliance with all the world's demands. It's the obligation of Iraq. Compliance will begin with an accurate and full and complete accounting for all chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons materials, as well as missiles and other means of delivery anywhere in Iraq. Failure to make such an accounting would be a further indication of the regime's bad faith and aggressive intent. Inspectors must have access to any site in Iraq at any time, without preclearance, without delay, without exceptions. Inspectors must be permitted to operate under new, effective rules. And the Iraqi regime must accept those rules without qualification or negotiation. To ensure that we learn the truth, the regime must allow witnesses to its illegal activities to be interviewed outside of the country. These witnesses must be free to bring their entire families with them, so they're beyond the reach of Saddam Hussein's terror, Saddam Hussein's torture, Saddam Hussein's murder. In addition to declaring and destroying all of its weapons of mass destruction, Iraq, in accordance with U.N. Security Council demands, must end its support for terrorism. As the U.N. demands, Iraq must cease the persecution of its civilian population. As the U.N. demands, Iraq must stop all illicit trade outside the oil-for-food program. Iraq must also release or account for all Gulf war personnel, including an American pilot whose fate is still unknown.

[49] Bush, G. W. (2002, October 16). Remarks on signing the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002. Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, 38(42), 1777-1779. U.S. Government Publishing Office. https://www.gpo.gov.

“When Iraq has a government committed to the freedom and well-being of its people, America, along with many other nations, will share a responsibility to help Iraq reform and prosper. And we will meet our responsibilities. That's our pledge to the Iraqi people.”

[50] Bush, G. W. (2001, September 20). Address to a joint session of Congress on the subject of the war on terrorism [Historical highlight]. U.S. House of Representatives History, Art and Archives. https://history.house.gov. “With a nation still reeling from the attacks on September 11, 2001, President Bush spoke, not just to American citizens, but to a global audience. “Our grief has turned to anger; and anger to resolution. Whether we bring our enemies to justice, or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done,” he declared. During his speech, the President demanded that the Taliban regime in Afghanistan surrender all leaders of Al-Qaeda to the United States, protect foreign nationals working in Afghanistan, release foreigners unjustly imprisoned, and close terrorist training camps. ”

[51] U.S. Department of State. (1999, March 26). U.S. and NATO objectives and interests in Kosovo [Fact sheet]. https://2001-2009.state.gov

[52] Bush, G. H. W. (1992, December 10). Letter to congressional leaders on the situation in Somalia. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George H. W. Bush (1992-1993, Book II) (pp. 2179-2180). U.S. Government Publishing Office. https://www.gpo.gov. “On November 29, 1992, the Secretary General of the United Nations reported to the Security Council that the deteriorating security conditions in Somalia had severely disrupted international relief efforts and that an immediate military operation under U.N. authority was urgently required. On December 3, the Security Council adopted Resolution 794, which determined that the situation in Somalia constituted a threat to international peace and security, and, invoking Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, authorized Member States to use all necessary means to establish a secure environment for humanitarian relief operations in Somalia. In my judgment, the deployment of U.S. Armed Forces under U.S. command to Somalia as part of this multilateral response to the Resolution is necessary to address a major humanitarian calamity, avert related threats to international peace and [[Page 2180]] security, and protect the safety of Americans and others engaged in relief operations. In the evening, Eastern Standard Time, on December 8, 1992, U.S. Armed Forces entered Somalia to secure the airfield and port facility of Mogadishu. Other elements of the U.S. Armed Forces and the Armed Forces of other Members of the United Nations are being introduced into Somalia to achieve the objectives of U.N. Security Council Resolution 794. No organized resistance has been encountered to date. U.S. Armed Forces will remain in Somalia only as long as necessary to establish a secure environment for humanitarian relief operations and will then turn over the responsibility of maintaining this environment to a U.N. peacekeeping force assigned to Somalia. Over 15 nations have already offered to deploy troops. While it is not possible to estimate precisely how long the transfer of responsibility may take, we believe that prolonged operations will not be necessary. We do not intend that U.S. Armed Forces deployed to Somalia become involved in hostilities. Nonetheless, these forces are equipped and ready to take such measures as may be needed to accomplish their humanitarian mission and defend themselves, if necessary; they also will have the support of any additional U.S. Armed Forces necessary to ensure their safety and the accomplishment of their mission.”

[53] Bush, G. H. W. (1990, August 20). National Security Directive 45: U.S. policy in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait [Memorandum]. The White House. https://irp.fas.org/offdocs/nsd/nsd_45.htm. “U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf are vital to the national security. These interests include access to oil and the security and stability of key friendly states in the region. The United States will defend its vital interests in the area, through the use of U.S. military force if necessary and appropriate, against any power with interests inimical to our own. The United States also will support the individual and collective self-defense of friendly countries in the area to enable them to play a more active role in their own defense. The United States will encourage the effective expressions of support and the participation of our allies and other friendly states to promote our mutual interests in the Persian Gulf region. (S) On Thursday, August 2, 1990 the government of Iraq, without provocation or warning, invaded and occupied the State of Kuwait, thereby placing these vital U.S. interests at risk. Four principles will guide U.S. policy during this crisis: (S) -- the immediate, complete, and unconditional withdrawal of all Iraqi forces from Kuwait; (S) -- the restoration of Kuwait's legitimate government to replace the puppet regime installed by Iraq; (S) -- a commitment to the security and stability of the Persian Gulf; and, (S) -- the protection of the lives of American citizens abroad. (S) To meet these principles and to bring the crisis to an immediate, peaceful, and just end, I hereby direct that the following diplomatic, economic, energy and military measures be undertaken.”

[54] Bundy, M. (1961, May 11). National Security Action Memorandum No. 52: U.S. objective and concept of operations in South Vietnam [Memorandum]. The White House. https://history.state.gov. "The U.S. objective and concept of operations stated in the report are approved: to prevent Communist domination of South Vietnam; to create in that country a viable and increasingly democratic society, and to initiate, on an accelerated basis, a series of mutually supporting actions of a military, political, economic, psychological and covert character designed to achieve this objective.”

[55] National Security Council. (1950, September 9). Report by the National Security Council to the President: United States courses of action with respect to Korea (NSC 81/1). Executive Secretariat Files. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1950v07. “4. The political objective of the United Nations in Korea is to bring about the complete independence and unity of Korea in accordance with the General Assembly resolutions of November 14, 1947, December 12, 1948, and October 21, 1949.”

[56] National Security Council. (1950, September 9). Report by the National Security Council to the President: United States courses of action with respect to Korea (NSC 81/1). Executive Secretariat Files. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1950v07. “6. As U.N. forces succeed in stabilizing the front, driving back the North Korean forces, and approaching the 38th parallel, the decisions and actions taken by the United States and other U.N. members which are supporting the Security Council resolutions, and those taken by the Kremlin, will determine whether hostilities are confined to operations against the North Koreans or spread so that the danger of a third world war is greatly increased.”

[57] National Security Council. (1950, September 9). Report by the National Security Council to the President: United States courses of action with respect to Korea (NSC 81/1). Executive Secretariat Files. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1950v07. “11. The U.N. forces are clearly committed by the Security Council resolutions to compel the withdrawal of the North Korean forces behind the 38th parallel and there is a clear legal basis for taking such military actions north of the 38th parallel as are necessary in accomplishing this mission.”

[58] National Security Council. (1950, September 9). Report by the National Security Council to the President: United States courses of action with respect to Korea (NSC 81/1). Executive Secretariat Files. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1950v07. “13. Soviet domination of North Korea has brought with it the pattern of police and propaganda control well known throughout the Soviet world. Since the existence and stability of a unified Korea must in the long run depend largely upon the Korean people themselves, the tasks of the United Nations will include the reorientation of the North Korean people toward the outlook of free peoples who accept the standards of international behavior set forth in the United Nations Charter.”

[59] National Security Council. (1950, September 9). Report by the National Security Council to the President: United States courses of action with respect to Korea (NSC 81/1). Executive Secretariat Files. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1950v07. “16. Concurrently the Joint Chiefs of Staff should be authorized to direct the Commander of the U.N. forces in Korea to make plans for the possible occupation of North Korea. However, the execution of such plans should take place only with the explicit approval of the President of the United States, and would be dependent upon prior consultation with and the approval of members of the U.N.”

[60] National Security Council. (1950, September 9). Report by the National Security Council to the President: United States courses of action with respect to Korea (NSC 81/1). Executive Secretariat Files. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1950v07. “22. In order to effect the reorientation of the North Korean people, to cause defection of enemy troops in the field, and to train North Korean personnel to participate in activities looking to unification of the country, the following steps would be appropriate: a. Establish the principle that the treatment of POW’s, after their transfer to places of internment, shall be directed toward their exploitation, training and use for psychological warfare purposes, and for the tasks specified above. b. Set up immediately on a pilot-plant scale an interrogation, indoctrination and training center for those POW’s now in our hands in Korea. Personnel in charge of this project must be selected with the greatest care, taking into consideration Korean or Far Eastern experience, language qualifications, and temperamental aptitude. Full advantage should be taken of World War II experience in the indoctrination of German and Japanese prisoners of war, of experiences in Greece, and of recent experience with escaped Soviet detainees.”

[61] National Security Council. (1950, September 9). Report by the National Security Council to the President: United States courses of action with respect to Korea (NSC 81/1). Executive Secretariat Files. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1950v07. “23. In preparation for the possible eventual retreat or sudden collapse of North Korean forces, the United States should immediately discuss with certain friendly members of the United Nations the terms to be offered the North Korean forces…If the terms offered are not accepted, the U.N. Commander should continue his efforts to destroy as many of the enemy as possible before they retreat across the 38th parallel and only if so directed should continue operations north of the 38th parallel with major forces for the purpose of occupying North Korea.”

[62] National Security Council. (1950, September 9). Report by the National Security Council to the President: United States courses of action with respect to Korea (NSC 81/1). Executive Secretariat Files. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1950v07. 24. “If operations are undertaken to occupy northern Korea, the United Nations Commander should, in consultation with the Government of the R.O.K., determine the timing and method of subjecting occupied territory north of the 38th parallel to its jurisdiction. He should forbid, as commander of the U.N. forces, reprisals against the forces, officials, and populace of North Korea, except in accordance with international law, and take such measures as are within his power to secure compliance with this directive.”

[63] National Security Council. (1950, September 9). Report by the National Security Council to the President: United States courses of action with respect to Korea (NSC 81/1). Executive Secretariat Files. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1950v07. “27. The United States should recognize that the Government of the R.O.K. will have to take strong measures against Communist efforts to cause trouble in Korea and that it may require support in these measures from the United States. At the same time, the United States should recognize that social and economic reforms will be necessary in order to reduce the Communist menace to manageable proportions. The Government of the R.O.K. should be re-established in Seoul and recognized as the only lawful government in Korea and should be consulted on problems arising in connection with the unification of Korea. That Government should be expected to exercise its powers with full regard to the desirability of eliminating the spirit of vengeance.”

[64] National Security Council. (1950, September 9). Report by the National Security Council to the President: United States courses of action with respect to Korea (NSC 81/1). Executive Secretariat Files. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1950v07. “31. The United States should urge that U.N. forces be retained in Korea until and only until a unified and independent state has been firmly established and should be prepared to make available United States forces as a contingent of the U.N. forces for the purpose of deterring renewed aggression or internal strife.”

[65] United Nations Security Council. (1992, December 3). Resolution 794 (1992) (S/RES/794). https://www.un.org/securitycouncil/content/resolutions. “Sharing the Secretary-General's assessment that the situation in Somalia is intolerable and that it has become necessary to review the basic premises and principles of the United Nations effort in Somalia, and that UNOSOM's existing course would not in present circumstances be an adequate response to the tragedy in Somalia,  Determined to establish as soon as possible the necessary conditions for the delivery of humanitarian assistance wherever needed in Somalia, in conformity with resolutions 751 (1992) and 767 (1992),  Noting the offer by Member States aimed at establishing a secure environment for humanitarian relief operations in Somalia as soon as possible,  Determined further to restore peace, stability and law and order with a view to facilitating the process of a political settlement under the auspices of the United Nations, aimed at national reconciliation in Somalia, and encouraging the Secretary-General and his Special Representative to continue and intensify their work at the national and regional levels to promote these objectives,” (p. 2)

[66] United Nations Security Council. (1992, December 3). Resolution 794 (1992) (S/RES/794). https://www.un.org/securitycouncil/content/resolutions. “2. Demands that all parties, movements and factions in Somalia take all measures necessary to facilitate the efforts of the United Nations, its specialized agencies and humanitarian organizations to provide urgent humanitarian assistance to the affected population in Somalia;  3. Also demands that all parties, movements and factions in Somalia take all measures necessary to ensure the safety of United Nations and all other personnel engaged in the delivery of humanitarian assistance, including the military forces to be established pursuant to the authorization given in paragraph 10 below;  4. Further demands that all parties, movements and factions in Somalia immediately cease and desist from all breaches of international humanitarian law including from actions such as those described above;  5. Strongly condemns all violations of international humanitarian law occurring in Somalia, including in particular the deliberate impeding of the delivery of food and medical supplies essential for the survival of the civilian population, and affirms that those who commit or order the commission of such acts will be held individually responsible in respect of such acts;  6. Decides that the operations and the further deployment of the 3,500 personnel of the United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM) authorized by 

paragraph 3 of resolution 775 (1992) should proceed at the discretion of the Secretary-General in the light of his assessment of conditions on the ground; and requests him to keep the Council informed and to make such recommendations as may be appropriate for the fulfilment of its mandate where conditions permit;” (p. 3)

[67] Cumings, B. (2010). The Korean War: A history. Modern Library. “The quick and virtually complete collapse of resistance in the South energized the United States to enter the war in force. Secretary of State Dean Acheson dominated the decision making, which soon committed American air and ground forces to the fight. On the night of June 24 (Washington time), Acheson decided to take the Korean question to the UN, before he had notified President Truman of the fighting; he then told Truman there was no need to have him back in Washington until the next day. At emergency White House meetings on the evening of June 25, Acheson argued for increased military aid to the ROK, U.S. Air Force cover for the evacuation of Americans, and the interposition of the Seventh Fleet between Taiwan and the China mainland-thus obviating a Communist invasion of the island, dividing China and leaving Taiwan governed by the Republic of China even today. On the afternoon of June 26 Acheson labored alone on the fundamental decisions committing American air and naval power to the Korean War, which were approved by the White House that evening. Thus the decision to intervene in force was Acheson’s decision, supported by the president but taken before United Nations, Pentagon, or congressional approval. His reasoning had little to do with Korea’s strategic value, and everything to do with American prestige and political economy: “prestige is the shadow cast by power,” he once said, and the North Koreans had challenged it; American credibility was therefore at stake. South Korea was also essential to Japan’s industrial revival, Acheson thought, as part of his “great crescent” strategy linking northeast Asia with the Middle East (and which we discuss later on).” (p. 24-25)

[68] Cumings, B. (2010). The Korean War: A history. Modern Library. “The point to remember is that this was a civil war35 and, as a British diplomat once said, “every country has a right to have its War of the Roses.” The true tragedy was not the war itself, for a civil conflict purely among Koreans might have resolved the extraordinary tensions generated by colonialism, national division, and foreign intervention. The tragedy was that the war solved nothing: only the status quo ante was restored, only a cease-fire held the peace.x” (p. 46)

[69] Cumings, B. (2010). The Korean War: A history. Modern Library. “Stokes happened to have been right: the longevity of this conflict finds its reason in the essential nature of the war, the thing we need to know first: it was a civil war, a war fought primarily by Koreans from conflicting social systems, for Korean goals. It did not last three years, but had a beginning in 1932, and has never ended. In the early 1970s, when the Vietnam War was clearly lost, even an anti-Communist scholar such as Adam Ulam (who in the 1990s called Korea “Stalin’s war”) could reflect that the North’s attack across the 38th parallel was no different than Mao’s legions crossing the Yangtze River into south China,8 and we can add Hanoi’s regular armies roaring out of the central highlands in 1975: the civil wars in China and Vietnam ended with infantry invasions-and Korea would have, too, if we think of June 1950 as an end to decades of intra-Korean conflict, a dénouement instead of a beginning.” (p. 69)

[70] Cumings, B. (2010). The Korean War: A history. Modern Library. “t also presumes to demarcate the period of active American involvement; before June 1950, it is Syngman Rhee against Kim Il Sung backed or controlled by Stalin and/or Mao; after July 1953, it is Rhee against the same people, his fledgling republic ever under threat. This construction focuses the bright glare of our attention on the question of who started the war, on the presupposition that the correct answer to this question furnishes answers to all the other questions. What is highlighted here obscures all that went before and all that came after, placing it in the shadows of irrelevance. In this manner a wrongly conceived and never-known civil conflict disappears before our very eyes, as an American construction that only an American would believe; but American amour propre remains firmly intact. The American focus on “who started it” is a political and often an ideological position, a point of honor that abstracts from and makes easy and comprehensible the politically shaped verdicts that began with Washington’s official story on June 25, 1950. The Korean War was (and is) a civil war; only this conception can account for the 100,000 lives lost in the South before June 1950 and the continuity of the conflict down to the present, in spite of assumptions that Moscow’s puppets in Pyongyang would surely collapse after the USSR itself met oblivion in 1991.” (p. 70)

[71] Cumings, B. (2010). The Korean War: A history. Modern Library. “Not many writers were better or more perspicacious guides to the George W. Bush administration and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan than Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker. He recently wrote that two of our five big wars since 1945 were good ones-Korea and the Gulf War (1991)-because they were “legitimate in their origins” and “scrupulous in their execution.” Both were fought “in response to armed aggression across international borders,” and in both American leaders “resisted powerful political pressures to expand its objective to include the destruction and conquest of the regime responsible for the original aggression.” 15 The reader can judge how well these generalizations hold up as this book unfolds. Acheson’s Press Club speech was the opposite of an ill-considered gaffe: instead it unlocks key aspects of U.S. policy toward Korea before the war. Why did he not include Korea in his perimeter? The best answer is that Acheson “wanted to keep secret the American commitment to Korea’s defense.”16 Acheson implied that should an attack come there, the United States would take the problem to the UN Security Council-which is what Dean Rusk had secretly recommended to him nearly a year before the war, in July 1949, and exactly what Acheson did when the war erupted. In the many drafts leading up to this speech, South Korea was consistently seen as a direct American responsibility, along with Japan. But Acheson did not want to say this publicly, lest Syngman Rhee be emboldened to start a war; that is also why he blocked tanks and an air force for the ROK. Interestingly, when the North Koreans commented on this speech they had South Korea included in the defense perimeter. Why? Because for weeks there was no official transcript of the speech, and the North Koreans probably read The New York Times-which in the Sunday “Week in Review” section after the speech also had Korea included in the defense line. In the end it all worked beautifully for Acheson, who was seeking ambiguity and trying to keep both the Communists and volatile allies such as Syngman Rhee and Chiang Kai-shek guessing about what the United States would do if South Korea or Taiwan were attacked. The British War Office said in a December 1949 estimate that the Northern forces would have little difficulty in winning a war-and “on the question of aggression,” there can be “no doubt whatever that their ultimate object is to overrun the South.” The Americans had thought that the South could defend itself, the War Office said, but recently “they have been coming round to our way of thinking.” This was an accurate reflection of Acheson’s suppositions. As for Stalin, thanks to Kim Philby and other spies he was reading Acheson’s secrets with his breakfast, and had no reason to pay attention to speeches for public consumption.” (p. 74-75)

[72] Cumings, B. (2010). The Korean War: A history. Modern Library. “The United States, however, pursued a civil-war deterrent in Korea, hoping to restrain both the enemy and the ally; it therefore refused to equip this army with heavy weaponry that could be used to support an invasion of the North, such as tanks and an air force, and tried to keep hotheaded Southern commanders from provoking conflict along the 38th parallel. They did not succeed in the latter case; much of the extensive fighting along the border that lasted from May to December 1949 was said by internal American accounts to have been started by Southern forces, and was a major reason for the posting of UN military observers in Korea in 1950-to watch both the North and the South. Although the South launched many small raids across the parallel before the summer of 1949, with the North happy to reciprocate, the important border battles began at Kaesong on May 4, 1949, in an engagement that the South started. It lasted about four days and took an official toll of four hundred North Korean and twenty-two South Korean soldiers, as well as upward of a hundred civilian deaths in Kaesong, according to American and South Korean figures.38 The South committed six infantry companies and several battalions, and two of its companies defected to the North (incongruous in their American military uniforms, Pyongyang made quick propaganda use of them). Months later, based on the defectors’ testimony, the North Koreans claimed that several thousand troops led by Kim Sok-won attacked across the parallel on the morning of May 4, near Mount Songak, inaugurating border fighting that lasted for six months. 39 Kim was the commander of the critically important 1st Division; he was also from northern Korea and, as we have seen, had tracked Kim Il Sung at Japan’s behest in the Manchurian wilderness in the late 1930s. Syngman Rhee came to rely on Kim and a small core of Manchurian officers after coming to power in 1948, mainly those who had experience in Japanese counterinsurgency. A few weeks after the Kaesong battle, Kim Sok-won gave the United Nations Commission on Korea (UNCOK) a briefing in his status as commander of ROKA forces along the 38th parallel: North and South “may engage in major battles at any moment,” he said; Korea has entered into “a state of warfare.” “We should have a program to recover our lost land, North Korea, by breaking through the 38th border which has existed since 1945”; the moment of major battles, Kim told UNCOK, is rapidly approaching.” (p. 134-135)

[73] Cumings, B. (2010). The Korean War: A history. Modern Library. “In 1949–50 Syngman Rhee also tried mightily to get elements of the Truman administration (especially in the intelligence agencies and the Pentagon) to back an invasion of the North, but through the intervention and multiple visits to Seoul by his patron M. Preston Goodfellow, Rhee was told that Washington would not come to the aid of his regime unless it were attacked without provocation. Goodfellow returned from Seoul in December 1949 and had discussions with the Chinese nationalist ambassador; the momentum for attack had shifted, Goodfellow told him: … it was the South Koreans anxious to go into N.K., because they were feeling sharp with their army of well-trained 100,000 strong [sic]. But U.S. Govt was most anxious to restrain any provocation by the S.K. and Goodfellow had gone there lately to do just that. I asked how great was the possibility or danger of war breaking out in Korea. Goodfellow: said U.S. Govt. position is this: avoid any initiative on S. Korea’s part in attacking N.K., but if N.K. should invade S.K. then S.K. should resist and march right into N.K. with III World War as the result but in such a case, the aggression came from N.K. and the American people would understand it.48 By the end of May 1950 Rhee’s government was in total disarray, having lost many seats in an election for the legislature, and with devastating internal squabbles between different factions in the forces of order. The Korean ambassador to the United States, Chang Myon, made American officials aware of this crisis-which was the main reason John Foster Dulles decided to visit Seoul one week before the conventional war began.” (p. 140)

[74] Cumings, B. (2010). The Korean War: A history. Modern Library. “Korea was a critical presence in American policy at the dawn of the Cold War. As we have seen, the Truman administration identified its stake in Korea in the same “fifteen weeks” in which the containment doctrine and the Marshall Plan were hammered out. Dean Acheson, then undersecretary of state, and George Marshall, the new secretary of state, reoriented American policy away from the Pentagon’s idea that the Korean peninsula had no strategic significance, toward seeing its value in the context of rebuilding the Japanese economy and applying the containment doctrine to South Korea-in George Kennan’s original, limited meaning of using economic and military aid and the resources of the United Nations to prop up nations threatened by communism. It was at this time, in early 1947, that Washington finally got control of Korea policy from the Pentagon and the occupation; the effect was essentially to ratify the de facto containment policies against the Korean left wing that the occupation had been following since September 1945. George Marshall, as we saw, told Acheson in late January to draft a plan to connect a separate South Korea with Japan’s economy, and a few months later Secretary of the Army William Draper said that Japanese influence would again develop in Korea, “since Korea and Japan form a natural area for trade and commerce.” 2 Around the same time Acheson remarked in secret Senate testimony that the United States had drawn the line in Korea, and sought funding for a major program to turn back communism there on the model of “Truman Doctrine” aid to Greece and Turkey.” (p. 192-193)

[75] Cumings, B. (2010). The Korean War: A history. Modern Library. “So Kim Il Sung attacked in June 1950, hoping to unify Korea, and quickly dispatched the Southern army and government. That led the United States to intervene to reestablish the Republic of Korea, essentially under a containment doctrine commitment that was three years old by then. That goal was nearly accomplished in late September, three months into the war, but in the meantime Truman and Acheson had decided to roll back the Northern regime as part of a general offensive against communism, exemplified by NSC 68 in April 1950. The defeat of American and allied forces in North Korea by Chinese and Korean peasant armies in the early winter of 1950 caused the worst crisis in U.S. foreign relations between 1945 and the Cuban Missile Crisis, led Truman to declare a national emergency, and essentially “demolished” the Truman administration (as Acheson put it)-Truman could have run again in 1952, but like Lyndon Johnson confronted by another impending defeat in 1968, he chose not to do so.” (p. 193)

[76] Cumings, B. (2010). The Korean War: A history. Modern Library. “The Korean War was the crisis that, in Acheson’s subsequent words, “came along and saved us”; by that he meant that it enabled the final approval of NSC 68 and passage through Congress of a quadrupling of American defense spending. More than that, it was this war and not World War II that occasioned the enormous foreign military base structure and the domestic military-industrial complex to service it and which has come to define the sinews of American global power ever since. Less obviously, the failure of the Korean rollback created a centrist coalition behind containment that lasted down to the end of the Cold War. This consensus deeply shaped how the Vietnam War was fought (no invasion of the North), evolved into the stalemate in the 1980s between those who wanted to contain Nicaragua’s Sandinista regime and those who wanted to overthrow it, and governed the 1991 decision to throw Saddam Hussein’s army out of Kuwait, but not to march on Baghdad…These two Korean wars-the victory for Kennan-style containment, and the defeat of Acheson’s rollback-reestablished the two Korean states and created a tense but essentially stable deterrent situation on the peninsula that has lasted ever since; the DMZ, Panmunjom, two huge Korean armies, and other artifacts of this war (even the United Nations Command) are still standing today as museums of this distant conflict. Both Koreas became garrison states and the North remains perhaps the most amazing garrison state in the world, with more than a million people under arms and young men and women both serving long terms in the military. The South suffered through three decades of military dictatorship while building a strong economy, and after a political breakthrough in the 1990s is both a flourishing democracy and the tenth-largest industrial economy. There are many other effects that this hot war had on the two Koreas, but the impact of the war on the United States was determining as well. ” (p. 194)

[77] Cumings, B. (2010). The Korean War: A history. Modern Library. “Kennan’s 1947 strategy-five advanced industrial structures exist in the world, we have four, Moscow has one, containment means keeping things that way-might have sufficed to achieve the critical goal of reviving Western and Japanese industry. NSC 68 defined a new global strategy, but it was really NSC 48 that cast the die in the Pacific: the United States would now do something utterly unimagined at the end of World War II: it would prepare to intervene militarily against anticolonial movements in East Asia-first Korea, then Vietnam, with the Chinese revolution as the towering backdrop. The complexities of this turning point have been analyzed and documented by historians, but they remain largely unplumbed, even today, among experts on foreign affairs, political scientists, journalists, and pundits, because their work places far too much weight on realpolitik and the bipolar rivalry with Moscow, and relegates the two biggest wars of the period to the shadows of global concerns.” (p. 197)

[78] Cumings, B. (2010). The Korean War: A history. Modern Library. “Ever since the publication of the “open door notes” in 1900 amid an imperial scramble for Chinese real estate, Washington’s ultimate goal had always been unimpeded access to the East Asian region; it wanted native governments strong enough to maintain independence but not strong enough to throw off Western influence. The emergence of anti-colonial regimes in Korea, China, and Vietnam negated that goal, and so American planners forged a second-best world that divided Asia for a generation.” (p. 198)

[79] Cumings, B. (2010). The Korean War: A history. Modern Library. “So we need another verdict: a split decision-the first Korean War, the war for the south in the summer of 1950, was a success. The second war, the war for the north, was a failure. Secretary of State Dean Acheson produced this schizophrenic epitaph: the decision to defend South Korea was the finest hour of the Truman presidency; the decision to march to the Yalu occasioned “an incalculable defeat to U.S. foreign policy and destroyed the Truman administration”; this was “the worst defeat … since Bull Run.” However, Acheson assumed that the latter happened not to him but to his bête noire: he squares the circle by blaming it all on MacArthur, and liberal historiography has squared the circle in the same way. The Korean War happened during the height of the McCarthy period, and it was the handiwork of Dean Acheson and Harry Truman; McCarthy attacked both, and so the experience of the war disappeared in the shaping of the Cold War consensus: Truman and Acheson were the good guys. Cold War debate was almost always between the middle and the right, the consensus anchored by the McCarthys on one end and the Achesons or Hubert Humphreys on the other. Furthermore, the Korean War is no icon for the conservative or the liberal, it merely symbolized an absence, mostly a forgetting, but also a never-knowing. The American split verdict on the Korean War, coming closely on the heels of a failed war to liberate the North, was an agreement to disagree, a stitched-together mending of a torn national psyche-you remember one verdict, and forget or condemn the other; each verdict implies a corresponding amnesia. The result is a kind of hegemony of forgetting, in which almost everything to do with the war is buried history in the United States.” (p. 207-208)

[80] Cumings, B. (2010). The Korean War: A history. Modern Library. “In the trite phrases of Washington policymakers, this would be called “lacking an exit strategy.” In fact the United States has had no exit strategy anywhere since 1945, except in places where we were kicked out (Vietnam) or asked to leave (the Philippines): American troops still occupy Japan, Korea, and Germany, in the seventh decade after the end of World War II. Policymakers-almost always civilians with little or no military experience (Acheson is the archetype)-get Americans into wars but cannot get them out, and soon the Pentagon takes over, establishes bases, and the entire enterprise becomes a perpetual-motion machine fueled by a defense budget that dwarfs all others in the world.” (p. 211)

[81] Schmitt, E., and Choe, S.-H. (2026, August 18). U.S. cuts back military drills with South Korea, as Trump woos Kim Jong-un. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/18/us/politics/pentagon-south-korea-training-exercises.html. “The Pentagon said late on Tuesday that it was ending a major training exercise with South Korea one week earlier than scheduled, on Aug. 21, and scaling back many remaining live-fire training drills to computer simulations or canceling them altogether. The moves came after President Trump on Sunday ordered the Defense Department to reduce joint military exercises with South Korea, a longtime U.S. ally and a linchpin of America’s national security strategy in the Asia-Pacific region.”

[82] Stoker, D. (2024). Purpose and power: US grand strategy from the Revolutionary Era to the present. Cambridge University Press. “The feelings and beliefs of both Nixon and Kissinger about the ending of the war were complex. Both believed South Vietnam’s fall likely, though didn’t think it written in the stars. But, in the words of one historian, “Without a stable and effective South Vietnamese government, no amount of US help would win the war.”102 The North Vietnamese also had the best things any warring state could hope for: one opponent unwilling to do what was necessary to survive, and another that consistently overestimated its ability to shape events. The US left Vietnam in defeat. There is no other way to interpret this. The Nixon administration sought security above all else. It certainly sup- ported and preferred the development of democracy abroad, but it didn’t seek its expansion. Nixon and Kissinger considered themselves “realists.” But the grand strategy they constructed was rarely based upon realistic assessments of the motivations of America’s enemies, opponents, or friends. They consistently failed to properly consider the political aims of Washington’s rivals, the value they placed upon these aims, how this would affect their actions, and how American actions and desires had little chance of altering the behavior of its most important foes. Détente failed to convince Moscow to abandon its aims. China opened to the US and the world, a decision it made to serve its interests, not America’s. North Vietnam remained ruth- lessly fixed upon the achievement of its aims. Nixon and Kissinger sought to improve American security and create a balance of power in the world. The first can be done; the second was beyond Washington’s ability, because it couldn’t control the actions of other nations, particularly great powers. There were limits to American power – as always.” (p. 476)

[83] Stoker, D. (2024). Purpose and power: US grand strategy from the Revolutionary Era to the present. Cambridge University Press. “The collapse of the Afghan army and the Taliban’s quick final campaign destroyed American evacuation plans. The administration had intended to leave 650 troops to guard the embassy. This meant there were insufficient troops to also hold the key Bagram airport. Biden approved its closure, which meant operating out of Kabul. Biden’s push for a rapid withdrawal put Defense and State on different paths, and Milley accused State of wait- ing too long to order an evacuation. This, combined with the quick col- lapse of Kabul’s army, forced the administration to launch an evacuation mission entailing the dispatch of 6,000 US troops to secure Kabul’s airport. An August 26 suicide bombing killed thirteen American service members supporting the evacuation. The administration received abundant intelli- gence that such an attack might occur.104 The US and others evacuated 124,000 people by August 31 but left behind perhaps 200 Americans and most of the tens of thousands of Afghans who had helped the Americans. France’s Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Angela Merkel, and Great Britain’s Boris Johnson all pressed Biden to extend the August 31 deadline. He refused.105 On August 31, 2021, 11:59pm Kabul time, the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, Major General Chris Donahue, the last American sol- dier in Afghanistan, boarded the last American transport aircraft in Kabul. America’s twenty-year war in Afghanistan was over. The United States was leaving in defeat. Its NATO partners were already gone. In total, 2,461 American military personnel were killed in the Afghan War. Perhaps 69,000 Afghan soldiers and police died, and perhaps 47,000 civilians. The US spent $824.9 billion, an average of $3.4 billion a month. Comparisons with America’s 1975 evacuation of Hanoi quickly emerged, but instead of the image of helicopters departing the US embassy roof, the picture was of Afghans falling to their deaths from American aircraft fleeing Kabul. CNN journalist Peter Bergen wrote: “Biden is presiding over a debacle entirely of his own making in Afghanistan.” Biden later defended his actions: the mission had been accomplished – Bin Laden was dead, and Afghanistan wasn’t a base for global terror. China, COVID, cyberspace, and climate change were, he insisted, more important.” (p. 694-695)

[84] Stark, A. (2024). The Yemen model: Why U.S. policy has failed in the Middle East. Yale University Press. “This approach to managing U.S. security priorities in the Mid- dle East has not worked-a fact that the recent history of U.S. engagement in Yemen has demonstrated time and time again. The narrow lens of counterterrorism did not allow U.S. policy makers to see that their partner, the regime of the corrupt autocrat President Ali Abdullah Saleh, was beginning to wobble even before the Arab Spring erupted in 2011. It meant that U.S. officials felt secure push- ing forward Yemen’s post–Arab Spring political transition process, the National Dialogue Conference, even as the process failed to re- solve the underlying issues that generated the Arab Spring protest movement in the first place. And it allowed U.S. officials to believe that they could ultimately stay out of deeper involvement in the war in Yemen by providing logistical support to the intervention. Instead of staying out, the United States became implicated in the conflict and its humanitarian fallout, including the civilian deaths that resulted from coalition airstrikes, such as the 2018 bus bombing. The intervention failed in its objective of containing the Houthis and Iranian influence. Instead, the war in Yemen created a humanitarian disaster, generated further instability in the region, and gave Iran an opportunity to increase its influence on the Ara- bian Peninsula on Saudi Arabia’s southern border. This recent history also demonstrates that while Yemen has long been viewed by U.S. officials as peripheral to U.S. security interests, the United States has been continuously pulled back into wars in Yemen. If the humanitarian suffering is not enough to warrant our concern about Yemen’s wars (and it ought to be), then U.S. strategic interests should be.” (p. 3)

[85] Gelb, L. H., and Betts, R. K. (2016). The irony of Vietnam: The system worked (F. Zakaria, Foreword). Brookings Institution Press. “The title of this book must strike any intelligent reader, at first glance, as ridiculous. America’s war in Vietnam was obviously a failure. Whether the failure was strategic, tactical, conceptual, operational, military, political, diplomatic, moral, or all these, will remain in dispute. But after decades of commitment to prevent Communist domina- tion of the country, at the cost of many billions of dollars and many thousands of American and Vietnamese lives, virtually no one can credibly maintain that the effort was successful.” (p. 1)