US Armed forces conducted 400 military interventions since 1776, MIP Investigation finds

The United States has waged nearly 400 military interventions between 1776–2019 worldwide since its founding, new research 'Military Intervention Project: A New Dataset on US Military Interventions'  published this week has found. According to the investigative report compiled by innovative research scholars Sidita Kushi and Monica Duffy Toft. after foraging through databases and other resources, it was declared that in the post-9/11 era, the US has been the most "militarily aggressive" in the history of the globe.

More than a quarter of the military interventions were conducted in the last 30 years by the US armed forces. Half of those conflicts and other uses of force and coercion – including displays and threats of force as well as covert and other operations – occurred between 1950 and 2019, the investigation revealed. More than a quarter of military invasions have taken place in nations worldwide since the end of the Cold War. Of the total 400 military interventions, 34 per cent have been in Latin America and the Caribbean; 23 per cent in East Asia and the Pacific region; 14 per cent in West Asia and North Africa; and 13 per cent in Europe and Central Asia.

Credit: Afghan Ministry of Defense Press Office via AP

The US Army's military interventions have “increased and intensified” in recent years, according to the refined version of the Military Intervention Project (MIP) dataset. While the Cold War era (1946 – 1989) and the period between 1868 – 1917 were the most militarily active for the United States, the post-9/11 era has already taken the third spot in all of US history and most of that military adventurism has been in West Asia, the investigation, a venture Center for Strategic Studies at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, found. MIP offers 200 variables that offer complex analyses of drivers and outcomes of wars and other uses of force by the United States armed forces. 

"Unlike earlier eras in which displays and threats of force were employed, such posturing short of military violence has been absent in recent years. The United States has actually engaged in 30 interventions at level 4 (usage of force) or 5 (war)," as per the Military Intervention Project. 

While foreign military interventions are now routine endeavours in international relations, especially in response to intrastate conflicts, the United States troops have readily "enforced" this kinetic trend, according to MIP researchers. Such increasing interventionist military trends as a part of the new norm of “contingent sovereignty" that in fact explicitly challenges the traditional principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other states. While the US military justifies its interventions in Bosnia, Kosovo, Libya, and Somalia, these have typically "failed to achieve their humanitarian and democratizing objectives," the investigation claims. 

Crewmen sit inside Bradley fighting vehicles at a US military base at an undisclosed location in Northeastern Syria. Credit: Associated Press

US special operators and forces active in three-fourths of globe

US military interventions are aimed at promoting geopolitical interests, and it cannot be explained through the dynamics of the post-Cold War era. "US Army primarily intervenes when its security interests are threatened," the new dataset on US Military Interventions, revealed. US foreign and security policy since the Cold War has been a hyper-militarized failure. "US military uses force abroad without a clear organizing principle, and thus its military missions have had disastrous long-term and unintended consequences," researchers say. "These interventions have only increased and intensified in recent years, with the US militarily intervening over 200 times after World War II and over 25 per cent of all US military interventions occurring during the post-Cold War era.”

Whilst until the end of the Cold War, the US military's hostility was generally proportional to that of its rivals but of lately they began to "escalate hostilities as its rivals deescalate it, marking the beginning of America’s more kinetic foreign policy.” In recent years, US military engagement has been that of kinetic diplomacy, implying diplomacy "solely through armed force." The researchers noted that in the past years, “while US ambassadors are operating in one-third of the world’s countries, US special operators and forces are active in three-fourths”. 

"This raises important empirical questions that require comprehensive data on US military interventionism across history: has the contemporary US increasingly relied on force as a foreign policy instrument? What do patterns of US military interventions look like across time and place? Do these patterns promote US national interests?" MIP's analysts ask. 

US crewmen rest their weapons after training with Bradley fighting vehicles. Credit: Associated Press

US' covert military operations and low-profile interventions by its Special Operations forces, a combination of US government secrecy and the dataset’s scrupulous sourcing standards guarantees that the post-9/11 tally "is an undercount," according to MIP. The movement of US troops or its special forces [airborne, seaborne, shelling, etc.] of another nation, is in the context of some 'political issue or dispute.' Washington's international military interventions are in accordance with the temporal guidelines so that military interventions are continuous if repeated acts occur within 6 months of one another. 

"Political use of military force involving ground troops of either the US Army or Marine Corps in an active attempt to influence the behaviour of other nations," Military Intervention Project claimed.