In Chapter 7, the authors home in on the policy implications and avenues for future research, which build upon the empirical and theoretical findings that are explicated in Chapters 3–6. The discussion herein revolves around the following questions: What do the empirical operational code results mean for the day-to-day conduct of the politics of the MENA region? How do these at-a-distance leadership analysis findings and inferences help us to make sense of MENA’s international relations today? How does the actor-specific analysis in this book cue regional and international policymakers on understanding and engaging with certain political leaders in the MENA region? This chapter addresses these questions through utilizing a case study approach. These four salient cases are: 1) Iran’s nuclear program and the diplomatic crisis with the United States (2010–2022); 2) the Egyptian crisis in the wake of the Arab uprisings (2011–2014); 3) the Syrian civil war (2011–2022); and 4) the rise and fall of the Islamic State and its top leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in Iraq and Syria (2013–2019). This chapter briefly introduces these cases and discusses how individual-level leadership analyses can be used to make sense of these crises.

A classic tenet of the just war tradition is that the purpose of a just war is to secure a just peace. In the past generation, securing a just peace in the wake of military victory has been perhaps the thorniest problem in United States foreign policy, encountered in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, and Kosovo. This chapter offers a moral framework for judging and pursuing a just peace in the wake of military intervention – an ethic of political reconciliation. It roots the ethic in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, seeks also to express it in secular language, and contrasts it with the globally dominant liberal peace. The chapter then applies the ethic to Iraq and shows how the it may help to build a deeper and more lasting peace and thus secure a critical foreign policy interest of the United States.

This form of international cooperation offered completely new possibilities for the suppression of a system of human trafficking that operated across oceans and continents, but at the same time it conflicted with the interests of particular states and their own mutual rivalries and on several occasions threatened to founder on the limitations imposed by national sovereign rights. Alongside the viability of the agreed measure, then, Chapter 6 looks at the diplomatic wrangling by which the British government tried to secure treaty obligations from as many states as possible and to overcome massive political resistance, notably from Spain, Portugal, Brazil, France and the United States. Yet this decades-long process of negotiation produced a mounting international consensus, particularly from the mid-1840s onwards, condemning slavery as a ‘crime against humanity’. One telling sign of this new moral climate was the emergence of one of the first international treaty regimes, which extended from Europe across North and South America and the Arab World to East and West Africa. Its foundational idea was to enforce an agreed humanitarian norms by military means if necessary. The fight against the slave trade, it is argued, gave rise to a new conception of intervention, and abolitionism became established as a key international guiding norm for ‘civilisational’ action in the long nineteenth century.

Chapter 5 begins by briefly looking at the British Slave Trade Act of 1807, which also marked the beginning of the Royal Navy’s operations off the coast of West Africa. It concentrates on the developments that led from a national ban and its unilateral military enforcement by the United Kingdom to its international and multilateral implementation. A crucial turning point is marked by the Congress of Vienna, at which the political pressure built up by the abolitionists was so great that, for the first time, the proscription of the slave trade was jointly proclaimed and enshrined as a humanitarian norm in international law. This interdict then formed the point of reference for a series of highly controversial negotiations between the European states to decide on collective measures to be taken against this border-crossing problem. A bilateral approach between Britain and the continental powers finally resulted in a mechanism for implementation to be set up, which consisted of a previously unheard of combination of military and legal measures and which, in the shape of the Mixed Commissions for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, produced one of the first forms of international jurisdiction.

The function of intervention, in this context, was to act as a corrective in international politics. Fundamental questions posed by this practice of intervention by force in the internal affairs of a sovereign state are addressed in Chapter 2, which locates them in the context of the Vienna order. What can be observed here is, first, the emergence of an anti-revolutionary paradigm of intervention, by means of which the ‘Holy Alliance’, made up of the continental powers Russia, Austria and Prussia, made a collective attempt to prevent and suppress internal unrest and revolutionary movements. Second, and in parallel to these efforts, the British struggle to suppress the Atlantic slave trade gave birth to a further-reaching conception of intervention centred on the military enforcement of an internationally agreed humanitarian norm.

This chapter focuses on the 2008 events in the Juba Peace Talks between the Lord’s Resistance Army/Movement (LRA/M) and the Government of Uganda, which ended with joint military strikes by Ugandan and US forces (called Operation Lightning Thunder) against the LRA. LRA leader Joseph Kony had repeatedly failed to sign the Final Peace Agreement amidst growing confusion over demand and the role of the LRA/M delegates. In 2008, previously less obvious patterns of mistrust and miscommunication in the peace talks came to the fore, exacerbated by parallel preparations for war and peace and confusing international signals. The USA took on a new and prominent role, working behind the scenes to assure military preparations while also being an observer at the talks. Within the delegation, roles of individuals became increasingly bewildering. Yet despite the tremendous frustrations in the negotiation process and the missed opportunity to celebrate the Final Peace Agreement with a fully planned signing ceremony in the bush attended by 150 guests, the fall out of the military Operation Lightning Thunder shows the gravity of the decision to abandon the often-frustrating negotiation process in favour of what mistakenly continues to be sold as the quicker solution.

The perspective is not isolationist: the United States should be a constructive world citizen. Nor does it arise from pacifism, although sometimes it may be wise not to seek to win wars, but to end them. Given war aversion and the essential absence of threat, military spending is hugely excessive. However, even if the US should substantially disarm, it is probably wise to keep some military forces to carry out limited missions, to hedge a bit against the highly unlikely rise of an effective adversary, and to develop a capacity to rebuild. There would be risk if military forces were very substantially reduced, but experiences in Vietnam and Iraq suggest that there is risk as well in maintaining large forces-in-being that can be deployed in an under-reflective manner. It also facilitates misguided militarized assertiveness, fatuous political rhetoric, and arrogance. The American public has not become newly isolationist or militaristic. It has long been willing to engage internationally, but not to expend American lives in costly and questionable foreign adventures: the 9/11 wars are not indicators of change in this. Indeed, an Iraq Syndrome has taken hold, and military intervention, particularly with ground troops does not seem to have much of a future.

This chapter narrates Operation Limousin, France’s first major military intervention in Chad from 1969-1972. It traces shifting French strategies to defeat a widespread Frolinat rebellion, and charts French military successes in central Chad. It also examines the ultimate inability of French arms and diplomacy to defeat Frolinat’s “2nd Army” in the desert north of the country. The chapter also analyzes Limousin’s mixed results and its longer-term consequences for Chad’s subsequent conflicts. In particular, the chapter addresses the counterinsurgency methods employed by French forces and their Chadian allies, and their impact on local populations. These included the fragmentation of state authority through the creation of numerous militias, indiscriminate air attacks, and operational support for an even less discriminating government army. Throughout, the difficult relations between Chadian President, François Tombalbaye, and top Chadian officials with their French patrons remain a central element to the story.

In mid-1977 and again in early 1978, the “2nd Army,” now heavily rearmed by Libya, launched a series of devastating attacks against CSM positions in Chad’s northern territories. After a series of failed negotiation efforts on the part of the CSM, rebel moves in the direction of N’Djamena led French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing to order a military intervention. Operation Tacaud aimed to protect the capital and the (comparatively) economically prosperous Chadian south from apparent Libyan designs. This chapter examines French diplomatic and military efforts to stabilize Chad in 1977 and 1978, and the policymaking process behind Giscard's decision to intervene on behalf of the CSM. It also looks at the negotiations that led Hissène Habré, who had broken with Goukouni in 1976, to agree to join a coalition government headed by Malloum and supported by France.

This chapter traces the sequence of events leading to the withdrawal of French forces from Chad in April 1980. It begins with the French decision to overthrew Emperor Jean-Bedel Bokassa, leader of the Central African Empire, partly in response to his increasingly close relations with Gaddafi. However, the French-organized coup also fatally undercut their peacemaking strategy in Chad.Goukouni, now the president of Chad’s transitional government, became worried that France might attempt to overthrow him as well. This led him patch up his relationship with Gaddafi’s regime in preparation for an imminent struggle with Hissène Habré. This chapter examines these events, analyzing the rapid decline in the ability of French policymakers to influence the Chadian political scene. As fighting broke out between Habré’s forces and those allied with Goukouni, a sharp debate erupted among French policymakers about whether to intervene actively on the side of Goukouni or attempt to maintain an increasingly untenable neutrality. Instead, in April 1980, Giscard decided on a complete withdrawal, judging the risks of intervention too high, with little expected gain.

This chapter unpacks the federal intervention in the War on Drugs and analyzes the strategies the president followed across states depending on governors’ political affiliations. We disaggregate the intervention on the military, judicial, communicative, and social policy dimensions and assess patterns of cooperation and conflict between federal and subnational authorities. Using extensive interviews with federal and subnational elites and case studies from three cities in three states, we show how Mexico’s federal government followed differentiated strategies to deal with drug violence. The president protected subnational co-partisans (PAN) in Tijuana (PAN); partially cooperated with centrist opposition authorities (PRI) in Ciudad Juáreza; but confronted leftist governors and mayors (PRD), leaving them at the mercy of drug cartels in Apatzingán. Cartels responded by launching strategic attacks and challenging their rivals in municipalities with vulnerable leftist states.Thus, the politicization of law enforcement in the War on Drugs – which was possible because Mexico transitioned to electoral democracy without developing the rule of law – became a major stimulant of violence.

This chapter specifies the methods used in the book to studying the alliances between local and intervening counterinsurgency allies. Nine wars are examined in the book. Five wars are studied using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, including the USA in Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam, as well as India in Sri Lanka and the USSR in Afghanistan. For these five wars, thousands of primary source US, Indian, and Soviet government documents describing the day-to-day workings of these alliances were examined and used to identify 460 specific policy requests, which were then incorporated in an original dataset tracking local compliance and other relevant variables. The coding rules for each variable are detailed in this chapter. The remaining four wars, namely Vietnam in Cambodia, Egypt in Yemen, Cuba in Angola, and Syria in Lebanon, rely on secondary historical accounts or primary source observations from outside actors such as US intelligence agencies.

Detailing the US intervention in Vietnam this chapter provides a list of policy requests from the USA to Vietnamese partners and the rate of Vietnamese compliance from 1964 to 1973. Providing a summary of the US-Vietnam counterinsurgency partnership, this chapter discusses several distinctive components of the Vietnamese-US alliance, including detailing how the shock of the 1968 Tet Offensive led to a sharp increase in local compliance, suggesting that significant enemy activity can motivate clients to cooperate with the demands of intervening patrons. Overall, similar to other interventions, local compliance was affected by the convergence or divergence of US and Vietnamese interests, interacting with US dependency on Saigon to implement particular reforms. There are 105 US policy requests identified and detailed, including pacification, reconciliation and development programs.

Detailing the US intervention in Afghanistan this chapter provides a list of policy requests from the USA to Afghan partners and the rate of Afghan compliance from 2001 to 2011. Providing a summary of the US-Afghan counterinsurgency partnership from the start of the US intervention to 2011, this chapter discusses several distinctive components of the Afghan-US alliance, namely the tension between US and Afghan officials, and an unusual pattern of free riding in Afghanistan not observed in other interventions examined in the book. Afghan compliance was affected by the convergence or divergence of US and Afghan interests, interacting with US dependency on Kabul to implement particular reforms. There are 148 US policy requests identified and detailed including working against corruption, expanding governance capacity, addressing counternarcotics, and aiding in development programs.

Detailing the US intervention in Iraq, this chapter provides a list of policy requests from the USA to Iraqi partners and the rate of Iraqi compliance with US requests from 2004 to 2010. Providing a summary of the US-Iraqi counterinsurgency partnership (2003–11), this chapter discusses several distinctive components of the Iraqi-US alliance, namely the imperfect and awkward transition to Iraqi sovereignty and Washington negotiating with not one, but two local governments in Iraq, namely the Shi’a-dominated government in Baghdad, and the Kurdish Regional Government in Erbil. Iraqi compliance was affected by the convergence or divergence of US and Iraqi interests, interacting with US dependency on Iraq to implement particular reforms. There are 106 US policy requests identified and detailed including working against sectarianism and corruption.