Follow us on social

1600px-us_navy_030402-n-5362a-004_u.s._army_sgt._mark_phiffer_stands_guard_duty_near_a_burning_oil_well_in_the_rumaylah_oil_fields_in_southern_iraq

Report: post-9/11 era one of the most militarily aggressive in US history

America has conducted nearly 400 interventions since its founding, with more than a quarter in the last 30 years.

Analysis | Reporting | Military Industrial Complex

The United States has conducted nearly 400 military interventions since 1776, according to innovative research by scholars Sidita Kushi and Monica Duffy Toft. 

Half of those conflicts and other uses of force – including displays and threats of force as well as covert and other operations – occurred between 1950 and 2019, the last year covered in a new dataset, introduced by Kushi and Toft in a Journal of Conflict Resolution article published earlier this week. More than a quarter of them have taken place since the end of the Cold War.    

The United States has carried out 34 percent of its 392 interventions against countries in Latin America and the Caribbean; 23 percent in East Asia and the Pacific region; 14 percent in the Middle East and North Africa; and just 13 percent in Europe and Central Asia, according to a newly refined version of the Military Intervention Project (MIP) dataset — a venture of the Center for Strategic Studies at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. 

In addition to providing the most accurate count ever of U.S. military interventions — doubling the number of cases found in existing data, while also employing rigorous sourcing methods — the MIP offers 200 variables that allow for complex analyses of drivers and outcomes of wars and other uses of force.

Crucially, Kushi and Toft, the director of the Fletcher School’s Center for Strategic Studies, found that U.S. interventions have “increased and intensified” in recent years. While the Cold War era (1946–1989) and the period between 1868–1917 were the most “militaristically active” for the United States, the post-9/11 era has already assumed third position in all of U.S. history.  

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, they found, has actually “engaged in 30 interventions at level 4 (usage of force) or 5 (war).”

Until the end of the Cold War, note Kushi and Toft, U.S. military hostility was generally proportional to that of its rivals.  Since then, “the U.S. began to escalate its hostilities as its rivals deescalate it, marking the beginning of America’s more kinetic foreign policy.”  This recent pattern of international relations conducted largely through armed force, what Toft has termed “kinetic diplomacy,” has increasingly targeted the Middle East and Africa.  These regions have seen both large-scale U.S. wars, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, and low-profile combat in nations such as Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, and Tunisia

The MIP data incorporates confirmed covert operations and low-profile interventions by Special Operations forces, but a combination of U.S. government secrecy and the dataset’s scrupulous sourcing standards guarantees that post-9/11 tally is an undercount, according to Kushi, an assistant professor of Political Science at Bridgewater State University and a non-residential fellow at Tufts’ Center for Strategic Studies.

Recently, for example, Alice Speri and I revealed the existence of low-profile proxy war programs run across Africa, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific region. While experts say that the Pentagon has likely used the secretive 127e authority to carry out combat beyond the scope of any authorization for use of military force or permissible self-defense, in violation of the Constitution, such highly classified operations may evade capture in the MIP dataset.  While 127e programs in Somalia and Yemen for example overlap with known U.S. military interventions, other uses of the authority, such as in Egypt and Lebanon, may not.  The same goes for even lesser-known authorities like Section 1202, which provides support to foreign irregular forces aimed at near-peer competitors. 

As the MIP is further developed and refined, Kushi and Toft hope that it will allow for a more nuanced understanding of the conditions that cause the United States to launch military interventions and the effects on the U.S. and the nations it targets, including the economic and human toll and inadvertent outcomes.  

What, they ask, “were the longer-term costs and unintended consequences of the intervention in Afghanistan and how did that intervention influence U.S. engagements in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen?”  The answers, they hope, will lead to improved data and, ultimately, a better U.S. foreign policy. 


U.S. Army guarding Rumaylah Oil Fields, Southern Iraq, 2003. Photo credit: U.S. Navy via WikiMedia Commons
Analysis | Reporting | Military Industrial Complex
China Malaysia
Top photo credit: Pearly Tan and Thinaah Muralitharan of Malaysia compete in the Women's Doubles Round Robin match against Nami Matsuyama and Chiharu Shida of Japan on day five of the BWF Sudirman Cup Finals 2025 at Fenghuang Gymnasium on May 1, 2025 in Xiamen, Fujian Province of China. (Photo by Zheng Hongliang/VCG )

How China is 'eating our lunch' with soft power

Asia-Pacific

In June 2025, while U.S. and Philippine forces conducted joint military drills in the Sulu Sea and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reaffirmed America’s commitment to the Indo-Pacific at Singapore’s Shangri-La Dialogue, another story deserving of attention played out less visibly.

A Chinese-financed rail project broke ground in Malaysia with diplomatic fanfare and local celebration. As Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim noted, the ceremony “marks an important milestone” in bilateral cooperation. The contrast was sharp: Washington sent ships and speeches; Beijing sent people and money.

keep readingShow less
President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and President of Russia Vladimir Putin
Top photo credit: President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and President of Russia Vladimir Putin appear on screen. (shutterstock/miss.cabul)

Westerners foolishly rush to defend Azerbaijan against Russia

Europe

The escalating tensions between Russia and Azerbaijan — marked by tit-for-tat arrests, accusations of ethnic violence, and economic sparring — have tempted some Western observers to view the conflict as an opportunity to further isolate Moscow.

However, this is not a simple narrative of Azerbaijan resisting Russian dominance. It is a complex struggle over energy routes, regional influence, and the future of the South Caucasus, where Western alignment with Baku risks undermining critical priorities, including potential U.S.-Russia engagement on Ukraine and arms control.

keep readingShow less
Netanyahu, Trump, and Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa
Top photo credit: OpenAI. 2025. Netanyahu, Trump, and Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa. AI-generated image. ChatGPT

Shotgun wedding? Israel and Syria go to the altar

Middle East

For half a century, the border between Israel and Syria on the Golan Heights was a model of hostile stability. The guns were silent, but deep-seated antagonism prevailed, punctuated by repeated, failed attempts at diplomacy.

Now, following the sudden collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December 2024 and a 12-day war between Israel and Iran that has solidified Israel's military dominance in the region, the geopolitical ice is cracking.

In a turn of events that would have been unthinkable a year ago, Israel and Syria are in “advanced talks” to end hostilities. Reports now suggest a White House summit is being planned for as early as September, where Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would sign a security agreement, paving the way for normalization. But this is no outbreak of brotherly love; it is a display of realpolitik, a shotgun wedding between a triumphant Israel and a destitute Syria, with Washington playing the role of officiant.

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.