Ebook: Armed state building: confronting state failure, 1898-2012

Since 1898, the United States and the United Nations have deployed military force more than three dozen times in attempts to rebuild failed states. Currently there are more state-building campaigns in progress than at any time in the past century - including Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Sudan, Liberia, Cote d'Ivoire, and Lebanon - and the number of candidate nations for such campaigns in the future is substantial. Even with a broad definition of success, earlier campaigns failed more than half the time. This book looks at the question of what causes armed, international state-building campaigns by liberal powers to succeed or fail.