Introducing the Military Intervention Project: A New Dataset on US Military Interventions, 1776–2019

• Author: Sidita Kushi,Monica Duffy Toft
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00220027221117546
• Published date: 01 April 2023
• Date: 01 April 2023
• Subject Matter: Data Set Feature

Data Set Feature

Journal of Conf‌lict Resolution

2023, Vol. 67(4) 752–779

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/00220027221117546

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Introducing the Military

Intervention Project: A New

Dataset on US Military

Interventions, 1776–2019

Sidita Kushi

1

and Monica Duffy Toft

2



Abstract

While scholars have made many claims about US military interventions, they have not

come to a consensus on main trends and consequences. This article introduces a new,

comprehensive dataset of all US military interventions since the country’s founding,

alongside over 200 variables that allow scholars to evaluate theoretical propositions on

drivers and outcomes of intervention. It compares the new Military Intervention

Project (MIP) dataset to the current leading dataset, the Militarized Interstate Disputes

(MID). In sum, MIP doubles the universe of cases, integrates a range of military in-

tervention def‌initions and sources, expands the timeline of analysis, and offers more

transparency of sourcing through historically-documented case narratives of every US

military intervention included in the dataset. According to MIP, the US has undertaken

almost 400 military interventions since 1776, with half of these operations undertaken

between 1950 and 2019. Over 25% of them have occurred in the post-Cold War

period.

Keywords

military intervention, dataset, foreign policy, war, United States

1

Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, MA, USA

2

Fletcher School, Tufts University University, Medford, MA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Sidita Kushi, Department of Political Science, Bridgewater State University, 131 Summer St, Bridgewater, MA

02324, USA.

Email: skushi@bridgew.edu

Foreign military interventions are now routine endeavors in international relations,

especially in response to intrastate conf‌licts (Pickering and Mitchell 2017). The United

States (US) has readily enforced this kinetic trend. According to our research, the US

has undertaken almost 400 military interventions since the country’s founding in 1776.

What is more, 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% of all

US military interventions occurring during the post-Cold War era.

1

Some scholars have explained such increasing interventionist trends as part of the

new norm of “contingent sovereignty,”which explicitly challenges the traditional

principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other states (Ramos 2013, 143).

Particularly regarding the US, one perspective is that the country is evolving past its

Cold War doctrine of containment toward acting on norms related to humanitarian

intervention (Finnemore 2003;Haass 1994, 14). Indeed, military interventions in

Bosnia, Kosovo, Libya, and Somalia all held some humanitarian justif‌ications, but

these interventions have typically failed to achieve their humanitarian and democra-

tizing objectives (Pickering and Kisangani 2006;Walker and Pearson 2007;Gleditsch,

Christiansen, and Hegre 2007). Other scholars argue that US military interventions

harm foreign citizens and diminish US security goals, weakening interventions’both

humanitarian and interest-based explanations (Peksen 2012;Aslam 2010;Dimant,

Krieger, and Meierrieks 2017). Instead of spreading democracy, these interventions

tend to transform target states into illiberal democracies —at best (Walker and Pearson

2007;Gleditsch et al. 2007).

Yet accounts of US military interventions to promote geopolitical interests cannot

explain the dynamics of the post-Cold War era either. If the US primarily intervenes

when its security interests are threatened, we expect the US to intervene less in an era

void of peer competitors where fewer vital interests are arguably at stake (Taliaferro

2000;Waltz 1979;Art and Jervis 1973).

The restraint literature further argues that US foreign and security policy since the

Cold War has been a hyper-militarized failure, often in opposition to vital US geo-

political interests (Posen 2014;Gholz, Press, and Sapolsky 2017;Mearsheimer and

Walt 2016;Layne 2017). Furthermore, some scholars contend that the US uses force

abroad without a clear organizing principle, and thus its military missions have had

disastrous long-term and unintended consequences (Arregu´

ın-Toft 2001;Aslam 2010).

Toft (2018) has labeled current patterns of US military engagement as kinetic di-

plomacy, diplomacy solely through armed force. Indeed, in the past years, “while US

ambassadors are operating in one-third of the world’s countries, US special operators

are active in three-fourths”. This raises important empirical questions that require

comprehensive data on US military interventionism across history: has the contem-

porary 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?

Examining this reliance on force motivates the Military Intervention Project (MIP).

MIP is a comprehensive dataset of all US military interventions since the country’s

Kushi and Toft 753