Interventions since the Cold War: from statebuilding to stabilization

Through the lens of security sector reform, this article explores shifts in international interventions since the Cold War. Identifying three phases, it traces the global North's failure to transform fragile states into liberal democratic polities and changes to intervention practices in response to that failure. Immediately after the Cold War, an unfettered belief in the liberal peace thesis, and its global applicability, drove interventions that sought to establish an integrated liberal internationalist system of states shaped by mutuality. This changed with 9/11, shifting the focus towards extensive statebuilding exercises to replace, by force if necessary, security sectors and reconstruct failed states as liberal democracies. The current phase reflects lost faith in the global North's transformative potential following experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. New forms of intervention from a distance have emerged, relying on delegation to technology and militaries of the global South. This type of intervention allows the global North to maintain a sense of influence while shifting the burden of intervention onto the global South's populations and militaries—and foreclosing comprehensive statebuilding. The global North can no longer claim to act on behalf of universally applicable norms, but alternatives have yet to materialize, leaving interventions in an ideological limbo.