Since the end of the Cold War, the world’s only superpower militarily intervened in a large number of conflicts. The most well-known cases include Operation Provide Comfort in Northern Iraq after the First Gulf War, Operation Gothic Serpent in Somalia, Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti, Operation Deliberate Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Operation Allied Force in Serbia/Kosovo, Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 Iraq, Operation Odyssey Dawn in Libya, and the intervention against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. This article considers the trajectory for U.S. military intervention for the near future. Many commentators hold that the failures of the Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya cases have effectively ended an era of large-scale U.S. military intervention. Others point to the entry of Susan Rice and Samantha Power into the Biden Administration and expect the persistence of the use of the military in the vein of “liberal interventionism.”

I will try to address this abstract question in a concrete manner by drawing out lessons from the 2003-2011 U.S. experience in Iraq. Among all of America’s military adventures, the Iraq intervention was the costliest in terms of blood and treasure. The conflict was also exceedingly complex. In my present research on the Iraq conflict, I identify how the United States employed five different military strategies at different times and different places: warfighting, clear/hold/build, decapitation, community mobilization, and homogenization. Instead of making blanket statements about military intervention, we can better understand the trajectory of U.S. military intervention by examining the nature of success and failure of these particular strategies during 2003-11 in Iraq. Which of these strategies have seen continuation in the ten years after U.S. withdrawal from Iraq? Which have become the basis for action moving forward? Which have truly been discarded?