Enforcing the Peace: Learning from the Imperial Past

Anarchy breeds terrorism, yet the international community has been reluctant to commit the necessary resources to supporting and maintaining peaceful rule. This daring work argues that modern peacekeeping operations and military occupations bear a surprising resemblance to the imperialism practiced by liberal states a century ago. It shows how the West's attempts to remake foreign societies in their own image-even with the best of intentions-invariably fail.

Focusing on operations in Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and East Timor in the mid- to late 1990s, while touching on both postwar Afghanistan and the occupation of Iraq, Enforcing the Peace compares these cases to the colonial activities of Great Britain, France, and the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. As an alternative to trying to control political developments abroad, Marten shows how serious foreign intervention can restore basic security to unstable regions. She argues that the colonial experience demonstrates that military organizations police effectively if political leaders prioritize the task. The time has come to raise the importance of armed peacekeeping on the international agenda.