Foreign interventions by the United States
The United States government has been involved in numerous interventions in foreign countries throughout its history. The U.S. has engaged in nearly 400 military interventions between 1776 and 2023, with half of these operations occurring since 1950 and over 25% occurring in the post-Cold War period.[1] Common objectives of U.S. foreign interventions have revolved around economic opportunity, social protection, protection of U.S. citizens and diplomats, territorial expansion, fomenting regime change, nation-building, and enforcing international law.[1]
See also: United States involvement in regime change and Timeline of United States military operations
There have been two dominant ideologies in the United States about foreign policy—interventionism, which encourages military and political intervention in foreign countries—and isolationism, which discourages these.[2]
The 19th century formed the roots of United States foreign interventionism, which at the time was largely driven by economic opportunities in the Pacific and Spanish-held Latin America along with the Monroe Doctrine, which saw the U.S. seek a policy to resist European colonialism in the Western hemisphere. The 20th century saw the U.S. intervene in two world wars in which American forces fought alongside their allies in international campaigns against Imperial Japan, Imperial and Nazi Germany, and their respective allies. The aftermath of World War II resulted in a foreign policy of containment aimed at preventing the spread of world communism. The ensuing Cold War resulted in the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Carter, and Reagan Doctrines, all of which saw the U.S. engage in espionage, regime change, proxy conflicts, and other clandestine activity internationally against Soviet puppet regimes.
After the USSR collapsed in 1991, the US emerged as the world's sole superpower and, with this, continued interventions in Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. Following the September 11 attacks in 2001, the Bush Administration launched the "war on terror" in which the U.S. waged international counterterrorism campaigns against various extremist groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in various countries. The Bush Doctrine of preemptive war saw the U.S. invade Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. In addition, America expanded its military presence in Africa and Asia via a revamped policy of foreign internal defense. The Obama administration's 2012 "Pivot to East Asia" strategy sought to refocus U.S. geopolitical efforts from counter-insurgencies in the Middle East to naval activity in East Asia, as part of a policy to counter China's expansion in the South China Sea, a trajectory also continued by Trump and Biden.
The United States Navy has been involved in anti-piracy activity in foreign territory throughout its history, from the Barbary Wars to combating modern piracy off the coast of Somalia and other regions.
After the September 11, 2001 attacks, under President George W. Bush, the U.S. and NATO launched the global War on Terror, which began in earnest with an intervention to depose the Taliban government in the Afghan War, which the U.S. suspected of protecting Al-Qaeda. In December 2009, President Barack Obama ordered a "surge" in U.S. forces to Afghanistan, deploying an additional 30,000 troops to fight Al-Qaeda and the Taliban insurgency, before ordering a drawdown in 2011.[98] Afghanistan continued to host U.S. and NATO counter-terror and counterinsurgency operations (ISAF/Resolute Support and operations Enduring Freedom/Freedom's Sentinel) until 2021, when the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan amidst the negotiated American-led withdrawal from the country. Over 2,400 Americans, 18 CIA operatives, and over 1,800 civilian contractors, died in the Afghan War. The war in Afghanistan became the longest war in United States history, lasting 19 years and ten months–surpassing the length of the Vietnam War, which lasted 19 years and five months–and cost the U.S. over $2 trillion.[99]
Though "Operation Enduring Freedom" (OEF) usually refers to the 2001–2014 phase of the War in Afghanistan, the term is also the U.S. military's official name for the War on Terror, and has multiple subordinate operations which see American military forces deployed in regions across the world in the name of combating terrorism, often in collaboration with the host nation's central government via security cooperation and status of forces agreements:
The War on Terror saw the U.S. military and intelligence community evolve its asymmetric warfare capabilities, seeing the extensive usage of drone strikes and special operations in various foreign countries including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia against suspected terrorist groups and their leadership.[127][128]
In 2003, the U.S. and a multi-national coalition invaded and occupied Iraq to depose President Saddam Hussein, whom the Bush administration accused of having links to al-Qaeda and possessing weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) during the Iraq disarmament crisis. No stockpiles of WMDs were discovered besides about 500 degraded and abandoned chemical munitions leftover from the Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s, which the Iraq Survey Group deemed "not militarily significant".[129] The U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found no substantial evidence of links between Iraq and al-Qaeda[130] and President Bush later admitted that "much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong".[131] Over 4,400 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians died during the Iraq War, which officially ended on December 18, 2011.
In the late 2000s, the United States Naval Forces Europe-Africa built the Africa Partnership Station to train coastal African nations in maritime security, including enforcing laws in their territorial waters and exclusive economic zones and combating piracy, smuggling, and illegal fishing.[132]
By 2009, the U.S. provided large amounts of aid and counterinsurgency training to enhance stability and reduce violence in President Álvaro Uribe's war-ravaged Colombia, in what has been called "the most successful nation-building exercise by the United States in this century".[133]
The 2011 Arab Spring resulted in uprisings, revolutions, and civil wars across the Arab world, including Libya, Syria, and Yemen. In 2011, the U.S. and NATO intervened in Libya by launching an extensive bombardment campaign in support of anti-Gaddafi forces. There was also speculation in The Washington Post that President Barack Obama issued a covert action, discovering in March 2011 that Obama authorized the CIA to carry out a clandestine effort to provide arms and support to the Libyan opposition.[134] Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was ultimately overthrown and killed. American activities in Libya resulted in the 2012 Benghazi attack.
Beginning around 2012, under the aegis of operation Timber Sycamore and other clandestine activities, CIA operatives and U.S. special operations troops trained and armed nearly 10,000 Syrian rebel fighters against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad[135] at a cost of $1 billion a year until it was phased out in 2017 by the Trump administration.[136][137][138][139]
2013–2014 saw the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/ISIS) terror organization in the Middle East. In June 2014, during Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S. re-intervened into Iraq and began airstrikes against ISIL there in response to prior gains by the terrorist group that threatened U.S. assets (including the U.S. embassy) and Iraqi government forces. This was followed by more airstrikes on ISIL in Syria in September 2014,[140] where the U.S.-led coalition targeted ISIL positions throughout the war-ravaged nation. Initial airstrikes involved fighters, bombers, and cruise missiles. The coalition maintains a sizable ground presence in Syria today. The U.S. officially re-intervened in Libya in 2015 as part of Inherent Resolve.
In response to the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, the Obama administration established the European Deterrence Initiative (EDI), a program dedicated to bolstering American military presence in Central and Eastern Europe. The EDI has funded Operation Atlantic Resolve, a collective defense effort to enhance NATO's military planning and defense capabilities by maintaining a persistent rotation of American air, ground and naval presence in the region to deter perceived Russian aggression along NATO's eastern flank.[141][142] The Enhanced Forward Presence (EFP) force was established by NATO.
In March 2015, President Obama declared that he had authorized U.S. forces to provide logistical and intelligence support to Saudi Arabia in their military intervention in Yemen, establishing a "Joint Planning Cell" with them.[143] American and British forces participated in the blockade of Yemen.
President Donald Trump was the first U.S. president in decades to not commit the military to new foreign campaigns, instead continuing wars and interventions he inherited from his predecessors, including interventions in Iraq, Syria and Somalia.[144] The Trump administration often used economic pressure against international adversaries such as Venezuela and the Islamic Republic of Iran.[145] In 2019, tensions between the U.S. and Iran triggered a crisis in the Persian Gulf which saw the U.S. bolster its military presence in the region, the creation of the International Maritime Security Construct to combat attacks on commercial shipping, and the assassination of prominent Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.[146]
In March 2021, the Biden administration designated al-Shabaab in Mozambique as a terrorist organization and, at the request of the Mozambique government, intervened in the Cabo Delgado conflict. Army Special Forces were deployed in the country to train Mozambican marines.[147][148][149]