Foreign military intervention: the dynamics of protracted conflict

Uses case studies of 6 major military interventions to address the questions of how do politically inspired military interventions come about, proceed and end. The cases are: United States in Vietnam; Soviet Union in Afghanistan; Syrian in Lebanon, Isreal in Lebanon, India in Sri Lanka, Cuba and South America in Angola. Concludes that military interventions are likely to unleash powerful new forces in an unstable political situation and in the absence of a quick, decisive, victory reactions will be triggered often introducing previously dormant forces; secondly, the degree of uncertainty usually exceeds what the intervenors consider likley; thirdly, interventions are extremely complex with an asymmetry of motivations between intervening and target nation, fourthly there is a high level of destructiveness, and finally intervenors do not learn from previous examples of intervention and remain convinced against the odds that this time the outcome will be what they want it to be.