fight and win interstate wars. But who might these other states be? What role might
armed forces specialized to win interstate wars play in substate vio lence? Yugo slavia’s
violent disintegration played itself out over the entire de cade, despite Western attempts
to resolve the conflict peacefully. At the same time, the world witnessed ethnic tension
and vio lence in central Africa. Genocide in Rwanda and Burundi was effectively ignored
by the international community. And, despite U.S. military primacy, Rus sia maintains
enough military power and po liti cal influence to prevent U.S. intervention in ethnic
hostilities in the Transcaucasus region.
These dual realities converged and diverged throughout the 1990s and continue to
do so today. The disintegration of Yugo slavia culminated in an American- led war against
Serbia to halt attacks on the ethnic Albanian population in Kosovo. The 78- day air
war by NATO against Serbia ended with the capitulation of the Serbs and inter-
national administration of the province of Kosovo. The war also severely challenged
core princi ples of international law: technically, the action of NATO in Kosovo was
a violation of Serbian sovereignty. Yet NATO’s leaders held that Serb rapes, lootings,
and murders constituted a greater harm: violating the princi ple of sovereignty was less
than the harm of allowing Serbians to murder and torture Kosovar Albanians. The
repercussions affect international politics to this day.
Clearly, the end of the Cold War in the 1990s denotes a major change in inter-
national relations, the end of one historical era and the beginning of another. The
overwhelming military power of the United States, combined with its economic
power, appeared to many to usher in an era of U.S. primacy in international affairs to
a degree not matched even by the Romans or Alexander the Great. The United States
seemed able to impose its will on other states, even against the strong objections of its
allies. Yet this moment of primacy now appears doubtful; it proved insufficient to
deter or prevent ethnic conflict, civil wars, and human rights abuses from occurring,
whether in Somalia, Rwanda, or the former Yugo slavia. And many threats, like terror-
ism, cyber security, and the global financial crisis of 2008, have shown themselves, by
their very nature, to demand multilateral engagement: no single state, however, power-
ful, can remain secure against these threats on its own.the new Millennium: the first two De cades
Perhaps the biggest change in interstate politics following the end of the Cold War was
the puzzling elevation of terrorism— once a relatively minor threat— from a law-
enforcement prob lem to a vital national security interest (and therefore a military
prob lem). On September 11, 2001, the world witnessed lethal, psychologically disrup-
tive, and eco nom ically devastating terrorist attacks or ga nized and funded by Al Qaeda60 CHAPTER Two ■ HisTorical coNTexT oF iNTerNaTioNal relaTioNsESSIR7_CH02_020_069_11P.indd 60 6/14/16 10:02 AM