The end of liberal institutional history: Military intervention and the fallacy of institutional order in the post-Cold War era

In the post-Cold War era the value of institutions in establishing a world order with greater levels of cooperation and fewer violent conflicts has been forwarded. The failure of global communism was offered as a liberal victory, and with no real challengers, economic and political liberalism were hypothesized to spread democracy and peace throughout the globe and fashion what Fukuyama termed the ‘end of history.’ However, the ideological battle among international relations theorists has continued to ensure that decision makers are faced with the challenge of determining which theory most accurately reflects the reality of the world system, and thus, which approach to use in guiding them in developing policies that will achieve their desired goals. Therefore, my purpose in this paper is to invalidate the supposition that institutional order has displaced the traditional process of statecraft. First, I have offered a general debate among liberal and realist visions of cooperation and conflict in the post-Cold War era to highlight the compatibility of the international system with the realist framework. Second, in order to combat claims that such general arguments are non-falsifiable, I have augmented the general arguments with the topic of military intervention as the lowest common denominator of both conflict and cooperation to exemplify the consistency of realist explanation and the corresponding deficiency of liberal institutionalism. Third, I have offered three specific cases of military intervention (Rwanda 1994, Kosovo 1999, Iraq 2003) that defy the institutional and support the realist frameworks. Finally, I have concluded that there is not sufficient reason to abandon classical realism for liberal institutionalism as a framework for understanding international relations. Instead, if we are to negotiate relations among states we must do so with an accurate realist picture of the international system as a guide.