Gideon Rose How War Ends Analysis

When examining history, there are many “lenses” through which one can view events that have made significant impacts in the field of international relations. During an address to the Carnegie Council on his book, How War Ends, Gideon Rose makes a bold claim that although the United States has been militarily successful in most of the conflicts in the past century, poor planning and incomplete identification of political goals and agendas by political leaders have lead to “botched” efforts in these endeavors and have ultimately led to prolonged conflicts and presence in foreign countries. Although Rose mentions many examples, his focus was on the war in Iraq and the regime change that occurred there due to US military intervention. While, listening

A hegemon is “ a state that is so powerful that it dominates all other states in that system …[and]… no state has the military wherewithal to put up a serious fight”(Mearshimer, 2001). The coveted position of unchallenged dominance, brings hegemonic stability, the idea that a state actor that has achieved hegemony will help stabilize the rest of the states in that system. In such a system there are revisionist powers, such as Iraq, that will try and upset the balance in place. In turn, this causes the hegemon to intervene and in most cases in recent history, it has proved beneficial to the revisionist state says Rose (Rose, 2011). Rose argues that these interventions have been the work of a single hegemonic power (US), rather than that of international institutions, which in realist’s eyes, are simply the projection of the strongest state’s power. These interventions have been costly and risky, but Rose believes the costs were worth it saying: “the places we have gone and stayed have been the ones that have tended to do better” (Rose, 2011). Here, Rose speaks about South vs. North Korea and East vs. West Germany along with a handful of examples in which the presence of the United States has drastically improved the situation of one state while its absence has led to the disempowerment of the other. In Iraq, a tyrannical leader was removed and eventually, a system that worked better than the previous one was put in place through actions taken by the United States all in an effort to secure its position and its interests demonstrating the idea that a hegemon can help stabilize the system and supporting the idea that Rose is more aligned with realist thinking than