Since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, American policymakers have been forced to reassess their priorities and consider longer‐term and more flexible strategies for meeting unexpected contingencies in the post‐Cold War world. Currently, the United States is the only competent Western power at the most intense and technologically sophisticated end of military operations and the expected hand‐holder of its European allies at the most basic peacekeeping end. Exiting the Balkan Thicket reviews the West’s experiences in Bosnia and Kosovo and provides recommendations on how the United States can move beyond the status quo and forge a better balanced and more forward‐looking security relationship with its European allies.
Featuring chapters by Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute; David Chandler, research fellow with the Policy Research Institute at Leeds Metropolitan University; Robert M. Hayden, director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh; John C. Hulsman, senior European analyst at the Heritage Foundation; E. Wayne Merry, senior fellow at the Lester B. Pearson Canadian International Peacekeeping Training Center; Stephen Schwartz, author of Kosovo: Background to a War; and Raju G. C. Thomas, Allis Chalmers Professor of International Affairs at Marquette University.