Intervening in conflict: the policy issues

After 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan, the ‘Kosovo model’ for a large-scale international response to complicated emergency became less relevant. Afghanistan was more than just a complex emergency and security now stood out as being the most challenging and rapidly developing sector that imposed a more rigorous and less idealistic approach on national contributions. The risks and costs had grown and it was important for contributing nations and their concerned officials to know how we were moving from one generation of international forces into another. This paper traces the developments that brought international forces across a threshold into a new chapter of intensive operations and explains a risk-benefit approach that any future contributors have to undergo in order to decide how deeply committed the smaller nation can afford to be.