Limited Liability Multilateralism

Under what conditions and for what reasons do American leaders seek the endorsement of relevant international organizations (IOs) such as the UN or NATO for prospective military interventions? My central hypothesis is that U.S. government efforts to obtain IO approval for prospective interventions are frequently the result of significant bureaucratic deliberations and bargaining between hawkish policy leaders who emphasize the likely positive payoffs of a prompt use of force, on the one side, and skeptical officials--with the top military brass and war veterans in senior policy positions at the forefront--who highlight its potential downsides and long-term costs, on the other. The military leaders--the chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), the regional combatant commanders, and senior planners on the Joint Staff in Washington--are generally skeptical of humanitarian and other "idealist" interventions that aim to change the domestic politics of foreign countries; they naturally tend to consider all the potential downsides of intervention, given their operational focus; and they usually worry more than activist civilian policy officials about public and congr