The Dialectics of Intervention . An Analysis of Discursive and Theoretical Accounts for Conflict Initiation

Abstract

! The scope of this work is to critically assess the phenomenon of American interventions from the beginning of the post-Cold War era to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Departing from the analysis of the question of why an argument liable to disproof was chosen for legitimizing on legal grounds the 2003 invasion of Iraq, I proceed to the analysis of the relation between legitimizing discourse employed by the American administration domestically, and the one employed in the context of international institutions. The first one is concluded to take precedence over the second - at least for what concerns the timeframe taken into consideration in this work. I then proceed to an analysis of the evolution of domestic legitimizing discourse from 1991 to 2003, providing a dialectic evolutionary model. Finally, competing theoretical interpretations of the phenomenon are tested against the findings of the research.