1. Stephen Budianski, “Missions Implausible,” US News & World Report 111 (October 14, 1991), pp. 24–31.
2. Kosovo represents a stronger case for unilateralism than for multilateralism because, while the United States acted with others, it restricted at the same time the universe of cooperation by giving up on securing the approval of non-NATO partners represented in the Security Council (Russia and China). This was a serious threshold to cross, because, later on in the case of the invasion of Iraq, the United States could and in fact did shrink even further the number of states it cooperated with when deciding to use force. It is true that in a recent endeavor Sarah Kreps describes Kosovo as a multilateral operation because of the level of involvement by other parties and because of the approval by a regional organization (NATO). But this assessment is possible only because Sarah Kreps does not take into consideration the evolution over time of a state policy in the direction of either unilateralism or multilateralism. Thus, she does not discuss the previous instance of the United States doing away with Security Council approval in the bombing of Iraq in December 1998. Sarah Kreps, Coalitions of Convenience: United States Military Interventions after the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 20–1; also see
3. Marc Weller, “The US, Iraq, and the Use of Force in a Unipolar World,” Survival 41 (Winter 1999): 81–100.
4. Ivo Daalder and Michael O’Hanlon, Winning Ugly: NATO’s War to Save Kosovo (Washington: Brookings Institution, 2000), p. 117.
5. For a similar interpretation, see Jeffrey Taliaferro, “Neoclassical Realism: The Psychology of Great Power Intervention,” in Making Sense of International Relations Theory, ed. Jennifer Sterling-Folker (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2006), pp. 38–54. However, Taliaferro considers prestige as the equivalent of reputation. Also see