American Military History, Volume 2 by Richard W. Stewart

Operations in northern Iraq, Somalia, and Haiti reflected changing philosophies with respect to armed intervention on the part of both the United Nations and the United States. Throughout the Cold War, peacekeeping and humanitarian relief had featured minor to modest military participation. In such operations, political and diplomatic im- peratives had heavily outweighed military ones and troops were intro- duced sparingly.

In 1987 about 10,000 UN troops were deployed on seven operations at a cost of perhaps $230 million. Very few of these troops were Americans. By 1995, 80,000 personnel were deployed on twenty peacekeeping operations at a cost exceeding $3.5 billion and a major fraction of the troops were American. What had changed?