The first major study of its kind also found the post-9/11 era resulted in higher hostility levels, with US military adventures becoming overwhelmingly commonplace. Given the current landscape of interventions, and inertia, experts expect to see a continuing upward trend in US interventions in both MENA and Sub-Saharan Africa.
"The cumulative impact of what we discovered from our data collection effort was indeed surprising," said Sidita Kushi, an Assistant Professor at Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts, and one of the study's authors. "We hadn't expected both the quantity and quality of US military interventions to be as large as revealed in the data," Kushi told Middle East Eye.
Following the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States emerged as the dominant military power globally. However, this did not translate into a decrease in military interventions.
"The post-Cold War era has produced fewer great power conflicts and instances in which to defend vital US interests, yet US military interventions continue at high rates and higher hostilities," the report concluded. "This militaristic pattern persists during a time of relative peace, one of arguably fewer direct threats to the US homeland and security."
Following the end of the Cold War, US humanitarian military interventions were increasingly justified under the banner of human rights.
During the post-9/11 US "Global War on Terror" Washington chose to use military force to solve its problems, said Monica Duffy Toft, Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School of Tufts University, also in Massachusetts.
The study found that the end of the Cold War unchained US military global ambitions. Even as US rivals reduced their military intervention, Washington began to escalate its hostilities, resulting in a widening gap between US actions relative to its opponents.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute puts the cost of the US military at more than US$800 billion annually, accounting for almost 40% of global military spending.
"The US continues to dramatically prioritize funding of its Department of Defense while limiting funding and roles for its Department of State," said Toft, adding that currently, the United States has US Special Forces deployed in more countries than it does Ambassadors".
The US global military footprints might be surprising to its citizens; unfortunately, these are hardly surprising to the rest of the world. The legitimacy of US assaults has been marred largely as a result of its now decades-long hyper-interventionist stance.
Violence tends to beget violence, and even a smart return toward a multi-factor foreign policy - a foreign policy which relies on allies' wisdom, which engages diplomacy, trade and aid first, and force last - can take years to bear fruit
