Publication

This paper explores how liberal democracies have coped with the problem of versatile force in international intervention. Versatility refers to the ability of security forces to calibrate levels of force. The issue is important because a variety of security problems, including political violence, organized crime and riots, feature prominently during and after internal wars. This paper has three objectives: empirical, explanatory and practical. Empirically, it analyzes the use of force by four liberal democracies: the US, the UK, Germany and Italy. It offers an explanatory model of the policy differences between these countries. Finally, it discusses the practical implications of versatile force.