The Long Decade of State Building

Just as the nineteenth century was a “long century” of state formation in Europe,¹ the post–Cold War years formed a “long decade” of externally assisted state building. From 1989 to 2007, the United Nations or its members mounted twentytwo international interventions with partial or full state-building agendas. The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the long engagement in Afghanistan starting in 2001 were the most ambitious interventions of this kind. The interventions were situated in a fast-developing international regime designed to assist state building in the aftermath of civil wars, internal strife, the implosion of weak regimes, or...