US has used democracy to justify interference – Bosnia, Kosovo, Libya, and Somalia prove.

“Why Does the United States Intervene Abroad? Democracy, Human Rights Violations, and Terrorism” [https://whanchoi.people.uic.edu/Why-Does-The-US-Intervene-Abroad.pdf]//saginator

While relatively frequent as a foreign policy tool implemented by the US government, military intervention is not easy to characterize in a straightforward manner. According to Peceny (1995, 371), ‘‘since 1998, U.S. presidents have consistently combined military intervention and democracy promotion despite the apparent contradictions involved in promoting self-determination through coercion or military victory through limitations on what allied states can do to win wars.’’ Put differently, the most powerful and active state appears Janus-faced, at least by reputation, because of its use of the military overseas to implement security policy: ‘‘The U.S. government’s professed goals—the promotion of human rights, democracy, and global peace—and the U.S. position as the largest exporter of conventional weaponry may be in conflict’’ (Blanton 2000, 124). The purpose of this study is to account for US military interventions through multivariate logit models that bring together and build upon insights from previous studies. To be specific, this study is the first to assess the relative importance of the following three major US foreign policy issues in the same empirical model: encroachment on democratic institutions, human rights violations, and terrorist activity. The US military ‘‘truly shines’’ with respect to global power projection (O’Hanlon 2003, 80), and thus, the capacity exists for Washington to act beyond a purely national interest and consider a wider range of criteria in its deployments. One point of view is that the United States is moving away from old notions related to containment of its former Soviet rival and toward ‘‘a more expansive notion of humanitarian intervention.’’ Military interventions in places such as Bosnia, Kosovo, Libya, and Somalia received at least partial justification on humanitarian grounds and appeared consistent with the U.N.’s doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect. Even the ‘‘most optimistic’’ human rights advocate, of course, may not expect the United States to favor such concerns over its strategic interests (Apodaca and Stohl 1999, 187). At the same time, the United States seems to operate without ‘‘clear guidelines for when and how’’ to use force (Haass 1994, 13, 6). The resulting question then is where do US priorities lie?