The adage that any military plan is only as good as the assumptions that underlie it is a central theme in this book. During international interventions in civil wars in the 1990s in Cambodia, Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo, the reaction of warring parties and the local population to initial military success – or failure – often proved unpredictable. Intervening forces tended to fall victim to the law of unintended consequences which, during times of chaos, operates at exponential levels. This study examines how the unintended consequences of the presence of a new source of power in a war-torn society placed high demands on the flexibility of military commanders on the ground. In each of these peace operations, the mission they had set out to perform steadily shifted beyond its original parameters.

In conventional war, waged by military adversaries with similar weapons and methods, the destruction of the main forces of the enemy has always been the ultimate and seemingly straightforward military goal. In this type of military operation, for which soldiers spend most of their time preparing, adaptability to unexpected tactical moves by opposing forces on the battlefield has always been one of a field commander's most valued skills. In the sort of military operations most Western soldiers found themselves in during the 1990s, the ‘next move’ of what could be considered the ‘enemies of the peace’ (or anyone opposing the goals of the foreign presence) was most often made in the civilian sphere. Moving into this murky arena has often been discarded as ‘mission creep’: the real or perceived progression of the military role beyond its original military parameters. However, in all its different manifestations throughout the 1990s, ‘mission creep’ came to be a requirement to reach any level of success rather than the doomsday scenario it was often made out to be by those favoring a strict separation of the military and the civilian spheres.

On 30 November 1942, while leading the Allied military forces in battle against the Axis in North Africa, General Dwight D. Eisenhower lamented in a letter to General George C. Marshall: ‘The sooner I can get rid of all these questions that are outside the military scope, the happier I will be! Sometimes think I live ten years each week, of which at least nine are absorbed in political and economic matters.’