Discussing the human dimension of US military interventions after the Cold War

In the post-Cold War age, in world attention shifted to intrastate conflicts rather than interstate conflicts. The majority of these conflicts take place between states and their citizens. However, some states are able to imlement humanitarian intervention as a solution to these conflicts. the United States of America (USA) is one of the countries most directly or indirectly involved in humanitarian crises betwen other countries. Humanitarian interventions led by the USA have begun to be accepted as legitimate by some segments of the international community, even if they do not comply with international law. The source of legitimacy is that the intervention is carried out on humanitarian grounds. The United States claims that it made humanitarian interventions for humanitarian reasons. In humanitarian interventions, the intervening country should not have interests in the intervened country. Therefore, the main question is whether the US intervenes with humanitarian concerns rather than national interests. For this reason, the main purpose of the study is to determine whether the USA is involved in humanitarian crises for its national interests or for humanitarian concerns. In general, national interests and humanitarian concerns are defined as foreign policy objectives. USA foreign policy purposes or national interests in the US national security documents are listed as national security, power gain, economic interests, or vital interests, important interests, or primary, secondary, and tertiary interests. The study is analyzed by putting the humanitarian concerns of the US administration against these interest elements and focusing on "intention" at every stage. In addition, the US congress and public opinion, the preferences of the US president as internal factors; the existence of the humanitarian crisis and the behavior of international, regional and local actors as external factors affecting the US foreign policy goals are examined. The importance of the study is to determine the foreign policy goals of the USA in case of a humanitarian crisis and to try to identify the internal and external factors that affect the foreign policy goals. Because some countries that take the humanitarian intervention of the USA as an example can also perform humanitarian intervention, they can solve a humanitarian crisis or they can cause new conflicts by citing the humanitarian crisis. Since the subject is very broad in the literature, I chose the 1995 Bosnia and 1999 Kosovo and 2001 Libya interventions, which were related to the humanitarian crisis, as a comparative case study. Because in all three cases, the USA participated in the humanitarian intervention. Humanitarian crises have arisen in near regions, and neo-liberal the US presidents have carried out humanitarian intervention. In all three cases, it was concluded that the USA acted on the condition of combining its national interests with the humanitarian situation in humanitarian crises, but there were internal and external factors affecting the objectives of the intervention. Keywords: The USA, national interest, humanitarian intervention, 1995 Bosnia, 1999 Kosovo, 2001 Libya