Responding to Potential Transitions

Every three weeks, a major political crisis begins somewhere in the world. The United States intervenes in less than a fifth of them. But that is still a new U.S. intervention about every two months. And almost all of them are civilian interventions; less than a third involve the military. CSIS is releasing a new dataset of "potential transitions" worldwide, covering responses to 758 political crises between 1989 and 2010, including 134 interventions. Under what circumstances does the United States decide to intervene? What dilemmas do crises such as those in Mali and Syria pose to decisionmakers? Join CSIS experts for a discussion of these questions and more.