Conclusion

Abstract

This book sought to provide a comprehensive account of the safety zones of the 1990s, explaining the reasons for their creation, detailing their implementation, and shedding some light on why each succeeded or failed. Moreover, in an attempt to help bridge the gap between schools of thought in International Relations that are sometimes needlessly polarized, this book developed the idea of a broadened conception of interest, suggesting that states neither operate in a purely strategic, material environment, nor in a uniquely normative and legal one. Rather, states exist in both milieus simultaneously. They seek to satisfy, in some measure, both interests associated with more narrow, short-term and self-regarding concerns, which we have labeled state interests, and interests associated with broader, long-term and international society-oriented considerations, which we have called community interests. Each of the case studies then sought to show the extent to which community and state interests interacted in complex, dynamic ways, producing particular outcomes, namely safety zones, which neither type of variable could explain on its own.