The no-fly zone in the 2011 Libya intervention, and its subsequent non-use in Syria, are best understood by examining it as a result of the ideational competition within the Obama administration amid an uncertain, though less permissive international environment. This analysis builds on previous case studies by treating ideas as an intervening variable that mediates between systemic conditions and state behaviour. Unlike earlier chapters on Iraq and Bosnia, this analysis must rely less on primary sources, as many relevant documents remain classified. This restriction limits the direct evidentiary support for the arguments presented in this chapter. Despite these limitations, a detailed examination has been conducted using a careful triangulation of secondary sources alongside a variety of both edited and unedited materials. This approach provides a comprehensive view of the administration's decision-making process. While this chapter cannot conclusively prove its interpretation of events or entirely rule out alternative explanations, the richly detailed narrative constructed from available sources should allow readers to assess the plausibility of the arguments made and form their own conclusions about the events surrounding the implementation of the no-fly zone in Libya.

Scholarly discussions on the 2011 intervention have covered aspects such as the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) norm (Bellamy and Williams, 2011; Chesterman, 2011; Nuruzzaman, 2022), alliance management (Davidson, 2013) and decision making within the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) (Adler-Nissen and Pouliot, 2014; Martin, 2022). Further discussions draw parallels with other international conflicts like those in Côte d’Ivoire and Syria (Kildron, 2012; Rees, 2022).

Much like with Iraq's no-fly zones, the debate about the potential use of a no-fly zone in Syria is often mentioned in broader literature about US intervention, yet rarely occupies the central focus it might seem to warrant given its role in American politics at the time. While the near-contemporaneous Libyan conflict resulted in direct US military action, Syria saw a protracted civil war where the possibility of a no-fly zone was repeatedly raised and rejected (Phillips, 2016; Zenko, 2016b). Extant scholarship on (the lack of) US intervention in Syria tends to focus on Obama's ‘red line’ in association with the Assad regime's use of chemical weapons. The US foreign policy establishment grappled with numerous contrasting ideas about how best to respond to the humanitarian catastrophe and complex conflict in Syria.

Moreover, as protests against President Bashar al-Assad escalated into civil war in 2011, comparisons to Libya quickly surfaced as both cases shared elements of government brutality against demonstrators turned rebels. However, Syria, unlike Libya, was more strategically complex and involved major global powers such as Russia, which directly supported Assad. Despite calls from Syrian opposition groups and US allies such as Turkey for the creation of no-fly zones to protect civilians from aerial bombardments, the US hesitated (Zenko, 2011a). The reasons for this hesitation lie not only in the lessons learned from Libya but also in the evolving dynamics of American foreign policy and broader systemic considerations as the wider international environment had begun to shift.

As recently as March 2022, in an address to Congress, Ukrainian President Zelensky pleaded: ‘Is this a lot to ask for, to create a no-fly zone over Ukraine to save people? Is this too much to ask?’ Recalling Martin Luther King's famous speech, he continued: ‘I have a dream, these words are known to each of you today. I can say, I have a need. I need to protect our sky.’ Despite considerable public debate, the Biden administration remained steadfast in its opposition to a no-fly zone for fear of uncontrollable escalation should NATO jets patrol the skies of Ukraine. Zelensky knew of these concerns, but he also knew of the seemingly inescapable grasp the no-fly zone continues to have on the imagination of both Washington decision makers and the American public.

The no-fly zone holds a curious place in US foreign policy. Whenever American decision makers considered military intervention abroad in the last four decades, the no-fly zone was not far from their thoughts. In four major cases, the instrument was in fact employed – to detrimental, at times downright catastrophic effect. This assessment is mirrored in relevant scholarly and policy literature, and backed by empirical evidence. The Iraqi no-fly zones are seen as ineffective at best, and irrelevant at worst, in preventing Saddam Hussein's crackdown against Kurds and Shias or coercing him into cooperation with the international community. The Bosnian no-fly zone is usually considered a failure: not only did it not effectively protect civilians or compel perpetrators of violence, it may have created a false sense of security in Bosnia's doomed ‘safe havens’.

In this book, I demonstrated the utility of neoclassical realist approaches, and particularly the use of ideas as intervening variables in the foreign policy executive’s decision-making process, to answering theoretical and empirical questions about the American use of no-fly zones. While ostensibly employed for the protection of civilians in intra-state conflict, relevant scholarship tells us that no-fly zones are not, in fact, suited to this purpose. Why have US foreign policy decision makers continued to discuss and employ them?

I developed a neoclassical realist framework employing ideas and ideational competition as an intervening variable in the transmission belt from an uncertain international environment to foreign policy choice. Decision makers use ideas to guide their interpretation of uncertain systemic conditions, and to wield them as tools of persuasion in foreign policy deliberations. Decision making in the US foreign policy executive is then best understood as a competition between diverging ideas about US interests and appropriate response strategies to the scenario at hand. Under pressure to act quickly, decision makers suggest no-fly zones not to solve the problem or manage the conflict itself, but to patch over these intra-administrative ideational divides. I investigated and provided confirmatory evidence for this causal mechanism in detailed case studies on US foreign policy across four administrations.

Why does the United States keep engaging in interventions in ways that make it impossible to succeed? By extension, why do leaders who choose to intervene abroad do such a subpar job of prosecuting it? Any convincing answer will require a framework for the analysis of US foreign policy across different cases. Here, I offer such a framework, which I anchor in wider theories of state behaviour and decision making by combining neoclassical realism (NCR), as well as the study of ideas and group decision making.

I suggest that in the face of uncertain international environments, the foreign policy executives lean on grand but diverging ideas of leadership, prudence, responsibility and technological prowess to inform their decisions. They wield these ideas to persuade others during foreign policy deliberations where they discuss what should be done and how, often without a clear outcome. The lengthy process of deliberating these ideas can become a problem for decision makers absent agreement or decisive presidential leadership, and especially if under pressure to act quickly. Decision makers may then be incentivized to opt for quick fixes: short-term, incremental policies to patch over ideational divides. They do so by considering different foreign policy instruments, the exact consequences of which are frequently unclear (or ignored). They then choose what at the onset look like easy, low-cost solutions that everyone can agree on – often precisely because the exact parameters or consequences of these solutions remain unclear to, or are not actually agreed upon by, decision makers.

This chapter highlights the causal primacy of systemic variables for the use of no-fly zones in US foreign policy, and thus rebalances the relationship between international environments and ideational competition. In the preceding chapters, I have provided an answer to the question: When and why are no-fly zones used? No-fly zones play a crucial role in overcoming pervasive ideational competition in the US foreign policy executive. Absent agreement or presidential leadership, the no-fly zone functions as a quick fix – adhesive tape on deep ideational divides. I argued that by taking on this role, the no-fly zone functions symbolically in foreign policy deliberations, disconnected from its actual strategic properties or utility and indeed from any detailed political or military planning. This ‘idealization’ process is most visible over time and across the cases discussed in previous chapters. In Iraq, the no-fly zone emerged out of the hesitancy to commit large-scale support to Kurdish refugees and Shia rebels. In Bosnia, the no-fly zone symbolized how the US could easily signal commitment yet avoid any actual responsibility and the risks of involvement. Diverging viewpoints and arguments are frequent in the US foreign policy executive, however. If the no-fly zone takes on the role of a faux compromise in the foreign policy executive, why do we not see even more no-fly zones?

First, use of the no-fly zone is connected to military-technological improvements that make aerial intervention seemingly risk-free for the US.

In literature on US policy in Iraq, the 1991 and 1992 no-fly zones are often relegated to footnotes. Some authors mention the no-fly zones within the broader sanctions regime against Iraq (Graham-Brown, 1999; Alterman, 2003) or in relation to various air operations and its later stages (Hiltermann, 1997; Gibbons, 2002; Cockayne and Malone, 2006). The northern no-fly zone is conventionally viewed as auxiliary to a mostly uncontroversial and largely successful humanitarian mission, an afterthought to the more important Gulf War (Goff, 1992; Helfont, 2023). The southern no-fly zone is even less researched, with only two scholarly contributions focused on it in some detail (Brattebo, 2006; O’Brien, 2021). This may be surprising considering that, at least per President George H.W. Bush and his National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, the foreign policy executive's entire ‘planning focus’ at the time had been put on the ‘problems and opportunities which emerged in the aftermath of Desert Storm’ (Bush and Scowcroft, 1999, p 493). The focus on military-strategic and tactical aspects obfuscates insights to be gained from an analysis of the political decision-making process leading up to the instrument's use, showcasing a type of intervention that served as a blueprint for subsequent administrations.

Purely looking at America's international environment, it must remain unclear why no-fly zones were used to ostensibly protect the Kurds of northern Iraq and the Shia in the south. Faced with pervasive uncertainty around the international implications of the Soviet Union's rapid disintegration, the Bush administration (together with its allies) decided to intervene militarily when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, but after its quick victory did not pursue regime change by directly removing Saddam Hussein.

How do adults form preferences over education policy? Why do Democrats and Republicans disagree about how schools should work and what they should teach? I argue that public opinion follows a “top-down” model, in which rank-and-file voters largely adopt the positions of prominent national leaders in their parties. This causes policy preferences to become polarized. I illustrate these dynamics with four case studies: (1) public opinion toward school reopening during the COVID-19 pandemic; (2) debate about Common Core education standards; (3) voting behavior on a 1978 California initiative that sought to ban gay teachers; and (4) voting behavior on a 1998 California initiative that banned bilingual education in that state.

In the final analysis, James and a cohort of literary modernists fractured the abstraction known as “the public” by showing that it is composed of individuals, each with their distinctive mental lives and social roles. The modernist ethic of radical empiricism holds that everyone has a responsibility to test their beliefs against reality and to seek multiple perspectives from sources that are accountable to the truth. James’s life’s work, along with that of later modernists who dramatized the productive varieties of dissociative experience, helped provide a scaffolding for democratic thought by exhorting readers to fortify their minds against the persuasive energy of powerful institutions and charismatic leaders. The book closes with a reflection upon our contemporary media ecology, drawing on philosopher Catherine Malabou’s concept of the brain’s “plasticity,” a term that in French encompasses both its regenerative and destructive capabilities. If we better understood these divergent mental processes and their complex neuroanatomy, we humans may be better equipped to take responsibility for our minds, and more rigorous stock of the limitations of our beliefs, our choices, and our actions.

I combine a national dataset on high-profile education culture wars – dealing with school mascots, curriculum, religion, sexuality, and evolution – with information on student achievement on standardized tests to examine how adult political conflicts impact student learning in the classroom. I show that student achievement declines after an outbreak of controversy, an effect that persists for several years and appears driven mostly by controversies involving evolution and race. In addition to a large-N, “difference in differences” analysis, the chapter provides two detailed case studies, over a controversial school mascot in California and a federal court case involving a Pennsylvania’s district policy to teach intelligent design.

This chapter surveys current doctrine concerning the scope of Congress’s regulatory, taxing, and spending powers. The Court’s historic pattern of decisions both presents a study in constitutional change and illumines factors that sometimes make change difficult. Prior to the Great Depression and the New Deal, the Court struggled uncertainly to cabin Congress’s powers under Article I. But the Court, seemingly in response to political pressures, substantially abandoned that effort in 1937, when it began to interpret the Commerce Clause as giving Congress vast powers to regulate the national economy and the Taxing and Spending Clause as allowing it to create largesse-dispensing programs that the Founding generation could not have imagined. At least since the 1980s, a strain of conservative scholarship has maintained that the modern, swollen national government finds no justification in the original Constitution and that the Court should enforce the original design. This chapter traces the Court’s limited success in implementing a course correction and identifies the considerations that have given pause to conservative justices. It also describes the Court’s more aggressive efforts to limit congressional power under the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, all of which include express authorizations of Congress to “enforce” their substantive guarantees.