Through the latter years of the twentieth century and early years of the twenty-first century, there have been a number of high-profile multinational interven­tions by the international community in countries deemed to be sufficiently un­stable to present a threat to global peace or, more controversially, to local pop­ulations. Beginning with the tardy but largely successful intervention in the Yu­goslav civil war in 1990 and culminating in the soon to conclude intervention in Afghanistan after the Al Qaeda attacks on the USA in 2001, there have also been military interventions in Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011. The list is not exhaustive. There have been other interventions elsewhere, but these particular examples of military intervention mainly conducted by western powers provide illuminat­ing insights into the success and, sometimes, the failure of such multinational security responses to perceived international threats.