ABSTRACT
The ideational sources of Western interventionism are to be sought in two overlapping concepts. The first is the liberal internationalism which appeared in United Sates’ policy soon after World War II. The second source is the democratic peace theory in its offensive variant which fits within the broad current of thought encompassing the various forms and specific concepts of the liberal school of thought in the theory of international relations. A common denominator for all of them was the manner of executing the interventions in the very context of their liberal-humanitarian and democratising narrative. Iraq was a perfect catastrophe in every aspect: legal, moral, humanitarian, and in relation to internal consequences and international implications. The projected successful ‘democratisation’ of Iraq was intended by the authors of this project, American neoconservatives, to serve as a catalyst for similar processes in the ‘Extended Middle East’.
