This book analyzes UN intervention discourses and practices in Iraq and develops a deconstructive approach to international interventions.

Hitherto, most analyses of the conflict in Iraq in 2003 have established the UN’s role as path-dependent on the foreign policy of the US and the UK, and largely portrayed it as a mediator and fervent opponent of international intervention. Analyzing the UN Security Council and the later UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) from 2000 to 2010, this book undoes this path-dependency and puts the UN’s relationship with Iraq center-stage. It develops a deconstructive, critical approach that identifies subject construction and reflexivity as central processes of intervention practices and concludes that (non-)intervention is deeply connected to the stabilization of political identities and representations. Using extensive primary data, the book contributes a new perspective on international interventions.

This book will be of much interest to students of peace and conflict studies, intervention and statebuilding, Middle Eastern studies and International Relations.