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This article contends that the William Clinton and George W. Bush administrations experienced similar transformations in their respective policies towards UN peace operations and nation-building. Although they began from nearly opposite perspectives, both came to remarkably similar conclusions about the value of peace operations, UN-led or otherwise, as tools for US foreign policy. Initial positions, driven in part by ideological concerns, gave way to more pragmatism about how the United States would support UN peace operations, reinforced by experiences with Congress and at the UN. A defining feature of this pragmatism was a deep reluctance to contribute significant numbers of troops to UN-commanded operations, even as both administrations supported increases in the number and scale of UN missions.

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The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) was embraced at the World Summit 15 years ago, before nations and civil society had built the tools, knowledge and political endurance to implement its approach. Written by a policy researcher with R2P expertise who became a US diplomat involved in these issues, this piece reflects on the experience of the Obama administration’s efforts to bring US government focus to atrocity prevention. It considers what it got right, what it missed, and options for looking forward to address R2P in the decade ahead.