The choice of client issue is separable from the intervention decision. You could choose an ostensibly humanitarian enterprise for non-humanitarian reasons.
mbs
Will I learn just what the "cynical great power reasons" for U.S. intervention in the Balkans in the 1990s were? They must have been some doozy, because they led Clinton to choose the Bosnian Muslims as America's "Balkan Clients." Usually, when one chooses clients for cynical great power reasons, one chooses CLIENTS WITH WEAPONS!! CLIENTS THAT HAVE POWER!! CLIENTS THAT CAN DEFEND THEMSELVES!!
We in the Clinton administration must have been really brilliant when, looking for a Balkan client for cynical great power reasons, we passed over Slobodan Milosevic, the biggest, meanest, nastiest, best-armed S.O.B. in the peninsula, and chose instead the Bosnian Muslims...
Brad DeLong