In 1995, some observers and policymakers might have expected that the international deployment in Bosnia would be an exceptional event. It soon became obvious, however, that Bosnia was only the first in a succession of ambitious military interventions and post-conflict missions: first in Kosovo (1999) and East Timor (1999), then, in Afghanistan (2001), and finally in Iraq (2003). It became commonplace to refer to all of these missions as if they were variations on the same theme: sometimes referred to as nation-building, stabilization operations (U.S. military), state-building, or post conflict peacebuilding. As a new international cadre of nation-builders emerged, moving from one mission to the next, policymakers asked with ever greater insistence whether there were some universal lessons.