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The past, present, and future of intervention

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 September 2013

Abstract

Despite the prominent place of intervention in contemporary world politics, debate is limited by two weaknesses: first, an excessive presentism; and second, a focus on normative questions to the detriment of analysis of the longer-term sociological dynamics that fuel interventionary pressures. In keeping with the focus of the Special Issue on the ways in which intervention is embedded within modernity, this article examines the emergence of intervention during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, assesses its place in the contemporary world, and considers its prospects in upcoming years. The main point of the article is simple – although intervention changes in character across time and place, it is a persistent feature of modern international relations. As such, intervention is here to stay.

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Copyright © British International Studies Association 2013 

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References

1 This was made clear in the exchanges that took place between academics and British policymakers during the seminar series that acted as the incubator for this Special Issue. Policymakers tended to dwell on the ‘lessons’ of interventions they considered to be ‘successful’ (such as Kosovo), while discounting those they considered to be ‘failures’ (such as Iraq). But what was most striking about parliamentarians of all political persuasions was their shared view of intervention as a routine policy tool regardless of judgements about its success or failure.

2 The sheer volume of this work makes if impossible to précis effectively. What is important to note is the partisanship within debates about intervention. On one side are advocates ranging from Gareth Evans to Fernando Tesón. On the other are critics ranging from Noam Chomsky to Mark Mazower. This partisanship is reinforced by the presence of scholarly journals such as The Global Responsibility to Protect (which is largely supportive of the practice) and the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding (which is not). The result of this ‘with us or against us’ mentality is, for the most part, a non-conversation.

3 For example, at the April 2013 meeting of the International Studies Association in San Francisco, there were over 100 papers and roundtable contributions on intervention. The great majority of these were concerned with normative issues, particularly in relation to recent interventions in Libya, Mali, and Cote d'Ivoire, and the failure to intervene militarily in Darfur and Syria, reinforcing the presentism that tends to surround discussions of intervention.

4 This is not a new point in and of itself – indeed, it is one made by Stephen Krasner in his seminal work on the subject, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). However, as will become clear, the approach taken by the contributors does mark a distinctive departure in terms of how the intervention/non-intervention dynamic is approached.

5 Buzan, Barry and Lawson, George, ‘The Global Transformation: The Nineteenth Century and the Making of Modern International Relations’, International Studies Quarterly, 57:3 (2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, In Press. On the concept of the ‘long nineteenth century’, see Hobsbawm, Eric, The Age of Empire, 1875–1914 (London: Abacus, 1987), p. 8Google Scholar.

6 See, for example, Recchia, Stefano and Welsh, Jennifer (eds), Just and Unjust Military Interventions: European Thinkers from Vitoria to Mill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Simms, Brendan and Trim, D.J.B. (eds), Humanitarian Intervention: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 The centrality of ideas of individual rights, rooted in concerns for freedom of conscience, to the development of intervention during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is relayed in Reus-Smit, Christian, Individual Rights and the Making of the Modern International System (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch. 3. See also Havercroft, Jonathan, ‘Was Westphalia “All That”? Hobbes, Bellarmine and the Norm of Non-Intervention’, Global Constitutionalism, 1:1 (2012), pp. 120–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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9 This is particularly likely if intervention is defined in operational terms, either by defining it in terms of the transhistorical characteristics that distinguish intervention as a social practice, as per Reus-Smit in this Special Issue, or in terms of its primary objective, for example in changing the authority structure of target polities. The latter is the focus of Young, Oran, ‘Intervention and International Systems’, Journal of International Affairs, 22:2 (1968), pp. 177–87Google Scholar; and Rosenau, James, ‘Intervention as a Scientific Concept’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 13:2 (1969), pp. 149–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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22 Kissinger took his cues from the arch counterrevolutionary of the early nineteenth century, Prince Klemens von Metternich, one of the architects of the Concert of Europe. Kissinger wrote his PhD thesis on Metternich, later publishing it in book form. Kissinger, Henry, A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of the Peace 1812–1822 (New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1999)Google Scholar.

23 Onuf, Nicholas, ‘Humanitarian Intervention: The Early Years’, Florida Journal of International Law, 16:4 (2004), pp. 753–87Google Scholar. The key text here remains John Stuart Mill's ‘A Few Words on Non-Intervention’, written in 1859 and available at: {http://international-political-theory.net/texts/Mill-Non-Intervention.pdf}. For a discussion of Mill's approach to intervention, see Hoffman, Stanley, ‘The Problem of Intervention’, in Bull, Hedley (ed.), Intervention in World Politics (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984), pp. 25–6Google Scholar. Interestingly, both Mill and other prominent liberals such as Giuseppe Mazzini, whilst against intervention to support liberal revolutions, were in favour of interventions that responded to attempts by reactionary powers to crush such revolutions. On this point, see Varouxakis, Georgios, ‘John Stuart Mill on Intervention and Non-Intervention’, Millennium, 26:1 (1997), pp. 5776CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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25 On the development of ideas of humanitarianism during the nineteenth century, see Barnett, Michael, The Empire of Humanity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011)Google Scholar; Bass, Freedom's Battle; and Finnemore, Purpose of Intervention.

26 Morgenthau, ‘To Intervene or Not to Intervene’, p. 426.

27 Morgenthau, ‘To Intervene or Not to Intervene’, p. 426.

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29 A selective sample of these texts includes Chesterman, Simon, Just War or Just Peace? Humanitarian Intervention and International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)Google Scholar; Holzgrefe, J. L. and Keohane, Robert O. (eds), Humanitarian Intervention: Ethical, Legal and Political Dilemmas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lyons, Gene M. and Mastanduno, Michael (eds), Beyond Westphalia? State Sovereignty and International Intervention (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Orford, Anne, International Authority and the Responsibility to Protect (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ramsbotham, Oliver and Woodhouse, Tom, Humanitarian Intervention in Contemporary Conflict (Cambridge: Polity, 1996)Google Scholar; Weiss, Thomas, Humanitarian Intervention (Cambridge: Polity, 2007)Google Scholar; Welsh, Jennifer (ed.), Humanitarian Intervention and International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; and Wheeler, Saving Strangers.

30 Examples include Bass, Freedom's Battle; and Wheeler, Saving Strangers.

31 Simms, Brendan and Trim, David, ‘Towards a History of Humanitarian Intervention’, in Simms, Brendan and Trim, D.J.B. (eds), Humanitarian Intervention: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Perhaps the closest actual representative of this position was the nineteenth-century British parliamentarian, Richard Cobden. For a discussion of Cobden's non-interventionary credentials, see Vincent, John, Non-Intervention and International Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974)Google Scholar, Part II.

33 Vincent, Non-Intervention, p. 8.

35 The original report on ‘Responsibility to Protect’ can be found at: {www.un.org/secureworld/}. A key source for the report is Deng, Franciset al., Sovereignty as Responsibility (Washington DC: Brookings, 1996)Google Scholar. The Responsibility to Protect was formally adopted at the 2005 World Summit, which required states to ‘take timely and decisive action’ to protect populations from acts of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. Two useful, if starkly divergent, takes on the subject are Bellamy, Alex, Global Politics and the Responsibility to Protect (London: Routledge, 2010)Google Scholar; and Hehir, Aidan, The Responsibility to Protect (London: Palgrave, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 See, for example, Tony Blair's 1999 Chicago Speech, {http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/international/jan-june99/blair_doctrine4-23.html} accessed 1 August 2013, which urged assessments of humanitarian intervention to incorporate calculations of interests and the likelihood of success. For a general discussion of this issue, see Chris Brown, ‘The Antipolitical Theory of Responsibility to Protect’, Global Responsibility to Protect (2013), In Press.

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39 Bull, ‘Introduction’, p. 1.

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41 Taliaferro, Jeffrey, Balancing Risks: Great Power Interventions in the Periphery (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004)Google Scholar. During the nineteenth century, such costs derived from both resistance in target countries and the reduced numbers of troops the intervener could deploy out of concerns about domestic disorder. As Roger Bullen notes, ‘intervention was the price that the powers paid for their great-power status’. See Bullen, ‘Great Powers’, p. 59.

42 Kaufmann, Chaim D. and Pape, Robert A., ‘Explaining Costly International Moral Action: Britain's Sixty-Year Campaign Against the Atlantic Slave Trade’, International Organization, 53:4 (1999), p. 631CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Interestingly, Kaufmann and Pape explain this commitment in terms of British domestic poilitics (incorporating non-conformist elites at a relatively low cost) rather than international status. Our thanks to Chris Brown for alerting us to this point.

43 These are official US figures drawn from ‘Special Inspector General’ reports on Afghani and Iraqi Reconstruction. For more details, see Toby Dodge, this Special Issue.

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49 For an assessment of the legal debates around intervention, see Chesterman, Just War or Just Peace? On quasi-sovereignty, see Grovogui, Siba, Sovereigns, Quasi-Sovereigns and Africans (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

50 Shilliam, this Special Issue.

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55 Orford, International Authority.

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61 We not have the scope to chart the multiple actors that take part in interventionary practices. Suffice to say that private actors, from think tanks to security firms, are central to interventionary practices. For more on this issue, see the contributions by David Williams and Toby Dodge to this Special Issue.

62 Aron, Raymond, Peace and War (New York: Doubleday and Co., 1966)Google Scholar; Halliday, Fred, Revolution and World Politics (London: Palgrave, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Owen, John IV, The Clash of Ideas in World Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hoffman, ‘The Problem of Intervention’.

63 Aron, Peace and War, pp. 100–3; Owen, The Clash of Ideas, p. 54.

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65 Buzan, Barry and Lawson, George, ‘Capitalism and the Emergent World Order’, International Affaris, 90:1 (2014)Google Scholar, In press.

66 This analysis suggests that seeing military interventions as ‘wars of choice’ obscures more than it reveals. See, for example, Charles Krauthammer, ‘Wars of Choice, Wars of Necessity’, Time Magazine (28 October 2001), available at: {http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,181599,00.html} accessed 7 July 2013; Haas, Richard N., War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009)Google Scholar.

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69 The latter was a response both to dynamics associated with superpower competition and the Sino-Soviet split, which generated competition between Moscow and Beijing over strategic regions (Southeast Asia, Southern Africa) and national liberation movements. This dynamic underscores how non-European powers began to shape the pattern of external interventions in important ways during the Cold War.

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77 Scobell, Andrew, China's Use of Military Force: Beyond the Great Wall and the Long March (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 119–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Halliday, Revolution and World Politics, pp. 111–15.

78 Carlson, Allan, Unifying China, Integrating with the World: Securing Chinese Sovereignty in the Reform Era (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

79 Gill, Rising Star, pp. 113–21.

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83 Suzuki, Shogo, ‘Why Does China Participate in Intrusive Peacekeeping? Understanding Paternalistic Chinese Discourses on Development and Intervention’, International Peacekeeping, 18:3 (2011), pp. 271–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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85 Bonnie Glaser, Scott Snyder, and John S. Park, ‘Keeping an Eye on an Unruly Neighbor: Chinese Views of Economic Reform and Stability in North Korea’, Working Paper, United States Institute for Peace (3 January 2008), available at: {http://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/resources/Jan2008.pdf} accessed 1 August 2013.

86 Buzan and Lawson, ‘Capitalism and the Emergent World Order’.

87 Ibid.

88 Quinn-Judge, Sophie, ‘Fraternal Aid, Self-defence, or Self-interest? Vietnam's Intervention in Cambodia, 1978–1989’, in Simms, Brendan and Trim, D.J.B. (eds), Humanitarian Intervention: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 343–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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90 Quinn-Judge, Sophie, ‘Victory on the Battlefield; Isolation in Asia: Vietnam's Cambodia Decade, 1979–1989’ in Westad, Odd Arne and Quinn-Judge, Sophie (eds), The Third Indochina War: Conflict between China, Vietnam and Cambodia, 1972–79 (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 214Google Scholar.

91 Weinberger, Naomi Joy, Syrian Intervention in Lebanon: The 1975–76 Civil War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 320Google Scholar.

92 Weinberger, Syrian Intervention, pp. 329–32.

93 Ferris, Jesse, Nasser's Gamble: How Intervention in Yemen Caused the Six-Day War and the Decline of Egyptian Power (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012)Google Scholar.

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95 On the general difficulties of foreign imposed regime change, see Betts, Richard K., ‘The Delusion of Impartial Intervention’, Foreign Affairs, 73:6 (1994), pp. 2033CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the specific difficulties of promoting democracy through intervention, see Pickering, Jeffrey and Peceny, Mark, ‘Forging Democracy at Gunpoint’, International Studies Quarterly, 50:3 (2006), pp. 539–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Downes, Alexander B. and Monten, Jonathan, ‘Forced to be Free? Why Foreign-Imposed Regime Change Rarely Leads to Democratization’, International Security, 37:4 (2013), pp. 90131CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the importance of external conditions (such as terrain) to the success of interventions, see Kreps, Sarah, ‘When Does the Mission Determine the Coalition?’, Security Studies, 17:3 (2008), pp. 531–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the importance of internal conditions (most notably leaders’ beliefs) to the success of interventions, see Saunders, Elizabeth, ‘Transformative Choices: Leaders and the Origins of Intervention Strategy’, International Security, 34:2 (2009), pp. 119–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

96 ‘Syrian Death Toll Now Above 100,000, says UN Chief Ban’, BBC News (25 July 2013), available at: {http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23455760} accessed 1 August 2013. Figures on refugees in Syria available at: {www.unhcr.org/50a9f829a.html} accessed 1 August 2013.

97 This is a point made forcefully in Vincent, Non-Intervention, p. 331.