International Intervention And State Making

This book analyses the changing dynamics of sovereignty resulting from contemporary international state-building interventions. It aims to highlight how the exercise of ‘exceptional’ forms of power by intervening agencies impacts on the sovereign capacity of intervened states. Drawing upon in-depth analyses of three case studies – Kosovo, East Timor and the Kurdistan Regional Government, the book shifts the focus of the debate to the nature of contemporary intervention as an act of statemaking, and argues that foreign intervention changes the dynamics of political power upon which sovereignty is structured. At the same time, it reveals how intervention reproduces the imposed conditions of international state-making, thus permanently internalising external regulatory mechanisms. International intervention, in other words, becomes the constitutive element of governance in the newly created state. This book will be of much interest to students of statebuilding, war and conflict studies, global governance, security studies and IR.

In International Intervention and the Problem of Legitimacy Andrew C. Gilbert argues for an ethnographic analysis of international intervention as a series of encounters, focusing on the relations of difference and inequality, and the question of legitimacy that permeate such encounters. He discusses the transformations that happen in everyday engagements between intervention agents and their target populations, and also identifies key instabilities that emerge out of such engagements. Gilbert highlights the struggles, entanglements and inter-dependencies between and among foreign agents, and the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina that channel and shape intervention and how it unfolds. Drawing upon nearly two years of fieldwork studying in postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina, Gilbert's probing analysis identifies previously overlooked sites, processes, and effects of international intervention, and suggests new comparative opportunities for the study of transnational action that seeks to save and secure human lives and improve the human condition. Above all, International Intervention and the Problem of Legitimacy foregrounds and analyzes the open-ended, innovative, and unpredictable nature of international intervention that is usually omitted from the ordered representations of the technocratic vision and the confident assertions of many critiques.

National sovereignty, defined as a nation's right to exercise its own law and practise over its territory, is a cherished norm in the modern era, and yet it raises great legal, political and ethical dilemmas. This study looks at the problems created by international intervention.

Military intervention in a conflict without a reasonable prospect of success is unjustifiable, especially when it is done in the name of humanity. Couched in the debate on the responsibility to protect civilians from violence and drawing on traditional 'just war' principles, the centralpremise of this book is that humanitarian military intervention can be justified as a policy option only if decision makers can be reasonably sure that intervention will do more good than harm. This book asks, 'Have past humanitarian military interventions been successful?' It defines success as saving lives and sets out a methodology for estimating the number of lives saved by a particular military intervention. Analysis of 17 military operations in six conflict areas that were thedefining cases of the 1990s-northern Iraq after the Gulf War, Somalia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, Kosovo and East Timor-shows that the majority were successful by this measure. In every conflict studied, however, some military interventions succeeded while others failed, raising the question, 'Why have some past interventions been more successful than others?' This book argues that the central factors determining whether a humanitarian intervention succeeds are theobjectives of the intervention and the military strategy employed by the intervening states. Four types of humanitarian military intervention are offered: helping to deliver emergency aid, protecting aid operations, saving the victims of violence and defeating the perpetrators of violence. Thefocus on strategy within these four types allows an exploration of the political and military dimensions of humanitarian intervention and highlights the advantages and disadvantages of each of the four types.Humanitarian military intervention is controversial. Scepticism is always in order about the need to use military force because the consequences can be so dire. Yet it has become equally controversial not to intervene when a government subjects its citizens to massive violation of their basic humanrights. This book recognizes the limits of humanitarian intervention but does not shy away from suggesting how military force can save lives in extreme circumstances.

This book analyses the changing dynamics of sovereignty resulting from contemporary international state-building interventions. It aims to highlight how the exercise of ‘exceptional’ forms of power by intervening agencies impacts on the sovereign capacity of intervened states. Drawing upon in-depth analyses of three case studies – Kosovo, East Timor and the Kurdistan Regional Government, the book shifts the focus of the debate to the nature of contemporary intervention as an act of statemaking, and argues that foreign intervention changes the dynamics of political power upon which sovereignty is structured. At the same time, it reveals how intervention reproduces the imposed conditions of international state-making, thus permanently internalising external regulatory mechanisms. International intervention, in other words, becomes the constitutive element of governance in the newly created state. This book will be of much interest to students of statebuilding, war and conflict studies, global governance, security studies and IR.

Responsibility to Protect: Research, bibliography, background. Supplementary volume to the Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty

Focusing on Bosnia after Dayton, this book examines the role of the international community in state-building and intervention, underlining the importance of international participation and building on local resources for increased effectiveness.

Humanitarian action confronts us with the dilemmas of international relations in the age of globalization. The approach in this book is holistic, comparative and analytical. Humanitarian intervention is considered from the point of view of political economy, public administration, international relations, international law, the military, political theory, sociology, culture and media studies. Chapters discuss experiences across Bosnia, Rwanda, Somalia, Iraq, Haiti and other cases, if we are moving towards global governance humanitarian intervention is part of this motion. It is a harbinger of a new global politics, which is all the more reason to consider it scrupulously.