The Question Of Intervention

The question of when or if a nation should intervene in another country’s affairs is one of the most important concerns in today’s volatile world. Taking John Stuart Mill’s famous 1859 essay “A Few Words on Non-Intervention” as his starting point, international relations scholar Michael W. Doyle addresses the thorny issue of when a state’s sovereignty should be respected and when it should be overridden or disregarded by other states in the name of humanitarian protection, national self-determination, or national security. In this time of complex social and political interplay and increasingly sophisticated and deadly weaponry, Doyle reinvigorates Mill’s principles for a new era while assessing the new United Nations doctrine of responsibility to protect. In the twenty-first century, intervention can take many forms: military and economic, unilateral and multilateral. Doyle’s thought-provoking argument examines essential moral and legal questions underlying significant American foreign policy dilemmas of recent years, including Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

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.

Violence or the potential for violence is a fact of human existence. Many societies, including our own, reward martial success or skill at arms. The ways in which members of a particular society use force reveal a great deal about the nature of authority within the group and about its members' priorities. Martha Finnemore uses one type of force, military intervention, as a window onto the shifting character of international society. She examines the changes, over the past 400 years, in why countries intervene militarily as well as in the ways they have intervened. It is not the fact of intervention that has altered, she says, but rather the reasons for and meaning behind intervention—the conventional understanding of the purposes for which states can and should use force. Finnemore looks at three types of intervention: collecting debts, addressing humanitarian crises, and acting against states perceived as threats to international peace. In all three, she finds that what is now considered "obvious" was vigorously contested or even rejected by people in earlier periods for well-articulated and logical reasons. A broad historical perspective allows her to explicate long-term trends: the steady erosion of force's normative value in international politics, the growing influence of equality norms in many aspects of global political life, and the increasing importance of law in intervention practices.

Government plays a critical role in mitigating individual and collective vulnerability to disaster. Through measures such as disaster relief, infrastructure development, and environmental regulation, public policy is central to making societies more resilient. However, the recent drive to replace public institutions with market mechanisms has challenged governmental efforts to manage collective risk. The contributors to this volume analyze the respective roles of the public and private sectors in the management of catastrophic risk, addressing questions such as: How should homeland security officials evaluate the risk posed by terrorist attacks and natural disasters? Are market-based interventions likely to mitigate our vulnerability to the effects of climate change? What is the appropriate relationship between non-governmental organizations and private security firms in responding to humanitarian emergencies? And how can philanthropic efforts to combat the AIDS crisis ensure ongoing access to life-saving drugs in the developing world? More generally, these essays point to the way thoughtful policy intervention can improve our capacity to withstand catastrophic events. Additional Columbia / SSRC books on the Privatization of Risk and its Implications for Americans Bailouts: Public Money, Private ProfitEdited by Robert E. Wright Health at Risk: America's Ailing Health System-and How to Heal ItEdited by Jacob S. Hacker Laid Off, Laid Low: Political and Economic Consequences of Employment InsecurityEdited by Katherine S. Newman Pensions, Social Security, and the Privatization of RiskEdited by Mitchell A. Orenstein

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.

"There is a veritable cottage industry of books on humanitarian intervention (the use of military force to stop atrocities) and the vast majority favors the project. The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention challenges this consensus by pointing up the strategic, legal, and ethical problems associated with it. The book also disputes the claim that humanitarian intervention, particularly as manifested in the doctrine of "The Responsibility to Protect," has become a universal norm that offers a comprehensive and effective solution to mass killing"--

Contains statements delivered by the Secretary-General over a period of 16 months (26 June 1998-19 Oct. 1999), which are intended as a contribution to the current debate on the question of intervention. Includes photographs related to the UN peacekeeping operations in the different parts of the world.

Since Somalia, the international community has found itself changing its view of humanitarian intervention. Operations designed to alleviate suffering and achieve peace sometimes produce damaging results. The United Nations, nongovernmental organizations, military and civilian agencies alike find themselves in the midst of confusion and weakness where what they seek are clarity and stability. Competing needs, rights, and values can obscure even the best international efforts to quell violence and assuage crises of poverty. More attention must be paid to the complexity of issues and moral dilemmas involved. This volume of original essays by international policy leaders, practitioners, and scholars brings together insights into the conflicting moral pressures present in different kinds of interventions ranging from Rwanda and Somalia to Haiti, Cambodia, and Bosnia. From their various cultural and professional perspectives the authors cover issues of human rights, sanctions, arms trade, refugees, HIV, and the media. Together they make the case that, although there are no easy answers, moral reflection and content can improve the quality of decisionmaking and intervention in internal conflicts. Published under the auspices of The International Committee of the Red Cross.