'Lessons from Intervention in the 21st Century' - Introduction and Framework
This column by David Held and Kyle McNally is part of Global Policy’s e-book, ‘Lessons from Intervention in the 21st Century: Legality, Legitimacy and Feasibility', edited by David Held and Kyle McNally. Contributions from academics and practitioners will be serialised on Global Policy until the e-book’s release in the summer of 2014. Find out more here or join the debate on Twitter #GPintervention.
The post-WWII settlement institutionalised a system of security governance which sits at the core of the multilateral order – stemming from the Security Council to what is now a complex array of international regimes. Throughout the Cold War, the standoff between the US and USSR, reinforced by the logic of mutually assured destruction, was a de-centrifugal structure pushing conflict into a series of proxy wars. The end of the Cold War was initially portrayed as a triumph for US power and even celebrated as the end of ideology. However, under the surface there was a shift from an era of bipolarity to multipolarity. This was a more complex and uncertain system marked by a growing number of players; both state and non-state actors. The liberal internationalist agenda set down in 1945 could, it seemed, now reach new levels of openness, access and representation. Simultaneously, new divisions and rifts were beginning to emerge.
As the era of proxy wars ended, a changing pattern of conflict emerged from state sponsored conflicts to patterns of internal disputes and violence increasingly involving and targeting civilians. These ‘new wars’ have been both the result and cause of acute state failure and fragility and overwhelming humanitarian crises throughout the developing world. In such circumstances a minimum provision for subsistence and safety is wanting for millions of people. It is against this background that a widespread debate emerged about how to protect human life and ensure human security, when states prove unable or unwilling to do so. Throughout the 1990s the notion of ‘sovereignty as responsibility’ emerged as a point of reference involving discussions about how and to what extent sovereignty must be qualified by the willingness and capacity to protect citizens.
The significance of this debate outlasted the impact of 9/11 and the Bush-led War on Terror. In fact, some of the terms of the debate illuminated normative frameworks to assess the post-9/11 wars. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in many respects dramatized the concerns about when and under what circumstances military intervention is justified, the intended and unintended results of the use of military force, and the huge human costs and the very uncertain geopolitical outcomes. The debate about conflict and security became a global affair raising widespread concerns about international law, the use of force and humanitarian crises.
Debates about military intervention, humanitarian or otherwise, typically involve two poles: the legality of intervention in relation to international law and the feasibility of those interventions. These concerns are crucial for fairly obvious reasons. Legality is typically understood as specified by Chapter I (Article 2) and Chapter VII (Article 51) of the UN Charter, which firmly defend the sovereign equality for all member states, while sanctioning war only in the case self-defence and threats to international peace and security, respectively.
Feasibility is taken here as the capacity to resolve such breaches and/or restore a sustainable peace. Prima facie it seems a straight forward term to grasp but it raises many complex considerations. Feasibility is always about judging the required means to achieve a particular end – the protection of civilians, the eradication of a despotic regime, providing relief to populations under severe threat. Here the issue is whether the deployment of military forces can and does deliver the desired end. A sleuth of issues arise: has the use of force been effective? Has it generated collateral damage which undermines the core mission? Does it leave a legacy of violence as the norm of managing conflictual relationships? Does the deployment of force undermine human rights standards and the capacity for self-determination? Do the means destroy the end?
However, questions of feasibility are not only about whether or not an action will be effective in the end; indeed, there are also questions as to whether intervention will be implemented at all, and if so: how? by whom? and for how long? Strong UN mandates are increasingly sparse and rarely associated with the capacity to deliver successful intervention. For example, key resolutions can be blocked by members of the P-5 before the point at which they are tested for efficacy – as has been the case when China vetoes resolutions aimed at putting more pressure on Sudan regarding the Darfur crisis.
Even when a strong UN resolution is made condemning a power for aggression, it can be readily ignored – such as Israel ignoring the requests to withdraw from occupied territories, and the international community’s unwillingness to enforce the mandate. On the other hand, there are states able and willing to intervene who do not always garner sufficient support, both internationally and domestically. The US and allies can be poised to act, as they were recently over the use of chemical weapons in Syria, but found legal backing wanting, both in the UN and in domestic legislatures. Accordingly, there is sometimes a sharp inverse relationship between the feasibility of an intervention and its legality. These tradeoffs between legality and feasibility need investigation.
In the context of severe humanitarian crises, the UN grounds for legitimate military action, as specified in Chapter VII of the UN Charter, have been considered too restrictive. Since its publication in 2001 the R2P doctrine has attempted to provide guidance on those cases where states fail to protect their own citizens. Yet, the application of R2P has been controversial and what was conceived as a ‘responsibility to protect’ has in some cases become a ‘right to intervene’, casting aside the more comprehensive framework of R2P, including principles of and efforts towards prevention and rebuilding. In this context, the application of the R2P doctrine raises doubts about whether it can become an impartial framework for international intervention.
Despite the addition of R2P to the grounds for intervention, there is another range of issues that needs consideration. These centre on the concept of legitimacy. The debate about legitimacy is complex but one thing is clear: questions of legitimacy are inevitably raised by the limited nature of legal argument. What is considered legal in some instances, may not be considered legitimate, and vice versa. For example, the US-led NATO intervention in Kosovo in 1999 is widely regarded as legitimate even though it may also be regarded as illegal. The war in Afghanistan had Security Council approval but the legitimacy of the war is increasingly contested. It is difficult now to see how the ideal end game of the Afghanistan operation was ever feasible, which draws into question the purpose of such a war. The war in Iraq was illegal to begin with, later received UN support, and yet is still largely regarded as illegitimate. The intervention in Libya has been regarded as legal, invoking R2P, but now widespread questions linger about the interpretation and stretching of the UN mandate, which tests the bounds of its legitimacy.
Accordingly, questions of legitimacy abound, both in terms of the nature and location of legitimacy, and in terms of whether it is only ever a post hoc argument. Since we can only know whether an action is protection or preventative after the fact, are all matters of legitimacy retrospective judgements?
Taken together, the above considerations suggest a three dimensional inquiry into the nature of intervention. A range of possible arguments is plausible as a response to these issues. Positions can range from regarding an intervention as unfeasible irrespective of its possible legality and/or legitimacy to interventions which can robustly be defended on all three categories. This e-book asks contributors to comment on and debate these issues. Contributors are invited to address the trade-offs between feasibility, legality and legitimacy apparent in intervention debates, or to go further in questioning the very terms of ‘intervention’, ‘feasibility’ and ‘legitimacy’ in this field.
There will be two clusters of articles. The first examines the terms of reference of intervention and interrogates the concepts of legality, feasibility and legitimacy. The purpose of this is to assess critically the available conceptual frameworks for understanding and assessing interventions. The second will examine a range of case studies setting out what has worked, what has failed and why. The editors will write a concluding essay drawing the strands of the debate together.
David Held is Master of University College, Durham University, Professor of Politics and International Relations and General Editor of Global Policy. Kyle McNally is a PhD candidate at Durham University and Community Editor for Global Policy.
