scholarly journals Conditions of External Military Interventions in African Internal Conflicts: Complexity of Conflict Intensity, Social Dislocation and Raw Materials

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 24-55
Author(s):  
Martin Schmiedl ◽  
Jan Prouza
Keyword(s):  
High Intensity ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
High Complexity ◽  
Military Interventions ◽  
Internal Conflicts ◽  
Intrastate Conflicts ◽  
The Military ◽  
External Interventions ◽  
Conflict Intensity

External interventions are one of the most important aspects of intrastate conflicts since a majority of them are significantly internationalised, especially in Africa where the interventions most often occur. Factors that lead to the military intervention remain, however, puzzling. The authors therefore apply the method of fs/QCA to understand not only  conditionsbehind intervention into African intrastate conflicts, but also to catch interactions among them. The results show high complexity of various possible combinations, mainly of high intensity, massive social dislocation or presence of raw materials in case of interventions in African internal conflicts

scholarly journals Coup Agency and Prospects for Democracy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holger Albrecht ◽  
Kevin Koehler ◽  
Austin Schutz
Keyword(s):  
Military Intervention ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Research Note ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Democratic Transitions ◽  
Military Interventions ◽  
Security Personnel ◽  
The Military ◽  
Global Data

Abstract This research note introduces new global data on military coups. Conventional aggregate data so far have conflated two distinct types of coups. Military interventions by leading officers are coups “from above,” characterized by political power struggles within authoritarian elite coalitions where officers move against civilian elites, executive incumbents, and their loyal security personnel. By contrast, power grabs by officers from the lower and middle ranks are coups “from below,” where military personnel outside of the political elite challenge sitting incumbents, their loyalists, and the regime itself. Disaggregating coup types offers leverage to revise important questions about the causes and consequences of military intervention in politics. This research note illustrates that coup attempts from the top of the military hierarchy are much more likely to be successful than coups from the lower and middle ranks of the military hierarchy. Moreover, coups from the top recalibrate authoritarian elite coalitions and serve to sustain autocratic rule; they rarely produce an opening for a democratic transition. Successful coups from below, by contrast, can result in the breakdown of authoritarian regimes and generate an opening for democratic transitions.

Actors in Military Intervention

2018 ◽  
pp. 89-134
Author(s):  
Catherine Gegout
Keyword(s):  
Military Intervention ◽  
The United States ◽  
Military Bases ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Military Interventions ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
Security Actor ◽  
The Military ◽  
Security Affairs ◽  
Security Organizations

Chapter three locates European military intervention alongside the military interventions and political and economic presence of other regional and international actors. African states have agency in their own foreign policies, but African security organizations are dependent on European funding for the deployment of troops, and they cooperate with the European Union. The United Nations is present in Africa, but it often has to act alone: European actors are not always there to support UN missions. However, Europeans are keen on reinforcing UN capacity to fight militias. China is increasingly an important economic partner of Africa, and now becoming a security actor there. European actors are trying to develop relations with China on African security affairs. The United States is an important security actor in Africa, with military bases there. Its role and motives are studied in detail, as it influences the decisions of European actors to intervene.

The barking dogs: junior coalition partners and military operations abroad in Italy

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Valerio Vignoli
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Military Operations ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Military Interventions ◽  
Lega Nord ◽  
Italian Context ◽  
The Military

Abstract Various studies explored under which conditions junior coalition partners are able to have an impact on foreign policy outcomes. However, these parties do not always manage to get what they want. In this situation, they face a dilemma: defecting or staying? In the Italian context, as far as Military Operations Abroad (MOA) are concerned, the latter option has invariably prevailed. In particular, Italy's involvement in Operation Allied Force in Kosovo (1999) and Operation Unified Protector in Libya (2011) raised considerable contestation from junior partners that did not result in the termination of the respective cabinets. Employing extensive qualitative data, including a set of original interviews with relevant policymakers, this article aims to understand why junior partners did not defect in these two cases. The empirical findings highlight a variation in parties' motivations according to their ideological leaning: while extreme-left parties were afraid of being punished by their own voters for leaving the cabinet because of the participation in the operation in Kosovo, the far-right and autonomist Lega Nord did not consider opposition to the military intervention in Libya as a salient issue. Therefore, the article has considerable implications for the research agendas on the party politics of military interventions and government termination.

A MICROCOSM OF DECLINE: BRITISH LOSS OF NERVE AND MILITARY INTERVENTION IN JORDAN AND KUWAIT, 1958 AND 1961

1997 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 1069-1083 ◽  
Author(s):  
NIGEL JOHN ASHTON
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Limited Resources ◽  
Military Interventions ◽  
International Climate ◽  
The Military ◽  
Shed Light

This article reinterprets the post-Suez British role in the Middle East through a comparison of the military interventions in Jordan in 1958 and Kuwait in 1961. Moreover, it places these operations in the broader context of the debate about British decline. It is argued that in addition to the familiar constraints on British action imposed by limited resources and the changing international climate, the projection of power in the region proved to be a great test of nerve for British ministers and officials. Paradoxically, this proved to be true as much of the successful interventions in Jordan and Kuwait as of the earlier failure over Suez. Utilizing very recently released documents from British and American archives, the article aims to shed light on the dynamics of decline at the microcosmic level, in the belief that insights gleaned here may well be of value in revising macrocosmic theories of the process.

Experimental Microfoundations for Resolve: I

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua D. Kertzer
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Experimental Design ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Risk Averse ◽  
Military Interventions ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Human Costs ◽  
The Military ◽  
Reputational Costs

This chapter examines individual-level microfoundations of resolve in the context of public opinion using a novel laboratory experiment that models both the selection into, and duration of support for, military interventions. The experiment manipulates situational features of the military intervention while measuring dispositional variables using techniques employed in behavioral economics and social psychology. The chapter first explains the rationale for using public opinion as the domain in which to construct a theory of resolve before discussing the study's experimental design. It then presents the experiment's findings and their implications for the study of public opinion, and for theories of resolve more generally. The results show that time and risk preferences can help account for variations in sensitivity to the costs of war: more patient respondents are less sensitive to casualties while more risk-averse respondents are more sensitive to the human costs of fighting as well as the reputational costs of backing down.

Distributing Death in Humanitarian Interventions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lars Christie
Keyword(s):  
Military Intervention ◽  
Population Group ◽  
The Other ◽  
Military Interventions ◽  
Military Forces ◽  
Humanitarian Interventions ◽  
The Military ◽  
Collateral Harm

Armed military interventions often inflict large amounts of collateral harm on innocent civilians. Ought intervening soldiers, when possible, to direct collateral harm to one innocent population group rather than the other? Recently several authors have proposed that expected beneficiaries of a military intervention ought to carry greater risk of collateral harm than neutral bystanders who are not subject to the threat the military forces are intervening to avert. According to this view, intervening soldiers ought to reduce the risk of collateral harm to neutral bystanders, even if this means foreseeably imposing a somewhat higher overall number of collateral casualties among those for whom the intervention is conducted. This chapter raises a number of challenges to this view. Even if the beneficiary thesis is accepted with respect to discrete risk-imposing acts, it should not be with respect to risk-imposing strategies individuated on a war-by-war basis.

Complicating the Moral Case of Responsibility to Protect

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Zunes
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Military Interventions ◽  
Humanitarian Interventions ◽  
Moral Case ◽  
Violent Action ◽  
The Military ◽  
Critical Moments

This chapter examines the military interventions in Kosovo and Libya (often advanced as successful humanitarian interventions), and argues that they did more harm than good. They escalated the level of killings (by regime and rebels), fanning nationalism in the first and sectarian militias in the second. The general explanations underpinning this analysis are that intervening powers are rarely neutral or impartial, and that military intervention changes the strategies of the target regime and of the rebelling parties. The chapter argues for the efficacy of strategic non-violent action internally and preventive diplomacy externally, as alternatives to military intervention. It notes the successes of non-violent movements in both case studies, and critical moments at which they could have been supported by preventive diplomacy but were not. A second theme is sensitivity to broader ramifications of military intervention for international affairs.

Legality of Foreign Military Intervention in International Law: Four Case Studies

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 462-506
Author(s):  
Mindia Vashakmadze
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Military Interventions ◽  
Internal Conflicts ◽  
Substantive Law ◽  
Self Defence

Foreign military intervention in internal conflicts remains an important feature of today’s international relations. At the same time, the paradigms of interventions in international law are changing. In today’s world, questions related to legality and legitimacy of foreign military interventions are more often raised than ever. However, in many cases, there is a gap between legality and legitimacy of such interventions. Concepts such as humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect attempted to bridge this gap; however, both concepts remain contested. Complex questions of substantive law and the institutional framework of collective security are discussed in this context. Meanwhile, classic exceptions to the general prohibition on the use of force, such as self-defence, are broadly interpreted. Certain States aspire to revive their ambitions by using military means to protect nationals abroad. The paper examines four cases (Georgia, Libya, Syria and Ukraine) in which different arguments have been held to justify military interventions. It attempts to answer the question as to whether there are new paradigms of military intervention in international law and to what extent the arguments made by the States to justify military interventions have influenced relevant norms and the structure of international law.

The President as Communicator-in-Chief

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lukas D. Herr
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Military Interventions ◽  
Qualitative Case Studies ◽  
Us Military ◽  
Intervention Policy ◽  
The Military

In US military intervention policy, presidents can usually benefit from substantial room for manoeuvre, which is not called into question by Congress and its members. Based on a domestic perspective of US foreign policy, this study argues that presidents deploy tropes of American exceptionalism and that such rhetoric conduces to congressional deference by setting the terms of the debate and silencing prospective criticism. Three qualitative case studies of the military interventions and their respective discourses in Kosovo in 1999, Iraq as from 2003 and Libya in 2011 show that members of Congress defer to presidential warmongering when they are left without access to a societally sustainable rebuttal.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document