Intervention in Contemporary World Politics by Neil Macfarlane

Author:Neil Macfarlane [Macfarlane, Neil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, General, Strategy, Political Science, International Relations, Arms Control, Political Freedom
ISBN: 9781136051920
Google: Et4_E6mMt6wC
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-06-17T04:58:36+00:00

The post-Cold War practice of intervention

The practice of intervention in the post-Cold War period was dominated at the global level by actions mounted by coalitions of the willing under UN mandates (UNITAF in Somalia in late 1992, Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti in 1994, NATO’s insertion of IFOR into Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995, the Italian-led Operation Alba in Albania in 1997 and the Australian-led INTERFET in East Timor in 1999) or by particular states with similar mandates (e.g., France’s Operation Turquoise in Rwanda in mid-1994). In some instances, regional organisations played an essential (NATO in Bosnia) or significant (the OAS in Haiti, the OSCE in Bosnia) role as the UN’s agents of choice in dealing with specific aspects of the crisis in question. In other cases, the organisations operated independently of the UN (e.g., the intervention of ECOWAS in Liberia and Sierra Leone, the CIS in Georgia and Tajikistan, and NATO in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia). However, for the most part, regional operations were authorised or approved by the UN Security Council, either prospectively (NATO in Bosnia), or retrospectively (ECOWAS in Liberia and Sierra Leone, the CIS in Georgia and Tajikistan).34 The great exception (in terms of the lack of a UNSC mandate) was NATO in Kosovo.

From a chronological point of view, there is a reasonably clear-cut period of multilateral interventionism in the 1990s. Perhaps in reaction to the apparent success in resolving a number of prolonged local conflicts towards the end of the Cold War and the rebuff of Iraqi aggression in 1990–91 and taking into account the appearance of a number of post-Cold War conflicts in Europe, there was initially a rapid increase in the number of interventions and of peace-support operations at the beginning of the decade. This died quickly. The debacle in Somalia in 1993 considerably deflated American enthusiasm for participation in peace enforcement and, more broadly, for ‘assertive multilateralism’.

The new American caution was reflected in the stringent conditions on participation included in Presidential Decision Directive 25 (PDD-25), issued in the spring of 1994, just as the Rwandan crisis broke out. As Weiss and Collins note, ‘the United States would not become involved unless American interests could be advanced at acceptable risk; and at least seventeen conditions had to be fulfilled to indicate an acceptable risk’.35 In the prevailing circumstances, the United States government strongly resisted the idea of multilateral peace enforcement in Rwanda, greatly reducing the prospect for an effective international response. The paucity of media presence on the ground reduced the degree of domestic pressure on them to act. The frustrations of the UN, the EU, the OSCE and NATO in the former Yugoslavia contributed to the reversal in the mood of the international community. UN action was also increasingly constrained by its financial crisis, which was due in large part to the refusal of the United States to pay its accumulated and delinquent contributions to the general and peacekeeping budgets.36

In consequence, the number of peacekeeping or peace-enforcement missions declined markedly from 1994 to 1997.

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