Intervention

An intervention is a coercive action taken by one international actor to affect the political authority of another. This entry examines the concept of intervention and then discusses the balance between the protection of human rights and respect for state sovereignty, the legal basis for humanitarian intervention, and the issues related to the strategies employed in humanitarian intervention.

The notion of intervention is notoriously elusive and controversial. In what remains the most relevant conceptual work on the issue, James Rosenau proposed to delimit the notion in two ways. First, an intervention is a coercive action, implying a sharp break from previous, conventional, behavior. This sudden interruption in the course of established relations between political units is finite and transitory. It has a beginning (the usual modes of behavior are abandoned) and an end (these modes of behavior are reestablished or, because they persist, they become conventional in turn). Military intervention—either directly or indirectly, such as the support of subversive or terrorist-armed activities—is an especially conspicuous and significant form of coercive action, but it is not the only one. There are other types of measures, either diplomatic or economic, that can constitute a forcible interference and provoke a sharp break in preestablished relations. Second, an [Page 1332]intervention is not just any type of break: It is directed at affecting (changing or preserving) the political authority of another actor. Political authority notably refers to the actors and the processes that enable a political community to choose its own political, economic, social, and cultural system as well as its foreign policy. The target is thus deprived, at least momentarily, of its capacity for self-determination.

Interventions are therefore different from the foreign policies that imply a continuous presence in the target society. For example, the presence since 1945 of U.S. troops in Europe and in Northeast Asia is not considered today as an intervention, a sharp break with long-standing relations. On the contrary, this military presence is integrated and largely taken for granted. The continuous exercise of regular diplomatic and economic influence is not considered as an intervention either. Similarly, colonialism and imperialism imply a long-standing presence of the colonizer and expand well beyond the notion of intervention. Interventions are also distinct from the numerous external actions that have as their main goal an influence that is not focused on structures of political authority. For example, measures favoring investment abroad, an international public relation campaign to promote the candidacy of a city to host the Olympic Games, the expulsion of diplomats, or the signing of an alliance all alter previous behavior. But the main goal of these actions is to affect the capacity of other international actors, not directly their authority structure (even if, in the long run, authority structures might be somewhat affected).

Both practically and theoretically, the notion of intervention is one of the most disputed in international relations for two main reasons. First, the phenomenon touches on some of the core issues, notably the imperatives of order and justice (sovereignty and individual rights), of a variety of legal, normative, political, and strategic/military perspectives. As a consequence, different practitioners of international politics (diplomats, soldiers, lawyers, human rights advocates, etc.) as well as several academic disciplines are simultaneously interested, which leads not only to a proliferation of studies and approaches but also to a disconnect between these relatively autonomous debates. Second, for international relations practitioners and analysts, the notion of intervention is at the root of a key issue, the evolving divide between the domestic, especially the domestic politics that enable each person to work out his or her own destiny, and the international. The changing reach of international relations and the concerns that these changes generate are at the core of the debates on intervention, linked to states' sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political independence. Article 2(7) of the Charter of the United Nations (UN) provides, “Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the UN to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.” The UN Charter affirms the inviolability of state boundaries, but the content of the “matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state” has been continually disputed. What are the matters and concerns that are within the reach of the society of states and what are the matters and concerns (if any) that are off-limits, that is, for the political communities to decide?

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