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Could humanitarian intervention fuel the conflict instead of ending it?

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Abstract

An unpleasant truth overlooked is that although war is a great evil, it does have a great virtue: it can solve political conflicts and lead to peace. This can happen when all belligerents become exhausted or when one wins decisively. This study empirically analyzes whether these arguments are supported by evidence on recent military interventions. In our analysis, the effect of military intervention on deterioration risk is not highly significant and considerable. At peak, danger—the risk of state collapse—is about 38%, whereas a country with no intervention has a risk of 19%. R2P doctrine, however, developed by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty in 2001 with the avowed objectives of protecting humans from mass atrocities and other crimes, is theoretically defective, which will continue to be limited. To avoid arbitrary intervention, we should restructure the philosophy of the R2P to one with which any society of any age can agree and pursue a “minimalist-institutional approach.”

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Notes

  1. Edward N. Luttwak, Give War a Chance, Foreign Affairs, Jul/Aug 1999; 78, 4, p. 36.

  2. See more at https://www.medcalc.org/manual/logistic_regression.php [2021/05/12].

  3. Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798–2018, Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress.gov R42738, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R42738.pdf [2019/03/01].

  4. State Fragility Index and Matrix, Time-Series Data, 1995–2018, http://www.systemicpeace.org/inscrdata.html [2021/05/11].

  5. https://sites.duke.edu/icbdata/ [2019/02/16].

  6. Luttwak, p. 44.

  7. Paul Collier, Anke Hoeffler, and Nicholas Sambanis, The Collier–Hoeffler model of civil war onset and the case study project research design, Paul Collier, Nicholas Sambanis eds, Understanding Civil War: Evidence and Analysis, World Bank 2005, p. 16. However, the effect is sufficiently important to warrant disaggregation into different types of commodities. They categorized primary commodity exports according to which type of product was dominant: food, non-food agriculture, oil, other raw materials, and a residual category of “mixed”. The results were that only one was significant when introduced into their baseline regression, namely oil versus nonoil.

  8. Ibid., p. 12.

  9. Ibid., pp. 16–17. If a country is characterized by ethnic dominance, its risk of conflict is nearly doubled.

  10. Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, On Economic Causes of Civil Wars, Oxford Economic Papers 50(4), February 1998, p. 571.

  11. Paul Collier, Anke Hoeffler, and Nicholas Sambanis, Ibid., p. 9.

  12. Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, “Greed and Grievance in Civil War,” World Bank Polity Research Paper, No.2355, May 2000.

  13. Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organised Violence in a Global Era, Polity, p. 102.

  14. Peter W. Singer, Corporate Warriors, The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry, Cornell University Press, 2003, p. 65.

  15. Ibid., p. 67.

  16. http://www.un.org/en/charter-united-nations/index.html [2016/07/24].

  17. http://responsibilitytoprotect.org/ICISS%20Report.pdf [2016/09/15].

  18. The R2P also embraces three specific responsibilities:

    A. The responsibility to prevent: to address both the root causes and the direct causes of internal conflict and other man-made crises putting populations at risk.

    B. The responsibility to react: to respond to situations of compelling human need with appropriate measures, which may include coercive measures such as sanctions and international prosecution, and in extreme cases military intervention.

    C. The responsibility to rebuild: to provide, particularly after a military intervention, full assistance with recovery, reconstruction, and reconciliation, addressing the causes of the harm the intervention was designed to halt or avert.

  19. Macdonald, Alistair (28 February 2011). "Cameron Doesn't Rule Out Military Force for Libya". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 28 February 2011.

  20. Jeffrey Bachman, R2P’s “Ulterior Motive Exemption” and the Failure to Protect in Libya, Politics and Governance, 2015, Volume 3, Issue 4, pp. 56–67.

  21. Saleh El Machnouk, The Responsibility to Protect After Libya, Kennedy School Review 14, 2014, p. 89; Robert Pape, “When Duty Calls: A Pragmatic Standard of Humanitarian Intervention.” International Security 37(1), Summer 2012, pp. 41–80.

  22. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/opinion/15iht-edlibya15.html [2016/07/08].

  23. Ibid., p. 89.

  24. https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/is-libya-natos-final-bow/ [2016/08/03] And the NTC estimates the death toll to be around 25,000.

  25. https://www.brookings.edu/2016/04/12/everyone-says-the-libya-intervention-was-a-failure-theyre-wrong/ [2016/08/03].

  26. Final report of the Panel of Experts established pursuant to resolution 1973 (2011) concerning Libya, United Nations Security Council, S/2014/106, 19 February 2014.

  27. Final report of the Panel of Experts established pursuant to resolution 1973 (2011) concerning Libya, United Nations Security Council S/2014/106, 19 February 2014.

  28. http://www.stopwapenhandel.org/node/1549 [2016/07/11].

  29. Taylor B. Seybolt, Humanitarian Military Intervention: The Conditions for Success and Failure, Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 27.

  30. Ibid., pp. 27–28.

  31. Ibid., p. 28.

  32. Ibid., p. 6.

  33. Ibid., p. 268.

  34. Ibid., p. 269.

  35. Ibid., p. 269.

  36. Ibid., p. 269.

  37. Ibid., p. 269.

  38. Ibid., p. 270.

  39. Ibid., p. 275.

  40. https://www.unicef.org/media/media_19974.html [2019/04/30].

  41. http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/05/17/sprj.irq.main/ [2021/06/08] US civil administrator L. Paul Bremer has ordered a large-scale operation to ensure that Baath Party members are removed from critical positions in the public sector. This is what the reviewers have pointed out.

  42. Stephen Biddle, Jeffery A. Friedman and Stephen Long, Civil War Intervention and the Problem of Iraq, International Studies Quarterly, 2012, 56, pp. 85–98.

  43. Michael Ignatieff, Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry, Princeton University Press, 2003.

  44. https://www.msf.org.au/article/statements-opinion/chemical-attacks-just-one-element-suffering-syrian-people [2019/07/25] Douma that was subjected to a chemical assault was a rebel stronghold. Also see, https://www.opcw.org/media-centre/news/2019/03/opcw-issues-fact-finding-mission-report-chemical-weapons-use-allegation [2019/07/25].

  45. Michael Ignatieff, The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror, Edinburgh University Press, 2004.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my manuscript and their many insightful comments and suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Social Sciences, Hitotsubashi University, 2-1 Naka, Kunitachi-City, Tokyo, 186-8601, Japan

    Mitsuhisa Fukutomi

  2. Department of War Studies, King′s College London, Strand, London, WC2R 2LS, UK

    Mitsuhisa Fukutomi

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Correspondence to Mitsuhisa Fukutomi.

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Fukutomi, M. Could humanitarian intervention fuel the conflict instead of ending it?. Int Polit 59, 640–660 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41311-021-00323-2

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