Multilateral military interventions: Theory and practice

Political Science Quarterly

Volumn 123, Issue 4, 2008, Pages 573-603

  Kreps, Sarah E ^a  

^a Government at Cornell University ^*  (United States)

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EID: 59249087189     PISSN: 00323195     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/j.1538-165X.2008.tb00635.x     Document Type: Review

References (78)

1. define intervention based on Herbert Tillema's 1989 characterization: "operations undertaken directly by a state's regular military forces within foreign lands in such a manner as to risk immediate combat, hence war, if they encounter resistance. It includes all combat-ready deployments of conventional ground forces, air and commando raids, and naval and artillery shelling, whether or not such operations result in direct bloodshed. It excludes less blatant forms of international interference that do not necessarily risk international war immediately, including covert operations, military alerts, shows of force, pacific military deployments, incidental incursions, cross-border small arms fire, aerial or naval encounters, and actions of irregular forces, police units, diplomatic personnel, or international observers." Given the range of force that this definition includes, I use "intervention" and "use of force" interchangeably in this paper. See Herbert Tillema, "Foreign Overt Military Intervention in the Nuclear Age: A Clarification," Journal of Peace Research 26 (November 1989): 419-420.
2. See the official White House website at http://www.whitehouse.gov/ infocus/iraq/news/20030326. html, accessed 15 August 2006.
3. Richard L. Morningstar and Coit D. Blacker, "World Orders: Unilateralism vs. Multilateralism," Harvard International Review 26 (Fall 2004): 74-77. Morningstar and Blacker observe that "the only difference between the actions in Kosovo and those in Iraq was that France and Germany supported the Kosovo campaign and opposed the Iraq war. Russia, China, and many other countries were opposed to both."
4. William Stueck, "The United Nations, the Security Council and the Korean War," in Vaughan Lowe, Adam Roberts, Jennifer Welsh, and Dominick Zaum, The United Nations Security Council and War: The Evolution of Thought and Practice since 1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
5. The ambiguous use of the terms tends to predominate in policy-oriented journals, where careful definitions may be considered too tactical. Examples of articles in which the authors discuss multilateralism and unilateralism without clearly defining the terms include William B. Slocombe, "Force, Pre-Emption, and Legitimacy," Survival 45 (Spring 2003): 117-130;
6. Robert Tucker writes of the debate between unilateralism and multilateralism in vague terms such as "collectively" or "alone" in "Alone or With Others: The Temptations of Post-Cold War Power," Foreign Affairs 78 (November/ December 1999): 15-20;
7. Bruce W Jentleson, "Tough Love Multilateralism," The Washington Quarterly 27 (Winter 2003-4)4): 7-24.
8. John Van Oudenaren, "Unilateralism, Multilateralism, and Transatlantic Relations" (paper presented at Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University, Princeton NJ, 4 October 2002).
9. These are the criteria David Skidmore uses for multilateralism in "Understanding the Unilateralist Turn in US Foreign Policy," Foreign Policy Analysis 1 (July 2005): 207-228.
10. Robert O. Keohane, "Multilateralism: An Agenda for Research," International Journal 45 (Autumn 1990): 731-64.
11. See, for example, Stuart Taylor, Jr., "Legality of Grenada Attack Disputed," The New York Times, 26 October 1983; for other analysis questioning the legality of the Grenada intervention,
12. see Detlev Vagts, "International Law under Time Pressure: Grading the Grenada Take-Home Examination," The American Journal of International Law 78 (January 1984): 169-172;
13. Maurice Waters, "The Invasion of Grenada, 1983, and the Collapse of Legal Norms," Journal of Peace Research 23 (September 1986): 229-246.
14. See, for example, Renato Corbetta and William J. Dixon, "Multilateralism, Major Powers, and Militarized Disputes," Political Research Quarterly 57 (March 2004): 5-14.
15. John Ruggie, "Multilateralism: Anatomy of an Institution," International Organization 46 (Summer 1992): 561-598.
16. Ibid, 574.
17. Ruth Wedgwood, "Unilateral Action in a Multilateral World" in Stewart Patrick and Shepard Forman, eds., Multilateralism and US Foreign Policy (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001), 167-189.
18. Lebanese officials in fact implied legitimate equivalence of the UN and multinational force: "The Beirut government told Mr. Habib that it would accept a compromise suggestion that either troops from the UN peacekeeping force that had been based in southern Lebanon since 1978 or the multinational force now keeping the peace in Beirut run the warning stations." See Thomas Friedman, "Lebanon Accepts Proposal by Habib," The New York Times, 23 June 1983.
19. Martha Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs about the Use of Force (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), 81.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. The Iraq war's "coalition of the willing" for example, included many states that superficially appeared to be strategically disinterested in Iraq. Colombia participated in the coalition, and did not have a strategic interest in Iraq, but does have a strategic interest in the financial aid that the United States provides to Colombia, a beneficiary of substantial U.S. economic and political support. For a discussion on the connection between foreign aid and participation in the Iraq War, see, for example. Janet Bagnall, "Bribery and Extortion: US efforts to bring other countries on side in the war on Iraq involve questionable tactics," The Gazette (Montreal), 28 March 2003.
24. See, for example, Dale Copeland's critique of Alexander Wendt's Social Theory of International Politics: "The Constructivist Challenge to Structural Realism: A Review Essay" International Security 25 (Autumn 2000): 187-212.
25. Wedgwood, "Unilateral Action," 185.
26. In his neoconservative post-mortem, Francis Fukuyama challenges the "coalition of the willing" approach but acknowledges that the international system lacks institutions that "confer legitimacy on collective action." In particular, the UN may be adequate for peacekeeping but lacks legitimacy and the effectiveness to deal with issues in the security arena. A multi-multilateral world has emerged because of deficiencies in a variety of international institutions. See Francis Fukuyama, "After Neo- conservatism," The New York Times, 19 February 2006.
27. Daniel Drezner makes the argument that NATO indeed had more legitimacy than the UN for intervening in Kosovo because of its demonstrated successes in the Bosnia conflict a few years earlier; here he connects legitimacy with the effectiveness of the multilateral organization, which in this case referred to NATO over the UN. See Daniel Drezner, "Regime Proliferation and World Politics: Is there Viscosity in Global Governance?" (paper presented at Mershon Center for International Security Studies, the Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, January 2007).
28. Corbetta and Dixon, "Multilateralism.
29. Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth make the argument that most of the criticism of unilateralist policies tends to vary on the substance of the issue; benign policies that are unilateral, such as reducing global warming, are nonetheless unlikely to elicit criticisms of unilateralism, suggesting a linkage between the substance at issue and the likelihood of unilateral criticisms. See Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, "International Relations Theory and the Case against Unilateralism," Perspectives on Politics (September 2005): 509-524.
30. Finnemore, Intervention, 82.
31. See the UN Charter, Chapter 1, Article 2(4), accessed at http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter/ chapterl .htm, 20 January 2007.
32. See the UN Charter, Chapter 7, Article 51, accessed at http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter/ chapter7.htm, 20 January 2007.
33. J.L. Brierly, The Law of Nations: An Introduction to the International Law of Peace, Humphrey Waldock ed., 6th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963), 415.
34. Michael Glennon, Limits of Law, Prerogatives of Power: Interventionism after Kosovo (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2001), 21,
35. The UN founders debated whether to devolve authority to regional authorities or whether to keep it concentrated in the central organization of the UN. The position of U.S. representative Cordell Hull was globalist rather than regionalist and favored the maintenance of power concentrated in the UN itself; this is the position that ultimately trumped the position of those such as Winston Churchill who envisioned a more devolved, regionalist arrangement. For an excellent analysis of this debate and the role of regional organizations, see Anthony Clark Arend, "The United Nations, Regional Organizations, and Military Operations: The Past and the Present,'' The Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law 7 (Fall 1996): 3-34.
36. The most egregious of these failures was that in which a UN peacekeeping force proved itself too weak to stop the killing of thousands of Bosnian Muslims in the town of Srebrenica (1995). Barbara Crossette, "UN Details its Failure to Stop '95 Bosnia Massacre," The New York Times, 19 November 1999.
37. The Foreign Affairs Committee of the British House of Commons, quoted in Glennon, Limits of Law, 34-35.
38. Richard A. Falk, "Kosovo, World Order, and the Future of International Law," The American Journal of International Law 93 (October 1999): 853.
39. Anne-Marie Slaughter offers a helpful analysis of this legal-legitimacy dynamic in "Good Reasons for Going Around the UN," The New York Times, 18 March 2003.
40. See also the original report of the International Commission on Kosovo, The Kosovo Report (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2001).
41. Thomas M. Franck argues that this unilateral act was fully legal under Article 51. See Thomas M. Franck, "Terrorism and the Right of Self-Defense," The American Journal of International Law 95 (October 2001): 839-843.
42. Thomas Friedman, "We Are Alone," The New York Times, 26 October 2001.
43. This conceptualization draws on that of Atsushi Tago and Martha Finnemore, who also disaggregate multilateralism into authorization and operation. I diverge from their conceptualization mostly in the way 1 designate the standards for multilateral operations, which Finnemore leaves somewhat ambiguous ("strategically disinterested states") and which Tago assumes to be simply quantitative, that is, three or more actors. See Finnemore, Intervention, and Atsushi Tago, "Determinants of Multilateralism in US Use of Force: State of Economy, Election Cycle, and Divided Government," Journal of Peace Research 42 (September 2005): 585-604.
44. Alex Thompson, "Coercion through IOs: Security Council and the Logic of Information Transmission," International Organization 60 (January 2006): 1-34. NATO also qualifies as multilateral for similar reasons; heterogeneous interests of constituent states contribute to diffuse reciprocity and leadership among the members.
45. See Stephen Weber, "Shaping the Balance of Power: Multilateralism in NATO," International Organization 46 (Summer 1992): 633-680.
46. Resolution 1706 expanded the African Union's mission on 31 August 2006, seeking to maintain an African character on the peacekeeping mission. Accessed on the UN's website, http://www.un.org/ News/Press/docs/2006/sc8821.doc.htm, 20 September 2006.
47. One author writes that "perhaps the single most striking fact about the intervention ⋯ is that it could occur without any prior objection being raised within the US government, despite the fact that the US had for thirty years repeatedly foresworn unilateral intervention in Latin America." Abraham Lowenthal, quoted in Yale H. Ferguson, "The 1965 Dominican Intervention: Recent Interpretations," International Organization 27 (Autumn 1973): 528-29. Ferguson also notes that the Johnson administration essentially "turned back the clock" in Latin America, resorting to unilateral intervention rather than maintaining the position of non-intervention that the Good Neighbor Policy had established decades earlier.
48. The methodology for indexing the degree of multilateralism for U.S. interventions is adapted from the Fund for Peace/Foreign Policy and Freedom House index methodologies. The Foreign Policy/Fund for Peace Failed States Index methodology, at www.fundforpeace.org/programs/fsi/ caststep2.php, accessed 12 September 2006. The process involves generating a set of appropriate indicators, collecting data on the indicators, rating each indicator on a none-low-medium-high scale (converting into a 0-1-2-3), then aggregating the ratings to obtain an overall data point for the intervention. I adapted the rating system for each indicator from Freedom House, whose methodology and parameters can be found at http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page= 35&year=2006, accessed 12 September 2006.
49. Patricia Weitsman makes the argument that keeping an alliance together during conflict is as difficult as bringing it together for a conflict's inception. See Patricia Weitsman, Dangerous Alliances:
50. Proponents of Peace, Weapons of War (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004). The case of Spain-withdrawal on account of domestic challenges to staying in-during the Iraq war highlights these difficulties of alliance cohesion during conflict.
51. Kenneth Oye, "Explaining Cooperation under Anarchy: Hypotheses and Strategies," World Politics 38 (October 1985): 19.
52. Ibid.
53. One key observation of Mancur Olson's theory of collective action is that smaller institutions, organizations, or regimes can more easily advance their interest than large ones; see Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, rev. ed., 1971).
54. It is important to note, however, that the total number of states is not a function of any state that provided moral or symbolic support. A state needs to have provided some tangible form of combat support-deployment of combat troops, intelligence, logistics, overflight rates, basing access-to qualify as a participant in the coalition. Thus, contrary to the claim that the Iraq war had 47 states in the "coalition of the willing," the coalition consisted of 32 states that actually contributed tangible support in Iraq. The number is still high but is a correction of the inflated number of 47, which included a few states (for example, Palau) that simply wrote a letter of support to the United States; such moral support does not qualify a state as a participant.
55. See, for example, Stephen D. Krasner, "Regimes and the Limits of Realism: Regimes as Autonomous Variables," International Organization 36 (Spring 1982): 499.
56. Barbara Koremenos, Charles Lipson, and Duncan Snidal, "The Rational Design of International Institutions," International Organization 55 (Autumn 2001): 792.
57. John Vinocur, "Doubts on Lebanon," The New York Times, 24 September 1983;
58. Thomas Friedman, "Lebanon Asks Three Nations to Send More Troops," The New York Times, 30 November 1982.
59. Data drawn from Conduct of the Persian Gulf War, The Final Report to the US Congress by the US Department of Defense; (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense, April 1992), Appendix P.
60. Mark Garrard, "War Termination in the Persian Gulf: Problems and Prospects," Aerospace Power Journal 15 (Fall 2001), accessed at the journal's website http://www.airpower.maxwell.af. mil/airchronicles/apj/apjOl/ falOl/garrard.html, 18 September 2006.
61. Koremenos, Lipson, and Snidal, "Rational Design," 778.
62. Ibid., 774.
63. This logic is consistent with the realist understanding of institutions, in which they are a reflection of the distribution of power. See, for example, John Mearsheimer, "The False Promise of International Institutions," International Security 19 (Winter 1994-95): 5-49.
64. Koremenos, Lipson, and Snidal, "Rational Design," 774,
65. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Game Plan: A Geostrategic Framework for the Conduct of the U.S.-Soviet Contest (Boston, MA: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986): xiv.
66. Thomas A. Keaney and Eliot A. Cohen, Gulf War Air Power Survey Summary Report (Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1993).
67. Sarah E. Kreps "The 1994 Haiti Intervention: A Unilateral Intervention in Multilateral Clothes," The Journal of Strategic Studies 3 (June 2007): 449-474.
68. "5 U.S. Marines and 9 Italians Wounded in Lebanon," New York Times, 17 March 1983.
69. While the post-Iraq writing on the unilateralist turn is almost endless, a sample of that literature includes, inter alia, Stanley Hoffman, "The High and the Mighty," The American Prospect 13 (January 2003): 28-31; Joseph Nye, The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go it Alone (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); David Skidmore, "Understanding the Unilateralism Turn in U.S. Foreign Policy," Foreign Policy Analysis, 1 (July 2005): 207-228; Brooks and Wolforth, "IR Theory and the Case against Unilateralism."
70. Martha Finnemore's empirical look at interventions specifically notes a trend toward multilateralism after the end of the Cold War, with state propensities toward multilateralism increasing because of a multilateral norm that makes operating unilaterally illegitimate. See Finnemore, Intervention,
71. John Lewis Gaddis argues that unilateralism is endemic to U.S. foreign policy, citing instances dating back to John Quincy Adams in the nineteenth century. See John Lewis Gaddis, Surprise, Security, and the American Experience (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).
72. As an indication, the UNSC authorized just 15 peacekeeping missions and authorized 22 Chapter VII "threats to the peace" resolutions from the UN's inception until 1990, compared to 31 peacekeeping missions and 145 Chapter VII resolutions between 1990 and 1998. See Erik Voeten, "Outside Options and the Logic of Security Council Action," The American Political Science Review 95 (December 2001): 845-858.
73. G. John Ikenberry, "Multilateralism in Decline," Perspectives on Politics 1 (Fall 2003): 533.
74. Ikenberry, "Multilateralism in Decline," 543, 545.
75. Richard H. Haass, "Multilateralism for a Global Era," 14 November 2001, accessed on the website of the U.S. Department of State at http://www.state.gOv/s/p/rem/6134.htm, 29 October 2008.
76. Daniel Bombey and James Blitz, "US and EU Plan Iran Sanctions," Financial Times, 13 October 2008.
77. U.S. Supreme Court case Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964). Appeal from the Supreme Court of Ohio, No. 11. Argued 26 March 1963. Restored to the calendar for reargument 29 April 1963. Reargued 1 April 1964. Decided 22 June 1964.
78. Drezner, "Regime Proliferation," 3