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Interventionism (politics)

Interference by one country in the affairs of another

Interference by one country in the affairs of another

Interventionism, in international politics, is the interference of a state or group of states into the domestic affairs of another state for the purposes of coercing that state to do something or refrain from doing something. The intervention can be conducted through military force or economic coercion. A different term, economic interventionism, refers to government interventions into markets at home.

Military intervention, which is a common element of interventionism, has been defined by Martha Finnemore in the context of international relations as "the deployment of military personnel across recognized boundaries for the purpose of determining the political authority structure in the target state". Interventions may be solely focused on altering political authority structures, or may be conducted for humanitarian purposes, or for debt collection.

Interventionism has played a major role in the foreign policies of Western powers, particularly during and after the Victorian era. The New Imperialism era saw numerous interventions by Western nations in the Global South, including the Banana Wars. Modern interventionism grew out of Cold War policies, where the United States and the Soviet Union intervened in nations around the world to counter any influence held there by the other nation. Historians have noted that interventionism has always been a contentious political issue in the public opinion of countries which engaged in interventions.

According to a dataset by Alexander Downes, 120 leaders were removed through foreign-imposed regime change between 1816 and 2011. A 2016 study by Carnegie Mellon University political scientist Dov Haim Levin (who now teaches at the University of Hong Kong) found that the United States intervened in 81 foreign elections between 1946 and 2000, with the majority of those being through covert, rather than overt, actions. Multilateral interventions that include territorial governance by foreign institutions also include cases like East Timor and Kosovo, and have been proposed (but were rejected) for the Palestinian territories. A 2021 review of the existing literature found that foreign interventions since World War II tend to overwhelmingly fail in achieving their purported objectives.

Foreign-imposed regime change

Studies by Alexander Downes, Lindsey O'Rourke, and Jonathan Monten indicate that foreign-imposed regime change seldom reduces the likelihood of civil war, violent removal of the newly imposed leader, and the probability of conflict between the intervening state and its adversaries, and does not increase the likelihood of democratization unless regime change comes with pro-democratic institutional changes in countries with favorable conditions for democracy. Downes argues:

Research by Nigel Lo, Barry Hashimoto, and Dan Reiter has contrasting findings, as they find that interstate "peace following wars last longer when the war ends in foreign-imposed regime change". However, research by Reiter and Goran Peic finds that foreign-imposed regime change can raise the probability of civil war.

By country

China

Cuba

Egypt

Egypt has intervened in Libya.

Ethiopia

Ethiopia has intervened in Somalia.

France

France has intervened in Libya and in West Africa.

India

India has intervened in Sri Lanka.

Indonesia

Indonesia has intervened in East Timor.

Iran

Iran has intervened in Iraq and in Syria.

Israel

Nigeria

Nigeria has shown the will to intervene in the affairs of other sub Saharan African countries since independence. It is said that one of the reasons Yakubu Gowon was removed from office had been the squandering of Nigeria's resources in such far-away lands as Grenada and Guyana, with no returns, economic or political for Nigeria. The philosophy of subsequent military governments in Nigeria was that in an increasingly interdependent world, a country cannot be an island.

Russia

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia has led interventions in Bahrain and in Yemen.

Soviet Union

Turkey

Turkey has intervened in Cyprus, in Libya and in Syria.

United Arab Emirates

The UAE has intervened in Sudan and in Yemen.

United States

References

References

  1. Lingelbach, W. E.. (1900). "The Doctrine and Practice of Intervention in Europe". The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
  2. "Interventionism". [[Merriam-Webster]].
  3. Finnemore, Martha. (2004). "The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs about the Use of Force". [[Cornell University Press]].
  4. Rabe, Stephen G.. (2005). "U.S. Intervention in British Guiana: A Cold War Story". [[University of North Carolina Press]].
  5. Kinzer, Stephen. (2017). "The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire". [[Henry Holt and Company]].
  6. Downes, Alexander B.. (2021). "Catastrophic Success: Why Foreign-Imposed Regime Change Goes Wrong". Cornell University Press.
  7. Levin, Dov H.. (June 2016). "When the Great Power Gets a Vote: The Effects of Great Power Electoral Interventions on Election Results". [[International Studies Quarterly]].
  8. Agrawal, Nina. (21 December 2016). "The U.S. is no stranger to interfering in the elections of other countries". Los Angeles Times.
  9. Pugh, Jeffrey D.. (2012-11-01). "Whose Brother's Keeper? International Trusteeship and the Search for Peace in the Palestinian Territories". International Studies Perspectives.
  10. (2021). "Persistent failure? International interventions since World War II". The Handbook of Historical Economics.
  11. (2016). "You Can't Always Get What You Want: Why Foreign-Imposed Regime Change Seldom Improves Interstate Relations". International Security.
  12. (2013). "Forced to Be Free? Why Foreign-Imposed Regime Change Rarely Leads to Democratization". International Security.
  13. (2008). "Ensuring Peace: Foreign-Imposed Regime Change and Postwar Peace Duration, 1914–2001". International Organization.
  14. (2011). "Foreign-Imposed Regime Change, State Power and Civil War Onset, 1920–2004". British Journal of Political Science.
  15. (2021-12-10). "Interventionism".
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