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A tale of three French interventions: Intervention entrepreneurs and institutional intervention choices
Abstract
What factors explain the institutional shape of military interventions spearheaded by France? This article suggests that Intervention Entrepreneurs are the deciding agents. To secure the viability of their intervention proposal, they select an intervention venue based on pragmatic grounds. Most importantly, they carefully study possible domestic and international opposition to their intervention plans and conceive institutional intervention choices accordingly. The result is an ad hoc selection of intervention venues with little impact of political ideology, norms, organisational interests, or historical learning. Moreover, on many occasions, little attention is paid to which intervention format would most benefit the peace and prosperity in the conflict theatre in the medium to long term. The article illustrates this argument by tracing French institutional decision-making for interventions in Chad/CAR, Mali, and Libya.
The provision of external state support to non-state armed groups in civil wars is a dynamic process. While we know much about the initiation of external support and its effects, we know less about why state sponsorship changes over time. Based on a within-case analysis of the United States’ support commitment to the armed opposition in Nicaragua in the 1980s, this article demonstrates the utility of focusing on shifts in leaders’ perceptions and domestic attribution processes rather than structural features of the international system or rebel behaviour to understand temporal variation in external support.
During the Malian crisis of 2012, French president Hollande ruled out French boots on the ground and preferred an African intervention. The African Union (AU) was predestined to lead conflict management. Yet in early 2013, Hollande authorized a French operation, thereby outmaneuvering the AU. Using ‘explaining-outcome process-tracing,’ I seek to uncover the underlying causal mechanisms that explain how the AU could be sidelined. Specifically, I scrutinize the preferences and actions of the AU and French actors and the narrations that elucidated these preferences and actions because as I argue, they are crucial to understand the marginalization of the AU.
This bibliography contains books, edited volumes, journal articles, book chapters, theses, grey literature, and other resources on the ongoing conflict in Libya. Most of the included literature was published since Mu'ammar al-Qaddāfī's removal in 2011. Many of the publications included focus on the Libyan revolution, protest movements, the emergence of militias, the Islamic State in Libya, and the successes and failures of international interventions in the country's conflicts. Earlier publications analyzing political, social, economic, or religious developments, that help to understand the dynamics of the present conflict, are also included. The literature has been retrieved manually and should thus not be considered exhaustive.
In the past decade, the EU has significantly stepped up its profile as a security actor in the Sahel. Drawing on historical institutionalism, we conceptualise path-dependencies and lock-in effects as elements of a “foreign policy entrapment” spiral to analyse the EU’s policies towards the Sahel. Specifically, we seek to explain the EU’s increasingly widened and deepened engagement in the region. Hence, this article traces the evolution of the EU’s Sahel policy both in discourse and implementation. We identify a predominant security narrative as well as a regionalisation narrative and show that EU action has followed these narratives. Based on this analysis, we argue that the evolution of the EU’s Sahel policy can be understood as a case of “foreign policy entrapment”. Initial decisions on the overall direction of EU foreign policy have created strong path-dependencies and lock-in effects that make it difficult for EU policy-makers to change the policy course.
OPEN ACCESS: In 2013, France launched Operation ‘Serval’ to halt the southwards advance of Islamist insurgents in Mali. Using a Clausewitzian analytical framework, this article provides an assessment of France’s political and military aims in Mali and the degree to which they have been attained. Clear political goals, coordinated international diplomacy, an effective use of military force and blunders by the rebel forces turned ‘Serval’ into a short-term success. Strategically, however, the mission has proven unable to address the conflict’s underlying causes. Serval’s long-term effect is probably better measured by what it prevented than what it contributed.
This comparative study explores the conditions and causal pathways through which conflict-generated diasporas become moderate or radical actors when linked to homelands experiencing limited sovereignty. Situated at the nexus of scholarship on diasporas and conflict, ethnic lobbying in foreign policy, and transnationalism this article develops four types of diaspora political mobilization—radical (strong and weak) and moderate (strong and weak)—and unpacks the causal pathways that lead to these four types in different political contexts. I argue that dynamics in the original homeland drive the overall trend towards radicalism or moderation of diaspora mobilization in a host-land: high levels of violence are associated with radicalism, and low levels with moderation. Nevertheless, how diaspora mobilization takes place is a result of the conjuncture of the level of violence with another variable, the linkages of the main secessionist elites to the diaspora. The article uses observations from eight cases of Albanian diaspora mobilization in the US and the UK from 1989 until the proclamation of Kosovo's independence in 2008.
Both qualitative and quantitative research routinely fall short, producing misleading causal inferences. Because these weaknesses are in part different, we are convinced that multi-method strategies are productive. Each approach can provide additional leverage that helps address shortcomings of the other. This position is quite distinct from that of Beck, who believes that the two types of analysis cannot be adjoined. We review examples of adjoining that Beck dismisses, based on what we see as his outdated view of qualitative methods. By contrast, we show that these examples demonstrate how qualitative and quantitative analysis can work together.
Available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1470242. States use formal international organizations (IOs) to manage both their everyday interactions and more dramatic episodes, including international conflicts. Yet contemporary international relations theory does not explain the existence or form of IOs. This article addresses the question of why states use formal organizations by investigating the functions IOs perform and the properties that enable them to perform those functions. Starting with a rational-institutionalist perspective that sees IOs as enabling states to achieve their ends, the authors also examine power and distributive questions and the role of IOs in creating norms and understandings. We identify centralization and independence as the key properties of formal organizations, and illustrate their importance with a wide array of examples.
Argues that there has been a change of norm in relation to the legitimacy of humanitarian intervention in the 1990s. It shows how humanitarian justifications for the use of force lacked legitimacy in Cold War international society, focusing on the cases of India, Vietnam, and Tanzania's interventions in the 1970s. This reflected the dominance of pluralist international society thinking in shaping the legal rules and institutions of international society. By focusing on cases of intervention in Iraq, Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Kosovo, the second part of the book shows how a new solidarist conception of international society shaped Western interventions in the 1990s. In arguing that a new norm has developed that has facilitated new state actions; the book identifies two key limits to this norm: first, military intervention justified on humanitarian grounds requires UN Security Council authorization; second, whilst new norms enable new actions, they do not determine that intervention will take place when it is urgently needed as in Rwanda.
Argues that there has been a change of norm in relation to the legitimacy of humanitarian intervention in the 1990s. It shows how humanitarian justifications for the use of force lacked legitimacy in Cold War international society, focusing on the cases of India, Vietnam, and Tanzania's interventions in the 1970s. This reflected the dominance of pluralist international society thinking in shaping the legal rules and institutions of international society. By focusing on cases of intervention in Iraq, Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Kosovo, the second part of the book shows how a new solidarist conception of international society shaped Western interventions in the 1990s. In arguing that a new norm has developed that has facilitated new state actions; the book identifies two key limits to this norm: first, military intervention justified on humanitarian grounds requires UN Security Council authorization; second, whilst new norms enable new actions, they do not determine that intervention will take place when it is urgently needed as in Rwanda.
Many countries serving in multilateral military coalitions are "paid" to do so, either in cash or in concessions relating to other international issues. An examination of hundreds of declassified archival sources as well as elite interviews relating to the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Iraq War, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization operation in Afghanistan, the United Nations-African Union operation in Darfur, and the African Union operation in Somalia reveals that these payment practices follow a systematic pattern: pivotal states provide the means to cover such payments. These states reason that rewarding third parties to serve in multilateral coalitions holds important political benefits. Moreover, two distinct types of payment schemes exist: deployment subsidies and political side deals. Three types of states are most likely to receive such payments: (1) states that are inadequately resourced to deploy; (2) states that are perceived by the pivotal states as critical contributors to the coalition endeavor; and (3) opportunistic states that perceive a coalition deployment as an opportunity to negotiate a quid pro quo. These findings provide a novel perspective on what international burden sharing looks like in practice. Moreover, they raise important questions about the efficiency and effectiveness of such payment practices in multilateral military deployments. © 2019 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
NATO’s Libya Operation was a first in several ways: the first time the alliance operated in an Arab and African country, the first time Arab partners participated in kinetic missions, the first time it executed a UN mandate designed to protect civilians and the first time the United States were not in the lead. This book is the first one to tell the operation’s story from all sides concerned: spanning the hallways of the United Nations in New York, NATO Headquarters in Brussels and, crucially, the two operational epicenters: the Libyan battlefield, and Joint Force Command Naples, which was in charge of the mission. Weighill and Gaub offer a comprehensive exploration of both the war's progression and the many challenges NATO faced, from its extremely rapid planning and limited understanding of Libya and its forces, to training shortfalls and the absence of post-conflict planning.
Why Europe Intervenes in Africa analyzes the underlying causes of all European decisions for and against military interventions in conflicts in African states since the late 1980s. It focuses on the main European actors who have deployed troops in Africa: France, the United Kingdom and the European Union. When conflict occurs in Africa, the response of European actors is generally inaction. This can be explained in several ways: the absence of strategic and economic interests, the unwillingness of European leaders to become involved in conflicts in former colonies of other European states, and sometimes the Eurocentric assumption that conflict in Africa is a normal event which does not require intervention. When European actors do decide to intervene, it is primarily for motives of security and prestige, and not primarily for economic or humanitarian reasons. The weight of past relations with Africa can also be a driver for European military intervention, but the impact of that past is changing. This book offers a theory of European intervention based mainly on the approaches of realism and post-colonialism. It refutes the assumptions of liberals and constructivists who posit that states and organizations intervene primarily in order to respect the principle of the “responsibility to protect.”
Why did American leaders work hard to secure multilateral approval from the United Nations or NATO for military interventions in Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo, while making only limited efforts to gain such approval for the 2003 Iraq War? In Reassuring the Reluctant Warriors, Stefano Recchia draws on declassified documents and about one hundred interviews with civilian and military leaders to illuminate little-known aspects of U.S. decision making in the run-up to those interventions. American leaders, he argues, seek UN or NATO approval to facilitate sustained military and financial burden sharing and ensure domestic support. However, the most assertive, hawkish, and influential civilian leaders in Washington tend to downplay the costs of intervention, and when confronted with hesitant international partners they often want to bypass multilateral bodies. In these circumstances, America's senior generals and admirals-as reluctant warriors who worry about Vietnam-style quagmires-can play an important restraining role, steering U.S. policy toward multilateralism. Senior military officers are well placed to debunk the civilian interventionists' optimistic assumptions regarding the costs of war, thereby undermining broader governmental support for intervention. Recchia demonstrates that when the military expresses strong concerns about the stabilization burden, even hawkish civilian leaders can be expected to work hard to secure multilateral support through the UN or NATO-if only to reassure the reluctant warriors about long-term burden sharing. By contrast, when the military stays silent, as it did in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq War, the most hawkish civilians are empowered; consequently, the United States is more likely to bypass multilateral bodies and may end up shouldering a heavy stabilization burden largely by itself. Recchia's argument that the military has the ability to contribute not only to a more prudent but also to a more multilateralist U.S. intervention policy may be counterintuitive, but the evidence is compelling.
When President George W. Bush launched an invasion of Iraq in March of 2003, he did so without the explicit approval of the Security Council. His father's administration, by contrast, carefully funneled statecraft through the United Nations and achieved Council authorization for the U.S.-led Gulf War in 1991. The history of American policy toward Iraq displays considerable variation in the extent to which policies were conducted through the UN and other international organizations. In Channels of Power, Alexander Thompson surveys U.S. policy toward Iraq, starting with the Gulf War, continuing through the interwar years of sanctions and coercive disarmament, and concluding with the 2003 invasion and its long aftermath. He offers a framework for understanding why powerful states often work through international organizations when conducting coercive policies-and why they sometimes choose instead to work alone or with ad hoc coalitions. The conventional wisdom holds that because having legitimacy for their actions is important for normative reasons, states seek multilateral approval. Channels of Power offers a rationalist alternative to these standard legitimation arguments, one based on the notion of strategic information transmission: When state actions are endorsed by an independent organization, this sends politically crucial information to the world community, both leaders and their publics, and results in greater international support.
Legitimacy considerations profoundly affect coalition-building strategies for contemporary military interventions. However, the nature of this impact depends on which of three distinct legitimacy audiences intervening governments are most concerned about: their domestic publics, the international community or the host-country population. Intervening actors typically value all three audiences, but may be more confident of some audiences’ approval than of others’. Moreover, these audiences may raise divergent demands regarding coalition design, each entailing distinctive strategic, operational and/or political costs. Intervening actors therefore make strategic choices about how to adjust their coalition, including which legitimacy audience to prioritize. Juxtaposing the two Western-led coalitions deployed to Afghanistan in 2001 highlights how profoundly such choices affect coalition design – and what unintended longer-term consequences they can have.
Military interventions are without a doubt the most forceful and most costly foreign policy tool extant. But how do they actually come about? The bulk of the existing literature on military interventions points to the head of state and his/her closest advisers to explain intervention decisions. This article argues instead that Intervention Entrepreneurs play a critical role in the political decision-making process of military interventions. Intervention Entrepreneurs are individuals or groups that promote the launch of a specific military intervention because they anticipate benefitting disproportionately from the intervention decision and/or aftermath. To further their intervention proposal, these entrepreneurs employ very similar techniques which include: (1) the creation of a narrative for intervention; (2) the act of spreading and “selling” this narrative to the media, think tanks and other thought leaders; (3) the act of establishing faits accomplis – actions that can create a slippery slope toward intervention such as leaking information or (if possible) pre-deploying troops or other personnel to the intervention theatre; and (4) the lobbying of critical decision-makers (including the head of state) to support the intervention proposal. This article uses the French intervention in Mali (2013) to introduce the concept of Intervention Entrepreneurs and illustrate the strategies and power these actors exert.
Do authoritarian states deter dissent in the diaspora? Using data on Libyan and Syrian activism in the United States and Great Britain, this study demonstrates that they do through violence, exile, threats, surveillance, and by harming dissidents’ relatives at home. The analysis finds that the transnational repression of these diasporas deterred public anti-regime mobilization before the Arab Spring. I then identify the mechanisms by which Libyans and Syrians overcame these effects during the 2011 revolutions. Activists “came out” when (1) violence at home changed their relatives’ circumstances and upset repression’s relational effects; (2) the sacrifices of vanguard activists expanded their objects of obligation, leading them to embrace cost sharing; and (3) the regimes were perceived as incapable of making good on their threats. However, differences in the regimes’ perceived capacities to repress in 2011 produced significant variation in the pace of diaspora emergence over time and guarded advocacy. The study advances understanding of transnationalism by demonstrating how states exercise coercive power across borders and the conditions under which diasporas mobilize to publicly and collectively challenge home-country regimes.
Mitterrand’s second septennat certainly saw a proliferation of the forums in which French armed forces were engaged. The new spirit of interventionism contrasted sharply with the hostility which had characterised the Socialists’ perspective on armed involvement outside France’s borders prior to Mitterrand’s election,2 and the will with which French forces were committed to national and multilateral initiatives also contrasted with the ambivalence and uncertainty which had surrounded the beginnings of the operations in Lebanon and Chad. Despite its lack of resources, and its difficulty in effecting the transition to the post-Cold War circumstances, the French military establishment was now active in a plethora of overseas missions. By the time of the second cohabitation French troops were deployed in Bosnia, Somalia, Cambodia and Iraq, as well as in continuing missions in Europe and Africa.3 It had indeed become ‘an army on which the sun never [set]’.4
War is invariably accompanied by debate, if not controversy, over the legitimacy of using force. Alongside the longstanding state practice of justifying use of force is the increasing codification of legal rules on the use of force. In this volume a leading group of international authorities consider the issues surrounding the legitimation of force from several distinct disciplinary perspectives, including political science, law, history and philosophy. In particular, they examine the underlying question of whether and how international society's traditional norms of sovereignty and non-intervention can coexist both with the new norm of humanitarian intervention and with an increasingly hegemonial if not ‘imperial’) role played by the United States. What is the difference between ‘legality’ and ‘legitimacy’? Is the latter a truly universal concept or mainly a Western one? Are earlier ideas about ‘just war’ still relevant?
When the Clinton Administration sent the United States military into Haiti in 1994, it first sought United Nations authorization and assembled a large coalition of allies. With a defense budget twenty times the entire GDP of Haiti, why did the US seek multilateral support when its military could quickly and easily have overpowered the 7,600-soldier Haitian army? The US has enjoyed unrivaled military power after the Cold War and yet in eight out of ten post-Cold War military interventions, it has chosen to use force multilaterally rather than going alone. Why does the US seek allies when, as the case of Haiti so starkly illustrates, it does not appear to need their help? Why in other instances such as the 2003 Iraq War does it largely sidestep international institutions and allies and intervene unilaterally? This book answers these questions through a study of US interventions after the post-Cold War. It shows that even powerful states have incentives to intervene multilaterally. Coalitions and international organization blessing confer legitimacy and provide ways to share what are often costly burdens of war. But those benefits come at some cost, since multilateralism is less expedient than unilateralism. With long time horizons-in which threats are distant-states will welcome the material assistance and legitimacy benefits of multilateralism. Short time horizons, however, will make immediate payoffs of unilateralism more attractive, even if it means foregoing the longer-term benefits of multilateralism.
What distinguishes a peace enforcement operation from an invasion? This question has been asked with particular vehemence since the US intervention in Iraq, but it faces all military operations seeking to impose peace in countries torn by civil war. This book highlights the critical role of international organisations (IOs) as gatekeepers to international legitimacy for modern peace enforcement operations. The author analyses five operations launched through four IOs: the ECOWAS intervention in Liberia, the SADC operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Lesotho, the NATO Kosovo campaign and the UN intervention in East Timor. In all these campaigns, lead states sought IO mandates primarily to establish the international legitimacy of their interventions. The evidence suggests that international relations are structured by commonly accepted rules, that both democratic and authoritarian states care about the international legitimacy of their actions, and that IOs have a key function in world politics.
Approval from the United Nations or NATO appears to have become a necessary condition for US humanitarian military intervention. Conventional explanations emphasizing the pull of legitimacy cannot fully account for this given that US policymakers vary considerably in their attachment to multilateralism. This article argues that America's military leaders, who are consistently skeptical about humanitarian intervention and tend to emphasize its costs, play a central role in making multilateral approval necessary. As long as top-ranking generals express strong reservations about intervention and no clear threat to US national security exists, they can veto the use of force. In such circumstances, even heavyweight “humanitarian hawks” among the civilian leadership, who initially may have wanted to bypass multilateral bodies to maximize US freedom of action, can be expected to recognize the need for UN or NATO approval—if only as a means of mollifying the generals by reassuring them about the prospect of sustained multilateral burden sharing. Two case studies drawing on interviews with senior civilian and military officials illustrate and probe the plausibility of the argument.
When politically marginal ethnic groups have transnational ties to co-ethnics in civil conflicts, the countries in which the marginal groups reside are more likely to intervene. Marginal-to-marginal group ties and marginal-to-dominant group ties between a group in a third-party country and actors in civil conflict increase the likelihood of military intervention. Familiar forms of ethnic ties such as politically dominant-to-marginal group ties and dominant-to-dominant group ties are merely special cases of ethnic ties between any group in a third-party country and co-ethnics in civil conflict. The article also presents evidence suggesting that ethnic ties affect how intervening countries take sides. Interveners tend to favour the government in civil conflicts when marginal groups in both countries have ethnic ties. Likewise, ties between two dominant groups are associated with government-biased interventions. In contrast, intervening countries whose dominant group has ties to a marginal group in civil conflict tend to favour the opposition. Overall, the results testify to the importance of including politically marginal groups' ethnic ties when explaining how third-party countries behave.
Cooperation occurs more often than conflict in the international system. However, its practicalities have been little conceptualised in International Relations. Through an empirical study of the workings of contemporary Franco-British cooperation in defence, this article offers a multidimensional analysis of interstate cooperation taking into account organisational, political, material and cognitive factors. By studying their centripetal and centrifugal effects, this article shows why each factor is relevant for understanding what favours and impedes the emergence and continuation of intergovernmental cooperation. It notably demonstrates how domestic interorganisational dynamics have an impact on relations with foreign partners. This article also shows how bridging the traditional divide between approaches based on interests and approaches based on beliefs allows us to identify the evolutionary dynamic of cooperation.
When the United States faces loss or defeat in war, it is often loath to negotiate, make concessions to its adversary, and cut its losses. But the presence of allies and international organizations in the US coalition can help to correct this bias against compromise through a combination of simple bargaining, complex bargaining, and political cover. The costs of multilateralism can be considered a premium that is paid when operations are successful, so that the United States has an insurance policy to minimize loss in times of failure. The article contributes to a number of major debates over the costs and benefits of multilateralism and the impact of less powerful allies and international organizations on US foreign policy.
Although previous studies have examined U.S. public support for the use of military force in particular historical cases, and have even made limited comparisons among cases, a full comparison of a large number of historical episodes in which the United States contemplated, threatened, or actually used military force has been missing. An analysis of U.S. public support for the use of military force in twenty-two historical episodes from the early 1980s through the Iraq war and occupation (2003-05) underscores the continuing relevance of Bruce Jentleson's principal policy objectives framework: the objective for which military force is used is an important determinant of the base level of public support. The U.S. public supports restraining aggressive adversaries, but it is leery of involvement in civil-war situations. Although the objective of the mission strongly conditions this base level of support, the public is also sensitive to the relative risk of different military actions; to the prospect of civilian or military casualties; to multilateral participation in the mission; and to the likelihood of success or failure of the mission. These results suggest that support for U.S. military involvement in Iraq is unlikely to increase; indeed, given the ongoing civil strife in Iraq, continuing casualties, and substantial disagreement about the prospects for success, the public's support is likely to remain low or even decline.
William C. Wohlforth is Assistant Professor of International Relations in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
I am indebted to Stephen G. Brooks, Charles A. Kupchan, Joseph Lepgold, Robert Lieber, and Kathleen R. McNamara, who read and commented on drafts of this article.
1. Charles Krauthammer, "The Unipolar Moment," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 70, No. 1 (Winter 1990/1991), pp. 23-33.
2. Patrick Tyler, "The Lone Superpower Plan: Ammunition for Critics," New York Times, March 10, 1992, p. A12.
3. For the most thorough and theoretically grounded criticism of this strategy, see Christopher Layne, "The Unipolar Illusion: Why New Great Powers Will Arise," International Security, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Spring 1993), pp. 5-51; and Layne, "From Preponderance to Offshore Balancing: America's Future Grand Strategy," International Security, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Summer 1997), pp. 86-124.
4. The phrase—commonly attributed to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright—is also a favorite of President Bill Clinton's. For example, see the account of his speech announcing the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Alison Mitchell, "Clinton Urges NATO Expansion in 1999," New York Times, October 23, 1996, p. A20.
5. Kenneth N. Waltz, "Evaluating Theories," American Political Science Review, Vol. 91, No. 4 (December 1997), pp. 915-916; Layne, "Unipolar Illusion"; and Michael Mastanduno, "Preserving the Unipolar Moment: Realist Theories and U.S. Grand Strategy after the Cold War," International Security, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Spring 1997), pp. 44-98. Although I differ with Waltz on the stability of unipolarity, the title of this article and much of its contents reflect intellectual debts to his work on system structure and stability. See Waltz, "The Stability of a Bipolar World," Daedalus, Vol. 93, No. 3 (Summer 1964), pp. 881-901.
6. See Charles A. Kupchan, "After Pax Americana: Benign Power, Regional Integration, and the Sources of Stable Multipolarity," International Security, Vol. 23, No. 3 (Fall 1998), pp. 40-79. Samuel P. Huntington maintained this position in Huntington, "Why International Primacy Matters," International Security, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Spring 1993), pp. 63-83, but he has since abandoned it. A more bullish assessment, although still more pessimistic than the analysis here, is Douglas Lemke, "Continuity of History: Power Transition Theory and the End of the Cold War," Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 34, No. 1 (February 1996), pp. 203-236.
7. As Glenn H. Snyder puts it, the international system "appears to be unipolar, though incipiently multipolar." Snyder, Alliance Politics (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997), p. 18. The quoted phrases in this sentence appear in Charles A. Kupchan, "Rethinking Europe," National Interest, No. 56 (Summer 1999); Kupchan, "After Pax Americana," p. 41; Layne, "Unipolar Illusion"; Mastanduno, "Preserving the Unipolar Moment"; and Waltz, "Evaluating Theories," p. 914. Although Charles Krauthammer coined the term "unipolar moment" in his article under that title, he argued that unipolarity had the potential to last a generation.
8. Samuel P. Huntington, "The Lonely Superpower," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 78, No. 2 (March/April 1999), p. 36. For similar views of the post-Cold War structure, see Aaron L. Friedberg, "Ripe for Rivalry: Prospects for Peace in a Multipolar Asia," International Security, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Winter 1993/94), pp. 5-33; and Josef Joffe, "'Bismarck' or 'Britain'? Toward an American Grand Strategy after Bipolarity," International Security, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Spring 1995), pp. 94-117.
9. The assumption that realism predicts instability after the Cold War pervades the scholarly debate. See, for example, Sean M. Lynn-Jones and Steven E. Miller, eds., The Cold War and After: Prospects for Peace—An International Security Reader (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993); and David A. Baldwin, ed., Neorealism and Neoliberalism: The Contemporary Debate (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993). For more varied perspectives on realism and unipolarity, see Ethan B. Kapstein and Michael Mastanduno, eds., Unipolar Politics: Realism and State Strategies after the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). Explanations for stability despite the balance of power fall roughly into three categories: (1) liberal arguments, including democratization, economic interdependence, and international institutions. For examples, see Bruce M. Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University...
International Security 28.1 (2003) 5-46
Since the end of the Cold War, scholars, commentators, and practitioners of foreign policy have debated what structure of world power would follow the bipolar U.S.-Soviet competition, and what U.S. foreign policy would replace containment. Those who hypothesized a long "unipolar moment" of extraordinary U.S. relative power have proven more prescient than those who expected the relatively quick emergence of a multipolar world. Those who recommended a policy of "primacy"—essentially hegemony—to consolidate, exploit, and expand the U.S. relative advantage have carried the day against those who argued for a more restrained U.S. foreign policy. One can argue that the jury is still out, the "moment" will soon pass, and the policy of hegemony enabled by great power will be fleeting. But the evidence does not support such predictions. Unipolarity and U.S. hegemony will likely be around for some time, though observers do suggest that the United States could hasten its own slide from the pinnacle through indiscipline or hyperactivity.
The new debate on U.S. grand strategy is essentially about which variant of a hegemonic strategy the United States should pursue. The strategy proposed by President George W. Bush is, in caricature, unilateral, nationalistic, and oriented largely around the U.S. advantage in physical power, especially military power. This is "primacy" as it was originally conceived. The last years of Bill Clinton's administration saw the emergence of a strategy that also depended heavily on military power, but which was more multilateral and liberal, and more concerned with international legitimacy. It aimed to preserve the dominant U.S. global position, including its military position, which was understood to be an essential underpinning of global activism. That strategy has recently been elaborated, formalized, and defended under the rubric of "selective engagement" by Robert Art. Though this is too big an argument to settle on the sole basis of a military analysis, the understanding of U.S. military power developed below suggests that selective engagement is likely to prove more sustainable than primacy.
One pillar of U.S. hegemony is the vast military power of the United States. A staple of the U.S. debate about the size of the post-Cold War defense budget is the observation that the United States spends more than virtually all of the world's other major military powers combined, most of which are U.S. allies. Observers of the actual capabilities that this effort produces can focus on a favorite aspect of U.S. superiority to make the point that the United States sits comfortably atop the military food chain, and is likely to remain there. This article takes a slightly different approach. Below I argue that the United States enjoys command of the commons—command of the sea, space, and air. I discuss how command of the commons supports a hegemonic grand strategy. I explain why it seems implausible that a challenge to this command could arise in the near to medium term. Then I review the arenas of military action where adversaries continue to be able to fight U.S. forces with some hope of success—the "contested zones." I argue that in the near to medium term the United States will not be able to establish command in these arenas. The interrelationship between U.S. command of the commons and the persistence of the contested zones suggests that the United States can probably pursue a policy of selective engagement but not one of primacy.
I purposefully eschew discussing U.S. military power in light of the metrics of the current and previous administrations. The Clinton administration planned to be able to fight two nearly simultaneous major theater wars; theBush administration's emerging, and even more demanding, metric is the "4-2-1" principle—that is, deter in four places, counterattack in two, and if necessary, go to the enemy's capital in one of the two. These metrics obscure the foundations of U.S. military power—that is, all the difficult and expensive things that the United States does to create the conditions that permit it to even consider one, two, or four campaigns.
Extending and further testing the theory advanced by Bruce Jentleson with post-cold war data, variations in U.S. public support for the use of military force are shown to be best explained by the principal policy objective for which military force is being used, with a third category of “humanitarian intervention” added to the previous two of “foreign policy restraint” and “internal political change.” The principal policy objective theory is shown through a series of tests, including regression and logistic analyses, to offer the most powerful and parsimonious explanation, both directly superseding and indirectly subsuming such other alternative variables as interests, elite cues, risk, and multilateralism. These findings support the broader theoretical view of a rational public purposive and not purely reactive in its opinion formulation and have important implications for the basic dispositions of the types of military interventions the American public will and will not support in the post-cold war era.
This article identifies a “post post-Vietnam” pattern in recent American public opinion on the use of military force. Data is drawn from eight cases of limited military force in the 1980s and the 1990–91 Persian Gulf war. Although other factors enter in, particularly the “halo effect” of quick-strike successes, the variations in public support are best explained by differences in principal policy objectives between force used to coerce foreign policy restraint by an aggressor state, and force used to influence or impose internal political change within another state. Distinctions are made both among and within the cases, showing the American public to have been much more supportive of the use of force when the principal objective was to restrain rather than remake governments. These findings have theoretical implications for the analysis of public opinion, prescriptive implications for U.S. foreign policy strategy, and normative implications for views of the role of the public in the foreign policy process.
In the early 1990s, one of the principal features of the French military establishment was the extent of its commitment outside France's borders, and the encouragement it received to this end from President Frangois Mitterrand. This contrasted with the previous reticence and ambivalence about the engagement of troops outside France. This apparent change of heart had at least as much political as military justification, linked especially to France's relationship with the United Nations after the Cold War. Despite suggestions of accord, however, regarding France's military means and missions, troop deployments in the civil wars in Bosnia and Rwanda aroused considerable discord on political, military and financial grounds, and served to highlight the extent to which the presidential domaine reserve still applied in foreign and military affairs under Mitterrand as it had under his illustrious predecessor, Charles de Gaulle.
One of the defining characteristics of modern French defence is often argued to be the broad public and political consensus which is said to surround it. It is most regularly argued that this stems directly from the influences and decisions of General Charles de Gaulle, such as the external political imperative of maintaining French rank and status in international affairs, and especially the internal political factor of the presidential domaine réservé which he established in matters of defence and military affairs. This article examines primarily the issue of a defence consensus or otherwise surrounding France's external military interventions in the 1980s, under President François Mitterrand, in Lebanon and Chad. It argues that consensus was for the most part only partial and limited, and that partisan political differences were considerable. Moreover, such differences were regularly expressed as harsh criticisms of the leadership, its policy directions and its military capabilities, and these criticisms were periodically expressed across the political spectrum. It further argues that while Mitterrand adopted the domaine réservé with apparent ease, this did not necessarily facilitate consensus and at times it contributed to the disquiet engendered by external military interventions under his direction.
Recent scholarship on international institutions has begun to explore potentially powerful indirect pathways by which international institutions may influence states’ domestic politics and thereby influence the foreign policy preferences and strategies of state leaders. In this paper, we provide evidence documenting the indirect impact of institutional cues on public support for the use of force through an analysis of individual-level survey data and a survey-based experiment that examines support for a hypothetical American intervention in East Timor. We find that institutional endorsements increase support for the use of force among members of the American public who value the institution making the endorsement and among those who do not have confidence in the president. These individual-level analyses show that international institutions can affect domestic support for military action by serving providing a valuable “second opinion” on the proposed use of force.
On 28 January 2008 the European Union launched the military operation EUFOR in Chad and the Central African Republic. Its mandate was to contribute to the security of the civilian population, the numerous refugees from neighbouring Darfur and the local presence of the United Nations. This paper describes and analyses the planning process of this operation at the political-strategic and military-strategic levels with the aim of understanding how the military instrument was intended to generate the desired political effects. The paper argues that, from a military perspective, the EUFOR operation is based on the concept of humanitarian deterrence: the threat of military force is used to discourage potential spoilers from targeting the civilian population. As with any military operation, the planning of EUFOR was plagued by various elements of friction. At least some of this friction seems to flow from the mismatch in expectations between the political-strategic and military-strategic levels. The various political and military-technical constraints within which the operation was planned resulted in an operational posture that is less decisive than what the political ambitions would have suggested.
Understanding French Policy toward Chad/Sudan? A Difficult Task Part 1-3ʹ
- Roland Marchal
Financement Libyen: Le Spectre D’une Affaire D’etat
- Simon Piel
- Joan Tilouine
- Matthieu Goar
Comment La France a-T-Elle Decide D’intervenir En Libye?
- Natalie Nougayrede
The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War, and Peace
- James Baker
- Addison
The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs about the Use of Force
- Martha Finnemore
The French War on Al Qa
- Christopher S Chivvis
After Mali Comes Niger
- Sebastian Elischer
- Jean-Christophe Notin
- La Guerre De La France Au Mali
African Adventure? Assessing the European Union’s Military Intervention in Chad and the Central African Republic (Cambridge, MA: MIT Security Studies Working Paper
- Bjoern H Seibert
- Alexander Thompson
- Channels Of Power
Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War
- Robert M Gates
Security Council Working Methods and UN Peace Operations: The Case of Chad and the Central African Republic
- Alexandra Novosselof
- Richard Gowan
- Jean-Christophe Notin
- La Guerre De La France Au Mali