International Interventions and their comparability

Being on good faith or not Is meanless when result speak and some shit you Pull make people escéptic.

The AU missions in Somalia and Sudan, as well as the ECOWAS one in Gambia, are some pretty good examples of multilateral interventions that put diplomatic and humanitarian considerations ahead of hard power display.

Its good to know that regional partnerships are starting to work.

It really just depends on the circumstances. The AU’s track record with interventions has been fairly mixed, mostly due to their issues with corruption and infighting.

Okay, my Google-fu failed me: what does "AU" stands for?

Or it really is just Australia?

African-Union.

Gotcha, thank you.

I wish that Hispanoamerica could do their equivalent of that, but it's far easier to ask USA help for it.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Aug 18th 2019 at 3:26:47 AM

My pleasure.

The confusion is understandable, I can't imagine that abbreviation is uncommon

Moving here from the US Politics thread.

This is true, but I’d again emphasise that a country is not simply its government, we misrepresent things when we act as if an intervention in a civil war is inherently an attack upon an entire nation. It is an act of assistance to one part of a nation fighting against another part, if it’s a good thing or not obviously depends, but getting involved in a civil war is a lot more complicated than simply being an invasion.

Could you please point to where anyone here has said that use of military force is the only way to help people, I’d stand that in certain situations it’s the best way to help them, but it’s never the only way.

Typically your correct, it’s why I haven’t called for preemptive regime change in Belarus, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia or any other of the long list of dictatorships in the world.

What I reject is the idea that it’s never a way of starting on the long process of making a country into a stable, functioning democracy.

I’ve noticed when these conversations come up that those arguing against military interventions typically seem to understand the argument in favor of them as being in favor of them in all circumstances. I don’t think anyone here is arguing that a military intervention is the right choice in every situation, merely that there are situations that call for one and preemptively closing yourself off to the idea is just as silly as thinking we should invade every country.

Also, for clarity’s sake, here’s an actual academic definition of the term: [1]

I like that definition, it's broad enough to be useful while remaining value-neutral.

There's also a pre-existing word for half of that definition that's not a euphemism:

Invasion.

I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at here. I don’t think anyone is disputing that in some cases intervention requires a military invasion.

It seems like you’re just throwing out snarl words, what with referring to an actual academic definition of a concept as a “euphemism”.

Edited by archonspeaks on Feb 15th 2020 at 5:46:46 AM

Is easier to argue against something if you use loaded negative words to describe it

But yeah, a Intervention is a Invasion if you wanna be technical about it. The thing is? That other half of the defintion means that is a Justified Invasion

Edited by KazuyaProta on Feb 15th 2020 at 8:51:17 AM

I mean, if we want to get technical, an invasion is any instance where a military force aggressively enters territory held by another entity. Pretty much all warfare involves an invasion of some sort.

Because it's not an academic definition. For it to be an academic definition, it would have to be widely understood within that specific academic field.

I.e. If a paper or peer-reviewed article has to start off explaining what a term used in it means in the context of that specific text, it's not using an academic definition.

I guess I’m curious: what, exactly, is your issue with that definition? Because if you’re just quibbling over the definition of “academic”, I don’t think this is the thread for that.

The official definition of a military intervention, and the one I’ve seen most commonly used in academia is the one provided by the US DoD, which is “the deliberate act of a nation or a group of nations to introduce its military forces into the course of an existing controversy.” I prefer the definition linked above for a more critical analysis of the topic since it’s a little more specific, but that’s just me.

Edited by archonspeaks on Feb 15th 2020 at 6:06:01 AM

You can use whatever definition you want, really. As long as you're aware that no matter how you define it, that doesn't change the fact that in US politics 'military intervention' has been a euphemism (what I actually mean is a dog whistle) for Republican warhawks to say 'sending our troops to further our own interests no matter who it fucks over' without saying the quiet part out loud.

And we know at this point that you're not trying to downplay or defend that kind of stuff, but it took a while and some people are still going to have the initial assumption that that's what you mean when you use that phrase. So if you really want a discussion of whether and when it's acceptable to send troops in for humanitarian purposes, it's a lot more useful to just abandon the exact phrasing 'military intervention' with all its existing negative associations rather than finding all these neutral definitions.

If you're referring only to interventions where the military goes in to stop asshole dictators or groups of bigots from committing genocide or warring factions from killing each other and any innocent civilians who get in their way, then might I suggest that peacekeeping is a good term to use instead?

So I asked about this earlier in USA thread but disappeared for four days from internet so didn't really ask follow up on it.

I think I was told at least three examples of situations where USA intervened in favor of oppressed minorities and it worked out better, can I get more details on those?

Also, has there been situation on either American continent where ANY country has intervened on behalf of native population? Like people living in Amazon who have been killed by people burning down the forest?

The US has done some wonderful work in interventions as a core part of UN peacekeeping efforts, so there's plenty of examples of US troops going in to areas and making life there better.

It's mainly when the US sends troops in on its own initiative rather than at the behest of the UN that things don't tend to work out so shiny for the locals.

Peacekeeping and Military Intervention are literally the same thing

Basically. What Rob is doing is using a rhetorical flourish to justify “good” interventions within a certain worldview. All peacekeeping is an intervention by definition, but intervention is such a mean word.

Given that we all clearly understand each other, and that I’ve never once heard the phrase military intervention used like that, I feel like this point of dissent is a little ridiculous.

Edited by archonspeaks on Feb 16th 2020 at 12:06:52 PM

X4 What details do you want? The most prominent cases I can think off are the breakup of Yugoslavia, where NATO acted to try protect groups in both Bosnia and Kosovo who faced ethnic cleansing and attempted genocide (often far to late). You’ve also got the case of East Timor breaking away from Indonesia (though I believe Australia did much of the heavy lifting) and the air action over Iraq that was aimed to prevent Saddam from slaughtering the Kurds.

As for stuff in South and Central America, I’m not aware of any cases on humanitarian grounds, largely you saw the US act in opposition to communist/leftist groups and generally that wasn’t to help the local population.

Humanitarian intervention on a large scale (UN peacekeeping tended to be rather small scale and largely aimed for at conflicts between states) was only truly birthed in the ‘90s, so it’s rather followed global focus since then and as such has mainly been a thing in Africa and the Middle East.

Edited by Silasw on Feb 16th 2020 at 8:33:59 PM

Well would like some examples of USA interventions with Nato, with UN and on their own and how they have worked out. Also bit clarification if world police mentality is about USA ignoring NATO and UN or working together with them?

Also, so are interventions mostly about state vs state stuff and not about government enabling companies to do it or systemically exterminating smaller minorities in their area? Or is it case of middle east taking everyone's focus due to the really bad situation there?

Edited by SpookyMask on Feb 16th 2020 at 10:55:05 PM