Think before you Shoot: The Reality of Military Intervention

Intervention in internal conflicts is a nasty business, often with many unforeseen consequences. Such intervention is frequently unsuccessful. Such intervention often fails because intervening troops have an inadequate mandate, their forces are not sufficiently armed, and because intervention can prolong conflicts that otherwise would have ended.

Intervention in an internal conflict can only be successful with a force that is appropriate to the actual situation on the ground, not the situation policymakers wish for. Lightly armed peacekeepers can be successful in monitoring a peace agreement where it is in the interest of both sides to continue such an agreement. However, if the goal is to impose a peace upon groups who otherwise would continue fighting, overwhelming force and an acceptance of the casualties that such intervention is likely to bring is the price of victory, making such intervention very expensive in blood and treasure; such intervention must have either a compelling national interest or moral outrage to genocide to justify such a cost. Halfhearted intervention, however, is often worse than no intervention at all.

An inadequate mandate can cripple intervention. One poignant example is Rwanda. “The most unambiguous case of genocide since Hitler's war against the Jews” (Gourevitch 1998, cover) occurred while UN peacekeepers were stationed in the country to try to ensure the success of a peace agreement between the government and the rebel RPF army. These peacekeepers were intended to keep Kigali, the Rwandan capital, free of weapons. The UN commander on the ground, General Dallaire, received concrete information from a well-placed source in the Hutu militias known as interahamwe that a major weapons cache, which was going to be used to slaughter Tutsis, was in Kigali. The informant then requested protection from the UN. General Dallaire prepared to move against the cache but was forbidden by his superiors at the United Nations, who said that such action was “beyond the mandate of UNAMIR.” Instead of allowing him to take action to protect the people about to be murdered, the UN ordered Dallaire to turn over his information to President Habyarimana, who had armed the militias in the first place. Instead of protecting someone who offered critical information at great personal risk, the UN simply informed Habyarimana that he had a leak in his security apparatus (Gourevitch 1998, 105).

Inadequately arming peacekeepers and inadequate forces also cripple intervention. The UN force in Bosnia in the early 1990s is one poignant example. When these lightly armed peacekeepers proved incapable of defending themselves, “one side literally chained peacekeepers to their armored fighting vehicles so that UN aircraft could not attack them as they violated the peace agreement without killing their fellow peacekeepers” (Snow 2010, 104-105). In Somalia, humanitarian intervention ended in humiliation for the United States and failure for the UN because not enough troops were committed to pacify the country and President Bush decided that the operation was not worth incurring many American casualties (Calvert & Calvert 2007, 275).

Intervention can prolong a conflict by giving enough aid to allow the war to continue indefinitely. As outside groups pick which side to favor in a forced peace agreement, they often make things worse (Snow 2010, 107). This certainly happened in Rwanda. When the French finally intervened under Operation Turquoise, they ensured the safe passage of the Hutus that had been massacring their neighbors out of the country instead of protecting their victims. Eventually, the RPF drove the government troops and interahamwe militias over the border into Zaire where the planners, orchestrators, and executors of the genocide in Rwanda fleeing as fugitives from justice, were welcomed into UN camps as “refugees.” These camps provided safe haven for the murderous interahamwe and soldiers to attack Tutsis in Zaire as well as cross border raids back into Rwanda. Similar camps were also established inside of Rwanda for “internally displaced persons” which also provided a base for continued violence under the flag of the United Nations. The money from these camps “went straight through the political rackets into the purchase of arms and munitions” to use to continue the bloodshed (Gourevitch 1998, 271).

In a more recent example, NATO intervention in Libya also appears to be prolonging a conflict. NATO does not have enough of a compelling interest to make a full intervention there. Without any real information on the true objectives of the rebels fighting Gadhafi, we cannot know even if the government they would install would be better or worse than the current dictatorship. NATO member states are simply not willing to suffer the kinds of casualties it would take to try to remove Gadhafi directly, resorting to half-hearted air strikes instead. And now, the rebel forces are out of money and many supplies (Stratfor 2011b) and are certainly not able to “sustain combat at significant distances from their base of power against a well-defended urban area [Tripoli] — a tactical situation that would be difficult even for the best-trained and best-equipped military forces” (Stratfor 2011a, n.p.). Gadhafi simply is trying to hold on until NATO gets tired of the cost of its involvement (Stratfor 2011a) which already appears to be happening in the United States with the growing opposition in Congress.

The international community needs to learn this simple fact: intervention is complicated, expensive, and often has unintended results. If we have a compelling national interest or we seek to prevent genocide, intervention can certainly be justified. If we decide to intervene, we must dedicate the resources and be willing to pay the cost to bring things to a successful conclusion as quickly as possible. But if we cannot stomach seeing the flag-draped caskets of our soldiers on the evening news, if we cannot have a full, unequivocal commitment to victory, then we should not get involved at all, because we will make the situation worse.

References

Calvert, Peter and Susan Calvert. 2007. Politics and Society in the Developing World. Essex, England: Pearson Education Limited.

Gourevitch, Philip. 1998. We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families. New York: Picador.

Snow, Donald. 2010. Cases in International Relations. New York: Longman.

Stratfor. 2011. Libya: A New Rebel Front and Gadhafi's Strategy. Strategic Forecasting. June 8. http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20110607-libya-new-rebel-front-and-gadhafis-strategy (accessed June 18, 2011).

Stratfor. 2011. Libya: Rebels Run Out of Money. June 18. http://www.stratfor.com/sitrep/20110618-libya-rebels-run-out-money (accessed June 18, 2011).

Democratization in Belarus

The former Soviet republic Belarus has yet to achieve meaningful democratization. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described it as "the last remaining true dictatorship in Europe" (CNN 2005). Since President Alexander Lukashenko took power in 1994, Belarus has not seen a single free and fair election; Beatings of opposition candidates and mass arrests are commonplace (Rosenberg 2010). The election laws are routinely and blatantly violated there (Marples 2009, 760).

Discussion of Belarus is important because Belarus is very relevant to American security concerns, because “Nato sees Belarus as a potential threat to neighboring Lithuania. Russian tanks stationed in Belarus can be in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, in about 90 minutes" (Gedmin 2009). Belarus also is important to EU energy security, since one-fifth of all Russian natural gas exports to Europe pass through Belarus (Gedmin 2009). In the larger scheme of things, Democratization in this seemingly inconsequential country is important because “Democratization in countries such as Belarus, Georgia and Ukraine will almost certainly help to curb Russia’s imperial appetite. Faced with neighboring democracies, Russia would be forced to take greater stock of its affairs at home… the outside game – what happens in Russia’s neighborhood—may be as important as what’s happening inside Russia" (Gedmin 2009).

In the three stage model of democratization, stage one is described as where an authoritarian government comes under pressure and makes limited concessions, such as "permitting opposition groups to organize, restraining the police and security agencies, extending the scope of free speech and expression and permitting the emergence (or re-emergence) of civil society” (Calvert & Calvert 2006, 359). Belarus is clearly still in stage one.

Belarus is quite an oppressive and authoritarian state. It is a one-party dominant state. Opposition parties are permitted to exist but are harshly repressed and have no real power. The regime has used the military against protestors after elections (Marples 2009, 757), and routinely jails opposition leaders for years. Press freedom is virtually non-existent; Freedom House ranked Belarus 188th out of 195 countries in terms of press freedom (Gedmin 2009).

However, in recent times, Belarus has made some concessions that place it in the first stage of democratization. It released many political prisoners before the parliamentary elections in September 2008 (Marples 2009, 770), largely as a result of US and EU demands (Gedmin 2009). The regime has also recently allowed two opposition newspapers to be sold in public as a result of EU pressure, although state control of broadcast media remains very tight (Marples 2009, 770). The poor economy in Belarus is likely to force further concessions. Twenty five percent of state employees were working reduced hours in 2009 because of a shortage of funds (Gedmin 2009).

Belarus does not have good long term prospects for significant democratization. Belarus has no examples of democracy in its history to draw on (Marples 2009, 757). Tight state control of media combined with frequent arrests of opposition leaders during election periods make it very difficult for the opposition to garner support among the people. State officials even go so far as to conscript family members of opposition politicians in retaliation for their political activities (Marples 2009, 760). State propaganda constantly derides such leaders as "enemies of Belarus and/or in the pay of foreign governments" (Marples 2009, 760), and the opposition is plagued by its own internal disputes that prevent coordination. The fact also remains that the Lukashenko regime enjoys genuine popularity among many people, due to its ability to deliver economic prosperity (largely funded by subsidies from Moscow, especially in terms of discounted natural gas). This support will likely erode in the face of rising energy prices, but in the short term Lukashenko is still quite popular (Marples 2009).

The fact also remains that both the Obama and Bush administrations have been extremely focused on the Middle East since 2001, and have largely neglected the security concerns that exist for US allies in Eastern Europe. President Obama in particular has chosen to pander to Russia by reneging on missile defense agreements in Poland to obtain Russian concessions with regard to the Middle East (Boudwin 2010). Because of this focus, it is unlikely that the United States will bring to bear any significant resources to encourage democratization in Belarus, which makes the future of freedom in that country even bleaker than it already is.

References

Boudwin, Ryan. 2010. Feeding Warsaw to the Bear. APUS paper reprinted at http://aworldinconflict.blogspot.com/2010/12/feeding-poland-to-bear.html (accessed June 5, 2011).

Calvert, Peter and Susan Calvert. 2007. Politics and Society in the Developing World. Essex, England: Pearson Education Limited.

CNN. 2005. "Rice: Russia's future linked to democracy." April 20. http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/04/20/rice.dougherty/index.html (accessed June 5, 2011).

Gedmin, Jeffrey. 2009. "Europe's Last Dictatorship." Wall Street Journal - Eastern Edition, May 29. A13. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed June 6, 2011).

Marples, David R. 2009. "Outpost of tyranny? The failure of democratization in Belarus." Democratization 16, no. 4: 756-776. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed June 6, 2011).

Rosenberg, Steve. 2010."Hundreds of protesters arrested in Belarus." BBC News. December 20. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12037486 (accessed June 5, 2011).