Democracy and Security Special Issue: Foreign Intervention in Ethnic and Ethnonational Conflicts

Abstract

The following introduction reviews the gaps in extant International Relations theory regarding foreign intervention in ethnic and ethnonational conflicts, proposing ways in which Rationalist and Constructivist approaches to International Relations could contribute to our understanding of such phenomena. The introduction then provides an overview of the special issue's five articles, which draw upon evidence from Africa, the Balkans, Northern Ireland, and the Basque Country to highlight the benefits and drawbacks of third-party intervention in ethnic and ethnonational conflicts. In doing so, they highlight many of the most salient issues affecting the practice of intervention and peacebuilding today.

Keywords:

• The Balkans
• Conflict Management
• International Relations
• Intervention
• Peacebuilding

Notes

1. See Ted Robert Gurr, “Ethnic Warfare on the Wane,” Foreign Affairs 79, no. 3 (2000): 52–64; and James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War,” American Political Science Review 97, no. 1 (2003): 75–90.

2. Richard N. Haass, Intervention: The Use of American Military Force in the Post-Cold War World, rev. ed. (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1999), 5–9.

3. Richard N. Haass, “The Age of Nonpolarity,” Foreign Affairs 87 (May–June 2008): 44–56.

4. Kenneth N. Waltz, “Realist Thought and Neorealist Theory,” Journal of International Affairs 44 (Spring/Summer 1990): 21–37.

5. Robert D. Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games,” International Organization 42, no. 3 (1988): 427–460.

6. See Colin Wight, Agents, Structures and International Relations: Politics as Ontology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

7. It is also incorrect to regard Constructivism as a “school” or “paradigm” akin to Realism or Liberalism. Rather, much like Rationalism, it contains assumptions about how to study international relations, not a set of assumptions about how international relations operate.

8. Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett, eds., Security Communities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

9. See also Sebastian Rosato, Europe United: Power Politics and the Making of the European Community (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010).

10. For more on this, see Brendan Simms, Unfinest Hour: Britain and the Destruction of Bosnia (London: Allen Lane/The Penguin Press, 2001).

11. Kenneth N. Waltz, “Structural Realism after the Cold War,” International Security 25, no. 1 (2000): 5–41, 20–29.

12. John Gerard Ruggie, “What Makes the World Hang Together? Neo-utilitarianism and the Social Constructivist Challenge,” International Organization 52, no. 4 (1998): 855–885.

13. Alexander Wendt, “Anarchy Is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics,” International Organization 46, no. 2 (1992): 391–425.

14. For an overview of Realist Constructivism, which emphasizes how power structures and influences normative change, see J. Samuel Barkin, “Realist Constructivism,” International Studies Review 5 (2003): 325–342.

15. Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, 3rd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).

16. Michael Doyle, “Liberalism and World Politics,” American Political Science Review 80, no. 4 (1986): 1151–1169.

17. See Sebastian Rosato, “The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory,” American Political Science Review 97, no. 4 (2003): 585–602.

18. Christopher Layne, “Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace,” International Security 19, no. 2 (1994): 5–49.

19. Jack L. Snyder, Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go To War, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005); Jack L. Snyder and Edward D. Mansfield, From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict (New York: Norton Books, 2000).

20. Fiona B. Adamson, “Global Liberalism Versus Political Islam: Competing Ideological Frameworks in International Politics,” International Studies Review 7 (2005): 547–569, 548.

21. Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992).

22. Rogelio Alonso, “¿Qué Política Antiterrorista Frente a ETA? Lecciones desde la perspectiva comparada,” Fundacion para el Análisis y los Estudios Sociales, October–December 2007, http://www.fundacionfaes.org/record_file/filename/1329/_95-120_Alonso.pdf (accessed February 1, 2011); and Mitchell B. Reiss, Negotiating with Evil: When to Talk to Terrorists (New York: Open Road Media, 2010), 113.

23. Reiss, Negotiating with Evil, 136–153.

24. See Marc Lynch, “Understanding al-Qaeda: The Irrelevance of IR Theory,” Abu Aardvark (blog), November 2005, http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/abuaardvark/2005/11/understanding_a.html (accessed February 11, 2011); Adamson, “Global Liberalism Versus Political Islam,” 547–548; and Marc Lynch, “Al-Qaeda's Constructivist Turn,” Praeger Security International, May 5, 2006, http://psi.praeger.com/doc.aspx?newindex=1&q=lynch&imageField.x=0&imageField.y=0&c=&d=/commentary/Lynch-20060505-Lynch-20060505.xml&i=1#txmlhit (accessed February 11, 2011).

25. Adamson, “Global Liberalism Versus Political Islam,” 547.

26. Ibid.

27. On the widespread acceptance of the colonial analogy see Adrian Guelke, Northern Ireland: The International Perspective (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1988); and Joseph Ruane and Jennifer Todd, The Dynamics of Conflict in Northern Ireland: Power, Conflict and Emancipation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 271–272.

28. See, for instance, Jonathan Powell, “We Will Talk to Mullah Omar, and Maybe to Bin Laden Too,” Guardian, August 8, 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/08/talking-to-the-taliban-negotiations-end-war (accessed August 8, 2010).

29. For an overview of these arguments, see John Bew, Martyn Frampton, and Iñigo Gurruchaga, Talking to Terrorists: Making Peace in Northern Ireland and the Basque Country (New York: Columbia/Hurst, 2009), 1–17. For an example of this, see “Statement by International Leaders in Conflict Resolution and Peace Processes,” International Contact Group, March 29, 2010, http://icgbasque.org/documents/brussels-declaration/ (accessed February 11, 2011).

30. Pierre Bordieu, The Field of Cultural Production (Oxford: Polity Press, 1993).

31. For an example of how International Relations theories can produce different insights when applied to a single case study, see Jennifer Sterling-Folker, ed., Making Sense of International Relations (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, 2005).

32. For a discussion of this point in terms of the social sciences, see Alasdair MacIntyre, “Is a Science of Comparative Politics Possible?,” in Against the Self Images of the Age: Essays on Ideology and Philosophy (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 260–279.

33. Thomas Hennessey, Northern Ireland: The Origins of the Troubles (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2005), 393–394.

34. Arthur Aughey, The Politics of Northern Ireland: Beyond the Belfast Agreement (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), 76.

35. John Whyte, Interpreting Northern Ireland (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), viii.

36. Rogelio Alonso, “Pathways Out of Terrorism in Northern Ireland and the Basque Country: The Misrepresentation of the Irish Model,” Terrorism and Political Violence 16, no. 4 (2004): 695–713, 695.

37. For evidence of this, see Taylor Branch, The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History in the White House (London and New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), 329, 500, 641. According to a senior aide active in both John Major's and Tony Blair's administrations, Blair found Clinton's pronationalist bias “troubling” and that the fundamental flaw in the Clinton Administration's approach to NI was that it “did not regard Sinn Féin as terrorists.” This official also states that the Clinton Administration's contacts with unionists “were virtually non-existent.” See Con Coughlin, American Ally: Tony Blair and the War on Terror (London: Politico's Publishing Ltd., 2006), 31–33.

38. See for instance, Jonathan Powell, Great Hatred, Little Room: Making Peace in Northern Ireland (London: The Bodley Head, 2008).

39. For more on this point, see Martha Crenshaw, ed., The Consequences of Counterterrorism (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2010); and Reiss, Negotiating with Evil.

40. Mitchell B. Reiss, “The Troubles We've Seen,” The American Interest, July–August 2008, http://www.the-american-interest.com/article-bd.cfm?piece=454 (accessed November 12, 2009); Mary-Alice C. Clancy, Peace Without Consensus: Power Sharing Politics in Northern Ireland (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010).