The Global South contestation narratives and the transformation of military humanitarian interventions in the early 1990s

Abstract

This paper’s main contribution is to the agency of the South in support of the transformation of MHIs in the early 1990s. This is in contradiction to current literature on how the norm emerged after the Cold War. The study shows that strategic narratives used in hundreds of deliberations in the UNSC were used by the South as part of a social interaction that encouraged the transformation of humanitarian norms. This approach reveals that the South was able to support the interventions while overcoming contestation over practices and identities. Therefore, the South created a narrative of a preferred web of practices that was generally aligned with the transformation of MHIs.

Keywords:

• Bosnia
• Global South
• military humanitarian intervention
• norm contestation
• Somalia
• United Nations

1. Introduction

This paper adds to the literature by focusing on the contribution of Global South states (henceforth, “South”) to the contestation process of the military humanitarian intervention (MHI) norm in the early 1990s through their strategic narratives.

Many studies have analyzed international interventions and the changes that have occurred in MHIs over the past three decades while focusing on the Global North (henceforth, “North”) (Wheeler & Bellamy, 2009). This line of research usually emphasizes how the changes in MHIs resulted from liberal triumphalism in the North. However, there has been no analysis of the South’s strategic narratives on the practice of humanitarian interventions (HIs) in concrete emergencies. This approach yields many benefits in identifying the changes within the South on issues that relate to emergencies, the use of force, and the ontology of intervention from the South’s perspective.

For empirical reasons, the paper analyzes contestations at the UN Security Council (UNSC) over Bosnia and Somalia, which were the largest and most ambitious interventions in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War. In both cases, new practices were adopted for the interventions. These included, among others, employing tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians to execute new missions and ambitious goals to protect civilians, deliver aid, and encourage economic development.

The paper contributes to our understanding of the South’s role in the transformation of the MHI norm in several ways. First, it illustrates that the consensus over practices with clear background knowledge encouraged positive strategic narratives from the majority of South actors to combine them in new contexts, creating new meanings for MHIs. Second, the contestation over practices during emergencies allowed consensus while maintaining divisions. These allowed different groups of states to align with certain identity groups, such as Muslims or conservatives, while maintaining general support for the transformation of MHIs.

2. The South’s contestation over MHIs in the early 1990s: practices, identity, and strategic narratives

This paper’s theoretical approach is divided into three parts: MHIs as a web of practices, the South as a construct of multiple identities, and the role of strategic narratives in weaving together practices and identities while influencing the transformation of norms.

2.1. MHI transformation and practices

Early constructivist works on MHIs explain that their ideational-constitutive frame changed in three main phases. In the 19th century, they were implemented in the name of protecting minorities. At this phase European Powers, mainly Great Britain and France, justified unilateral military attacks mainly against territories held by the Ottoman Empire in Greece, Crete and Lebanon. The main goal was to cease abuses to the local Christian population by the hands of the Ottoman army. It called for protection of religious victims. This practice was accompanied by a rhetoric to differentiate the Powers from the “Tyrannies”, “uncivilized governments”, “inhumane”. The operations did not include aid to the local population (Finnemore, 2004, pp. 58−64; Swatek-Evenstein, 2021, pp. 142–64). During the Cold War, the MHIs were mainly unilateral military interventions in adjacent territories such as India in East Pakistan in 1971, Vietnam in Cambodia in 1978, or Tanzania in Uganda in 1979. These military operations were due to the recurrent security threat to the neighboring countries which had also had mass human suffering. While the interventions did cease human atrocities, the intervening states did not use humanitarianism as their main justification. In East Pakistan the intervention led to the creation of Bangladesh, in Uganda to the overthrowal of the regime, and in Cambodia to a decade of occupation (Barnett, 2011, pp. 132−58; Finnemore, 2004, pp. 58−68; Swatek-Evenstein, 2021, pp. 228−34; Wheeler, 2003, pp. 55–136). Since the end of the Cold War, the UNSC has been a key player and has authorized dozens of peacekeeping operations with the goal of HI. Each of these interventions adopted multiple practices, such as deploying multinational military forces, providing humanitarian aid, and reconstructing state institutions. All these new interventions were deployed during humanitarian emergencies in the context of civil wars that eroded the Westphalian norm of sovereignty. This change encouraged the evolution of the responsibility to protect (R2P) norm from the late 1990s (Barnett, 2011, pp. 161−219; Finnemore, 1996, pp. 153−85; Finnemore, 2004, pp. 78−83; ICISS, 2001; Wheeler, 2003, pp. 139–284).

One way to examine the evolution of MHIs is through contestation over practices. Since Neumann called for practices to be examined (Neumann, 2002, pp. 627–51), much has been written on the subject. Bueger and Gadinger elaborated on this and showed that there are many theoretical approaches to the subject of international practices (Bueger & Gadinger, 2018). This work adopts the approach of practices as a routinized type of behavior that reifies background knowledge and discourse on the material world (Adler & Pouliot, 2011, pp. 1−36; Reckwitz, 2002). Bernstein and Laurence point to the fact that the practice of interventions changed from the 1990s onward (Bernstein & Laurence, 2022, pp. 77–99). However, they do not describe the main practices that composed the change. Explaining the transformation of MHIs as contestation over practices puts an emphasis on the ontology of interventions as composed of several practices, which Pouliot dubbed “webs of practices” (McCourt, 2022, pp. 129−42; Pouliot, 2022, p. 181).

2.2. The South’s ‘Selves’

A second issue in this paper relates to identities, more specifically, the role of the identity of the South. Approaches to the evolution of the MHI norm as divided between North and South relate to the question of social identity. It is accepted that social identity influences how agencies perceive interests (Finnemore & Sikkink, 2001, pp. 390−400; Hall, 1999; Lapid & Kratochwil, 1996; Reus-Smit, 1999; Wendt, 1992, pp. 391–425). Hopf defines this as “how you understand yourself in relationship with others” (Hopf, 2012). Understanding norm contestation through practice leads to an acceptance that different agencies or regions have different identities or cultures, such as the North-South divide (Acharya, 2014, pp. 647−59; Hopf, 2012).

Descriptions of the transformation of the MHI norm since the 1990s (Chomsky, 2016; Haug et al., 2021, pp. 1923−44; Kovalik, 2020) promote the idea that it encouraged the creation of two rigidly opposite ideological camps. The first camp is led by reformist liberal Western countries. Writers such as Barnett, Bellamy, and Wheeler have even dubbed such MHIs as examples of “liberal intervention” (Barnett, 2011, pp. 161−70; Wheeler & Bellamy, 2009, pp. 522–39). These are used by the much richer and militarily superior North, who use the term to justify their purported moral superiority over the South, who comprise the second camp. Therefore, the South is composed of revisionist powers such as Russia, China, India, and international organizations such as the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), BRICS, the African Union, and others that are suspicious of the development of HIs (Adebajo, 2017, pp. 1187−202; Doyle, 2016 −90, pp. 637; Mabera & Spies, 2016, pp. 208−26; Menon, 2016). According to this approach, the South has tended to cling to the conservative Westphalian norm of state sovereignty and resisted the norm transformation of MHIs that legitimizes a wide spectrum of intervention in states’ affairs (Acharya, 2018, pp. 117−27; Bloomfield & Scott, 2017, pp. 20–38).

In recent years, works have been written on alternative world orders or regional orders that call for a more nuanced analysis of the South, emphasizing its diversity, overlapping, and multiplex world orders (Acharya, 2017, pp. 271−85; Acharya, 2022, pp. 265−70; Adler, 2019, p. 1; Kertcher & Turin, 2023; Reus-Smit, 2018). All these approaches acknowledge that the South is not one polity that adheres to and shares a social identity, norms, institutions, regulations, and interests.

2.3. Strategic narratives and weaving webs of meanings

Strategic narratives are a mode of communication that weave together identities and practices. This paper adopts the definition that they are “representations of a sequence of events and identities, a communicative tool through which political actors—usually elites—attempt to give determined meaning to past, present, and future in order to achieve political objectives” (Miskimmon et al., 2013, p. 5).

The South’s different identities were formulated through narratives. Ringmar has shown that “Our definitions of interest and identities are intimately related to the way in which we make sense of our world” (Ringmar, 1996, p. 6). Additionally, according to Autesserre, “some narratives emerge from practices … practices make possible and sustain dominant narratives already in existence … existing dominant narratives also enable and justify specific practices” (Autesserre, 2014, pp. 34–35). The narratives are invoked especially during emergencies when relations are challenged (Adler-Nissen, 2015, pp. 284−308; Bueger & Gadinger, 2018, pp. 80−83; Kertcher, 2021).

Strategic narratives are a form of sense-making that create meaning for policies and practices (Bueger & Gadinger, 2018, pp. 69−79; Miskimmon et al., 2013, 2017). More particularly, the strategic narratives produced during emergencies allow us to understand how the social identities of the South produced multiple “selves” toward different practices, which, in turn, created a web of meaning for the new MHIs.

2.4. Summary

The discussion above raises three main questions that this paper aims to answer. First, can we identify a unified “self” that objected to the new MHIs during the practices’ transformations as usually presented in the literature? Second, do the contestations vary if we examine them in different cases? Finally, how do different practices encourage the (re-)formulation of identities of Southern actors? This is crucial as states can hold several identities. For example, Egypt is an African country, an Arab country, and a Muslim country. The South also functions through narratives produced by international organizations to present a global identity (Non-Aligned Movement, NAM), regional identity (Organization of African Unity), cultural identity (League of Arab States, LAS), or religious identity (Organization of Islamic Cooperation, OIC).

3. Research design

This article adopts a strategic narrative analysis while comparing two emergencies in a relatively narrow timeframe to answer these research questions (George & Bennet, 2005, ch. 10; Miskimmon et al., 2017). The case studies selected are the interventions in Bosnia and Somalia initiated from early 1992 to 1995 (Mayall, 1996; Wheeler, 2003, pp. 139–284). These were the largest UN interventions in humanitarian crises and drove the norm’s transformation norm through the webbing of practices (Burg & Shoup, 1999; Wheeler, 2003, pp. 172–207, 242–57). Several scholars have studied narratives in emergencies, with a special emphasis on the UNSC. This was done, for example, to examine the war on terror (Kertcher, 2021), the Libyan emergency of 2011 (Adler-Nissen & Pouliot, 2014, pp. 889–911), the Crimean crisis of 2014 (Faizullaev & Cornut, 2017, pp. 578–604), and even the contestations of one UNSC member from the South (Albaret & Brun, 2022, pp. 523–42)

To explain the contestations from the South’s (norm-taker’s) perspective, the paper uses the UNSC as an arena that produces strategic narratives through its resolutions and the deliberations of different delegations. In its resolutions, the UNSC produces legal-constitutive frameworks on security issues and engages in how to use different practices in particular contexts.

First, 34 of the 46 relevant resolutions in which open discussions were held were analyzed. Second, contestations over practices were analyzed through the official deliberations of the South’s representatives. The corpus thus examines a total of 223 deliberations by countries from the South. Sometimes, the deliberations were made in the name of international actors, such as the OAU, OIC, LAS, and NAM. Deliberations by Bosnian and Somali representatives were deliberately omitted since they are actors with clear national interests in the conflicts.

The deliberations were coded according to approaches toward salient practices. Countries could ignore the changes or adopt a positive or negative attitude toward a practice’s transformation. When countries supported the transformation without clear reserve, they were identified as pro-reformist. When countries adopted a consistently critical narrative toward the changes in webs of practices and their connections, they were identified as conservatives. Conditionalist narratives are expressed in at least two strategic narrations. Conditionalist narratives are supportive of the webs of practices’ transformation; however, they have certain conditions that relate to identity. Another strategy relates to when countries adopted a narrative that supported a new web of practices but contested certain operational uses. This approach is in line with the approach that narratives are a form of sense-making that create meaning for policies and practices (Bueger & Gadinger, 2018, pp. 69−79; Miskimmon et al., 2013, 2017). Strategic narratives about webs of practices are also dynamic, contextual, and temporal.

The findings are arranged in two parts. The first part explains which practices were accepted with almost no reservation by Southern countries despite the changes from previous experience. The second part explains the contestations over practices’ transformations, mainly military in nature. The findings reveal two main webs of intertwined narratives on practices and identity. The first web mainly connected traditional civilian practices. The second web was related to enforcement measures and the deployment of international military forces.

4. Positive weaving of practices

South states supported the first web, discussed below, in their narratives. The web’s main outline comprised three threads: diplomatic practices, humanitarian aid practices, and practices related to economic development.

The South contextualized the diplomatic aspects of the interventions as part of two main issues: mediation and local responsibility. These practices were established during the Cold War in order to differentiate them from illegitimate interventions by Western powers or to negate the possibility of manipulating interventions as a form of neo-colonialism (United Nations, 1992).

First, all delegates supported the mediation of conflicts through the appointment of expert international mediators. This approach called for “political solutions” while acknowledging the agency of local actors as legitimate representatives of the people involved in the conflict toward the international community. The main goal was to encourage a reconciliation between local rival parties that would lead both states to return to a unitary state of effective government. This was accompanied by micro negotiations over ceasefires, supplying humanitarian aid, and other arrangements. An example of the recurrent narrative can be seen in Pakistan’s deliberation, accepted by all NAM members, regarding the intervention in Bosnia: “First, to ensure a complete cease-fire and cessation of all hostilities throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is an essential prerequisite for a just and equitable political solution to the conflict through peaceful negotiations; and secondly, to set out a framework of principles which should constitute the fundamental basis for peace and a politically negotiated settlement of the crisis” (UN S/PV.3269, 24 August 1993).

Second, the narratives of Southern countries put the responsibility for the mediation’s and the intervention’s success on the shoulders of the belligerent parties. When, by mid-1994, even the Somali leadership was pessimistic about the chances of the mediation efforts’ success (UN, S/1994/839, 1994; Kertcher, 2016, pp. 172–174), all Southern representatives adopted a joint narrative of acknowledgment that the sole responsibility for the failures of the intervention was on the Somali leadership’s lack of will to support the UN operations (UN, S/PV.3334, 1994; UN, S/PV.3385, 1994; UN, S/PV.3447, 1994). Mr. al-Khussaiby (Oman) stated, “It is for the Somali people themselves to assume a greater role in resolving the Somali crisis” (UN S/PV.3385, 31 May 1994). The exception to this approach was related to the Muslim identity group regarding Bosnia, which is analyzed later in the paper.

The second thread relating to innovations of practice is the way humanitarian aid was used. In the early 1990s, the UN focused on sending massive aid operations to countries in which millions were threatened by conflict. These operations included the delivery of hundreds of thousands of tons of food, clothes, and medical aid to both Bosnia and Somalia (Durch, 1997; Kertcher, 2016; Mayall, 1996; Seybolt, 2008).

In both cases, the humanitarian operations evolved in two stages. In early 1992, the aid operations focused on the capital cities and their surroundings. However, when the escalating conflicts threatened the lives of millions of people in Bosnia and Somalia, the emphasis shifted to supplying aid throughout these countries, ignoring the belligerent parties’ de-facto control over their territories (Burg & Shoup, 1999; Kertcher, 2016 −20, 126, pp. 109; Mayall, 1996; Seybolt, 2008; Yuusuf, 2021, pp. 85–88).

The South’s narrative was unanimous and in favor of broadening the aid operations. The provision of aid as a central focus of HIs was narrated in official deliberations as a responsibility of the belligerent parties and the international forces. Two examples suffice to reflect the broad support for the practice. Speaking in the name of the African Group, Mr. Adala (Kenya) stated support for the UN Secretary-General’s (UNSG) recommendations in Somalia to ensure the unimpeded delivery of humanitarian assistance to the displaced persons; and … that the Security Council underline the individual and collective responsibilities of the leaders of the factions to save lives and to assist in the distribution of humanitarian assistance (UN S/PV.3060, 17 March 1992). Likewise, in relation to the conflict in Bosnia, Mr. Mumbengegwi (Zimbabwe) stated, “We are certainly distressed by the reluctance of combatants in that conflict to allow access to humanitarian supplies by innocent civilians who desperately need it. My delegation fully accepts that the humanitarian situation is sufficiently serious to warrant the taking of all necessary measures to get food and medicines to the starving and the sick population of Bosnia and Herzegovina” (UN S/PV.3106, 13 August 1992).

Peace-building, or state-building, was a third practice that received support in the South’s narratives. This practice was developed in 1992 in the context of the discussion of a new vision of world order in the UNSG’s famous report An Agenda for Peace and the less famous An Agenda for Development (Boutros-Ghali, 1999 , 160–162, pp. 26−29; Kertcher, 2010). The practice of development was well-founded and included many projects that addressed state reforms and the development of their economies (Kennedy, 2006, pp. 113–142). However, the reconceptualization of development toward state-building changed the focus of international interventions toward the transformation of almost all state institutions (Fukuyama, 2004).

Somalia was a testing ground for the practices of state-building. In March 1993, the UN initiated many operations to revive state institutions in the health sector, the education sector, the police, and so on (Boutros-Ghali, 1999; Ganzglass, 1997, pp. 20–41; Kertcher, 2016, pp. 162–67; Menkhaus, 1997, pp. 42–63). Despite the major innovations in the level of intervention in state affairs, the representatives from the South supported these initiatives. The representative of Cape Verde, for example, celebrated this “new point of departure as regards the involvement of the international community in that country” (UN, S/PV.3188, 1993). Snoussi of Morocco argued that “UNOSOM II will be called upon to undertake the enormous task of rebuilding the country, restoring its political institutions and renewing its economy” (UN S/PV.3188, 1993). Marker of Pakistan celebrated “educational institutions which had been closed for so long have begun to function. Hundreds of thousands of Somali adults and children have been immunized against diseases which were endemic in that country” (UN, S/PV.3280, 1993). A final example is the hailing by Gambari from Nigeria of “the renewed efforts towards the restoration of the justice system and the police in Somalia” (UN, S/PV.3334, 1994).

This proactive position was held even after the infamous debacle of the Battle of Mogadishu in October 1993, in which hundreds of Somalians were killed. In the words of the Brazilian representative, “the concept of a continuum from relief to rehabilitation and development applies fully in the case of Somalia” (UN, S/PV.3317, 1993). Therefore, from the South’s perspective, despite a long history of anticolonialism, the intervention was justified due to the collapse of Somalia’s state institutions.

5. Contestation over military practices

The first use of international military forces in Bosnia and Somalia was explained in the UNSC according to the traditional peacekeeping model from the Cold War. This model emphasized that troops would be deployed under the UNSC mandate and with the consent of local actors. The composition of the forces was multinational. Troops were usually supposed to be deployed along national ceasefire lines for the purpose of supervision. Therefore, they would operate under Chapter VI of the UN Charter with a right of force limited to self-defense. It was accepted that the UN Special Representative would manage them (Bellamy et al., 2010, pp. 88−91; Kertcher, 2016, pp. 22–31).

The practice of peacekeeping began to change by mid-1992. First, the UNSC authorized the deployment of UN peacekeeping forces during the conflicts and along local ceasefire lines and, as was traditionally accepted, along national borders. Second, authorization was given for UN troops to secure and monitor aid operations in the capitals of both countries, Sarajevo and Mogadishu. Third, during the summer of 1992, it authorized the extension of military operations to support and protect aid efforts all over Bosnia and Somalia (Burg & Shoup, 1999). Fourth, in 1993, military forces were required to assist state-building measures in Somalia and to establish “Safe Areas” for Muslims in Bosnia against Serb and Croat attacks. The efforts in Bosnia also authorized NATO air attacks to deter any offensives against these areas.

The majority of the South’s contestations related to changes in these practices. They included conditions for support related to command and control, limits to enforcement authority, and contestations over discrimination of treatment in Muslim countries in the context of the new interventions. A few countries, mainly China, adopted a wholly critical view of these practices.

Despite the changes in the practice of peacekeeping, however, many of the South’s representatives’ narratives in the UNSC adopted conditionalist narratives and supported the interventions in both countries.

The first condition they raised was that the new practice of using UN soldiers would not threaten the UNSG’s control over the operations. Almost all states mentioned their conditional support; with the exception of a few countries such as Brazil and Cape Verde, they supported the new mode of operations without much criticism (UN, S/PV.3200, 1993; UN, S/PV.3208, 1993; UN, S/PV.3228, 1993; UN, S/PV.3269, 1993).

This can be seen in the case of Bosnia when the UNSC passed a resolution calling for countries to participate voluntarily in the operations without being reimbursed, according to UN rules. The representatives from the South were apprehensive about the possibility that the UNSG would lose control over the operations in Bosnia if there were no balanced geographical representation. This increased in importance when the number of personnel grew and the majority of reinforcements came from Northern countries (UN, S/PV.3106, 1992; UN, S/PV.3114, 1992).

Another example can be identified in Somalia. Southern states supported the authorization given to the US in December 1992 to lead international forces with the enforcement action authorized under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. However, this was on the condition that “the United Nations must monitor and supervise its implementation; and the United Nations must determine when the mandate has been fulfilled,” thereby hinting at the need for UNSG control (UN, S/PV.3060, 1992; UN, S/PV.3145, 1992). When the SRSG was commissioned to manage the operations in Somalia in early 1993, almost all the Southern states supported this in their narratives and called for the UNSG to be given enough tools to succeed (Boutros-Ghali, 1999; author, 2016, pp. 162–67). Mr. Marker (Pakistan) summarized that “it is therefore crucial that UNOSOM II and the Secretary-General be provided with a wide enough and a flexible enough mandate to achieve what they are being asked to deliver” (UN PV/3188, 26 March 1993).

A second contestation over practice was related to the conditions that allowed the extensive use of force by international military forces. The South agreed to the innovation of peace enforcement that allowed international military forces to support the delivery of aid in Bosnia and Somalia and to create “Safe Areas” for civilians in Bosnia. The South was also united in support of selective enforcement measures against the Somali faction responsible for the ambush that led to the deaths of 25 Pakistani soldiers in July.

However, after the Battle of Mogadishu, they changed their strategic narratives. They were fully in favor of the continuation of the web of practices that formed the new MHIs, but they now called for a focus on diplomatic peacemaking efforts and new peace-building measures that were not contested and to lessen the authority of peace enforcement authorized under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. They also stated that they would be willing to contribute thousands of troops within the scope of this limited peace enforcement authorization.

When Northern countries pulled their forces out of Somalia in early 1994, Southern states adopted a critical narrative on their abandonment of Somalia. Mr. Gambari (Nigeria) argued against the North’s withdrawal, saying, “It appears to our delegation that for the credibility of our Organization and in the higher interest of the Somali people, UNOSOM II cannot simply fold up and exit from Somalia” (UN, S/PV.3334, 1994). Nigeria also called for more technical support. Mr. Cardenas (Argentina) argued that the situation in Somalia “obliges UNOSOM II to remain under Chapter VII of the Charter. In that connection, we stress the need for the Operation to have at its disposal all the financing and military assets it needs to fulfil its mandate and effectively defend its personnel against armed attacks” (UN, S/PV.3334, 1994). According to Mr. Olhaye (Djibouti), “The United Nations mandate now changes from enforcement to more traditional peace-keeping, but in many ways its role must continue to have an essential bearing” (UN, S/PV.3334, 1994).

The third narrative was an accusation that alternative practices were related to bias against Muslim identity. This narrative was held by Muslim states who also represented the LAS and the OIC, both organizations representing Muslims worldwide. The crises in Bosnia and Somalia both occurred in areas dominated by Muslims. In Somalia, almost the entire population was Muslim. In Bosnia, Muslims constituted the largest minority in the country, and they were being overrun by the stronger Croat and Serb military forces. The Muslim bloc enthusiastically supported all the changes to the HI’s operational practices from early 1992 and called for international interventions that would protect the lives of millions of people (mainly Muslims).

However, they only agreed to the new practices as a compromise to an alternative ideal of international enforcement action. They compared the Muslims’ situation in Bosnia to the occupation of Kuwait by Iraq two years earlier. Therefore, they called for the UNSC to authorize an enforcement operation against the Bosnian Serbs. As Mr. Ali Moumin (Comoros) argued, The same Powers that were so compassionate and understanding and eager to enforce the no-fly zone in Iraq in order to stop Muslims from killing Muslims … do not seem to have the same compassion and eagerness when it comes to stopping the Serbs from killing Muslims (UN, S/PV.3136, 1992).

Another strategy for which they requested the adoption was the lifting of the ban on arming the Bosnian-Muslim government. They also objected to any easing of sanctions against the Serb-dominated Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), which supported the Bosnian Serbs. For example, Pakistan, which also represented the NAM and the OIC, decided to abstain on one of these resolutions. Mr. Marker argued that further measures should include the “lifting of the arms embargo against Bosnia and Herzegovina … the neutralization of heavy weapons, [and the] interdiction of arms supplies to the aggressors” (UN, S/PV.3228, 1993).

The combined approach of Muslim countries escalated, and they became more demanding in their narratives. As the Indonesian representative also argued in the name of the NAM, It calls not only for the immediate lifting of the arms embargo against the Republic of Bosnia, but also for a change in the mandate of UNPROFOR. And it calls for concerted military action against Serbian command posts, ammunition dumps and heavy weapons (UN S/PV.3367, 21 April 1994). However, despite their demanding narratives, the Muslim countries supported the UN resolutions. Moreover, their narratives were rejected by states from the North and other non-Muslim states from the South. These countries, as explained above, supported the webbing together of practices and rejected one-sided enforcement action against the Serbs.

The fourth narrative produced the most consistent contestation toward the transformation of the new MHI practices from China. Its representatives were apprehensive about the evolution of the MHI norm as a combination of practices in both cases, warning that these changes may have detrimental consequences on conflict resolution, state sovereignty, and the right to intervene (UN, S/PV.3114, 1992; UN, S/PV.3145, 1992). When a small group of states adopted a conservative strategic narrative on the changes in the use of international forces, the most consistent was China.

When the Chinese agreed to the use of force in Somalia to make sure aid would arrive for starving Somalis, they added that the new operationalization was “based on the needs of the unique situation in Somalia and should not constitute a precedent for United Nations peace-keeping operations” (UN, S/PV.3188, 1993). Therefore, when the Somali intervention was terminated, Mr. Li Zhaoxing hailed the return of two separate practices without military forces: “the United Nations should not only continue but also strengthen its efforts of peaceful mediation, and international humanitarian assistance should not come to a halt” (UN, S/PV.3447, 1994).

During 1993 and 1994, several other countries adopted the critical Chinese stance. The Russian delegation was hesitant regarding Bosnia, calling for aid to continue but not necessarily under Chapter VII (UN, S/PV.3200, 1993; UN, S/PV.3208, 1993; UN, S/PV.3228, 1993; UN S/PV.3269, 1993). It also called for a limitation of economic sanctions on the FRY, which supported the Bosnian Serbs, though other countries were less supportive (UN S/PV.3428, 1994). In the case of Somalia, the representatives of two non-UNSC members, Eritrea and Ethiopia, had already stated at the end of 1993 that the emphasis on the transformation of practices was a mistake. For Mr. Eteffa (Ethiopia), “the main issue in Somalia today and our main preoccupation should be peacemaking, and our commitment and our utmost endeavours should be directed to that end. Peacemaking is more cost-effective than peace-keeping or peace enforcement” (UN, S/PV.3317, 1993). The main emphasis of this small group was on support for and the responsibility of the Somali leadership, ignoring the international community’s efforts regarding the country (UN, S/PV.3317, 1993).

6. Conclusion

The dominant literature on norm transformation emphasizes the role of entrepreneurs and the contestation process of its constitutive aspects. This paper focused on Southern countries’ strategic narratives about practices and identities relating to the transformation of two MHIs after the Cold War. Interventions are social activities and, as such, can reveal how agencies and institutions conceptualize emergencies and respond to them. Generally, the South is described as resistant to MHI transformation through contestation. The two cases selected were the largest and most ambitious in their time and were executed at the height of the MHIs’ transformation.

This paper has shown that the South used various strategic narratives in order to weave together the meaning of the new interventions supporting the normative transformation. At the same time, strategic narratives also allowed exceptionalism that diverged itself in several ways from the UNSC resolutions to be maintained.

First, background knowledge of traditional practices such as mediation, aid, embargo, and peacekeeping induced support from Southern countries. The practices developed were connected through strategic narratives as a web of meanings that could not be disconnected. This connection may seem obvious to practitioners today (Autesserre, 2014). However, as seen in this paper, the strategic narrative concept allowed the reconceptualization and legitimation of new practices. For example, the new practice of peace-building was woven into that of development, which enjoyed long-term support from Southern countries.

Second, the main division between Southern countries was on the use of force in practice. On this subject, three main issues unfolded through the narratives. The first was the need for international management, which was accepted by all members. Another issue was Muslims’ uniqueness, which, though accepted in the transformation, also pointed to an international bias that should be further studied. Finally, conservatives, of which China was the most prominent, yielded to other Southern countries’ new web of intervention while warning about the total normative transformation of MHIs.

To conclude, the contestation process over MHIs in the early 1990s was not a process that can be summarized as a dynamic between active norm-givers and passive resistance or norm-takers or with a clear North-South divide. The analysis of strategic narratives on MHIs in the early 1990s thus reveals how narrative contestation over practices and identities played a crucial role in the evolution of norms by holding composite narratives.

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Notes on contributors

Chen Kertcher

Chen Kertcher is a lecturer at the Department of Middle Eastern Studies/Political Science at Ariel University. He is the head of the Public Diplomacy and Foreign Policy unit at the Middle East and Central Asia Research Center, MECARC. His research topics include the history of peacekeeping, conflict management in the Middle East and, the diffusion of international norms.