The decisions in between: a humanitarian crisis decision-making model

ABSTRACT

The end of the Cold War brought an increase in civil war, genocides and other humanitarian crises, as well as an increase in global concern and American involvement in intervention into such situations. I argue that the foreign policy decision-making process for the United States in these humanitarian crises is distinct from both regular foreign policy decisions and security crisis decisions. I develop a model of this humanitarian crisis decision-making process, situated between the two extant models. I illustrate this new model of decision-making with a structured, focused case study of American involvement in Bosnia. I first discuss how the situation would have unfolded based on the regular and security crisis decision-making models, then compare those archetypal expectations to how the decision-making process actually developed during the Bosnian conflict.

RÉSUMÉ

La fin de la Guerre Froide a entraîné une augmentation du nombre de guerres civiles, de génocides et d’autres crises humanitaires, ainsi que d’une inquiétude mondiale et de l’engagement américain dans les interventions ayant rapport avec ces situations. Je soutiens qu’aux États-Unis, le processus de prise des décisions politiques concernant ces crises humanitaires est distinct de celui des décisions ordinaires en politique étrangère et des décisions relatives aux crises sécuritaires. Je développe un modèle pour ce processus de prise de décisions concernant les crises humanitaires, situé entre les deux modèles existants. J’illustre ce nouveau modèle avec une étude de cas structurée et ciblée sur l’engagement américain en Bosnie. Je commence par décrire la manière dont la situation se serait déroulée en fonction des modèles de prise de décisions ordinaires et relatives aux crises sécuritaires, puis je compare ces attentes archétypiques à la manière dont le processus s’est réellement déroulé au cours du conflit bosniaque.

KEYWORDS:

• American foreign policy
• humanitarian crisis
• Bosnia
• decision-making process
• intervention

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Johann Park and three anonymous reviewers for comments on previous versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Petra Hendrickson received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Michigan State University in 2015. She is currently an assistant professor in international studies at Centre College in Danville, KY. Her main research interests often focus at the nexus of comparative politics and international relations and include US foreign policy, especially during the Clinton administration, political violence, and South/Southeast Asian politics.

Notes

1. Although major changes have happened in the world since the Bosnia crisis, namely September 11 and the War on Terror, there does not seem to have been a major shift in the general policymaking process. To be sure, discourse (Holland 2013, Widmaier 2007), how events are framed and the types of decisions made, such as about foreign aid (Azam and Thelen 2010, Fleck and Kilby 2010), for instance, have changed, but the processes by which decisions are reached and policies implemented have remained fairly stable.

2. Part of the president’s role is that they are in a position to be a source of information and guide public opinion during times of crisis (Knecht and Weatherford 2006).

3. Despite the notability of the Cuban Missile Crisis, it is not a representative crisis, due to the extreme stakes at play. The International Crisis Behavior Project (Brecher and Wilkenfield 2000, Brecher et al. 2017) makes available considerable data and information on a large number of additional crises from around the world, allowing for systematic comparisons across states, time periods and crises, most of which do not have nuclear war between two superpowers at stake.

4. A humanitarian crisis is similar to a complex humanitarian emergency, which occurs in a “country, region, or society where there is total or considerable breakdown of authority resulting from internal or external conflict any which requires an international response that goes beyond the mandate or capacity of any single and/or ongoing UN country program” (Burkle [2006], quoted in Suwanvanichkij et al. 2010, p. 2).

5. It may be possible for foreign policy actors to influence the frames presented by media outlets. For instance, Armoudian (2011) identifies “blame” and “heroes-and-victims” frames as common media reactions to conflicts. The Clinton administration succeeded in pushing a “violence on all sides” narrative where predominantly one-sided violence was instead described as a genuine three-sided conflict in which Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks were equally guilty of violence and bloodshed.

6. Bergbower and Schmitt (2015) discuss such activism in the context of the Rwandan genocide.

7. While televised images of malnourished refugees fleeing some kind of catastrophe are likely to make the public more sympathetic to the plight of those affected by a humanitarian crisis (Höijer 2004), the degree of influence the media ultimately has in the foreign policy decision-making process is unclear (Jakobsen 2000). Van Belle (2012) considers the so-called CNN effect at length, and concludes that it the expected effect of the media on public opinion, rather than the actual effect itself, that is the most influential. That is, policymakers expect the media to have a great impact on public opinion, and act according to that expectation, thus paying careful attention to media coverage of a situation and taking it as an indicator of the public’s mindset.

8. Humanitarian intervention stems from “the notion that outside parties have the right or even obligation to intervene to help people vis-à-vis their own governments or one another” (Haass 1994, p. 12) and may involve relief aid and the delivery of food and/or medicine. In multilateral humanitarian situations, such as those involving UN participation, “the most obvious work of international emergency efforts normally involves the tackling of displacement and associated ailments, i.e. shelter, disease, hunger, and livelihood sustainability of the people displaced by warfare” (Nafziger and Auvinen 1997, Albala-Bertrand 2000, p. 219). Humanitarian intervention itself may be “consensual” or “imposed” (Haass 1994, p. 62). Consensual humanitarian interventions require the military only for technical reasons, and are typically seen after natural disasters. However, an imposed humanitarian intervention

is one carried out in an uncertain or hostile environment. It is humanitarian in that its aims are narrow, to provide food and/or other life-sustaining supplies (as well as protection) to peoples. It does not seek to change the overall political authority, but rather to minimize suffering until either the authority changes or its policies change. But it is a military operation in that force must be available to protected those delivering the aid, to deter and defend against attacks on both the forces involved and on civilians, and to retaliate by punishing those who interfere and reducing or eliminating their capacity to interfere. (Haass 1994, pp. 62–63)

9. Military interventions “entail the introduction or deployment of new or additional combat forces to an area for specific purposes that go beyond ordinary training or scheduled expressions of support for national interests” (Haass 1994, pp. 19–20).

10. It should be noted that the issue was discussed in much more depth and much more frequently in the Clinton White House than it had been during the Bush administration (Drew 1994, Power 2002), but actual policy outputs – that is, no action by the United States – were the same for a long time (Power 2002).

11. As Knecht and Weatherford (2006) note, during crises, public attention and opinion will continue to build until the crisis reaches a conclusion.

12. For more on the public’s general approval of multilateral action and general disapproval of unilateral action by the United States, see Sobel (1998).

13. The Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics contains the explicit edict that journalists should “be vigilant and courageous about holding those in power accountable” (Society of Professional Journalists 1996).

14. Clinton also reacted strongly to Balkan Ghosts by Robert Kaplan, which depicted the conflict in Bosnia as part of a much broader, age-old conflict between inhabitants of the Balkans. During the period he was reading this book, Clinton backed off his own consideration of the possibility of American involvement (Christopher 1998, Power 2002, Albright 2003).

15. These reactions to op-ed pieces prompted Al Gore to take to responding to them point by point to continue to encourage a proactive policy by Clinton (Drew 1994).