7.3.2.1  Intervention by Invasion

(This is an archived extract from the book Patterns of Power: Edition 2)

There are several scenarios in which governments decide to invade another country, with ‘boots on the ground’, in order to protect groups of people:

·      A government might try to protect its own citizens by making a pre-emptive invasion of another country, to neutralise a threat of attack by regime change.  The most dramatic recent example, according to one interpretation of that action, was the decision by America and others to invade Iraq in 2003 – as described in the next chapter.

·      Governments have tried to protect their citizens by attacking terrorist bases in other countries to neutralise a threat and to deter further aggression.  For example Israel invaded Lebanon in 2006,[1] in response to provocation by Hezbollah, and it invaded Gaza in August 2011 in response to rocket attacks by Hamas.[2]

·      Some armed interventions are intended to prop up vulnerable ‘friendly’ governments; America has intervened in several such cases,[3] of which the most famous was Vietnam.

·      A country might intervene in the affairs of another in order to protect a group of vulnerable people.  Russia’s invasion of South Ossetia in 2008 was billed as such.[4]

In all these examples, the population of the country carrying out the invasion is keenly aware of the action.  It is seen as a 'foreign war', which might be popular for a while if the cause is seen as just, so the politicians who make the decision to invade enjoy a temporary political legitimacy (6.3.6).  The war will become increasingly unpopular if it drags on, though.

© PatternsofPower.org, 2014