7.3.2 Military Interventions in Other Countries
Military interventions in other countries for security purposes might be pre-emptive strikes, or to help friendly governments and groups.
Such interventions are not intended to acquire territory. They rely upon a trial of strength, rather than upon a governance framework, unless they are explicitly authorised by the UN Security Council – so this book classifies them as Ungoverned Power. The political decisions to deploy force are examples of realpolitik (6.7.7.4), and they are invariably seen by the target country as acts of war. Such adventures have a very low success rate.
Both America and Israel have established policies of intervening in other countries:
● The US declares war on terror in 2001, following the al-Qaeda attacks on 11 September 2001. The Authorization for Use of Military Force “Authorizes the President to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001”. It was used to permit the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and to conduct drone strikes in Pakistan.
● Israel has a strategy, the Dahiya Doctrine, of using excessive force to retaliate against terrorist attacks launched from other countries. It consists of “inflicting severe damage on their opponent’s infrastructure and civilian centers to achieve deterrence and avoid getting dragged into wars of attrition. …Israel must respond to enemy hostilities immediately, decisively, and with disproportionate force. By setting a painful and memorable precedent, quick military operations serve to shorten and intensify the period of fighting and lengthen periods of calm between rounds of fighting.” This doctrine, named after the Beirut suburb where it was first used, has been applied repeatedly in Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen. It has not deterred the terrorists at all.
As described in the following sub-sections, those who make military interventions in other countries can take on different degrees of risk to themselves, and there are varying consequences:
● Deployment of an invasion force (7.3.2.1), as America has done on numerous occasions since the Second World War, inevitably incurs casualties in the invading force. An article in foreignaffairs.com, Why Force Fails, summarises its dismal record:
“American soldiers have been deployed abroad almost continuously since the end of World War II. The best-known foreign interventions—in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq—were large, long, and costly. But there have been dozens of other such deployments, many smaller or shorter, for purposes ranging from deterrence to training. Taken as a whole, these operations have had a decidedly mixed record. Some, such as Operation Desert Storm in 1991, which swept the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s forces out of Kuwait, largely succeeded” – but that last example was an intervention made with UN approval, so it does not qualify as ungoverned force.
● Air-strikes made from a distance (7.3.2.2) rarely incur casualties by the invader, but they can harden opposition by the target country and its allies.
● The use of unmanned drones (7.3.2.3) is increasing as they become cheaper and more sophisticated. The attacker suffers no military losses, but the inevitable civilian casualties radicalise other people and make the entire strategy counterproductive.
These tactics are listed in a sequence of a diminishing risk of the attacker incurring casualties, and they can be used in any combination. Their effectiveness is questionable (7.3.2.4), since the backlash can be bigger than the original problem.
This page is intended to form part of Edition 4 of the Patterns of Power series of books. An archived copy of it is held at https://www.patternsofpower.org/edition04/732a.htm