The Foreign Policy of Great Power Intervention (E232)

Course Organization

Course number: E232
Credits: 6
Semester: Summer 2008
Time: Thursday 14.15-16.00
Venue: Rigot R2

Professor: David Sylvan
e-mail: sylvan@hei.unige.ch
office: Rigot 28
office hrs: Thurs.16.30-17.30 & by appt.
phone: 022 908 59 42

Assistant: Assia Alexieva
e-mail: alexiev3@hei.unige.ch
office: Rigot 26
office hours: Tues. 14.00-16.00
phone: 022 908 59 41

Course web site: http://graduateinstitute.ch/political-science/ great-power-intervention_en.html

Course Description

This course is a survey of some of the key issues involved in accounting for great power intervention: how target states are identified as clients or enemies; how foreign policy options (e.g., economic bailouts; covert subversion campaigns) are packaged and argued for; how failures are responded to. Discussion of changing historical justifications for intervention and the issue of formal vs. informal empire. Students will present, and write papers on, particular cases of great power intervention.

The course will begin with seven weeks on general issues relevant to great power intervention; for each topic, we will also discuss, in miniature form, specific examples.

• 1. Great powers and international hierarchy
• 2. Types of intervention
• 3. Modalities of intervention 1: diplomatic, economic, political, military
• 4. Modalities of intervention 2: openness vs. secrecy; proxies; multilateral vs. unilateral
• 5. Motives and justifications
• 6. The longer-term 1: sustainability vs. withdrawal
• 7. The longer term 2: consequences (including “blowback”)

The readings for these weeks, and for the other weeks in the class, will be available either through online journal services (track down journal articles through the library's A to Z journal search engine) or, in password-protected pdf scans, on the course website. I would like you to come to class with hard copies of those readings, and such others as may be distributed the week before; for all of these, please read them in advance. Readings for the presentation part of the class will be posted to the course website a week prior to the relevant presentations; students presenting (see below) must get readings to the teaching assistant 10 days prior to their presentation.

All students must sign up for a seminar paper, counting for 70% of the course grade. This signup must be done by email to Assia, listing three cases in order of preference; it is due by 17.00 on 28 Feb. Students will then be assigned to a case, one case per student; if at all possible, I will strive to choose cases for which students have indicated a preference. The seminar paper must make an argument about a general issue as applied to a specific intervention case; papers which are essentially descriptions or chronologies are not acceptable. Papers must employ at least some primary sources (e.g., cables, speeches, UN resolutions) as well. The target length for graduate student papers is 35 pages; for license student ones, 25 pages. Graduate students must also make an oral presentation, which counts for 30% of their grade; license students must turn in two 5-page preparatory papers, each counting for 15% of the course grade: the first, due on 28 Feb., specifying the argument they wish to explore in the seminar paper and what kinds of evidence would confirm or infirm it; and the second, due on 13 Mar., specifying the primary sources they will be using for the seminar paper and evaluating the reliability of those sources.

Seminar papers may be on one of the following cases (note: only major power intervenors listed), or a case, not on this list (there are many, many of them), which you propose and which I accept:

• Austria: Naples, 1821
• France: Spain, 1823
• Britain: Spain (Latin America): 1823
• Britain, France, Russia: Greek independence, 1827-32
• Austria, Russia: Hungary, 1849
• Britain: India (“Mutiny”), 1857-58
• Russia: Ottoman Empire, 1877-78
• Britain, France: Egypt, 1879-82
• U.S.: Hawaii, 1893
• Britain: Transvaal/Orange Free State (Boer War): 1899-1902
• Everyone: China (Boxer Rebellion), 1900-01
• U.S.: Colombia (Panama), 1903
• U.S.: Nicaragua, 1907
• U.S.: Nicaragua ,1927-33
• U.S.: China, 1945-49
• U.S.: Greece, 1947
• U.S.: Italy, 1948
• Britain, US: Albania, 1949-53
• U.S.: Korea, 1950-53
• U.S.: Iran, 1953
• U.S.: Guatemala, 1954
• Britain, France: Egypt (Suez), 1956
• U.S.S.R.: Hungary, 1956
• U.S.: Lebanon, 1958
• Britain: Jordan, 1958
• U.S.: Laos, 1960-75
• U.S.: Cuba, 1961
• U.S.: South Vietnam, 1961-75
• U.S.: Congo, 1964
• U.S.: Dominican Republic, 1965
• Britain: Yemen, 1962-66
• Britain: Oman, 1967-75
• U.S.S.R.: Czechoslovakia, 1968
• France: Chad, 1968-2008 (several interventions, with U.S. encouragement)
• U.S.: Chile, 1970-73
• U.S.: Angola, 1975-89
• U.S., France: Zaire (Shaba 1 and 2), 1977-78
• U.S., U.S.S.R.: Afghanistan, 1979-89
• U.S.: El Salvador, 1980-92
• U.S.: Nicaragua, 1981-89
• U.S.: Panama, 1989
• U.S.: Mexico, 1995
• U.S.: Colombia, 1999-present
• NATO states: Kosovo, 1999
• Britain: Sierra Leone, 2000
• U.S.: Afghanistan, 2001-present
• France: Côte d'Ivoire, 2002-04
• U.S.: Iraq, 2003-present

Week 1. Feb. 21.

Introduction

• S. Hoffmann, The problem of intervention, in H. Bull, ed., Intervention in World Politics , Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984.
• H.K. Tillema and J.R. van Wingen, Law and power in military intervention: major states after World War II, International Studies Q. 26,2 (1982): 220-50.

Week 2. Feb. 28.

Great powers and international hierarchy

• M. Weber, Power prestige and the ‘great powers', Economy and Society , ed. G. Roth and C. Wittich, Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1978, vol. 2, ch. 9, sect. 3.
• O.R. Young, Intervention and international systems, J. of International Affairs 22,2 (1968): 177-87.
• S. Strange, The persistent myth of lost hegemony, International Organization 41,4 (1987): 551-74.
• D.A. Lake, The new sovereignty in international relations, International Studies R. 5,3 (2003): 303-23.
• J.M. Hobson and J.C. Sharman, The enduring place of hierarchy in world politics: tracing the social logics of hierarchy and political change, European J. of International Relations 11,1 (2005): 63-98.
• [Note: I will probably add Ranke's essay on the Great Powers (1833) as on optional reading, once I have tracked down an English translation.]

Week 3. Mar. 6.

Types of intervention: client maintenance and hostile interventions

• M.J. O'Reilly and W.B. Renfro, Evolving empire: America's “Emirates” strategy in the Persian Gulf, International Studies Perspectives 8,2 (2007): 137-51.
• R. Vitalis, America's Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier , Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007: chs. 7, 8.
• D. Sylvan and S. Majeski, Clients, Enemies, and Empire: U.S. Foreign Policy in Perspective , London: Routledge, forthcoming, 2008, ch. 2, sects. 3, 4; ch. 4, sect. 1; ch. 5, sects. 1, 4; ch. 6, sect. 1.

Week 4. Mar. 13.

Modalities of intervention, 1: diplomatic, economic, political, military

• G. Martin, Continuity and change in Franco-African relations, J. of Modern African Studies 33,1 (1995): 1-20.
• T. Porteous, British government policy in sub-Saharan Africa under New Labour, International Affairs 81,2 (2005): 281-97.
• Sylvan and Majeski, Clients, Enemies, and Empire , ch. 5, sects. 2, 3; ch. 6, sects. 2, 3.

Week 5. Mar. 20.

Modalities of intervention, 2: openness vs. secrecy; proxies; multilateral vs. unilateral

• B. Cronin, The paradox of hegemony: America's ambiguous relationship with the United Nations, European J. of International Relations 7,1 (2001): 103-30.
• P.W. Singer, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry , Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2003: pt. 2.
• J. Scahill, Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army , New York: Nation Books, 2007: chs. 2-10.

Week 6. Mar. 27.

No class: Easter vacation

Week 7. Apr. 3.

Motives and justifications: humanitarian intervention; non-intervention

• M. Reisman with M.S. McDougal, Humanitarian intervention to protect the Ibos, in R.B. Lillich, ed., Humanitarian Intervention and the United Nations , Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1973.
• R.J. Vincent, Nonintervention and International Order , Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974: pt. 2.
• P.K. Huth, Major power intervention in international crises, 1918-1988, J. of Conflict Resolution 42,6 (1998): 744-70.
• P.M. Regan, Choosing to intervene: outside interventions in internal conflicts, J. of Politics 60,3 (1998): 754-79.
• A.J. Bellamy, Responsibility to protect or Trojan horse? The crisis in Darfur and humanitarian intervention after Iraq, Ethics and International Affairs 19,2 (2005): 31-53.

Week 8. Apr. 10.

The longer term, 1: sustainability vs. withdrawal

• W. Laqueur, Guerrilla: A Historical and Critical Study , London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1977, chs. 1-2, 5-7.
• R.K. Betts, The delusion of impartial intervention, Foreign Affairs 73,6 (1994): 20-33.
• P.M. Regan, Conditions of successful third-party intervention in intrastate conflicts, J. of Conflict Resolution 40,2 (1996): 336-59.
• S. Pezard, Military interventions, unexpected setbacks, and the decision to disengage, Ph.D. thesis, forthcoming, 2008, ch. 7.

Week 9. Apr. 17.

The longer term, 2: consequences

• C. Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire , New York: Metropolitan Books / Henry Holt, 2000: ch. 1.
• J. Schell, The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People , New York: Metropolitan Books / Henry Holt, 2003: chs. 3, 5.
• A.J. Bacevich, The New Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, introduction and chs. 1, 9.
• C. Johnson, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic , New York: Metropolitan Books / Henry Holt, 2006: ch. 2.

Week 10. Apr. 24.

Presentations, 1

Week 11. May 1.

No class: Ascension

Week 12. May 8.

Presentations, 2

Week 13. May 15.

Presentations, 3

Week 14. May 22.

Presentations, 4

Week 15. May 29.

Conclusions/summing up