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.
After an introductory class on the topic of intervention in general, there will be 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. Background: clients; policy instruments
3. Situations of intervention
4. Help from other actors
5. “Duty”
6. Tactical outcomes
7. Longer term consequences
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 80% of the course grade. The paper must be chosen from the list that follows this paragraph, and must also focus on one of the analytical foci numbers 4 through 7 above (i.e., help, duty, tactical outcomes, and longer term consequences). This signup must be done by email to Colin, listing three cases (one of which must be for an intervening country other than the United States) in order of preference and specifying for each case the particular analytical focus preferred; emails are due by 17.00 on 9 March. 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 an issue falling under the analytical focus, 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 papers is 35 pages. Students must also make an oral presentation, which counts for 20% of their grade.
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:
No class (I will be at the ISA); syllabi distributed. The class session will be made up at a later time.
Week 2. Feb.25 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 3. Mar. 4. Great powers and international hierarchy
L. Ranke, The great powers.
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.
Week 4. Mar. 11. Background: clients, policy instruments
D. Sylvan and S. Majeski, U.S. Foreign Policy in Perspective: Clients, Enemies and Empire, London: Routledge, 2009, chs. 1-4.
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.
Week 5. Mar. 18. Situations of intervention
Sylvan and Majeski, U.S. Foreign Policy in Perspective, chs. 5-7.
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.
Week 6. Mar 25. Help from other actors
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.
Note: I will make available a dataset of UN Security Council resolutions and peacekeeping operations from 1988 to the present; we will be discussing it in the context of intervention.
Week 7. Apr. 1. “Duty”
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.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.
M. Grow, U.S. Presidents and Latin American Interventions: Pursuing Regime Change in the Cold War, Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2008, conclusion.
Week 8. Apr. 8.
No class.
Week 9. Apr. 15.
No class: Easter vacation
Week 10. Apr. 22.
Tactical outcomes
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. Pézard, Beating a retreat: Military interventions, surprising setbacks, and the decision to disengage, Ph.D. thesis, IHEID, 2008, ch. 7.
Week 11. Apr. 29.
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, 8.
C. Johnson, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, New York: Metropolitan Books / Henry Holt, 2006: ch. 2.
A.J. Enterline and J.M. Greig, Against all odds? The history of imposed democracy and the future of Iraq and Afghanistan, Foreign Policy Analysis 4,4 (2008): 321-47.
Week 12. May 6. Presentations, 1
Week 13. May 13. Presentations, 2
Week 14. May 20. Presentations, 3
Week 15. May 27. Presentations, 4
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