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Hezbollah has been an important political and military actor in Lebanon and the Middle East since the mid-1980s. Its popularity grew especially after successfully deterring the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006. With the emergence of the so-called Arab Spring, however, the party's popularity declined for many reasons. One of these was its military intervention in Syria on the side of the Syrian government. This event has been interpreted in various ways, sometimes explaining it as religiously-motivated decision, due to Hezbollah's strong affiliation to Shia Islam. This empirical research finds that, on the contrary, Hezbollah's intervention is politically rather than religiously motivated. The data presented here shows that Hezbollah politicizes certain aspects of the religious sensitivities in the region in order to mobilize troops, yet, a study of its military activities inside Syria indicates that Hezbollah actually follows its political and geostrategic interests.

Hezbollah has been an important political and military actor in Lebanon and the Middle East since the mid-1980s. Its popularity grew especially after successfully deterring the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006. With the emergence of the so-called Arab Spring, however, the party's popularity declined for many reasons. One of these was its military intervention in Syria on the side of the Syrian government. This event has been interpreted in various ways, sometimes explaining it as religiously-motivated decision, due to Hezbollah's strong affiliation to Shia Islam. This empirical research finds that, on the contrary, Hezbollah's intervention is politically rather than religiously motivated. The data presented here shows that Hezbollah politicizes certain aspects of the religious sensitivities in the region in order to mobilize troops, yet, a study of its military activities inside Syria indicates that Hezbollah actually follows its political and geostrategic interests.

Foreign military intervention is one of the most common types of interstate military force used over recent decades. As war's costliness increases and the efficacy of economic sanctions and other foreign policy tools is increasingly questioned, it may become even more prevalent. Unfortunately, the field of international relations has little systematic understanding of the types of impacts such military ventures can have on target states in the developing world. In PCSE AR1 regressions of 106 developing countries from 1960 to 2002, we find that large scale foreign military interventions, which have over 1000 intervening troops, do not leave a significant imprint on governing institutions, economic growth rates, or physical quality of life in developing democracies. The same cannot be said for non-democratic states in the developing world. Hostile interventions can help to democratize non-democratic targets, while rival interventions lay the groundwork for long-term economic growth.

The past decade has witnessed the emergence of numerous 'cosmopolitan' theories of humanitarian military intervention. These theories anticipate a more cosmopolitan future, where interventions will be authorized by new cosmopolitan institutions and carried out by reformed cosmopolitan militaries. The contention of my article is that despite the merits of these approaches, it is often difficult to discern whether and how cosmopolitan theories can inform assessments of interventions that take place in our non-cosmopolitan present. Through taking Jurgen Habermas's judgements of two recent interventions as a 'case study', I reflect on the considerations that might come into play when cosmopolitans attempt to translate their future-orientated theories into practical engagements with the world as it is. Adapted from the source document.

The collapse of the Cold War order led to a change in the geopolitical environment of the Russian Federation. The declarations of independence of the former Soviet republics and the emergence of the post-Soviet area had weakened the country's position. As a result, the Russian Federation has been perceiving this new area as a zone of its 'vital interests', and attaining and maintaining dominant position in those territories has been considered crucial for the state's security, its strength and position on the international arena. Russia has been pursuing its goals in the area through numerous reintegration attempts on political, military and economic levels. To achieve the main political goal, which is the control over the post-Soviet area, the Russian Federation has been also using military instruments. The focal point and purpose of this article is to show the internal and external causes of military intervention of the Russian Federation in eastern Ukraine.

NATO's Operation Unified Protector in Libya has fostered the illusions of politicians and military planners that it is possible for outside powers to support regime change without the need to embark on counterinsurgency or externally driven state-building, which have consumed foreign troops and civilian aid agencies for many years. Yet it would be premature, and even dangerous, to consider Libya as a model for future military interventions. Developments in this country are unique in some important ways and they do not refute the central lesson that the international community has had to learn previously: Outside powers that engage in regime change in the first place need to be prepared to deal with a potentially very messy post-war phase. The operation in Libya has demonstrated how limited NATO member states' willingness and ability to actually prepare (and pay) for such a contingency has become

This article considers the effects of humanitarian military interventions (HMIs) on conflict in the countries in which they have been used. Theoretically, neutral HMIs, in which interveners target all violent actors, are expected to have a pacifying effect on conflict intensity by increasing the cost of violence for all parties—while biased HMIs can escalate conflict intensity, by reducing the cost of violence and so encouraging the supported parties to become more violent. The empirical results show that neutral HMIs do seem to lead to lower conflict intensity in the targeted countries, relative to other conflict-affected countries. Anti-rebels HMIs are, observed to escalate conflict both in the short and the long run, while the evidence for anti-government HMIs is mixed.

Media pools have frequently been deployed by the US military during the past 25 years, and there has been much written about the effects and limitations of their use in particular cases. The military actions reviewed in this study are troop deployments to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Grenada, Haiti, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Panama, and Somalia, all of which resulted in the loss of American lives. The research examines whether there is a correlation between the characterization of the intervention as it is presented in media pool stories and the shifts in public opinion during this range of US military interventions. The examination shows that (1) when US media are constrained by military pooling, then the military intervention is characterized by the media as facilitating political change, and the public opinion is initially favorable; and (2) when US media are not constrained by military pooling, then the military intervention is characterized by the media as facilitating humanitarian efforts, and the public opinion is initially less favorable. This evidence also suggests a savvy practice of agenda-framing and second-level agenda-setting among military operations planners who determine the implementation of media pooling. The evidence also suggests the need for additional attention by researchers interested in the variables of second-level message-framing effects during those periods when both media and audiences are vulnerable to message management.

Half Title -- Series Information -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Chapter 1 Introduction -- 1 Problem -- 2 Methodology -- 3 Structure -- 4 Preliminary Issues -- 4.1 The Usage of the Term 'Civil War' in Legal Literature -- 4.1.1 niac s in the Sense of Common Article 3 -- 4.1.2 niac s in the Sense of Protocol ii -- 4.1.3 Where Does 'Civil War' Fit in the Binary Framework of Geneva Conventions and What Does the Term Imply in the Context of Consensual Interventions? -- 4.1.4 Determining a Conflict as a Civil War in Practice -- 4.2 Prohibition of Intervention -- 4.2.1 Scholarly Efforts to Reveal an International Legal Regime Governing Resort to Force within Civil Wars -- Chapter 2 'Consent' in the Context of Military Interventions -- 1 Introduction: The Right to Consent to Intervention -- 2 Is Consent a Secondary Rule or Intrinsic to the Primary Rule Itself? -- 3 Consent and the Peremptory Character of the Prohibition of the Use of Force -- 4 Treaty-Based Prospective Consent -- 5 Validity and Limits of Consent -- 5.1 Consent to Be Given Freely -- 5.2 Consent to Be Clearly Established and Actually Expressed -- 5.2.1 Contradictory and Ambiguous Reactions to Intervention -- 5.2.2 Secret Consent -- 5.3 Consent to Be Granted by a State Organ Entitled to Do So -- 5.4 Intervention within the Limits of Consent -- 6 Conclusion -- Chapter 3 Capacity to Consent: Recognition of Governments -- 1 Introduction: The Act of Recognition -- 2 The Doctrine of Effective Control -- 2.1 Irrelevancy of Constitutional Law and the Policy of Not According Formal Recognition -- 2.1.1 Recognition of Guaidó as Interim President of Venezuela -- 2.2 Presumption in Favour of Established Governments during Civil Wars -- 2.2.1 Continued Recognition of the Assad Government in Syria.