Suchergebnisse

Internal conflict continues to be the most common form of organized violence, most often occurring in a so-called 'arc of instability' comprised of Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia. The misery and death caused by these conflicts, with helpless civilians often victims, has resulted in states and coalitions of states intervening militarily to stop the bloodshed, giving rise to many difficult issues. When should states perform military intervention? How should it be conducted? Is intervention a tactic that can be executed exclusive of other considerations or must it be part of a wider strategy? What makes it a success? And when can occupying troops return home? Military Intervention: Cases in Context for the Twenty-First Century strives to answer these and other questions by comparing and contrasting both the theory and practice of military intervention. It thoroughly reviews the literature and derives a set of guidelines for initiating, conducting, and terminating this complex undertaking. It then evaluates the validity of these guidelines by analyzing the recent cases of Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Haiti, Cambodia, East Timor, and Sierra Leone. The volume concludes with lessons on the why, when, and how of conducting a military intervention and offers recommendations for Afghanistan and Iraq.

Abstract
This article addresses, from a sociological point of view, the involvement of the Portuguese armed forces in international peace operations. After reviewing some major sociological contributions for understanding change in military institutions and the development of international military missions, it concentrates on the Portuguese case, aiming at uncovering the place and meaning of peace operations for the Portuguese armed forces during the past two decades. After briefly recalling some facts and figures concerning the Portuguese participation in peace operations, it addresses the relevance of such involvement at different analytical levels, showing that peace operations have come to play a decisive role in the national defence political discourse, the organizational configuration of the Portuguese armed forces and the soldiers' professional identity. The last section consists of a short prospective exercise looking at possible implications of disengagement from international peace missions. The conclusion is that, considering the strategic, organizational and socio-psychological centrality of these missions, disengagement is likely to have important consequences in the overall strategic definition, purpose and identity of the Portuguese military, while entailing an additional cost: the possible loss of at least part of a recently reinforced legitimacy.

1. Sharing risks and costs of military alliance : burdens of peace and war -- 2. Case one: The multinational force in Lebanon, 1982-1984 : national collective action -- 3. Case two: The Persian Gulf in 1990-1991 : leadership and legitimacy -- 4. Case three: The Balkans : incubators of European insecurity -- 5. Case four: NATO and Afghanistan : coalition warfighting and stability operations in a new century -- 6. Case five: Nuclear abolition and arms reduction : stakes and risks for NATO -- 7. Conclusion.

Current research on motivational sources of military interventions in civilwars frequently assumes that states intervene due to direct interests in thecivil war country. However, this study argues that there exists a subset ofinterventions in which weaker powers intervene on behalf of interestswhich great powers hold vis-à-vis the civil war country. Using the logic ofprincipal-agent theory in combination with arms trade data allows one toidentify 14 civil wars which experienced the phenomenon of indirectmilitary interventions. This type of intervention features a weaker powerproviding troops for combat missions, whereas its major arms supplier isonly involved with indirect military support. The analysis is complementedwith two brief case studies on the Moroccan intervention in Zaire (1977) andthe Ugandan intervention in the Central African Republic (2009). Both casestudies corroborate expectations as deduced from the proxy interventionframework.

Holmqvist presents an original account of the relationship between war and policing in the twenty first century. This interdisciplinary study of contemporary Western strategic thinking reveals how, why, and with what consequences, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq became seen as policing wars.

The ethnic strife that persists in Somalia, the Balkans, Iraq, and elsewhere, highlights the need for a revised doctrine of international humanitarian intervention. The new precept would replace the present ad hoc approach with one more fully articulated, to include employment of military force in those situations that cannot be resolved by less drastic sanctions, and the recognition by the international community of a responsibility to use it. In the absence of such intervention, where massive human rights abuses occur the United Nations‐based international system fails in its purpose to advance human rights for the peoples of the world. The international community would be required to confront and resolve the collision that can occur between the doctrines of state sovereignty and human rights in international law. The former often permits a state to vitiate the latter. One approach would recast international legal principles so that the international community itself would become the guardian of human rights around the world. It is proposed that the international system develop a Commonwealth of Humanity doctrine, modeled after the traditional principle of the Common Heritage of Mankind The United Nations could be reorganized, with a Human Rights Council equal to that of the Security Council. The new organ would monitor human rights and report violations to the Security Council for the appropriate enforcement.