When persuasion or pressure does not help, the state faces a serious dilemma whether to abandon the attempt to influence the behaviour of the partner (suspend or postpone the action), or enforce it directly, interfering with political processes inside a foreign country, or even intervening with military force (or other coercive instruments).
Interference in the internal affairs of a foreign state, and especially in a physical way through a military presence on its territory, touches upon the essence of the principle of sovereignty. The Westphalian model of international relations made the principle of sovereign equality the pillar of order. To this day, its basic rule stipulates that each country should freely decide on the choice of political, economic, social and cultural system, as well as on the directions of its foreign policy.
Interference in internal affairs is a way to ensure the desired behaviour of a partner by an appropriate change of the internal political conditions of its behaviour on the international arena (changing the leader, or the political regime, introducing a new strategy or political doctrine, forcing specific political or legal decisions).
Intervention, in turn, is the most glaring form of interference in the internal affairs of a foreign state. It is inadmissible without the freely expressed consent of the host country. But forcing a specific behaviour by persuasion, inducement, intimidation, or the use of coercive measures (permitted by law, e.g. under the mandate of the UN Security Council) is still an ongoing practice. This is the most straightforward of political tactics, namely the carrot and stick policy. Based on political behaviourism, it permeates the foreign policy strategies of the stronger countries.
Trust between countries nowadays depends more and more on internal matters, as the scope of matters understood as purely internal is clearly and consistently narrowing. There is a growing number of international legal instruments that impose patterns of behaviour on the state. By being bound by international standards in the field of human rights or the rule of law, states usually give the right to other states or international institutions to assess the degree of fulfilment of their obligations. They give international institutions the right to evaluate the democratic nature of elections or the independence of courts. There exists even the possibility for tribunals or international courts to change judgments of national courts and administrative decisions of state bodies. In other words, there is already a wide range of cases in which internal interference is significant in international practice.
This does not mean that it is easy for the political elite in some countries to come to terms with it.
In recent years, Russia and China have become the most vocal defenders of the principle of non-interference in internal affairs. They narrow-mindedly adhere to the principle of sovereignty. They accuse the West of using the agenda of human rights, the rule of law and democracy to overturn internal orders in other countries. They claim that “regime change” has become the doctrine of the West’s foreign policy towards countries that have not conformed to the Western political “diktat” on the international arena.
Thus it is a common practice today to interfere with an opinion, position, and even decisions affecting relations with a given state (e.g. in the form of sanctions for failure to comply with judgments of international tribunals).
Intervention is an extreme expression of not accepting the internal order of another country. It usually means physical constraint. As such, it is, as long as it has not been sanctioned in accordance with international law, e.g. by a relevant resolution of the United Nations Security Council, or a relevant international agreement, a transgression, a criminal act.
However, as a rule, the prohibition of intervention does not apply to private (natural) persons, although they may also be subject to criminal (including international) liability. Hence the still present phenomenon of dogs of war, Wagner Group commandos, mercenaries, hackers, etc. In turn, states for attempts to interfere are subject to moral, political and legal judgment. It has become an extreme manifestation of cynicism that some countries, accusing other countries of interfering in internal affairs, use, under various guises, especially virtual space to influence the outcome of elections in Western countries (e.g. Russia and the US elections).
For millennia, intervention was a normal, customary phenomenon, an attribute of a stronger state. The intervention served the purpose of conquest, annexation, plunder, subordination and neutralization of the threat. With time, it demanded legitimacy, a legal reason or a pretext for carrying it out. Attempts were made to distinguish intervention from mere aggression as comes to its actual or perceived legitimacy.
Today, the so-called hybrid activities constitute a new form of disguised intervention. Their symbol became the occupation of Crimea by the so-called green men, in fact the Russian armed forces in uniforms without insignia and in vehicles without markings.
Interventions were often made to place friendly rulers on foreign thrones. Poland experienced such interventions over many centuries. Bezprym asserted his rights to the throne of Poland with the help of Ruthenia (and Germany). The German king, Henry V, invaded Poland on the pretext of restoring the senior power to Zbigniew. The election of the Polish throne attracted foreign powers to influence its cast. The Habsburgs made special, but unsuccessful efforts in this regard. Their ineffectiveness dates back to the times when Wilhelm went to Kraków in vain to consume his relationship with Jadwiga, who was cleared away from the altar by Władysław Jagiełło. Ernest Habsburg was defeated by Henryk Walezy in his efforts to win the crown. Maximilian II, after the Valois escaped, was even elected king by the Senate, but the coronation never took place. Maximilian III tried to claim the rights to the Polish throne after Stefan Batory even with a sword, but equally unsuccessfully.
“Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube” – let others fight wars and you, Austria (happy!), get married. The conquest of foreign thrones by clever marriages became the doctrine of the foreign policy of the Habsburgs. Maximilian I, who is credited with the authorship of this motto, with his own marriage as well as the marriages of his son Philip and grandson Ferdinand, extended the rule of the dynasty to Burgundy, Spain, Bohemia and Hungary. Poland, however, was successfully eluding the Habsburgs. On the other hand, the mother of the emperors, the Polish Cymbarka of Mazovia, reportedly contributed a lot to the phenomenon that was a side effect of the expansion of the Habsburg lands, that the monarchs of half of Europe’s Habsburg house in the seventeenth century were affected by prognathism.
Muscovites, Germans, French and Swedes also strove for control over the cast of the Polish throne. Due to the variable fortune of Swedish-French influence on the throne, Stanisław Leszczyński was appointed king twice. But the end of the First Polish Republic is characterised the gradual vassalization of Poland by imperial Russia.
The Middle Ages in Europe became a constant streak of dynastic interventions, feuds over dependency or domination. Religious divisions ignited mass local European interventionism in the Middle Ages. The Crusades were the apotheosis of intervening in the name of the Christian faith. The Thirty Years’ War broke out against the backdrop of mutual persecution of Catholics and Protestants. The Peace of Westphalia, which ended religious wars, was intended to prevent states from violating the sovereignty of others. Intervention, however, continued as common practice. It is true that revolutionary France included the principle of “non-intervention” in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, as well as in the Declaration “on the law of peace and war” of May 1790. But already in 1792 it issued an act authorizing it to intervene when it becomes necessary to support the struggle of nations for freedom. Catherine II, morbidly afraid of the spread of French revolutionary ideals to the East of Europe, made the suppression of all progressive reforms in Poland a priority. Hence, it intervened by supporting Targowica and suppressing the statehood of Poland after the adoption of the Constitution of May 3.
The Holy Alliance concluded by Russia, Austria and Prussia in Paris in 1815 became the first instrument in great politics, in which the three leading European powers decreed the right to defend the existing political orders in Europe (France joined in 1818, but not for long). Under the mandate of the Holy Alliance, Austria intervened in Naples in 1821, France in Spain in 1823, Russia in Hungary in 1849 (by intervening in Poland in 1830, it could count on the concentration of Prussian forces on the border of the Kingdom, that greatly helped the Belgians to gain independence). The principle of defending legalism was enshrined in the Berlin Treaty of 1878, but Bismarck’s initiative to revive the Alliance of Three Emperors (Russia, Austria-Hungary and Germany) of 1873 remained largely inconsequential.
The era of colonial conquests made interventionism the norm of behaviour of larger European states. In the name of defending the Western Hemisphere against European interventionism, the Monroe doctrine was born.
One of the frequent goals of intervention in the imperialist era was to impose unequal conditions for economic activity. And the pretext for the action of the big states became protection of the interests of their citizens as well as the interests of corporations.
Two important legal doctrines were born from the resistance to the privileging of foreigners.
The first is the Calvo doctrine (named after Carlo Calvo, an Argentine lawyer who lived in the years 1824-1904). It stipulated that foreigners could not enjoy rights that could not be enjoyed by citizens of their own country. Foreigners cannot claim their rights before foreign courts and they cannot hide behind their diplomatic immunity in their legal disputes. Although it is true that nowadays there is a growing tendency that nothing can restrict foreigners from exercising the right to international arbitration in their economic disputes.
Another doctrine is the Drago doctrine formulated in 1902 (its author was Luis Maria Drago, then Argentina’s foreign minister), which states that public debt cannot be recovered through military intervention. The immediate reason for its formulation was the fact that in the years 1902-1903, Great Britain, Germany and Italy set up a blockade of Venezuela after its authorities refused to pay off foreign debts and compensations to foreigners. The Venezuelan authorities were quietly hoping that the European blockade would force the US to intervene in defence of Venezuela. It turned out, however, that for Theodor Roosevelt, the blockade as such did not violate the Monroe doctrine. It would only be affected by the landing of European soldiers on the beaches of Venezuela, i.e. an intervention in the strict sense.
The Drago doctrine was reflected in the Hague Convention of 1907 (the so-called Drago-Porter Convention). But there were still instruments in international law that allowed for intervention. For example, the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty of 1903 gave the US the right to intervene in Panama.
In the era of the League of Nations, war was proclaimed illegal (the Briand-Kellog Pact), and the London Convention of 1933, prohibiting aggression, indirectly outlawed military intervention. The growing ban on intervention also extended to the use of economic, political and diplomatic pressure.
In common law, the prohibition of intervention applies to military activities (assault, occupation, blockade, seizure of property, assets, embargo, detention, expulsion, arrest), subversive acts (incitement to violence, supporting illegal activities), economic coercion (boycott, embargo, sanctions, blockade of access) and economic sanctions.
Intervention by invitation and with the consent of the host country is, of course, allowed. However, if obtained ex-post it raises serious doubts. For example, the US intervention in Granada in 1983. The call for intervention reportedly came then from the Organization of the Eastern Caribbean States. Dominica claimed that the invitation had come to the Organization from the Governor-General of Granada (but it could not prove convincingly that it had been issued before the operation began). Because initially the Americans announced that the reason for the intervention was to protect American citizens. If so, they would be dispensed, because intervention for the protection of citizens is customarily accepted. However, it must respect the principle of proportionality. It becomes doubtful when the entire government and system collapses while evacuating one’s own citizens like was the case in Granada.
And even if there is an invitation to intervene, it must come from the constitutionally empowered authorities. During the American intervention in Panama in 1989, the Head of government issued an invitation, but constitutionally, it should be done by the President.
In the case of the intervention in the Dominican Republic in 1965, the US initially argued that it was about protecting American citizens. Then they admitted that, although there was no invitation from the new authorities, the intervention took place at the will (for the good) of the Dominican Republic. After a few days, they were trying to sanction the expedition of their own soldiers by the Organization of American States. As if they felt the weakness of the reasons for justifying the intervention. Because it was really about something else.
The intervention in the Dominican Republic is associated with the so-called Mann-Johnson doctrine. According to it, regardless of the nature of the political change (military coup or democratic revolution), the United States reserved the right to freely define its own interests and position towards the change that has taken place. The transformation in the Dominican Republic at that time was widely regarded as a democratic and progressive revolution. But the experience of the Cuban Revolution led Washington to raise fears that any democratic transition in Latin America could inevitably lead the revolted state to shift towards Soviet influence. That is why the United States decided to intervene, stante pede, in the Dominican Republic.
Soviet interventions in Hungary in 1956, in Czechoslovakia in 1968, and in Afghanistan in 1979 were also to take place at the invitation of the authorities of these countries, although these “invitations” had no credibility.
France, on the other hand, had preventively included clauses allowing it to intervene in its bilateral treaties with former African colonies. France intervened dozens of times in its former African colonies. In Gabon (1964 and 1990), Chad (68-71, 78, 83, 86, 90, 92, 2006), Zaire (77, 78), Central African Republic (1979, 96-97), Togo (1986, 91), Côte d’Ivoire (1990, 2002), Djibouti (1992), long to mention.
Russia embarked on interventions to keep the emancipating former Soviet republics in check and to strengthen its influence. Under the guise of peace operations, it supported the secessionist authorities in the early 1990s in Transnistria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. When the Georgian authorities tried to take control of its separatist regions, Russia deployed a regular military operation against Georgia (“to protect its peacekeeping contingent”). Russian soldiers in Tajikistan supported the government in its clashes with the opposition (including the strongly Islamic one) in 1992 and remain there to this day. Under the tripartite declaration (by the leaders of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia), Russian peacekeepers were deployed in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020.
In 1993, an attempt was made at the OSCE to incorporate Russia’s peacekeeping forces (including when deployed under the flag of the Commonwealth of Independent States) in the framework of a regional arrangement within the meaning of Article VIII of the United Nations Charter, i.e. the OSCE. Russia counted on the fact that, in addition to additional legitimation, it would be able to count on the financing of its operations by the OSCE. The West, in turn, hoped to be able to decide on the mandate of the peacekeeping forces and the duration of the operation. The negotiations ended in an absolute fiasco. The Russians decided that the freedom to decide when and how their forces would be “to bring peace” in the post-Soviet area was not worth sacrificing it for the OSCE banner.
Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974 on the pretext of protecting the Turkish population in the face of a coup d’état previously attempted in Nicosia. The intervention resulted in ethnic cleansing and the proclamation of a separatist republic. However, the Turks would never have thought of seeking an international mandate for their military presence in Cyprus. Because no one would give it.
The Africans themselves began to intervene on the African continent. South Africa’s intervention in Angola (1975) was to prevent “communization” of the newly liberated colony. South African forces clashed with the Cuban contingent supporting the left-wing Angolan group. In 1979, Tanzanian troops helped remove the Idi Amin regime in Uganda. African states intervened in Chad, Liberia, Lesotho and Somalia on the basis of an expedition of peacekeeping forces (pan-African or sub-regional).
Of course, intervention must always involve either the mandate of the Security Council or the invitation of the country’s authorities. Not every invitation is legitimate. Undemocratic, puppet, apartheid governments cannot claim it.
Intervention as a retaliation must respect the principle of proportionality.
The Charter of the United Nations prohibits interference in internal affairs by UN organs. The Security Council has the right to intervene, but within the scope of Chapter VIII of the Charter. It has sanctioned military operations against other countries thus performing a collective security role. This was the case of the international intervention in Korea in 1950 (the USSR did not block it only because it boycotted the Security Council meetings, demanding that the People’s Republic of China be represented at the table). The operation (under American command) in Kuwait and Iraq in 1990-1991 also had such a mandate.
Controversy surrounds interventions in internal conflicts, especially aid for rebels and non-state entities. One can help the legal authorities of the state. Insurgents can be helped if the right to self-determination is forcibly denied.
Since 1948, more than 60 peacekeeping operations have been deployed under the UN flag. These were both truce supervision force (e.g. in Palestine), observation force (e.g. in Georgia), stabilization (e.g. in Bosnia and Herzegovina), confidence restoration (e.g. in Croatia), verification (e.g. in Guatemala), police (e.g. in Haiti), administrative (e.g. in Kosovo) or preventive (e.g. in Macedonia). More than 20 missions (civil and military) have already been deployed by the European Union.
During my career I have had the opportunity to visit several of these missions. And even to contribute to prepare one. In the fall of 1993, I was delegated to support the High-Level Planning Group with my diplomatic advice. The Group was developing the blueprint for a possible OSCE peace operation in Nagorno-Karabakh. My task was, among others, to prepare draft MoU agreements with the governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan regarding the conditions for the deployment of peacekeeping forces. I completed my task successfully. However, the closer it was to the end of the fighting and the signing of the truce, the more obvious it became that no peacekeeping force would be deployed. And the mission’s assumptions were developed by generals and colonels who, although extremely professional and seasoned in peacekeeping missions, had no greater knowledge of the region, its people and customs. As I can see, this is the rule rather than the exception. Sometimes it led to quite embarrassing situations. In the mid-nineties, I got acquainted with the functioning of one of the UN missions in former Yugoslavia. The personnel of this mission were equipped with Chevrolet Caprice passenger cars, often used in the US on police patrols, huge five-and-a-half meters long vehicles. However, it was not taken into account that in the Balkans, as is the case in the Balkans, streets in towns and villages were narrow and winding. Manoeuvring these cars in these narrow streets became impossible.
In the late nineties, the concept of humanitarian intervention emerged. The international community would have the right to intervene physically in the event of massive human rights violations. It was put into practice in Kosovo/Serbia in 1999. But the NATO action at that time took place without the prior authorization of the UN Security Council. It undercut the wings of the whole concept. By analogy, the term ecological intervention was also coined. States would have the right to intervene on the territory of another state, where an environmental disaster with cross-border consequences would occur.
The NATO operation in Kosovo/Serbia highlighted the collision between moral and political reasons and international legal conditions in intervening. Attempts were made to prove that the authority and legitimacy of such organizations as NATO may be sufficient in the absence of unanimity among the permanent members of the Security Council, blocking the adoption of the UN mandate. Later, the so-called Bush doctrine emerged, implying that intervention is permissible even without UN Security Council mandate when it concerns a rogue state. It was put into practice by intervening in Iraq to remove the Saddam Hussein regime. But one had to realize that if applied on a universal scale, it would provide a pretext for aggressive actions by states that would not be guided by higher moral reasons, but simply imperial ones.
For the democratic West, the barrier to intervention is undoubtedly the increasingly strict scrutiny of the social costs of interventions by public opinion. It was the voice of public opinion that prevented Western countries from expediting armed forces, for example, to Libya or Syria in 2012, despite the acute humanitarian crisis that engulfed these countries. On the one hand, Western societies want foreign policy to be characterized by greater empathy, on the other hand, they are increasingly sensitive to the possible high social costs of such interventions (the number of victims both on the Western and the local side).
Western countries therefore intervene more and more only when these costs are socially acceptable.
The failure of transformational efforts in Afghanistan has discouraged the West from making Promethean interventions. The Afghan debacle prompted President Joe Biden to formulate a new doctrine of American interventionism in 2021. Its essence is to focus the US effort on the realization of its own national interests as the main criterion of involvement of US military force. The US will have to precisely define the objectives of the intervention. The use of troops for the establishment of a democratic order in foreign countries will be excluded.
