A Note To My Annoying Facebook Friends
My Facebook feed has become unbelievably annoying with people constantly sharing articles that beg the questions like: Why didn't we intervene in Darfur or why is America intervening in the Middle East? Both of these types of articles often have the conclusion that America is evil for only intervening in countries that have a resources like oil, while it lets other countries without valuable resources fall into chaos. However, the people who post these articles need to (first of all stop) learn that nations do not have friends or try to make friends, they just have interests, and these interests will be the driving factor in their agendas. However, these interests can be applied to situations like failing states for a mutually beneficial outcome that helps both the people of the failed state and the intervening super power.
Super powers will only intervene when it is beneficial for them to do so because it would be impractical to do otherwise. Therefore, the United States has foregone serious intervention in areas like Africa that lack the strategic advantages and/or resources that America needs, while it continually intervenes in the Middle East in failed or failing states to obtain and defend the oil resources and strategic advantages there. This may sound heartless, but it is the reality of humanitarian intervention in the 21st century, and it is not necessarily as bad as people think it to be.
On the contrary, intervention is a very good thing, because if it is successful, the oppressed people of failed states will receive help, and the super power that helped them will have accomplished something in their foreign policy agenda, while bolstering their ethos in the global community. All parties involved, with the exception of the failed state's oppressive regime, will benefit from this situation.
Because it is impractical for super powers to intervene purely on the basis of humanitarian intervention, situations without incentives for super powers fall under the jurisdiction of the UN. The Rwandan genocide exemplifies this situation. There was no incentive for a powerful state to fix the issue, so the UN was sent in for a peace keeping operation, which failed. During peace keeping operations, the UN forces are extremely restricted, thus diluting their power. As a result of this, UN operations fail the vast majority of the time, making the situation in the failed state worse, in addition to wasting large sums of money.
Instead of attacking super powers like the US for intervening in failed states to accomplish their agendas, my annoying Facebook friends should share equally annoying articles (if they even exist) about how the UN fails to solve any of the worlds problems due to the absence of any hard power in the organization. In this situation, I would still be annoyed, but at least they would be identifying the real problem in this situation
-Soder
Ben,
ReplyDeleteEvocative argument. Do you believe that all interventions were for interests? How about the US in Somalia?
Also, what if human rights were an interest? It could be argued that human rights protection builds the liberal order which is a major US interest. There is no reason that interests must be hard realist ones.
I think that US interests were a driving factor in the invasion of Somalia. Geographically, the state is located on the Gulf of Aden at the entrance of the Red Sea. An unstable or hostile government in Somalia could potentially interrupt global trade, which would be bad for the United States and the Liberal Global order.
DeleteThe Humanitarian crisis is Somalia was terrible, but I still think that the reasons for this intervention were driven by strategic advantages offered by the state. This was a costly and tragic intervention for the United States, and I think that the US expected to gain something from it.
-Ben
Hi Ben,
ReplyDeleteI thought you made a really interesting argument in your post, and the title of your blog post was funny as well and made me laugh. As I read through your post, I couldn't help thinking about human rights. You make the argument that super powers only intervene when they have the ability to gain something from their intervention. However, I think that the rights of people in struggling states are important to the US interest. Just because a realist might not think human rights are worth protecting doesn't mean a does as well. I think it would be interesting to see what would happen if super powers intervened purely for the good of human rights, and without any benefit to themselves.
-Baylie
Hey Ben,
ReplyDeleteGood job on your blog post. To start, the title was funny and made me intrigued to see where you would take this post.
First, I’m not quite sure that I believe with your statement, "Super powers will only intervene when it is beneficial for them to do so because it would be impractical to do otherwise.” I don’t think this is always true, although it may happen often. For example, why do you think the United States intervened during World War II and The Holocaust. I think that in this case, it was to protect human rights. These rights are probably more important to the interest of the United States. I’m not sure the United States had anything to, “gain” during World War II. If so, could you please explain with what you think about that? With all of this being said, super powers do often intervene when there is something to gain for themselves.
Alex
Alex, the United States did not become involved in World War II until Pearl Harbor was bombed. The United States also turned a blind eye when it came to the Holocaust during this period. We knew that Hitler was taking the prisoners away from their homes and we did nothing about it. There was a piece of legislation that would have transported Jewish children to the United States from Europe, but it died in Congress. In the case of WWII, the United States only acted because it was attacked. Sorry about this, but after learning about the Holocaust in my Seminar and going to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in D.C., I do not agree or like that the United States is portrayed as the heroes in the WWII. A better example of a country intervening as a humanitarian is needed. I think it is hard to come up with a scenario in which the country that intervenes does so purely out of the want to help the citizens of another country. I do agree with you that countries do not always intervene only because it would be beneficial to them. I would like to hope that countries have good intentions. However, the more I think about it, there are very few cases where this is true. Countries tend to only get involved when they were threatened, attacked, or there is a benefit to them doing so. Although I do not agree with realists, this could be a case where they have some very legitimate ideas.
DeleteHi Ben,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your post because I also see articles that I also don't think address the correct problem. I liked how you explained the mutually beneficial relationship that super powers and failed/failing states can have after intervention in their problems. I agree that, a majority of the time, major powers only get involved in humanitarian situations when it can benefit their direct interests. However, I also think Professor Shirk's point about human right being an interest can apply to some cases, but not often as many human rights violations are overlooked by super powers like the US without any action. In terms of the UN, what do you think could be done to provide them with the hard power to make positive changes in situations like Rwanda?