There are instances of benign interventions one country could make in another. Here are some examples of cases where that is the case:
- The regime of state (A) is committing acts of genocidal against its people, so state (B) intervenes to stop it (Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, al-Assad’s Syria, Gaddafi’s Libya...).
- An armed ethnic or religious group in country (A) commits acts of genocide against a weaker group (Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda and Burundi, Serbs and Muslims in Bosnia, the Taliban in Afghanistan, ISIS and the Yazidis in Iraq...).
- The regime of state (A) starves its own people (North Korea...).
- The political system of state (A) poses a threat to its neighbors, of invading and occupying them (Hitler in Czechoslovakia and the rest of Europe, Saddam Hussein in Kuwait...).
- A military or tribal regime seizes power in state (A) and is rejected by the majority of the population (countless examples).
Some of these cases are covered by the principle of “humanitarian intervention,” but, naturally, taking action in such cases is not unanimously supported. Such interventions have only been made in a few of the cases that warranted it. Nevertheless, these interventions remain defensible and justified when they do happen.
On the other hand, another form of intervention or use of the threat of intervention is absolutely indefensible. Interventions of this kind are made for the following reason: The people of state (A), the majority, often through their parliament, take a decision on their self-determination, their way of life or foreign policy, but this decision is not appreciated by country (B), which considers it a threat.
Russia’s Ukraine policy, which is reinforced by the deployment of 100,000 soldiers on the border, is a glaring example. The threats China has been posing to Taiwan, with the former rejecting the latter’s independence from it, is another. In the Arab Levant, we have another well-known example, when Assad’s Syria deprived Lebanon of an independent foreign policy in the name of a “single course and destiny.” When Lebanon wanted to wrest this right, it was met with assassinations of its politicians, journalists and writers.
During the Cold War, this type of intervention, at times direct and at others through intermediaries and proxies, was launched by the two superpowers often: the Soviet Union, with its army and the Warsaw Pact forces, crushed Hungary in 1956 and former Czechoslovakia in 1968; and it stood ready to crush Poland in 1981. The United States did not involve its army in crushing other countries. It did, however, support military coups against elected democratic regimes. The most prominent of these examples were the 1953 coup in Iran against the government of Mohammad Mosaddegh, the 1954 coup in Guatemala against the government of Jacobo Arbenz, and the 1973 coup in Chile against the government of Salvador Allende.
The argument - explicit or implied - for both superpowers’ interventions addressed security: the regime we are crushing strengthens our rival at our expense. As for the rival, it is the Western camp in Moscow’s view and the Soviet camp in Washington’s view.
After the Cold War and the democratic agenda’s rise globally, Washington stopped intervening against democratic regimes. Its first war in Iraq (which was not democratic) led to Kuwait’s liberation from Iraqi occupation. For its second war, the US was forced to justify it with the lie of the weapon of mass destruction.
Today, this kind of malicious intervention is linked to particular regimes that do not need any lies to justify their actions. They declare, without apprehension nor reluctance: I am defending my security against the will and freedom of others.
These regimes share particular characteristics, the most prominent of which are perhaps:
- The regime is authoritarian, even if it adopts superficially democratic facades in some cases, as Putin’s Russia does.
- It is a mostly nationalist and populist regime with a leader who is worshiped or semi-worshiped at its head.
- It puts raw security arguments above others. No consideration is paid to anything else, including the will of the population of the country where the intervention is to take place. And while many of those countries were communist in the past, that is, they are non-ideological today, Iran remains among the interventionist countries most reliant on ideological pretexts, though these pretexts do not succeed in concealing its expansionist tendencies.
- Existential questions surround the future of the interventionist regime and its viability. Even China, the only one of the interventionist countries that is on the rise, wealthy, and cohesive, might not be safe from such questions in the long run.
The phenomenon of malicious intervention has become one of the phenomena haunting our world today. In all likelihood, the weakness of the international community’s will as represented by democratic regimes first, and second, the fact that benign interventions have faltered, with countries becoming reluctant to launch them, are the reasons why malicious interventions have become so widespread and glaring.
