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Non-interventionism

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Non-interventionism or non-intervention is commonly understood as “a foreign policy of political or military non-involvement in foreign relations or in other countries’ internal affairs”.[1][2] In the political science lexicon, there is also the term of “isolationism”, which is sometimes improperly used to replace the concept of “non-interventionism”.[3] “Isolationism” should be interpreted more broadly as “a foreign policy grand strategy of military and political non-interference in international affairs and in the internal affairs of sovereign states, associated with trade and economic protectionism and cultural and religious isolation, as well as with the inability to be in permanent military alliances, with the preservation, however, some opportunities to participate in temporary military alliances that meet the current interests of the state and in permanent international organizations of a non-military nature”.[4]

This is based on the grounds that a state should not interfere in the internal politics of another state as well as the principles of state sovereignty and self-determination. A similar phrase is "strategic independence".[5]

History

The norm of non-intervention has dominated the majority of international relations and can be seen to have been one of the principal motivations for the US' initial non-intervention into World Wars I and II, and the non-intervention of the liberal powers in the Spanish Civil War, despite the intervention of Germany and Italy.[citation needed] The norm was then firmly established into international law as one of the United Nations Charter's central tenets, which established non-intervention as one of the key principles which would underpin the emergent post-World War II peace.[6][7]

However, this was soon affected by the advent of the Cold War, which increased the number and intensity of interventions in the domestic politics of a vast number of developing countries under pretexts such as instigating a "global socialist revolution" or ensuring "containment" of such a revolution. The adoption of such pretexts and the idea that such interventions were to prevent a threat to "international peace and security" allowed intervention under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. Additionally, the UN's power to regulate such interventions was hampered during the Cold War due to both the US and USSR holding veto power in the United Nations Security Council.

In different countries

China

Main article: Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence

Mutual non-interference has been one of China's principles on foreign policy since 1954. After the Chinese economic reform, China began to focus on industrial development and actively avoided military conflict over the subsequent decades.[8] As of December 2018, China has used its veto eleven times in UN Security Council.[9] China first used the veto on 25 August 1972 to block Bangladesh's admission to the UN. From 1971 to 2011, China used its veto sparingly, preferring to abstain rather than veto resolutions indirectly related to Chinese interests.[10] According to David L. Bosco, China turned abstention into an "art form," abstaining on 30% of Security Council Resolutions between 1971 and 1976.[11]: 140 

Sweden

Main article: Swedish neutrality

Sweden became a non-interventionist state after the backlash against the king following Swedish losses in the Napoleonic Wars; the coup d'etat that followed in 1812 caused Jean Baptiste Bernadotte to establish a policy of non-intervention, which lasted from the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 until the accession of Sweden into NATO in 2022.

Switzerland

Main article: Swiss neutrality

Switzerland has long been known for its policy of defensively armed neutrality. Its neutrality allows for the protection of the state by strategically avoiding conflict to preserve the autonomy of the state, and prevent the large powers surrounding it from invading its borders. This strategy has kept Switzerland from joining conflicts that threaten its sovereignty as well as allow its diverse citizenry to form a sense of national unity. [12]

United States

Main article: United States non-interventionism

After the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001, the United States changed its foreign policy to support the idea that "norms of sovereignty"[13] are not respected when there are threats of terrorism or weapons of mass destruction. Transnational terrorism complicates non-intervention, and some state perform preemptive strikes to deter a potentially greater violation of the sovereignty of their own nation. Weapons of mass destruction were also a new element to contend with concerning non-intervention.

In December 2013 the Pew Research Center reported that their newest poll, "American's Place in the World 2013," had revealed that 52 percent of respondents in the national poll said that the United States "should mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own."[14] That was the most people to answer that question this way in the history of the question, which pollsters began asking in 1964.[15] Only about a third of respondents felt that way a decade earlier.[15]

Decline

Since the end of the Cold War, new emergent norms of humanitarian intervention are challenging the norm of non-intervention, based upon the argument that while sovereignty gives rights to states, there is also a responsibility to protect its citizens. The ideal, an argument based upon social contract theory, has states being justified in intervening within other states if the latter fail to protect (or are actively involved in harming) their citizens.[16] The R2P doctrine follows a "second duty" that employs states to intervene if another state is unwilling or unable to protect its citizens from gross human rights violations.[17] Moreover, the International Criminal Court closely monitors states who are unable or unwilling to protect their citizens and investigate if they have committed egregious crimes. Non-intervention is not absolute. Michael Walzer's Just and Unjust Wars, which identifies three instances for when intervention is justifiable: "1) a particular community seeks secession or "natural liberation" within a set of boundaries; 2) counter-intervention is necessary to protect boundaries that already have been crossed; or 3) a terrible "violation of human rights," such as "cases of enslavement of massacre" has occurred[13]. Nations use these guidelines to justify violating the non-intervention norm.

That idea has been used to justify the UN-sanctioned intervention Operation Provide Comfort in Northern Iraq in 1991 to protect the Kurds and in Somalia, UNOSOM I and UNOSOM II from 1992 to 1995 in the absence of state power. However, after the US "Black Hawk Down" event in 1993 in Mogadishu, the US refused to intervene in Rwanda or Haiti. However, despite strong opposition from Russia and China, the idea of the responsibility to protect was again used to justify NATO intervention in Kosovo in 1999 and the 2011 military intervention in Libya.

The new norm of humanitarian intervention is not universally accepted and is often seen as still developing.[16]

See also

References

  1. ^ Smith, M. (2010). "The Myth of American Isolationism, Part I: American Leadership and the Cause of Liberty". The Heritage Foundation. Washington D.C.: 2.
  2. ^ Hodges, Henry G. (1915). The Doctrine of Intervention. Princeton, The Banner press. p. 1.
  3. ^ Romanov, V. V.; Artyukhov, A. A. (2013). "The Notion of "Isolationism" in U.S. Foreign-Policy Thought: Conceptual Characteristics" (PDF). Vestnik Vâtskogo Gosudarstvennogo Gumanitarnogo Universiteta (in Russian) (3–1). Kirov, Russia: 67. ISSN 1997-4280.
  4. ^ Artiukhov, A. A. (2022). "The Conceptual Characteristics of the Notion "Isolationism" at the Current Historical Stage". Meždunarodnyj Naučno-Issledovatel'skij Žurnal [International Research Journal] (in Russian). 8 (122). Yekaterinburg, Russia: 2. doi:10.23670/IRJ.2022.122.54. eISSN 2227-6017. ISSN 1997-4280.
  5. ^ Carpenter, Ted Galen (1997). The Libertarian Reader. Free Press. pp. 336–344. ISBN 978-0-684-83200-5.
  6. ^ "Non-Intervention (Non-interference in domestic affairs)". The Princeton Encyclopedia of Self-Determination. Retrieved 28 September 2023.
  7. ^ "Purposes and Principles of the UN (Chapter I of UN Charter) | United Nations Security Council". www.un.org. Retrieved 28 September 2023.
  8. ^ Brown, Kerry (17 September 2013). "Is China's non-interference policy sustainable?". BBC News. Retrieved 17 September 2013.
  9. ^ Security Council – Veto List. Retrieved 17 December 2018.
  10. ^ Pei, Minxin (7 February 2012). "Why Beijing Votes With Moscow". The New York Times.
  11. ^ Bosco, David L. (2009). Five to Rule Them All: The UN Security Council and the Making of the Modern World. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-532876-9.
  12. ^ Morris, Kate, White, Timothy J. (2011). "Neutrality and the European Union: The case of Switzerland". Journal of Law and Conflict Resolution. 3 (7): 104–111. S2CID 154842039.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  13. ^ a b Elden, Stuart (2006). "Contingent sovereignty, territorial integrity and the sanctity of borders". SAIS Review of International Affairs. 26 (1): 11–24. doi:10.1353/sais.2006.0008.
  14. ^ Healy, Gene (10 December 2013). "It's not isolationist for America to mind its own business". Washington Examiner. Retrieved 13 August 2014.
  15. ^ a b Lindsay, James M.; Kauss, Rachael (3 December 2013). "The Public's Mixed Message on America's Role in the World". Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Retrieved 13 August 2014.
  16. ^ a b Evans, Gareth (2004). "When is it Right to Fight?". Survival. 46 (3): 59–82. doi:10.1080/00396330412331343733. S2CID 154653540.
  17. ^ Henderson, Stacy (2019). "The Evolution of the Principle of Non-Intervention: R2P and Overt Assistance to Opposition Groups". Global Responsibility to Protect. 11 (4): 365–393. doi:10.1163/1875984X-01104002. ISSN 1875-9858 – via Hein Online.

Bibliography

  • Kupchan, Charles A. (2020) Isolationism: A History of America's Efforts to Shield Itself from the World (Oxford University Press, 2020).
  • Romanov V. V., Artyukhov A. A. (2013) The Notion of "Isolationism" in U.S. Foreign-Policy Thought: Conceptual Characteristics / V. V. Romanov, A. A. Artyukhov // Vestnik Vâtskogo Gosudarstvennogo Gumanitarnogo Universiteta. – № 3-1. – pp. 67-71.
  • Wheeler, N.J. (2003) "The Humanitarian Responsibilities of Sovereignty: Explaining the Development of a New Norm of Military Intervention for Humanitarian Purposes in International Society" in Welsh, J.M. Humanitarian Intervention and International Relations Oxford: Oxford Scholarship Online, pp. 29–50.
  • Walzer, M.J. (2000) Just and Unjust Wars New York: Basic Books, pp. 86–108.
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