MODERN CONDITIONS THAT ENCOURAGE INTERVENTION

Extensive use of clandestine actions and direct military intervention as techniques of achieving objectives and promoting political values can be accounted for by at least five conditions widespread throughout the contemporary world. First, all the major powers—and some lesser states as well—have added to their tradi­tional diplomatic bargaining techniques vast programs of military and economic assistance. Most of these programs, whether undertaken by a single state or by multilateral organizations such as the United Nations, affect the internal politi­cal, economic, and social development of the recipients. Often, economic devel­opment cannot be achieved unless important political reforms are also imple­mented. This may require diplomatic pressures (by threats to withhold economic rewards), which obviously constitute interference in the internal affairs of the recipient. Sometimes foreign efforts to liberalize a regime may result in such political instability that the goal of economic development has to be forfeited. Where such problems confront the donor governments (and they appear in almost all military and economic aid programs), foreign diplomats seek to mold the internal development of a society in ways with no precedent in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In some instances, governments use their large num­bers of foreign-aid personnel abroad to conduct propaganda, gather intelligence, and promote revolutionary or counterrevolutionary activities.

Second, there are many inconsistencies between national frontiers, on the one hand, and ethnic, religious, or linguistic frontiers, on the other. Many states today have only conditional viability; that is, they can exist only with the minimal support of all groups within their boundaries. If there are deep social cleavages, and some groups within the society feel oppressed, the likeli-

⁴ For details, see I. William Zartman, International Relations in the New Africa (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966), pp. 94-101. Zartman has claimed more recently, however, that because so many of the attempts at subversion in Africa during the 1960s failed, African governments can be expected to rely less in the future on this means of achieving objectives. See his "Intervention among Developing States," Journal of International Affairs, 22 (1968), 188-97.

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hood of civil disturbances is increased. If these minority groups formulate a strategy that requires highly organized or violent political action, they are apt to need support from the outside. Local Communist parties have obtained funds, propaganda, training, and sometimes weapons from the Soviet Union or Commu­nist China; ethnic minorities, such as the Naga tribes in India, have established contacts with China in order to obtain arms; liberation movements in Rhodesia relied extensively on African governments for sanctuaries, funds, and materiel; and cliques of military leaders have sought foreign support and diplomatic recog­nition before or during their attempts to seize power. However much these connections may seem to promote purely local interests, there is little doubt that some sort of debt is created between the dissidents and the external patron. The patron can intervene on behalf of the group, faction, or clique, and after it gains power, use its influence with the group to secure its own foreign-policy interests. Any unstable political order—and there are many in the contemporary world—offers opportunities for external intervention. We can suggest the hy­pothesis that the greater the ethnic, religious, economic, or ideological conflicts within a society, the greater the probability that an external government will intervene to serve its own interests.

The exact processes by which one government becomes involved in the internal affairs of another to the point where it may undertake a major program of intervention have not been studied sufficiently.⁵ Recent history would indicate, however, that it is usually a lengthy process in which some particular group in a society establishes contacts with the government of a foreign state. These contacts eventually become translated into commitments. The foreign government may, at first, provide only vague forms of "support"; that is, it announces its support of the group and perhaps disseminates propaganda on its behalf. Ultimately, however, a genuine system of interdependence develops, and vague statements of support become firm commitments involving the train­ing of political leaders and the sending of arms and perhaps manpower. If the political group—whether a revolutionary movement or a regime already in power—is seriously threatened by another force, the outside state may intervene massively with its own troops. The important observation is that at some point, one government perceives that it is in its interest to sustain or change the internal structure of another state. All the instruments of statecraft are directed subse­quently not so much at influencing the foreign policies of another state, but at determining its internal character. It is at this point that we must recognize the intertwining of domestic and foreign politics.

Third, political loyalties, which have traditionally extended to the pre­dominant political institutions and authorities, whether clan, tribe, nation, or empire, are sometimes directed instead to external political entities or ideologies. In the seventeenth century, religious loyalties frequently superseded national

⁵ See C.R. Mitchell, "Civil Strife and the Involvement of External Parties, " International Studies Quarterly, 14 (1970), 166-94.

246 Clandestine Actions and Military Intervention

or regional sentiments. Similarly, in the late eighteenth century, many European liberals welcomed French "liberation" even if it meant occupation by foreign troops and imposition of alien political institutions. Most people today accept the general proposition of primary loyalty to their own nation ("My country right or wrong"), but there are many exceptions among people who do not accept the legitimacy of the order under which they live. The quip that the postwar French Communist party was neither Right nor Left, but East, illustrates the existence of transnational ideologies and loyalties directed essentially toward foreign states. This characteristic of modern politics naturally creates opportuni­ties for foreign states, symbolizing these transnational ideologies, to become involved in other nations' domestic politics.

Fourth, the current nuclear stalemate has apparently forced the major antagonists of the cold war into the sector of irregular warfare and subversion, where the possibility of uncontrolled military escalation is slight. Blatant military aggression to achieve external objectives may face both universal diplomatic condemnation in the United Nations and instant nuclear retaliation, whereas establishment of client regimes and satellite states through subversion and inter­vention may be sufficient to achieve some objectives at a minimal cost of national capabilities and resources, with much lower risks.

Fifth, governments with revolutionary external objectives are naturally prone to use for foreign purposes the same kinds of techniques their leaders successfully employed in gaining domestic power. While on one level the French revolutionaries, Soviets, Nazis, and others maintained "correct" diplomatic rela­tions with foreign states, they simultaneously attempted to promote revolutionary activities against the social and political orders of those same states. Using "race" as the basis of political loyalty, Hitler proclaimed that a German's first duty was to the Third Reich, whether he lived in Austria, Czechoslovakia, or the United States. Communist governments have also spoken of "normalization of relations," "peaceful coexistence," and noninterference in other people's affairs; but their ideological pronouncements and domestic-policy statements clearly reveal that when it is in their interest to do so, they will promote, organize, or support foreign revolutions and rebellious uprisings.

This is not to say that Soviet or Chinese support for local rebellions has been indiscriminate. The pronouncements of Communist leaders, of course, support all "wars of national liberation." But in terms of actions, levels of involve­ment and commitment have varied extensively. In general, the record shows that when it is in the interest of China or the Soviet Union to maintain good relations with another state, it will not become actively involved in a rebellion that may occur in that state. The Russians have generally refrained from open support of Latin American revolutionary movements, and China strongly sup­ported the central government of Pakistan against the secessionist movement in East Pakistan during 1971. Although the Chinese have often promoted and assisted revolutionary movements abroad, their actions are to a certain extent constrained by the Maoist view that revolution should be primarily an indigenous matter. The "bastion of the revolution" role often enunciated in Chinese

247 Clandestine Actions and Military Intervention

speeches or editorials is thus inhibited by both ideological principles and consid­erations of diplomatic expediency.⁶

Many governments with revolutionary external objectives or doctrinal commitments have created a variety of extradiplomatic agencies whose main functions are to dispense propaganda, organize agitation, train foreign revolu­tionaries, and direct subversion. Among the more prominent of these external revolutionary organizations have been the Comintern, the Cominform, the Ger­man Abwehr, and various Soviet and Communist Chinese organizations and institutes that today have the function of providing revolutionary and ideological training for foreign Communist leaders. Although not concerned with doctrines of revolution, the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States has been heavily involved in subversive activities abroad. These organizations sometimes play a major role in defining the objectives and techniques of states' foreign policies and on occasion literally usurp the functions of more traditional diplo­matic institutions. During the early 1920s, when the Soviet government was actively engaged in organizing and supporting revolutionary activities through­out Europe, a number of the most important foreign-policy decisions were made within the organization of the Comintern. Soviet diplomats were frequently by­passed as intermediaries between the Soviet government and foreign groups and had to remain content to deal with relatively unimportant aspects of Soviet foreign policy. In any event, the new revolutionary dimensions of foreign rela­tions opened by the Bolsheviks required people with experience and outlook considerably different from those of professional diplomats. The directors of the Comintern and other external revolutionary organizations were primarily revolutionaries and agitators, concerned with the mechanics of organizing vio­lence and political support for doctrinal ends, not men engaged with such mun­dane matters as trade relations, diplomatic conferences, passports, and territorial treaties.⁷

Throughout the twentieth century, nations have had to face the problem of political change ostensibly inspired by domestic forces but largely engineered by an external power. In addition to reasonably overt actions, where revolutionar­ies are trained, organized, and armed abroad, intervention may include propa­ganda, espionage, discriminatory trade policies, or support or denial of support to governments or their opposition in domestic crises where such foreign support might prove to be decisive. Experts do not wholly agree whether one government may give military and political support to another attempting to maintain itself against a possible or actual rebellion or whether some kinds of economic and military assistance constitute intervention.⁸ Was the Western democracies' deci­sion not to intervene in the Spanish Civil War really nonintervention? It could

⁶ See Peter Van Ness, Revolution and China's Foreign Policy: Peking's Support for Wars of National Liberation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970).

⁷ See Theodore H. Von Laue, "Soviet Diplomacy: G.V. Chicherin, Peoples' Commissar for Foreign Affairs, 1918-1930," in The Diplomats, 1919-1939, eds. Gordon A. Craig and Felix Gilbert (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1953), pp. 234-81.

⁸ Louis Henkin, "Force, Intervention and Neutrality in Contemporary International Law," Proceedings of the American Society of International Law (April 1963), pp. 147—60.

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be argued that by deciding not to intervene, the democracies paved the way for General Franco's victory.⁹ How do we characterize an American program to help train foreign police in riot-control techniques? Since riots and demon­strations are in some countries the most promising or only way to achieve political change, this type of training could be construed in some cases as aid designed to keep unpopular regimes in power. Many other controversial cases could be cited, since they occur almost every day in modern international politics: No aid or trade program, military action, or important diplomatic communication can avoid having some impact on the public internal realm of other sovereign states.

If we classify as intervention all actions that have some impact immedi­ately or in the long run on another state's internal politics, then, today, virtually all forms of persuasion and diplomatic-economic-military programs would qual­ify. James Rosenau has proposed a more precise definition. In his view, interven­tion can be distinguished from other forms of state action in that it (1) constitutes a sharp break from conventional forms of interaction in a relationship, and (2) is consciously directed at changing or preserving the structure of political authority in the target state.¹⁰ Thus, foreign-aid programs, even though they might have direct consequences on the authority structure in a society, would not be considered intervention because they would not constitute a radical break from a conventional relationship. In contrast, although the Soviet Union has maintained various forms of control over the internal policies of Czechoslovakia since 1948, the sending of several divisions of troops in a lightning raid on Czechoslovakia in August 1968 would constitute a radical departure from the more conventional means of control. We might add a third characteristic of forms of intervention: Most, but not all, of the unconventional actions are taken without the consent of the legitimate (that is, commonly recognized) government.

We will discuss five forms of intervention: (1) various types of clandestine political actions, (2) demonstrations of force, (3) subversion, (4) guerrilla warfare (where it is primarily organized and supported from abroad), and (5) military intervention. Governments normally use combinations of these techniques simul­taneously, but we shall keep them distinct in examining several cases.

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