International Intervention and State-making

How Exception Became the Norm

Selver B. Sahin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317674719
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book analyses the changing dynamics of sovereignty resulting from contemporary international state-building interventions.

It aims to highlight how the exercise of 'exceptional' forms of power by intervening agencies impacts on the sovereign capacity of intervened states. Drawing upon in-depth analyses of three case studies – Kosovo, East Timor and the Kurdistan Regional Government, the book shifts the focus of the debate to the nature of contemporary intervention as an act of statemaking, and argues that foreign intervention changes the dynamics of political power upon which sovereignty is structured. At the same time, it reveals how intervention reproduces the imposed conditions of international state-making, thus permanently internalising external regulatory mechanisms. International intervention, in other words, becomes the constitutive element of governance in the newly created state.

This book will be of much interest to students of statebuilding, war and conflict studies, global governance, security studies and IR.

1
The myth of exceptional state-building

State-building operationalised in terms of exceptionalism, as discussed in the previous chapter, has become central to the discourse and practice of contemporary international intervention. The intrusive and long-term involvement of foreign agencies in domestic policy and institutional processes is justified as a necessary engagement conditioned by exceptional security and development challenges facing ‘fragile’ or ‘conflict-affected’ states. Bellamy, for instance, suggests that international intervention is not a discrete act with a clear beginning and end because international attempts to legitimise the use of military force on humanitarian grounds should be accompanied by longer-term programmes directed at conflict prevention and post-conflict reconstruction.¹ In this way, intervention becomes a means to transform these countries through near permanent engagement with the construction of the institutional and societal foundations of liberal democratic, market-oriented government models as part of a global security strategy.²

The intrusive and extended involvement of foreign state and non-state actors in the regulation of the domestic affairs of fragile states is now treated as a necessary action that seeks to prevent emergencies or crisis situations associated with domestic governance capacity of states. In this conception of prevention, intervention is argued to foster the sovereignty of states rather than challenging their political independence and territorial integrity. When foreign intervention is followed by territorial secession, rise of autonomous power centres or emergence of violent insurgencies, international agencies tend to argue that these situations are exceptional cases of state-building or unintended consequences of intervention. For instance, it was frequently emphasised by the Australian political leadership at the time that the 1999 military intervention resulting in an independent East Timorese state was a ‘special case’ that ‘no parallels’ could be established with other secessionist movements in the region such as Aceh and West Papua.³ Similarly, the recognition of internationally ‘supervised independence’ to Kosovo in 2008 was rationalised by leading Western governments as an exceptional method of conflict resolution. The outbreak of sectarian violence and insurgency in Iraq following the 2003 intervention, on the other hand, was explained by Western leaders as an unforseen development.⁴ While the rest of the country was engulfed in violence and insecurity, northern Iraq ruled by the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) has consolidated its existence as a ‘de facto’⁵ or ‘quasi’ state⁶ following the US-led military intervention in 2003.

The centrality of exceptionalism to the discourse of intervention reflects intervening powers’ efforts to avoid an operational framework that may force them to resolve or respond to similar situations in the same way in the future.⁷ It is also important to acknowledge that while discourses or declaratory statements of international agencies cannot be accepted at face value, a critical analysis of the actions or decisions of state officials requires us to take into account these discourses or the justifications offered, as they constitute their ‘representational practices’ to legitimise their actions⁸ or construction of a particular ‘reality’ that helps marginalise alternative understandings of such situations.⁹ However, their justifications for their violation of certain norms (such as non-use of force or territorial integrity) by reference to other norms (such as human rights),¹⁰ at the same time, are likely to give rise to a new rule or practice and produce new states of political and social affairs in intervened states.

Taking these into account as to the analysis of the effects of contemporary state-building interventions, I therefore would like to point to two kinds of effects which the policies and practices of intervention operationalised on the basis of the exceptionalism argument tend to produce: (1) normalisation or acceptance of the creation of states through intervention (or the normalisation of the idea that separatist movements are more likely to achieve their preferred statehood objectives through obtaining the support of the most powerful states); (2) normalisation of the involvement of foreign actors in domestic processes through longer-term intervention in the form of institutional capacity-building.

This being noted, foreign military intervention helps challenging local groups (such as self-determination movements and rebels) to achieve their political aspirations. This chapter investigates contemporary international interventions as a myth of exceptional state-building to demonstrate that the creation of new states through foreign interference is nothing exceptional. By new states, I refer to both recognised (Kosovo, East Timor and South Sudan) and non-recognised (or ‘informal states’)¹¹ (such as Northern Iraq, South Ossetia and Abkhazia) political entities that have established their existence as a result of great power intervention justified on humanitarian and security grounds. Rather than being exceptions, these cases illustrate how states are now created through foreign intervention and supervision.

In elaborating on this trend, the chapter examines the processes leading to the formation of new states by reference to the features of the relationships between intervening and local actors developing in the context of power struggles and mutual dependencies. After all, as noted earlier, the formation of states is essentially a power-driven process, as it entails not only the construction of competent government institutions for territorial control but also the acquisition of political power by one of the competing social groups and consolidation of their identity as an autonomous entity.¹² Therefore, the creation and distribution of political power as the basis of statehood is subject to constant contestation and negotiation by competing social groups. The key questions that need to be investigated in this regard are those that are concerned with the implications of interventions for the existing local power structures upon which sovereignty is based: How do the use of military force and the subsequent involvement of foreign agencies in the institutional and policy domain affect the dynamics of political power? How does the long-term involvement of foreign agencies in domestic policy-making transform the conditions of institutional and governmental order in intervened states? To be able answer these questions, it is essential to investigate the features of the relationships between intervening agencies and domestic groups developing in the context of a liberal peace framework, as discussed below.

Interveners and locals locked in the liberal peace paradigm

The interplay between interveners and local agencies remains as one of the under-investigated topics in relation to the construction of democratic state capacities in failing or fragile countries. In the 1990s, some scholars, inspired by Foucault’s work on power, examined foreign development assistance as a discourse of power and control that objectified and instrumentalised Western interventionism.¹³ These studies were focused on the hidden or subtle forms of power, surveillance and discipline behind international development policies, despite their seeming benign and well-meaning at first glance. A brief review of this literature may provide helpful insights into the contemporary forms of power exercised by foreign agencies to promote ‘good governance’ in fragile or post-conflict countries.

James Ferguson, for instance, applies Foucault’s concept of discourse as a structured and power-ridden practice of constituting knowledge to examine the operation of the international ‘development apparatus’.¹⁴ His analysis is centred around a Canadian government-funded rural development project implemented in the African state of Lesotho in the 1970s and 1980s. One of the key points Ferguson emphasises is that even though numerous donor-funded projects consistently failed to achieve their intended objectives of agricultural development or poverty alleviation in Lesotho and elsewhere, these projects became instrumental in expanding the ‘bureaucratic state power’ and depoliticising the exercise of that power by political authorities.¹⁵ Development assistance, in other words, emerged as an ‘anti-politics machine’ in that it has produced powerful constellations of control through seemingly apolitical projects. This becomes apparent in the rise of a discourse that depicts countries like Lesotho and others all in the same way: ‘less developed countries’ whose populations are classified as a collection of subsistence peasants that are ‘isolated’ from global markets.¹⁶ The representation of former colonies in such terms helps rationalise planned social interventions in the name of modernising or bringing these ‘isolated’ societies into a closer relationship with the world economy, although in reality they were already in contact with global markets for a long time even before they became independent.¹⁷ In addition to this, political and structural conditions of poverty such as inequalities in resource distribution, unemployment or low wages are excluded from the analyses of their economic and social underdevelopment. From these studies rather follows a reductionist strategy that treats poverty alleviation as a matter of technical improvements such as educating people, improving livestock and soil quality, and devising medium to long-term development plans.¹⁸ In this way, international agencies present their role as politically neutral, technical missions seeking to improve the provision of services to the rural poor. In reality, however, development projects reshape rural social relations and create new bureaucracies and facilities such as administrative offices, roads or health services which are often appropriated as a powerful resource by governments and elites.¹⁹

In a similar fashion, Arturo Escobar looks at development as a historical construct or ‘invention’ that turned poor countries into objects of knowledge and management.²⁰ Escobar locates the origins of development as an instrument for Western capitalist domination in the rearrangement of world power that occurred during the immediate post-Second World War period. The decline of the colonial order and the ‘discovery’ of mass poverty on a global scale were some of these rearrangements.²¹ Before the 1940s, Western governments’ concern with poverty was conditioned by a conviction that any attempt to stimulate economic development in colonies was pointless because the natives did not have the capacity for science and technology needed for socio-economic progress.²² Following the war, however, the chronic...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: state-building in international context
• 1 The myth of exceptional state-building
• 2 Theorising exceptional state-making
• 3 Kosovo and conflicting sovereignty claims
• 4 The Kurdish Regional Government and the question of increasing autonomy
• 5 Timor- Leste as an ‘exceptional’ state
• 6 Conclusion
• References
• Index