Intervention and Nonintervention

Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy, (2002) by Doris A. Graber

I NTERVENTION AND N ONINTERVENTION

Analysis of the intervention and nonintervention theories and practices of the United States requires examination of four distinct facets of the issue. They are the theory underlying the use of intervention in international relations, the policy doctrines proclaimed by the United States regarding intervention, the international law regarding the legality of intervention, and the actual practice of intervention adopted by the United States.

THE THEORY

The theory of intervention is based on the concept of state sovereignty, which was incorporated into the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia that ended the Thirty Years' War to prevent rulers from meddling in the affairs of their neighbors at the risk of provoking wars. Sovereignty of a state means that it is entitled to exercise absolute control over its territory and people and can choose to govern its realm as it chooses. In a world of sovereign states, where no overarching governmental unit exists, nobody has the right to interfere with the state's activities unless the interference has been explicitly authorized by the state. In other words, by virtue of its sovereignty, every state, no matter how small and weak or large and powerful, has the legal right to be free from intervention by other states.

The problem with this theory is that it is based on an unrealistic assumption: namely, that all states are completely independent actors who are not affected by what other states do and whose activities do not affect other states. Nonintervention is an impossibility for political units sharing the same world, particularly when they exist in close physical proximity. National borders, which demarcate the state's sphere of control, have become increasingly porous, especially in the modern age of surveillance satellites and the Internet. The fact that international law acknowledges that states have the right of self-defense to protect their sovereignty has always been an implicit acknowledgment that intrusions on state sovereignty should be expected.

THE POLICY DOCTRINES

Throughout modern history, the principle of non-intervention, tempered by the right of self-defense, has been cherished, especially by small and weak nations that lacked the strength to resist intrusions by stronger rivals. The United States, which started its political life as a small and weak nation, was no exception. Its vocal support of the principles of nonintervention—the nonintervention doctrine—has served three major purposes throughout the years, aside from its use as a guideline for policy. First, it was meant to deter European interventions directed against the United States and its neighbors. President George Washington, in his Farewell Address to the nation, repeated a mantra common to the Founders. The United States would not intervene in Europe's affairs in return for reciprocity by European powers. Accordingly, it would object to interventions by other powers because it considered nonintervention as the normal rule to be applied by the world community.

Second, the doctrine was intended to inform the American people that pressures on their government for a policy of intervention were likely to be rejected on principle, even when Americans were eager to help European colonies in Latin America to become independent states. Expectations were that repeated proclamations of the nonintervention policy would deter interventions that the country could ill afford to undertake.

All three purposes appeared to be particularly well served during the early years of the nation. It is therefore not surprising that American presidents, starting with George Washington, almost routinely advocated nonintervention. During the decades when the country was most vulnerable to foreign intervention and ill-equipped to intervene individually or collectively in faraway Europe, the doctrine was credited with keeping European powers from intervening in the affairs of the United States as a reward for American nonintervention in Europe's liberation struggles. The doctrine permitted American leaders to refuse most requests for political as well as humanitarian interventions. The successes claimed for the doctrine strengthened faith in its value.

At first, the doctrine was generally expressed in absolute terms to give it the strongest possible impact. This formulation was never viewed as a renunciation of the presumably inalienable right of every country to use intervention to protect its vital interests. Rather, the doctrine was avowed for its practical usefulness for American policy needs. That the nonintervention doctrine involved legal considerations under international law was not stressed until 1842, when Secretary of State Daniel Webster alluded to its grounding in the legal doctrine of sovereign rights.

Because the absolute formulation of the doctrine was literally interpreted by many people, it grew embarrassing when the United States engaged in numerous interventions in the Western Hemisphere. Therefore, American statesmen reformulated the doctrine so that it would specify the exceptional conditions under which intervention would be permitted. The ebb and flow of efforts to spell out the limits of nonintervention, without abandoning the nonintervention doctrine as a general principle, constitute the major aspects of doctrinal developments over the ensuing decades.