As the Afghanistan end-game begins and as we prepare for the debate on who, if anyone, will help stabilize a post-Gaddafi Libya, a stray thought on the never-ending intervention debate: there’s often the conceit from those skeptical of intervention that beleagured or conflict-ridden countries need to solve their own problems (not always of course–plenty of those arguing against intervention do so on purely national interest or prudential lines). This allows the anti-interventionist to safeguard national blood and treasure while also appearing to have in mind the long-term best interests of the society in question. It seems to me that there’s a basic fallacy here. There will almost always be intervention of some sort. Pakistan will meddle in Afghanistan; Chad will stoke the fires in Sudan; Ethiopia will take sides in Somalia [bold mine-DL]. The alternatives to Western or international intervention is therefore almost never a society left to sort out its own troubles. It’s really not a question of whether there will be intervention, only one of who will do the intervening. ~David Bosco

It may be the case that non-intervention by the U.S. and European allies serves the long-term best interests of a given country. On the whole, most of the countries that have “benefited” from such interventions in the last twenty years would probably have been better off had these never happened. For the most part, regional actors either could not or would not have intervened militarily where the U.S. and our allies have, partly because regional actors have to live with the consequences of such actions and the intervening governments are shielded from these by distance. Regional actors have more of a stake in the outcome of these conflicts, and they have at least some better understanding of the nature of such conflicts. Western intervening governments often have no reason to be involved, they are usually poorly-informed about the country in which they are intervening, and because they have so little at stake they have little patience to remain engaged in the country once the initial crisis has passed.

The Ethiopian example is not the best one Bosco could choose, since Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia was clearly supported and encouraged by the U.S. It is possible that Ethiopia would have invaded Somalia anyway, but U.S. policy at the time made it much more likely that Ethiopia would take such action. Regardless, what Bosco is describing is a lack of respect for other states’ sovereignty. We can take for granted that neighboring states are going to attempt to wield influence against one another, but what had usually limited this to support for proxy rebel groups was a basic acceptance that international borders were things that had to be respected. Over the last twenty years, the U.S. and allied governments have routinely ignored and undermined that principle.

Somalia is a difficult case. The formal borders of the country have long since ceased to represent political reality, Somaliland and Puntland have effectively broken off, and the officially recognized government of Somalia barely controls any of the country. Because it is such a fragmented country, it invites the sort of meddling Bosco describes. One would think that we should aspire to have fewer Somalias rather than doing things that are likely to create more of them. It also goes without saying that Western or international intervention hardly precludes other states from meddling in a country’s affairs, and it may be that the attention that Western governments and international institutions give to a particular country creates incentives for outside meddling where they would not be as great otherwise. The kind of intervention Bosco refers to in many of these cases is the wielding of influence or the use of proxies, which is something significantly different from direct invasions and occupations of other countries. If we must choose between the two, it’s hard to see why the latter is preferable. Presumably, the right way to cope with the problem of too little respect for state sovereignty and other states’ territorial integrity is not to find new and creative ways to undermine state sovereignty.