Intervention involves the unsolicited interference of one nation in the affairs of another. It may be directed against a single state, factions within that state, or interactions among a group of states. It does not necessarily take the form of military action but may involve economic or social pressure. When applied to international law, the concept can be elusive. Because many relations between states involve elements of coercion, it is difficult to determine at which point pressure becomes sufficiently coercive as to be deemed intervention. Although states always claim the right to intervene on the basis of "vital interests," they never agree as to what this term involves.
During most of the nineteenth century, the United States intervened to consolidate control of the American mainland, and major instances included successful efforts to acquire Florida, Texas, and California from Spain and Mexico. The United States also engaged in efforts to expose China, Japan, and Korea to American trade. For instance, Commodore Matthew C. Perry "opened" Japan in 1854 with an armed squadron. Prior to 1899, at least fifty minor incidents took place, usually in the Pacific or the Caribbean, in which U.S. forces raided pirate villages, landed marines to protect resident Americans, and bombarded foreign towns in reprisal for offensives directed toward American traders and missionaries. In 1900, U.S. troops took part in an international expedition to relieve Beijing from Chinese revolutionaries called the Boxers. Because of the Spanish-American War (1898), itself the result of U.S. pressure upon Spain to liberate Cuba, the United States gained the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam. The United States also annexed Hawaii in 1898 and in 1899 took part in the partition of the Samoan Islands, gaining the harbor of Pago Pago. In both cases, the United States sought to protect trade routes and, in the case of Hawaii, the economic and political prerogatives of the powerful American colony there.
By the late nineteenth century, the nation's leaders proclaimed their right to intervene in the Western Hemisphere. During the Venezuela boundary dispute, Secretary of State Richard Olney claimed on 20 July 1895, "The United States is practically sovereign on this continent, and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition." In his corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, first set forth in 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt issued a unilateral declaration asserting the U.S. prerogative to exercise "international police power" in the Western Hemisphere.
The Caribbean was a particular focal point, as the United States continually sought to protect its isthmian canal and to create political and financial stability favorable to its interests. In 1903, Roosevelt sent warships to the Isthmus of Panama to ensure Panama's successful secession from Colombia and thereby to ensure the building of the Panama Canal. President Woodrow Wilson intervened twice in Mexico, first in occupying Veracruz in 1914 after an alleged insult to American seamen and second in a "punitive expedition" in 1914 in search of the revolutionary Pancho Villa.
U.S. troops directly occupied several Caribbean nations. American forces entered Cuba in 1898, 1906, 1912, and 1917, at times remaining several years. Americans occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1924, the Dominican Republic from 1916 to 1924, and Nicaragua in 1909, from 1912 to 1924, and from 1927 to 1933.
In 1917 and 1941 the United States became a full-scale belligerent in World War I and World War II, respectively. In efforts to contain communist expansion, the United States led in the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (1949), entered the Korean War (1950–1953), and fought a full-scale conflict in Vietnam (1965–1975).Other examples of Cold War intervention include the Greek civil war (1947), the Berlin Airlift (1948), Guatemala (1954), and Lebanon (1958).Cuba was subject to an American-sponsored invasion in 1961 and an American blockade during the missile crisis of 1962.
Several Cold War presidents issued interventionist doctrines. On 12 March 1947, President Harry S. Truman pledged support for "free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." On 5 January 1957, the Eisenhower Doctrine authorized the dispatching of military forces to any Middle Eastern state requesting assistance against "overt armed aggression controlled by international communism." In the Carter Doctrine, promulgated on 23 January 1980 in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Jimmy Carter threatened military action against any "attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region."
On 6 February 1985, when Ronald Reagan spoke of backing "freedom fighters," his statement was dubbed by journalists the Reagan Doctrine. During his presidency, the United States opposed left-wing insurgencies in Angola, Mozambique, Grenada, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. Under Presidents George H. W. Bush and William J. Clinton, the United States maintained sanctions against South Africa, sent troops to Somalia and Lebanon, invaded Panama, entered into Operation Desert Storm against Iraq, and ordered eight thousand ground forces to Kosovo. The 2001 terrorist attack on the United States inspired prompt retaliatory intervention in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Bibliography
Graber, Doris A. Crisis Diplomacy: A History of U.S. Intervention Policies and Practices. Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1959.
———."Intervention and Nonintervention." In Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy: Studies of the Principal Movements and Ideas. Rev. ed. Edited by Alexander DeConde et al. New York: Scribners, 2002.
Haass, Richard N. Intervention: The Use of American Military Force in the Post–Cold War World. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment, 1994.
