Interventionist or internationalist? Coercion, self-determination, and humanitarianism in Third World practice

Abstract

This article argues that contemporary debates around intervention, and especially humanitarian intervention, have misunderstood the meaning of these concepts in Cold War international society. By comparing a specific kind of humanitarian interventionism with a specific kind of internationalism, that of a revolutionist strain of Third World practice, it shows that existing studies have paid too little attention to discursive entanglements of coercion, self-determination, and humanitarianism. The Angola case provides a significant illustration: in 1975 the problem of intervention comes to be tied not just to dictatorial interference, but to a logic of self-determination, which is itself tied to causes of anticolonialism and anti-racism. It is too easy to say that the period’s rules of non-intervention precluded the legitimate coercive prevention of atrocities and related international crimes. Particular practices of internationalism, linked to the promotion of self-determination, provided a basis for enforcing international human rights treaties, including the Genocide Convention. All this seems very different from what we usually know of the legitimacy of saving strangers and the character of Third World organising in the mid-20th century.