Tools of Foreign Intervention

Figure 9: Foreign Intervention Tools Represented in the Model

Diplomatic Economic Military

• Negotiating disputes between communities

• Supporting militants income • Attacking militants • Negotiating agreements between

militant groups

• Increasing the wealth of civilians • Punishing support of militants • Waging information campaigns

against militant ideology

• Providing in-kind benefits to empower community leaders

• Weapons removal • Providing governance benefits

for militants to pass on to civilians

• Providing in-kind benefits to militants to pass on to civilians

• Providing military training or assistance to militants

• Providing benefits to civilians

with condition of ceasing militant support

• Providing protection from punishment to civilians

• Cutting off resources to militants

Figure 9 is a chart of diplomatic, economic, and military intervention tools available to

and the intended mechanism for their effect; for example, cutting off resources to militant groups leverages pressure on them economically. A variety of different types of organizations or

agencies may perform any of these tasks, so it should not be assumed that diplomatic services always perform the diplomatic tasks, trade negotiators or aid agencies perform the economic tasks, or that only militaries engage in military action. For example, the U.S. military may wage information campaigns or provide benefits to community leaders, separate from their traditional use of military force. In the subsections below, I provide examples of programs or actions through which the U.S. government implements each tool for illustrative purposes.

Diplomatic Tools

Diplomatic

Tool Examples

Negotiating disputes between communities

Local dialogues, community-level meetings and workshops

Negotiating agreements between militant groups

Traditional diplomacy meetings and negotiations

Waging information campaigns against ideology

Public affairs programs, cultural exchanges, information campaigns Providing governance benefits for

militants to pass on

Governance and capacity-building meetings, workshops

There are several common diplomatic, or non-coercive tools that may be used by interveners to influence conflict outcomes. First, an intervener may negotiate agreements between different localized actors. Civilian communities may have grievances against one another due to

competition between them or distributions of power over one another. With effective negotiation, an intervener could negotiate disputes between communities diplomatically, resolving some of these underlying tensions. For example, diplomats and military negotiators sometimes met with local community leaders in contested districts of Afghanistan during the 2001 war against the

Taliban and al-Qaeda in order to better understand and address their needs and concerns (Malkasian 2013). The intervener may also negotiate agreements between militant groups. The United Nations and other international organizations met with militia leaders during the 1992 UNITAF mission in Somalia in order to halt the fighting by encouraging ceasefires.

Public diplomacy and information campaigns are designed to change the minds of civilians in favor of ideas that may promote foreign interests. This could entail swaying public opinion in favor or against a militant group using television, print and radio news outlets, social media, public engagement events, exchange programs, or the distribution of leaflets. The U.S. Department of State, USAID, U.S. Department of Defense and several intelligence agencies all engage in some form of public diplomacy, and many countries host media programs

administered by American Cultural Centers and the international radio broadcast Voice of America (VOA). Interveners may also provide governance assistance to a militant group whose rule it seeks to strengthen over a population of civilians that it extorts. Such assistance, offered through meetings with diplomats and sometimes humanitarian aid personnel, may increase the capacity of militants to deliver social services or adjudicate disputes (USAID ).

Economic Tools

Economic

Tool Examples

Supporting militants income Government or rebel funding, Foreign Military Sales (FMS), weapons transfers Increasing the wealth of civilians Economic investments, cash transfer and

micro-loan programs Providing in-kind benefits to

community leaders Development assistance provided to local community leaders Providing in-kind benefits to militants

to pass on

Development assistance provided to organization leaders

Providing civilians with conditional

benefits Development assistance provided to civilian organizations Cutting off resources to militants Sanctions, interrupting/intercepting

supply routes

Economic tools may come in the form of assistance, which provides local actors with additional financial or in-kind resources, or coercion, which leverages denial of access to resources to induce changes in behavior. First, an intervener may provide financial or in-kind support to militants in order to increase their strength. According to a report published by the CIA about U.S. experience in Somalia, “high-profile assistance from the international community-

including food relief, development assistance, and possibly diplomatic recognition—can provide enclave leaders with both the material for patronage and the perception of international approval needed to enhance their legitimacy” (CIA 1992, 7). Such funding could be delivered through diplomatic and humanitarian channels, or provided by deployed military troops (Tarnoff and Lawson 2018). The foreign intervention may also consciously attempt to improve the local economy and raise civilian wealth, by encouraging investment in local business or directly

engaging in civilian-focused cash transfer and micro-lending programs. 7 _{Further, assistance} could be given to civilians through their local community leaders in order to empower these leaders and improve their legitimacy in the eyes of the population. Civilians may grow to trust these leaders as interveners support their ability to deliver benefits.

An intervener may provide assistance tied to conditionality terms that are designed to alter conflict actor behavior. It may provide in-kind resources such as humanitarian food

deliveries to a militant group with the condition that the aid be passed on to a civilian population. This would allow the group to also provide civilians with benefits in order to win their support. Benefits may also be provided to civilians directly under the condition that they cease their support of militants. Finally, the intervention may engage in economic coercion of militant groups by directly cutting off their external sources of income to reduce their strength. They may impose sanctions, block transportation routes, or destroy production assets such as oil rigs, agricultural fields, or factories.

I can also model the presence of business activity in a conflict environment, and its mitigating effect on violence outcomes during each of the five different intervention strategies. Countries may continue to engage in business such as the drilling of oil or the mining of other natural resources during a civil conflict, effectively continuing to funnel wealth to a certain number of civilians. A militant group may benefit from this continued activity by extorting from the civilians who are earning money. Additional wealth may also increase civilians’ ability to turn against a group and defend themselves, as they may now be able to obtain weapons. I can model these conditions simply by providing additional, high levels of income to a subset of civilians and observing any mediating effect on the effects of each strategy.

Military Force Tools

The clearest use of military force exercised during a foreign intervention is through physical attacks on militant groups. Successful attacks erode the strength of the target group in order to limit their ability to control territory and expand into new geographic areas. An intervener may use force in ground combat operations, or to attack groups through more physically-distanced bombing campaigns. It may also, through the use of Special Operations, kill or detain specific civilians to punish their support for militants. Attacks in this case might only occur if the civilian is considered to be an active member of the group, but it may often be difficult to differentiate between civilians and combatants. The intervention may also punish support by providing training and funding to local law enforcement authorities, who punish on their behalf.

Interveners may remove weapons from a conflict environment by blocking their delivery or confiscating them, in order to lessen the likelihood that fighting groups gain access to those weapons or that civilians gain the ability to militarize themselves. They may also provide

Military

Tool Examples

Attacking militants Direct combat, bombing campaigns Punishing support Creation or support of local law

enforcement, Special Operations attack or detainment

Weapons removal Disarmament programs, Special

Operations missions

Providing military training & assistance International Military Education and Training (IMET), Special Operations train and assist missions

Protection from punishment Ground patrols, creation or support of local law enforcement

protection to civilians. This may shield them from extortion, possibly cutting off another militant group’s source of funding, or it may physically protect them from militant punishment.

Addressing Local Grievances

As discussed in Chapter 1, some of the underlying issues that lead to grievances at the local level include poverty and a weak economy, a lack of adjudication of disputes or rule of law, poor government accountability or representation of local concerns, and inadequate service delivery. Naturally, these governance and economic issues may warrant primarily diplomatic or economic responses. While forceful military approaches such as the strengthening of security and policing institutions are often necessary and sometimes even a prerequisite for these less forceful

responses to occur, they do not directly address the underlying grievances that lead civilians to support or join militant groups in conflict.

Figure 10: Categories of Impacts of Foreign Policy Tools

Addressing Civilian Grievances Addressing Militants and Fighting (D) Negotiating disputes between

communities

(D) Negotiating agreements between militant groups

(D) Waging information campaigns against ideology

(E) Supporting militants income (D) Providing governance benefits for

militants to pass on

(E) Cutting off resources to militants (E) Increasing the wealth of civilians (M) Attacking militants

(E) Providing in-kind benefits to community leaders

(M) Punishing support (E) Providing in-kind benefits to

militants to pass on (M) Weapons removal

(E) Providing civilians with conditional benefits

(M) Providing military training & assistance

In order to distinguish between strategies that address grievances and those that do not, I divide the individual tools into categories as shown above in Figure 10. I denote diplomatic tools with a (D), economic with an (E), and military with an (M). It is important to note that while all of the tools that address civilian grievances are either diplomatic or economic, those addressing the militant level and conflict fighting are not all military tools. Therefore, simply testing the

differences between the three types would not fully capture the effects of addressing grievances.