Towards a Post-Interventionist Era? The Military Intervention against the Islamic State

Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2016 im Fachbereich Politik - Internationale Politik - Allgemeines und Theorien, Note: 1.7, Freie Universität Berlin, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: Has the world of international intervention come to a turning point? Many observers claim that the interventions in Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003) have left Western societies tired and exhausted. Casualties and considerable material costs in combination with sobering results are said to have led to a growing uneasiness in Western societies when it comes to sending troops abroad. Against this background the hypothesis is put forward that future interventions will be harder to legitimize and are likely to differ in their character. Academia is debating this development vividly. The 2012 conference of the Bundeswehr Institute for Social Science in Berlin for instance brought up the issue using the title ¿The Armed Forces: Towards a Post-Interventionist Era?¿.

How will future interventions look like? Some point at the 2011 NATO-led military campaign in Libya, which differed from earlier missions in several aspects, and argue it might herald a new type of intervention. But there might be more change in the world of international intervention. Scholars like David Chandler argue that the Libyan case illustrates a shift towards a post-interventionist discourse. This discourse, Chandler claims, evolves around the paradigm of resilience and moves away from liberal internationalist claims of Western securing or sovereign agency towards a concern with empowering those held to be vulnerable. The conflict between sovereignty and intervention becomes discursively dissolved this way.