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Civil War and Intervention in International Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2009

J.H. Leurdijk
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Extract

Intervention is an almost daily phenomenon of international politics. Both for practitioners of international law and for students of international relations it is a challenging theoretical problem, since the occurrence of intervention is contrary to a number of hypotheses assumed in the theoretical analysis of international problems. In its broadest sense the concept of intervention refers to any act that invades the theoretical sphere of action of States which — in so far as a spatial conception of things can have any relevance in this context — is confined to relations between States and in no way affects the intra-state territory of other States. The traditional model or paradigm which practitioners of both sciences have long adopted as the starting point of their analysis is derived from an image of international politics as relations between States, whereby each individual State has exclusive competence for the political process within its frontiers. Intervention means externally initiated acts which imply an infringement of that exclusive competence and which are therefore inadmissible from a normative and legal point of view. So interpreted, however, the intervention concept covers a whole range of activities which form a substantial part of the day-to-day practice of international politics and, consequently, also constitute an intellectual challenge for theoreticians. If non-intervention was the norm, interventions would be presumed to be the exception:

“The weight of opinion was that they constituted exceptions to the principle of non-intervention, that they did not preponderate to the extent of converting that principle from the rule to the exception”.

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Articles
Information
Netherlands International Law Review , Volume 24 , Issue 1-2 , May 1977 , pp. 143 - 159
Copyright
Copyright © T.M.C. Asser Press 1977

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References

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10. Compare, however, the discussion on this question between Lillich and Brownlie, the latter being unwilling to accept humanitarian intervention as an exception to the general principle of non-intervention: Brownlie, Ian, “Humanitarian Intervention”Google Scholar and Lillich, Richard B., “Humanitarian Intervention: A Reply to Ian Brownlie and a Plea for Constructive Alternatives”, in Law and Civil War in the Modern World, pp. 217–228 and 229–251Google Scholar, respectively. Bowett takes the view that an exception of this kind can exist only as regards the nationals of the intervening State, since that action may then be based on the right of self-defence, but not as regards nationals of other countries, Bowett, Derek W., “The Interrelation of Theories of Intervention and Self-Defense”, in Law and Civil War in the Modern World, pp. 38–50.Google Scholar

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