Interventionist or internationalist? Coercion, self-determination, and humanitarianism in Third World practice
| Published date | 01 June 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00471178211059493 |
| Author | Patrick Quinton-Brown |
| Date | 01 June 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178211059493
International Relations
2023, Vol. 37(2) 251 –273
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/00471178211059493
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Interventionist or
internationalist? Coercion,
self-determination, and
humanitarianism in Third
World practice
Patrick Quinton-Brown
National University of Singapore
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.
Keywords
Global South, humanitarian intervention, international society, self-determination, sovereignty,
Third World
Corresponding author:
Patrick Quinton-Brown, National University of Singapore, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent, #07-03 AS8, Singapore
119260, Singapore.
Email: aripdq@nus.edu.sg
1059493IRE0010.1177/00471178211059493International RelationsQuinton-Brown
research-article2021
Article
252 International Relations 37(2)
Introduction
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 entan-
glements of coercion, self-determination, and humanitarianism. The Angola case pro-
vides a significant illustration: at a 1991 rally in Matanzas, Nelson Mandela commended
revolutionary Cuba, whose ‘commitment to the systematic eradication of racism is
unparalleled’. Mandela was in his prison cell when he heard about Cuba’s 30,000 troops
dispatched to Angola in 1975. When apartheid was shielded by a Western coalition which
saw in Pretoria an anti-communist bastion, internationalists halted a South African march
toward Luanda, marking a decisive moment in the history of the continent and breaking
‘the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressors’.1
From one view the Cuban operation was a legitimate international act – in light of its
effects having to do with the prevention of large-scale human rights abuses and crimes
against humanity. In this sense Mandela might have been praising one of the most sig-
nificant humanitarian interventions of the 20th century. Yet Fidel Castro never did under-
stand his military operation as ‘intervention’, to say nothing of ‘humanitarian
intervention’. Nor did the Non-Aligned Movement. Why? Put differently, can there be a
distinction between coercive acts of internationalism (in this case, a particular sort of
revolutionist internationalism) and coercive acts of humanitarian intervention (typically
defined as dictatorial or coercive interference for the prevention of large-scale human
rights abuses)? Has there been? In reflecting on these questions, the article makes a com-
ment on the historical constitution of intervention in international society and on the
relationship of humanitarian coercion with the principles of state sovereignty, independ-
ence, and non-intervention in domestic affairs.
Previous writings on the normative development of intervention presuppose an under-
standing of what it means to intervene, definitively and everywhere: the focus is often
on, for instance, how far the society of states recognises the legitimacy of using force for
the prevention of large-scale human rights abuses.2 But what we need to know is what
‘intervention’ was, where, and when, including how particular internationalist traditions,
applied and institutionalised by Third World networks, relate to re-orderings of the con-
cept in global order. In doing so we can show that that the extent to which states have
converged on the use of force for humanitarian purposes is not interchangeable with the
extent to which states have converged on intervention. In actual practice, how far inter-
national society recognises the legitimacy of international humanitarian protection is not
equal to how far international society recognises an exception to the rules of sovereignty
and non-intervention.
Contemporary writing in this way neglects some of the most important and histori-
cally influential dimensions of intervention as a problem; practices of intervention in the
Cold War often drew on notions of self-determination, as well as norms of anti-colonial-
ism and anti-racism, in a context of solidarity among colonised and formerly colonised
nations. A number of related case studies and institutional developments provide a clear
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