Wave blockers: When governments use foreign military interventions to offset transnational political currents

ABSTRACT

Why do governments use interventions to shape the internal political composition of other states? Many explanations focus on intervention’s strategic utility, which can include a wider sphere of influence and enhanced state security. Alternatively, this article argues that how regimes view the internal political conditions of other states in relation to their own political spheres dictates the utility that they assign to intervention. Drawing on archival content related to Saudi Arabia’s intervention in the North Yemen Civil War (1962–1967), the article tests this political-threat explanation of intervention against the strategic-threat alternative.

KEYWORDS:

• Threat perception
• military intervention
• regimes
• political contagion
• political survival

Acknowledgments

Earlier versions of this article received valuable feedback at the IS-ISSS 2021 Annual Conference at Indiana University and a 2021 academic workshop at American University organized by the Center for Security, Innovation, and New Technology with the Political Violence and Security Research Cluster.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Karimov Interviewed on Socioeconomic, ‘Foreign Policies’, Moscow PRAVDA, August 5, 1993. FBIS Daily Report.

² Stuart Horsman, ‘Uzbekistan’s Involvement in the Tajik Civil War 1992–1997: Domestic Considerations’, Central Asian Survey 18, no. 1 (1999), 43.

³ Stuart Horsman, ‘Uzbekistan’s Involvement in the Tajik Civil War 1992–1997: Domestic Considerations’, Central Asian Survey 18, no. 1 (1999), 43; Monika Shepherd, ‘The Effects of Russian and Uzbek Intervention in the Tajik Civil War’, The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 23, no. 3 (1996), 304.

⁴ John Stuart Mill, ‘A Few Words on Non-Intervention’, New England Review 27, no. 3 (reissued 2006 1859), 261.

⁵ Martha Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs About the Use of Force (Ithaca: Cornell I=UP 2003), 118; John M. Owen, ‘The Foreign Imposition of Domestic Institutions’, International Organization 56, no. 2 (2002): 377; John M. Owen, The Clash of Ideas in World Politics: Transnational Networks, States, and Regime Change, 1510–2010 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 45.

⁶ Patrick M. Regan, ‘Third-Party Interventions and the Duration of Intrastate Conflicts’, The Journal of Conflict Resolution 46, no. 1 (2002): 55.

⁷ Frederic S. Pearson and Robert A. Baumann, ‘International Military Intervention, 1946–1988’, Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, no. 6035, Ann Arbor, MI (1993), 1.

⁸ Elizabeth N. Saunders, ‘Transformative Choices: Leaders and the Origins of Intervention Strategy’, International Security 34, no. 2 (2009), 123.

⁹ Ibid., 125.

¹⁰ John M. Owen, ‘The Foreign Imposition of Domestic Institutions’, International Organization 56, no. 2 (2002), 376; Downes and O’Rourke’s idea of ‘institutional foreign imposed regime change’ is similar. See ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want: Why Foreign-Imposed Regime Change Seldom Improves Interstate Relations’, International Security 41, no. 2 (October 2016), 45.

¹¹ Owen, ‘The Foreign Imposition of Domestic Institutions’, 391; Martha Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs About the Use of Force (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 117.

¹² Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs About the Use of Force, 117.

¹³ Hans J. Morgenthau, ‘To Intervene or Not to Intervene’, Foreign Affairs 45, no. 3 (1967), 425–436; Hedley Bull, Intervention in World Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs About the Use of Force.

¹⁴ Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge University Press, 1981), 23; Owen, ‘The Foreign Imposition of Domestic Institutions’, 375; Bull, Intervention in World Politics, 19.

¹⁵ Elizabeth N. Saunders, Leaders at War: How Presidents Shape Military Interventions (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011), 6.

¹⁶ Bull, Intervention in World Politics.

¹⁷ Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs About the Use of Force.

¹⁸ John M. Owen, The Clash of Ideas in World Politics: Transnational Networks, States, and Regime Change, 1510–2010 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).

¹⁹ Andrew Bennett, Condemned to Repetition? The Rise, Fall, and Reprise of Soviet-Russian Military Interventionism, 1973–1996 (Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 1999).

²⁰ This ‘political-threat’ approach is particularly useful for explaining why middle powers ruled by authoritarian regimes militarily intervene in the affairs of neighboring states.

²¹ Chad E. Nelson, Revolutionary Contagion and International Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022); Curtis R. Ryan, Jordan and the Arab Uprisings: Regime Survival and Politics Beyond the State (Columbia University Press, 2018); Cinzia Bianco, ‘Gulf Security After 2011: A Threat Analysis’, Middle East Policy 25, no. 2 (2018).

²² Idean Salehyan, Rebels without Borders, Rebels without Borders (Cornell University Press, 2011); Donatella Della Porta et al., Globalization From Below: Transnational Activists and Protest Networks (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2006); Marianne Kneuer and Thomas Demmelhuber, ‘Gravity Centres of Authoritarian Rule: A Conceptual Approach’, Democratization 23, no. 5 (28 July 2016), 775–796.

²³ Janice Gross Stein, Threat Perception in International Relations (Oxford University Press, 2013); Steven R. David, ‘Explaining Third World Alignment’, World Politics 43, no. 2 (January 1991), 233–256.

²⁴ Erika Forsberg, ‘Diffusion in the Study of Civil Wars: A Cautionary Tale’, International Studies Review 16, no. 2 (2014), 189.

²⁵ Mark L. Haas, The Ideological Origins of Great Power Politics, 1789–1989 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), 6.

²⁶ Mark R. Beissinger, Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State (Cambridge University Press, 2002).

²⁷ Valerie Bunce and Sharon Wolchik, ‘A Regional Tradition: The Diffusion of the Democratic Change under Communism and Postcommunism’, in Democracy and Authoritarianism in the Postcommunist World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 377.

²⁸ Bianco, ‘Gulf Security After 2011: A Threat Analysis’, 29.

²⁹ Chad E. Nelson, Revolutionary Contagion and International Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), 10.

³⁰ Steven Heydemann, ‘Upgrading Authoritarianism in the Arab World’, Analysis Paper, The Saban Center for Middle East Policy at The Brookings Institution, no. 13 (October 2007), 7.

³¹ Etel Solingen, ‘Of Dominoes and Firewalls: The Domestic, Regional, and Global Politics of International Diffusion’, International Studies Quarterly 56, no. 4 (December 2012), 633.

³² Shepherd, ‘The Effects of Russian and Uzbek Intervention in the Tajik Civil War’, 304.

³³ Curtis R. Ryan, ‘Jordanian Foreign Policy and the Arab Spring’, Middle East Policy 21, no. 1 (March 2014), 144–153.

³⁴ May Darwich, ‘Creating the Enemy, Constructing the Threat: The Diffusion of Repression Against the Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East’, Democratization 24, no. 7 (10 November 2017), 1289–1306.

³⁵ Owen, ‘The Foreign Imposition of Domestic Institutions’, 405.

³⁶ Ibid., 385.

³⁷ Hans J. Morgenthau, ‘To Intervene or Not to Intervene’, Foreign Affairs 45, no. 3 (1967), 427.

³⁸ Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 40.

³⁹ Chad E. Nelson, ‘Revolution and War: Saddam’s Decision to Invade Iran’, The Middle East Journal 72, no. 2 (April 1, 2018), 246–266; Chad E. Nelson, Revolutionary Contagion and International Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022); Gregory F. Gause, ‘Balancing What? Threat Perception and Alliance Choice in the Gulf’, Security Studies 13, no. 2 (30 December 2003)

⁴⁰ Chad E. Nelson, Revolutionary Contagion and International Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), 16.

⁴¹ While Nelson examines how fear of contagion can trigger counter-revolutionary foreign military campaigns, foreign military intervention is not the project’s explicit outcome of interest.

⁴² Owen, The Clash of Ideas in World Politics: Transnational Networks, States, and Regime Change, 1510–2010, 45.

⁴³ Ibid.

⁴⁴ Lawrence Rubin, Islam in the Balance: Ideational Threats in Arab Politics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014), 19.

⁴⁵ Ibid, 17.

⁴⁶ Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2005), 76.

⁴⁷ See Michael Brecher and Jonathan Wilkenfeld, A Study of Crisis (University of Michigan Press, 1997), 324.

⁴⁸ Bruce Riedel, Jordan and America: An Enduring Friendship (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2021), 48.

⁴⁹ Dana Adams Schmidt, Yemen: The Unknown War (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1968).

⁵⁰ Avi Shlaim, Lion of Jordan: The Life of King Hussein in War and Peace (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2009), 190.

⁵¹ Malcolm H. Kerr, The Arab Cold War: Gamal ‘Abd al-Nasir and His Rivals, 1958–1970, Third Edition (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), 97.

⁵² The formal title for the Yemeni monarch is ‘King of the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen’. The Yemeni King is also referred to as the ‘Imam’, which means leader in Arabic.

⁵³ For a summary of why Egypt intervened in North Yemen, see Jesse Ferris, Nasser’s Gamble: How Intervention in Yemen Cause the Six-Day War and the Decline of Egyptian Power (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 69.

⁵⁴ Anthony H. Cordesman, The Gulf and The Search For Strategic Stability: Saudi Arabia, The Military Balance In The Gulf, And Trends In The Arab-Israeli Military Balance (Avalon Publishing, 1984); Walt, The Origins of Alliances; Malcolm H. Kerr, A Study of Ideology in Politics (London: Oxford University Press, 1965).

⁵⁵ Abir, Saudi Arabia: Government, Society and the Gulf Crisis, 40.

⁵⁶ Ibid., 42.

⁵⁷ Stephanie Cronin, ‘Tribes, Coups and Princes: Building a Modern Army in Saudi Arabia’, Middle Eastern Studies 49, no. 1 (January 2013), 17.

⁵⁸ Bsheer, Archive Wars, 66.

⁵⁹ Ibid., 65.

⁶⁰ Bsheer, Archive Wars.

⁶¹ Telegram A.R. Walmsley, Recent Developments in Saudi Arabia, September 5, 1962, Arabian Department, FO 371.163008.

⁶² De Gaury, Faisal: King of Saudi Arabia, 104.

⁶³ Ibid., 106.

⁶⁴ Abir, Saudi Arabia: Government, Society and the Gulf Crisis, 40.

⁶⁵ Toby Matthiesen, ‘Migration, Minorities, and Radical Networks’, International Review of Social History 59, no. 3 (2014), 490.

⁶⁶ Michael Edward Dobe, A Long Slow Tutelage in Western Ways of Work: Industrial Education and the Containment of Nationalism in Anglo-Iranian and ARAMCO, 1923–1963 (New Brunswick: Doctoral Dissertation, Rutgers University, 2008), 200–207.

⁶⁷ Ibid., 207. The author sources this quote from Robert King Hall, Report on Aramco’s Education and Training Program (Confidential), n.d., Robert King Hall Reports Folder, Box 20, HRS Papers.

⁶⁸ Joseph Mann, ‘King Faisal and the Challenge of Nasser’s Revolutionary Ideology’, Middle Eastern Studies 48, no. 5 (20012), 54.

⁶⁹ O’Ballance, The War in Yemen, 88.

⁷⁰ Telegram from the Department of State to the Embassy in Saudi Arabia, November 7, 1962, FRUS, 1961–1963, Vol. 18, Doc. 91.

⁷¹ Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, ‘Faysal Yu’aqad Mutamir Sahafiyan Fil Riyad [Faisal Holds Press Conference in Riyadh]’ (Umm al-Qura Issue 1944, 9 November 1962).

⁷² Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, ‘Bayan Faysal Lil Shaab Al-Saudiya Hawl Irlan al-Taabiya al-Ama Lil-Difa’a Ayn al-Watan Did al-Irdadat Masriya [Speech by Faysal to a Million Onlookers in the Eastern Region Condemning Egyptian Aggression]’ (Umm al-Qura Issue 1953, 11 January 1963).

⁷³ National Photographic Interpretation Center: Mission 4037, September 18, 1967, Approved for release 2009/03/20. While this aerial photography is from later in the war rather than at its outset, it confirms the role of the Saudi base at Najran in supporting the royalist counter-revolution.

⁷⁴ Tatawirat Al-Alaqat al-Yemeniya al-Saudiya, 1900–1970 [Developments in Yemeni and Saudi Relations, 1900–1970] (Damascus: Dar Musisat Raslan [Raslan Publish House], 2011), 265.

⁷⁵ Schmidt, Yemen: The Unknown War, 124.

⁷⁶ Andrew Bennett and Jeffrey T. Checkel, Process Tracing: From Metaphor to Analytic Tool (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 7.

⁷⁷ Matthew Evangelista, ‘Explaining the Cold War’s End’, in Process Tracing: From Metaphor to Analytic Tool, ed. Andrew Bennett and Jeffrey T. Checkel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 153–185; Nina Tannenwald, ‘The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Normative Basis of Nuclear Non-Use’, International Organization 53, no. 3 (1999), 433–468.

⁷⁸ Saeed M. Badeeb, The Saudi-Egyptian Conflict over North Yemen, 1962–1970 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1986), 57.

⁷⁹ Ibid.

⁸⁰ Al-Saud, ‘Faysal Yu’aqad Mutamir Sahafiyan Fil Riyad [Faisal Holds Press Conference in Riyadh]’.

⁸¹ Telegram from the Embassy in Saudi Arabia to the Department of State, November 19, 1962, FRUS, 1961–1963, Vol. 18, Doc. 101.

⁸² Gerald De Gaury, Faisal: King of Saudi Arabia (Louisville: Fons Vitae, 2007), 91.

⁸³ Richard Dekmejian, ‘The Liberal Impulse in Saudi Arabia’, Middle East Journal 57, no. 3 (2003): 402.

⁸⁴ Rosie Bsheer, ‘A Counter-Revolutionary State: Popular Movements and the Making of Saudi Arabia’, Past & Present 238, no. 1 (1 February 2018), 252.

⁸⁵ Ibid., 251–252.

⁸⁶ ‘Saud Stripped of Power; Faisal Takes Full Control (Published 1964)’, The New York Times, March 29, 1964, sec. Archives, accessed 13 November 2020.

⁸⁷ De Gaury, Faisal: King of Saudi Arabia, 127.

⁸⁸ Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, ‘Bayan Faysal Lil Shaab Al-Saudiya Hawl Irlan al-Taabiya al-Ama Lil-Difa Ayn al-Watan Didal-Irdadat Masriya [Speech by Faysal to a Million Onlookers in the Easter Region Condemning Egyptian Aggression]’ (Umm al-Qura Issue 1953, 11 January 1963).

⁸⁹ Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, ‘Faysal Fee Mutamir Sahafi Aqdah Fee Beyrout [Faysal at Beirut Press Conference]’ (Umm al-Qura Issue 1942, 26 October 1962), http://www.moqatel.com/openshare/Wthaek/Khotob/Khotub13/index.htm.

⁹⁰ Current Intelligence Weekly Review, March 15, 1963, Approved for release 1999/12.

⁹¹ Sarah Yizraeli, The Remaking of Saudi Arabia (Tel Aviv University: The Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, 1997), 156.

⁹² Cronin, ‘Tribes, Coups and Princes’, 17.

⁹³ Current Intelligence Weekly Review, March 15, 1963, Approved for release 1999/12.

⁹⁴ R.S. Crawford, Situation in Saudi Arabia, July 8, 1964, Arabian Department, FO 371.174673 (p. 14), Arabian Gulf Digital Archive, National Archives of the United Arab Emirates.

⁹⁵ Loyalist Yemenis Battle Soviet-Armed Nasser Forces, ABC Radio: Washington on Report, March 8, 1966, Radio-TV Monitoring Inc. Central Intelligence Agency, CIA-RDP75-00149R000200300117-1.

⁹⁶ Nasser’s Problems and Prospects in Yemen, Central Intelligence Agency, Office of National Estimates, February 18, 1965, LBJ Library Case No. 90–258: Document 41.

⁹⁷ Telegram from the Department of State to the Embassy in Saudi Arabia, 7 November 1962, FRUS, 1961–1963, Vol. 18, Doc. 91.

⁹⁸ Parker T. Hart, Saudi Arabia and the United States (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 173.

⁹⁹ Hart, Saudi Arabia and the United States, 158.

¹⁰⁰ Ibid., 185.

¹⁰¹ Ibid., 186.

¹⁰² Ali, Al-Alaqat Saudiya-Yeminiya, 1932–1962 [Saudi-Yemeni Relations], 98.

¹⁰³ BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, October 3, 1962.

¹⁰⁴ Telegram from the Department of State to the Embassy in the United Kingdom, February 12, 1963, FRUS, 1961–1963, Vol. 18, Doc. 156.

¹⁰⁵ ‘Memorandum from Robert W. Komer of the National Security Council Staff to President Kennedy’, October 4, 1962, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Vol. 18, Doc. 68.

¹⁰⁶ De Gaury, Faisal: King of Saudi Arabia, 112.

¹⁰⁷ Memorandum of Conversation, September 27, 1962, FRUS, 1961–1963, Vol. 18, Doc. 58.

¹⁰⁸ Bennett, Condemned to Repetition?, 25.

¹⁰⁹ Memorandum from the Department of State Executive Secretary (Brubeck) to the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy), February 24, 1963, FRUS, 1961–1963, Vol. 18, Doc. 163.

¹¹⁰ Jacob D. Kathman, ‘Civil War Contagion and Neighboring Interventions’, International Studies Quarterly 54, no. 4 (2010), 1004.

¹¹¹ UN General Assembly, 18^th Sess. 1235^th Plenary Meeting, UN Doc. A/PV.1235 (Oct. 9, 1963), available from http://undocs.org/en/A/PV.1235.

¹¹² What Are the Soviets up to in Yemen? December 19, 1967, Central Intelligence Agency, CIA-RDP79R00904A001300050007-8.

¹¹³ Ibid.

¹¹⁴ Ferris, Nasser’s Gamble: How Intervention in Yemen Cause the Six-Day War and the Decline of Egyptian Power, 153.

¹¹⁵ Memorandum of Conversation: Secretary’s Delegation to the Seventeenth Session of the United Nations General Assembly, September 27, 1962, FRUS, 1961–1963, Vol. 18, Doc. 58.

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¹¹⁷ Toby Matthiesen, ‘A “Saudi Spring?”: The Shi’a Protest Movement in the Eastern Province 2011–2012’, Middle East Journal 66, no. 4 (2012), 630–631.

¹¹⁸ Simone Henderson, ‘Bahrain’s Crisis: Saudi Forces Intervene’, The Washington Institute, March 15, 2011, https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/bahrains-crisis-saudi-forces-intervene.

¹¹⁹ S. Neil MacFarlane, ‘Africa’s Decaying Security System and the Rise of Intervention’, International Security 8, no. 4 (1984), 142.

¹²⁰ Michael Mayer, ‘Trigger Happy: The Foundations of US Military Interventions’, Journal of Strategic Studies 42, no. 2 (23 February 2019), 263.

¹²¹ Bruce Bueno de Mesquita et al., ‘An Institutional Explanation of the Democratic Peace’, The American Political Science Review 93, no. 4 (1999), 793.

¹²² Patrick M. Regan, ‘Third-Party Interventions and the Duration of Intrastate Conflicts’, The Journal of Conflict Resolution 46, no. 1 (2002), 55.

¹²³ Memorandum from the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs (Talbot) to Secretary of State Rusk, FRUS, 1961–1963, Vol. 18, Doc. 76.

¹²⁴ Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer, Unclear Physics: Why Iraq and Libya Failed to Build Nuclear Weapons, 1st ed. (Cornell University Press, 2016), https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt1d2dndd.

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¹²⁸ Regan, ‘Third-Party Interventions and the Duration of Intrastate Conflicts’, 55.

¹²⁹ Mark Coversino, Joan Johnson-Freese, and Ryan Evans, ‘Airmen, Sailors, and the Schoolhouse’, War on the Rocks Podcast, 24 August 2020, http://warontherocks.com/2020/08/airmen-sailors-and-the-schoolhouse/.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the American University; Cosmos Club Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Matthew N. Timmerman

Matthew N. Timmerman received his doctorate in International Relations from American University’s School of International Service in 2022. This article stems from his dissertation research at American University.