Twenty-First Century Military Multilateralism: “Messy” and With Unintended Consequences

Abstract

The current century has witnessed several high-profile Western military interventions in developing countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, and Mali/West Africa are well-known examples. All three were initiated unilaterally by the US or France but were soon supplemented with multilateral missions which operated in parallel with the unilateral intervention force, giving them a “messy” appearance. In the three cases, the foreign policy decision-makers in the US and France reacted mainly to domestic stimuli, most evidently in the case of the US, where revenge for 9/11 was a strong motive. Like-minded partners in NATO and troops from developing countries shared the burdens of the US and France and gave legitimacy to the military interventions. The consequences of the interventions were not that they contributed to stability. Rather they supported the incumbent elites, as they were able to avoid launching economic and political reform. The lack of reform undermined the prospects for stability.

Developing Countries and the Crisis of the Liberal International Order

“…Knio (2022) looks at the link between neoliberalism and liberal internationalism and argues that the current crisis of the international order reflects an inability to engage with the deeper structures contained within that link. Olsen (2022) focuses on multilateral attempts to promote stability in developing countries and concludes that the mixing of unilateral and multilateral interventions tends to produce messy results. Madrueño and Silberberger (2022) study how inefficiencies in existing international policies influence illicit money flows and impact the Global South.…”