Rethinking Foreign Military Interventions to Promote Human Rights: Evidence from Libya, Bahrain and Syria

Abstract

Foreign military intervention to promote democracy and human rights in the target states is a hotly debated issue. There are two camps of scholars who hold diametrically opposed views on the linkages between military interventions, democracy and human rights promotions. Scholars in the pro-intervention camp (see, for example, Brooks, 2012;Peceny, 1999;Perriello, 2012) vigorously argue that military interventions are necessary to unseat autocratic regimes, save the lives of people who aspire for democracy and promote human rights of the oppressed peoples. Interventions, according to them, are the best and most effective ways to democratize the authoritarian states and societies. The autocratic rulers would not otherwise budge and make way for democratic governance to ensure human rights. Murdie and Davis (2010) have examined this issue from a humanitarian peacekeeping operations viewpoint and arrived at similar conclusions. They argue that humanitarian peacekeeping interventions in states wracked by civil wars, though problematic, hold the potential to contribute to improvements in human rights conditions, and attempts to mediate between belligerent groups by humanitarian interveners might result in producing more respect for human rights.The anti-intervention camp (Bellin, 2004-05;de Mesquita and Downs, 2006;Gleditsch et al., 2007;Meernik et al., 2006), in contrast, rules out any positive connections between interventions and human rights and democracy promotions on the ground that third-party interventions are harmful to domestic reconciliation process and peace building in the target states. Military interventions, they hold, rarely contribute to the trajectory of

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