Explaining Middle Power Military Intervention: Australia’s Use of Force in Maritime Southeast Asia and the South Pacific
Why do middle powers use military force to intervene in external conflicts despite the costs and risk? While there is no shortage of literature on the causes of military intervention, most theories were derived from – and seek to explain – great power behavior. Given differences between great power...
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| Format: | Thesis |
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2023
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/152711 |
| _version_ | 1811069275816853504 |
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| author | Ackert, Nicholas Wolf |
| author2 | Fravel, M. Taylor |
| author_facet | Fravel, M. Taylor Ackert, Nicholas Wolf |
| author_sort | Ackert, Nicholas Wolf |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Why do middle powers use military force to intervene in external conflicts despite the costs and risk? While there is no shortage of literature on the causes of military intervention, most theories were derived from – and seek to explain – great power behavior. Given differences between great power and middle power material capabilities and interests, there are good reasons to anticipate that the logics of great power and middle power military intervention may not be the same.
Understanding why middle powers use force to intervene in some external conflicts but not others is important. While the majority of military interventions are led by great powers, middle powers like Australia and South Africa have led a number of large and costly operations. Moreover, throughout the past decade, middle powers have exercised increasingly assertive and consequential efforts to either challenge or strengthen the normative, economic, and alliance-related elements of the current international order. Therefore, it behooves academics and policymakers to evaluate how middle powers frame their interests and to better understand the conditions under which they implement costly and risky policies – including the use of force – to pursue them.
This thesis tests four competing theories of military intervention across a complete universe of post-Cold War cases associated with Australia, a state that most closely resembles the middle power ideal. Those theories are: (1) Military Intervention as Threat Response, (2) Military Intervention as a Socialized Behavior, (3) Military Intervention as Greed, and (4) Military Intervention as the Foreign Imposition of Domestic Institutions. I conclude that the theory of Military Intervention as a Socialized Behavior – which emphasizes the role of ideational incentives and defensive intentions – explains the greatest amount of variation in Australia’s behavior.
I find that Australia intervened primarily to protect its self-image and status as a guarantor of regional security, which it had been socialized into adopting through over sixty years of security cooperation with the United States and its Pacific Island neighbors. Notably, Canberra intervened in East Timor, Papua New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands, where the outbreaks of violence were perceived as a direct consequence of Australia’s colonial and neocolonial behaviors. However, it did not intervene in Fiji, where there was no expectation that Canberra would act because the country was not labeled as a failed state and Australia had not been blamed for the unrest there. Other goals, such as deterring foreign interference and preventing the externalities of adjacent state collapse, had less influence than presumed.
In the bigger picture, this thesis offers several contributions to the empirical and theoretical literature on military intervention and foreign policy. First, I develop an original framework for categorizing existing explanations about military intervention which facilitates easier – and replicable – comparison and testing of extant theories. Second, I demonstrate that, based on Australia's experiences, middle powers use force for reasons that differ from their great power counterparts. Thus, this project is a rejoinder to those who claim that middle powers are not differentiable from other non-great power states. Finally, I illustrate the inherent fragility of the middle power identity and reveal how easily it can be threatened by external shocks.
Three implications, which are based largely on the Australian experience, follow. First, we should question the mainstream argument that military intervention cannot be explained by ideas and images. As states weigh the costs and benefits of intervening, potential gains and losses can refer to intersubjectively understood social facts – such as self-image, status, and credibility – as much as wealth and physical safety. Second, middle powers may be more likely to take costlier and riskier actions when their self-image and status are at stake. Finally, middle powers may find themselves caught in self-defeating cycles of intervention. The more a middle power intervenes to protect its self-image and status as a purveyor of regional security, the more that identity will solidify in its own mind and in the minds of other states, encouraging future interventions. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T08:08:31Z |
| format | Thesis |
| id | mit-1721.1/152711 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T08:08:31Z |
| publishDate | 2023 |
| publisher | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1527112023-11-03T04:08:18Z Explaining Middle Power Military Intervention: Australia’s Use of Force in Maritime Southeast Asia and the South Pacific Ackert, Nicholas Wolf Fravel, M. Taylor Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science Why do middle powers use military force to intervene in external conflicts despite the costs and risk? While there is no shortage of literature on the causes of military intervention, most theories were derived from – and seek to explain – great power behavior. Given differences between great power and middle power material capabilities and interests, there are good reasons to anticipate that the logics of great power and middle power military intervention may not be the same. Understanding why middle powers use force to intervene in some external conflicts but not others is important. While the majority of military interventions are led by great powers, middle powers like Australia and South Africa have led a number of large and costly operations. Moreover, throughout the past decade, middle powers have exercised increasingly assertive and consequential efforts to either challenge or strengthen the normative, economic, and alliance-related elements of the current international order. Therefore, it behooves academics and policymakers to evaluate how middle powers frame their interests and to better understand the conditions under which they implement costly and risky policies – including the use of force – to pursue them. This thesis tests four competing theories of military intervention across a complete universe of post-Cold War cases associated with Australia, a state that most closely resembles the middle power ideal. Those theories are: (1) Military Intervention as Threat Response, (2) Military Intervention as a Socialized Behavior, (3) Military Intervention as Greed, and (4) Military Intervention as the Foreign Imposition of Domestic Institutions. I conclude that the theory of Military Intervention as a Socialized Behavior – which emphasizes the role of ideational incentives and defensive intentions – explains the greatest amount of variation in Australia’s behavior. I find that Australia intervened primarily to protect its self-image and status as a guarantor of regional security, which it had been socialized into adopting through over sixty years of security cooperation with the United States and its Pacific Island neighbors. Notably, Canberra intervened in East Timor, Papua New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands, where the outbreaks of violence were perceived as a direct consequence of Australia’s colonial and neocolonial behaviors. However, it did not intervene in Fiji, where there was no expectation that Canberra would act because the country was not labeled as a failed state and Australia had not been blamed for the unrest there. Other goals, such as deterring foreign interference and preventing the externalities of adjacent state collapse, had less influence than presumed. In the bigger picture, this thesis offers several contributions to the empirical and theoretical literature on military intervention and foreign policy. First, I develop an original framework for categorizing existing explanations about military intervention which facilitates easier – and replicable – comparison and testing of extant theories. Second, I demonstrate that, based on Australia's experiences, middle powers use force for reasons that differ from their great power counterparts. Thus, this project is a rejoinder to those who claim that middle powers are not differentiable from other non-great power states. Finally, I illustrate the inherent fragility of the middle power identity and reveal how easily it can be threatened by external shocks. Three implications, which are based largely on the Australian experience, follow. First, we should question the mainstream argument that military intervention cannot be explained by ideas and images. As states weigh the costs and benefits of intervening, potential gains and losses can refer to intersubjectively understood social facts – such as self-image, status, and credibility – as much as wealth and physical safety. Second, middle powers may be more likely to take costlier and riskier actions when their self-image and status are at stake. Finally, middle powers may find themselves caught in self-defeating cycles of intervention. The more a middle power intervenes to protect its self-image and status as a purveyor of regional security, the more that identity will solidify in its own mind and in the minds of other states, encouraging future interventions. S.M. 2023-11-02T20:10:12Z 2023-11-02T20:10:12Z 2023-09 2023-10-24T19:59:49.544Z Thesis https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/152711 Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) Copyright retained by author(s) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| spellingShingle | Ackert, Nicholas Wolf Explaining Middle Power Military Intervention: Australia’s Use of Force in Maritime Southeast Asia and the South Pacific |
| title | Explaining Middle Power Military Intervention: Australia’s Use of Force in Maritime Southeast Asia and the South Pacific |
| title_full | Explaining Middle Power Military Intervention: Australia’s Use of Force in Maritime Southeast Asia and the South Pacific |
| title_fullStr | Explaining Middle Power Military Intervention: Australia’s Use of Force in Maritime Southeast Asia and the South Pacific |
| title_full_unstemmed | Explaining Middle Power Military Intervention: Australia’s Use of Force in Maritime Southeast Asia and the South Pacific |
| title_short | Explaining Middle Power Military Intervention: Australia’s Use of Force in Maritime Southeast Asia and the South Pacific |
| title_sort | explaining middle power military intervention australia s use of force in maritime southeast asia and the south pacific |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/152711 |
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