the widespread clan conflicts from within, thus requiring the action of a neutral, international force such as the UN to bring aid to the civilians. The controversy behind the UN intervention lies with the practise of further military activities by the US forces, not the theoretical framework of the decision to intervene. Centred around ideas of identity and how one state’s perception of another manifests the ‘norm’ in international relations, constructivists such as Martha Finnermore argue that Somalia represents a conflict in which the US, as the principle intervener, had little to no strategic or economic gains to be made. 303 This is supported by Luke Glanville, leading to the belief that “the decision to intervene was motivated by genuine humanitarian concern for the suffering Somalis as much as any other factor.” 304 Evidently the constructivist approach, along with the various other primary theoretical frameworks interpret the issues of security and state insecurity in contrasting ways, ultimately justifying the legitimacy of humanitarian military interventions in their own ways. The opposition regarding the use of force is largely the responsibility of controversial methods employed by UN forces to obtain peace, these will be analysed within the following chapter. Nevertheless, the theoretical framework surrounding the often necessary use of force to carry out the moral responsibility to protect, as Ajaj argues, has never enjoyed as much legitimacy as it does today. 305
4. Motives and Means of a Successful Intervention 4.1 Motives behind a humanitarian military intervention
303 Martha Finnemore, ‘International Norm Dynamics and Political Change’, International Organization, 52(4), (1998), pp. 887-917. 304 Luke Glanville, ‘Somalia Reconsidered: An Examination of the Norm of Humanitarian Intervention’, International Affairs , 77(1), (2001), pp. 113-128. 305 Ahmad Ajaj, ‘Humanitarian Intervention: Second Reading of the Charter of the United Nations’, Arab Law Quarterly , 7(4), (1993), pp. 215-236.
127
Made with FlippingBook HTML5