Armed Intervention Criteria

Dunlap (2009) observes that although armed intervention can be very efficient in resolving conflicts, history has demonstrated that the success of such operation is sometimes very unpredictable.  It was successful during the world war II when the United States of America used it to aid bring down Hitler but on the contrary it led to a bitter defeat where the United States failed against Vietnam in an 8 year long Guerilla warfare. Ne could easily argue that the projected failure or success has no reason to do with the necessity of the action. There is a greater established probability of great loss of property, lives and ultimate defeat there making the decision of intervening forcibly to be approached in a reluctant manner. However Heinze (2006) observes that it should be noted here that reluctant does not translate to hesitant and therefore any has to be appropriately advised to institute the best set criteria that clearly defines  the suitable arena for armed  intervention so that the required action could take place immediately when need arises.

There are three different kinds of criteria that can be utilized to determine whether a country will engage in armed conflict intervention or not. The factors are: unilaterally, multilaterally when authorized by the united nation (UN) Security Council and lastly multilaterally by regional collective defense action. A unilateral criteria is utilized whenever one state is getting provoked by another state. Multilateral criteria can be used when one country moves into another country to stop crimes against humanity that are occurring there, for example if the United States of America moved to Kosovo to avert the genocide happening there.  The last option of multilaterally by regional collective defense action occurs when at least two countries/ nations collaborate to defend a particular region (Dunlap, 2009).

However, when the above criteria are used, thee are conflicts that are bound to occur.  A conflict could occur between unilateral self-defense and through a multilaterally when authorized by the UN Security Council. A conflict will come up when a given state or country is under an attack. The country may decide to go ahead and revenge on the offender. This could not be the wish of the UN Security Council as it may to handle the situation differently. This could be through a peaceful negotiation to prevent a war conflict (Heinze, 2006). The second case which is even worse is when both countries involved in a conflict are part of the UN. Surprisingly, this conflict is not great in case of humanitarian intervention due to its legitimacy. In accordance with Article III of the Legitimacy of Armed Humanitarian Intervention, The Jus ad Bellum is the right to use force in international relations. Necessary step/action can be truly defined through first establishing a uniform code of ethics to govern all states but there is a challenge that makes it virtually unachievable as there is a diversity of religion, cultures, ethics, and norms throughout the world’s population.

As the president of the United States of America, I will stick to fair play even if other states play unfairly. This is to mean that in all my intervention, I will want to protect the ethics that is correct to live by. This has a meaning that that any decision to employ armed intervention should be subject to America’s established ethics. For this reason I will use Declaration of Independence to establish the determining factors for armed intervention. My determining factors will therefore be denial of life, property or liberty, for all irrespective of being an American citizen or an underrepresented population. For this matter, if an invading force attacks the borders of our country, this could call for armed intervention (Haass, 2003). The intervention would also include defense of Americans abroad. Finally, armed conflict intervention could be essential to help population that has been denied either one or more of the above mentioned rights to extend of atrocities being committed.

However there are number of practical rationales for use of armed intervention. One of the most appropriate ways is to use it as self-defense both in the united states of America or any other country. This includes defense from any from of attack be it terrorism or any other attack. The intervention could also be used to intervene in humanitarian crisis however there should be a just cause up on which to pursue armed intervention on humanitarian grounds such mass slaughter or genocide (Haass, 2003)