More languages
More actions
Military intervention, sometimes colloquially called an invasion, is the use of armed force, political pressure, covert action, economic pressure, or institutional power by one state, coalition, or military force inside the territory or political conflict of another country. It can include invasion, occupation, bombing, expeditionary warfare, military advisers, proxy warfare, peacekeeping, counterinsurgency, covert operations, sanctions, aid conditionality, or direct support for one side in a civil war or national liberation struggle.
In ordinary speech, the word "invasion" is often used for any major foreign military entry into another country. More precisely, an invasion is a form of military intervention in which armed forces enter, attack, or occupy a territory. Military intervention is broader: it may occur through troops, airstrikes, proxy forces, intelligence agencies, humanitarian organizations, development agencies, sanctions, or military aid.
In liberal and bourgeois discourse, military intervention is often discussed through abstract language such as "security", "humanitarianism", "democracy", "development", "stability", "peacekeeping", or "self-defense". However, to anti-imperialists, intervention must be analyzed according to its class character, imperialist role, effect on self-determination, relationship to national liberation, and material consequences for the people affected.
Military intervention is not politically identical in all cases. An imperialist invasion to seize territory, impose a puppet regime, crush socialism, or open markets is not the same as an anti-fascist intervention against a genocidal occupying power, or an internationalist intervention requested by a revolutionary government fighting apartheid or counterrevolution. However, because imperialist states frequently use humanitarian or democratic language to disguise domination, anti-imperialists generally treat foreign intervention with suspicion unless its liberatory character can be clearly demonstrated..