Sleeping hegemons: Third-party intervention following territorial integrity transgressions

Abstract

It is not clear why some territorial transgressions lead to intervention by the international community and others do not. As most territorial transgressions lead to a reaction from the international community but a few, however, do not, this study examines the main determinants for non-intervention by capable members of the international community, following violation of the territorial integrity norm by a deviant state. This article focuses on which characteristics of the norm-transgressing state, the conflict, and the state capable of enforcing the norm affect the occurrence of non-intervention. This comparative study examines six major alleged transgressions of the territorial integrity norm — the occupation of Tibet, the Suez crisis, the 1967 six-day war, the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, the Moroccan occupation of the Western Sahara, and the 1989 Gulf crisis — using a multi-methodological approach based on qualitative methods, most notably fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis. Analysis reveals that the absence of high security costs to the hegemon in combination with (a) strategically important security relations between the transgressor and the hegemon or (b) absence of military and economic vulnerability are generally necessary and sufficient for non-intervention.