China's and India's perspectives on military intervention: why Africa but not Syria?

This paper addresses a puzzle for students of International Relations as to why China and India, two major re-emerging powers in Asia, do not always balk at military intervention invoked by Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, while they rhetorically harbour strong reservations about it. The recent cases of Côte d’Ivoire (2011), Libya (2011), Syria (since 2011) and Mali (since 2012) showed that both China and India acquiesced in external military intervention in these African countries plunged into brutal civil wars, with only that into Syria being rebuffed. By studying how they voted in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in 2011-2012 and their discourses on intervention, including humanitarian intervention, this paper examines why their decisions about intervention in Africa diverged from that in Syria. We put forward a thesis that their behaviour can be explained by an interplay between norms and interests in which they express a common anti-US liberal imperialist stance, shaped by a ‘collective historical trauma’ and ‘post-imperial ideology’, and demonstrate concerns for state failure and preferences for regional initiatives and political mediation to resolve civil wars.