Global Security and Intelligence Studies Volume 2, Issue 1, Fall 2016 | Page 40

Global Security and Intelligence Studies
Determinants of Involvement in Humanitarian Operations
U.S. involvement in humanitarian operations is determined and shaped by
media coverage, public support, historical milieu, as well as strategic interests
and human security concerns.
Historical Milieu and Larger Episodes
To examine one humanitarian operation without considering previous
engagements and interventions is to ignore or downplay the complexity and dynamism
of each case of human suffering. For example, the large-scale U.S.-led humanitarian
involvement in multilateral operations in response to Super Typhoon Yolanda cannot
be divorced from the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami or the 2011 tsunami and nuclear
disaster in Japan as well as other efforts to alleviate human suffering. This dynamic can
be conceptualized in terms of policymaking and decision-making processes shaped
by comprehensive, interconnected relationships determining policy outcomes across
cases of human suffering. Previous cases of human suffering can be perceived through
historical milieu and seen as larger episodes of strategic and humanitarian involvement
(Oliver and Myers 2002). Historical milieu can be used to explain how the 2004 Indian
Ocean Tsunami and 2011 tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan shaped and interacted
with the 2013 Super Typhoon Yolanda, two tragedies that prompted far-reaching U.S.-
led humanitarian responses.
U.S.-led humanitarian actions also coevolve within a broader context of
shifting normative and strategic conditions that demand responsive adaptation
strategies by policy elites (McGowen 1974; Rosenau 1970, 36; Thorson 1974). The
degree of foreign policy adaption is shaped and determined by an interactive and
diffuse set of dynamics functioning on both institutional (policy elites operating in
political authority structures) and ideational (policymaker perceptions and images
of domestic and global contexts) levels (Rosenau 1992). Our framework captures the
idea of “linkage politics” in demonstrating how humanitarian missions launched in
response to natural disasters are characterized by both global and domestic forces
(Putnam 1988; Rosenau 1969; Wilkenfeld 1973).
Humanitarian operations involve actions and reactions that function in
response to altering circumstances, historical narratives containing moral evaluations,
and as broader responses to systemic and nonlinear continuity and change. Put simply,
historical milieu might increase public and elite confidence in specific operations. This
“halo effect” might result in humanitarian relief operations garnering at least the same
level of success as past missions (Jentleson 1992).
Media Coverage and the Public
We believe that it is reasonable to suggest that media coverage, public
perceptions and awareness, and policymaker decisions within the foreign policymaking
process are filtered through humanitarian action. To understand historical milieu and
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