International military interventions: Identification and classification

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Abstract
International military intervention is the movement of troops or forces of one country into the territory or territorial waters of another country, or military action by troops already stationed by one country inside another, in the context of some political issue or dispute. As such it is a discrete event, or set of discrete events, persisting in time, entailing military action by officially designated armed forces to influence either domestic disputes or political conditions in a target state. Conceptually, all wars—i.e. persistent bilateral combat—are preceded by interventions, but not all interventions become wars. Key issues in identifying interventions include: verification of allegations; discovery of beginning and ending dates, or assessment of repeated intervention or counter‐intervention; definition of the auspices under which interventions are undertaken (e.g. international organization, or unauthorized vs. authorized military action); description of political issues and potential motives; specification of casualties and troop commitments; and comparison of interventions of varying magnitude or political import (e.g. by great powers or major vs. minor regional powers). The international military intervention dataset will encompass each world region for the years 1946–88.

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