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from Lexis Nexis that give an indication at the time of the reasons given for intervening. To
complement these sources, I used case histories written by experts of these countries and conflicts
to see what they argue were the reasons for the intervention. This combination of sources allows me
to come up with a general sense of the “agenda” of states when they intervene in conflict.
Across these 61 interveners, several patterns emerge. There were several cases when external
states sent troops directly to support a civil war state’s army at the express request of the
government. This was true in 1964 in Gabon, when France sent its military to stop an attempted
coup d’etat and in 1990 in Rwanda, when Zaire dispatched troops to attempt to block the Rwandan
Patriotic Front assault from Uganda, as well as in several other conflicts. In these cases, I argue, the
external state is merely attempting to help the government win and so does not bring a separate
agenda to the conflict.
In other cases, external states intervened in the conflict nominally to support one side, but
clearly had goals that were separate from the internal parties. A clear example is Rwanda and
Uganda’s invasion of eastern DRC, where each state set out to disarm their rebel groups based on
that country’s territory and to exploit Congolese resources. Likewise, in the civil war in Chad, Libya
sent in troops nominally in support of northern Chadian insurgents, but once there annexed part of
Chad’s territory.
Between these two extremes, there were a set of interveners for which it was more difficult
to determine if they had an independent agenda. These included cases such as the United States in
the conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. There is no question that the U.S. had at least
somewhat separate goals from the South Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian governments,
respectively, however determining if these goals were sufficiently different to count the U.S. as
having a separate agenda is difficult. The same problem complicates the coding of the current U.S.
involvement in Iraq. Again, there are clear differences of opinion between the United States and
Convention