This project unites five international historians to develop an empirical and context-sensitive approach to present-day challenges of global governance and humanitarian politics. The ongoing conflicts in Syria, Ukraine, and Venezuela illustrate the alarming inability of the international community to effectively address—let alone resolve—complex political and humanitarian crises. Our aim is to study and compare historical cases from the interwar period and the Cold War to identify patterns and dynamics of international conflict management that have been overlooked by recent scholarship. We intend to use these historical insights to help experts and policymakers assess more accurately the chances and risks of foreign involvement—and of non-involvement.

Regarding methods, we intend to use multi-archival research to provide a fine-grained analysis of the individual cases that is unavailable for more recent conflicts as key documents concerning planning, decision-making, and actions on the ground remain classified. In a second step, we will place the case studies in a comparative framework that engages with existing approaches in the social sciences. Our aim is to draw a fuller picture of how intervening powers and local populations interact within varying contexts.

The project envisages contributing to existing knowledge by testing and conceptually developing three key facets of international conflict management that have attracted little attention in current approaches to global governance: a) the process of conflict management, from the planning stages to decision-making, taking action, and long-term effects; b) the local context, not just as a backdrop but as a transformative setting; and c) the ‘agency’ of the conflicts themselves, in terms of their reverberations on the international system. Moreover, we intend to promote socially relevant interdisciplinary research by bringing international historians into dialogue with scholars of international relations, international law, security studies, and peace and conflict studies.