Externalisation and acculturation: the (re-)emergence of intervention-in-disguise?

Foreign intervention practices have unintended consequences for both the intervener and the intervened-in countries. The result has been a disdain and hesitancy by global powers within the liberal international order, notably the United States and, to a comparative extent, China and Russia as well as international organisations, to sanction unilateral and multilateral interventions. Despite this, these global powers continue to pursue their interests and foreign policy objectives, particularly in the Global South. Faced with this quandary, this paper uses the United States as its primary analytical lens while situating it within existing great power competition to demonstrate how global powers resort to externalisation of their practices, policies, norms and principles, and to a systematic acculturation of the Global South to create conditions that reduce the consequences of intervention but still achieve the same objectives as unilateral and multilateral intervention. The paper argues that understanding contemporary intervention practices by global powers requires reframing the concept of intervention to incorporate practices that disguise intervention, specifically by exploring how externalisation and acculturation re-emerge as ‘intervention-in-disguise’.