Abstract
The cases presented in the three previous chapters clearly demonstrate that the failure of the international community to stop contemporary genocide is due primarily to strategic ignorance about the true nature of genocide. This conceptual mistake led to the misapplication of force in trying to deal with genocide, and it fostered the underestimation of potential domestic support for stopping genocidevia decisive force. As we have seen, genocide is a threat to both humanitarian values and traditional national interests, as values and interests are inextricably intertwined when confronting the challenge of contemporary genocide. What is more, genocide threatens the very fabric of our present liberal international order, an order on which all nations depend, but none more so than the leading nation, the United States. Therefore, the international community’s unwillingness throughout the 1990s to do what was necessary to stop genocide was a strategic failure of the first magnitude. This pattern of failure has created a tone of dark pessimism among those who study contemporary genocide and crimes against humanity. According to Douglas Simon of Drew University:
Most of the analyses of the international community’s willingness and ability to deal with genocide are characterized by a depressing tone of frustration, cynicism, and pessimism.4
Have we learnt anything?… Pretty little so it seems to me.... I do not have to tell you that what happened in Rwanda or in Bosnia, happened right next door.
—Yehuda Bauer to the German Bundestag, Remembrance Day, 27 January 19981
Much that has been recounted in this report is bound to be discouraging for anyone who believed the victors of World War 11 when they swore “never again” would genocide be tolerated. The atrocities of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Serbs of the former Yugoslavia” and the Hutu of Rwanda revealed the hollowness of that pledge … the readfness of states to declarc their concerns about the security of people and respect for human rights within states is not matched by the political will, international capacity, or normative consensus that is required for action.
— John Stremlau, People in Peril 2
It zs no tribute to our era that we are becoming experts on the phenomenon of genocide.
—International Panel of Eminent Persons3
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Notes
John Stremlau, “People in Peril: Human Rights, Humanitarian Action, and Preventing Deadly Conflict,” A Report to the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, (New York: Carnegie Corporation, May 1998), 41.
International Panel of Eminent Persons, “Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide,” Report to the OAU, ig May 2000, sec. I, para. 5, www.oau–oua.org (accessed 23 August 2000).
Douglas W Simon, “The Evolution of the International System and Its Impact on Protection against Genocide,” in Protection against Genocide: Mission Impossible? edited by Neal Riemer (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2000), 17.
Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, “Remarks at the Organization of African Unity, Economic Commission for Africa,” Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 9 December 1997, www.state.gov (accessed 3 March 1998); “Remarks by the President to Genocide Survivors, Assistance Workers, and U.S. and Rwanda Government Officials,” the White House, Office of the Press Secretary (Kampala, Uganda) 25 March 1998; David J. Scheffer, Ambassador–at–Large for War Crimes Issues, U.S. Department of State, “The United States: Measures to Prevent Genocide and Other Atrocities,” address to the Conference on “Genocide and Crimes against Humanity: Early Warning and Prevention,” U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, 10 December 1998, www.state.gov (accessed 14 December 1998); “Kofi Annan Emphasizes Commitment to Enabling UN Never Again to Fail in Protecting Civilian Population from Genocide or Mass Slaughter,” UN press release, SG/SM/7263/AFR/196, 16 December 1999; Associated Press, “Bosnia War Crimes Suspect Kills Self” 13 October 2000, www.aol.com/news (accessed 13 October 2000); and David Rohde, “Jury in New York Orders Bosnian Serb to Pay Billions,” New York Times, 26 September 2000, www.nytimes.com(accessed 6 October 2000).
Neal Riemer, ed.. Protection against Genocide: Mission Impossible? (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2000); Isidor Wallimann and Michael N. Dobkowski, eds.. Genocide and the Modern Age: Etiology and Case Studies of Mass Death (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000); William A. Schabas, Genocide in International Law: The Crime of Crimes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
See Ruth Wedgwood, “Fiddling in Rome,” Foreign Affairs 77 (November/December 1998): 20–24.
Barbara Crossette, “Leaders Envision Broad New Role for UN Council,” New York Times, 8 September 2000, Al, Aio.
Helen Fein, “The Three P’s of Genocide Prevention: With Application to a Genocide Foretold—Rwanda,” in Riemer, ed.. Protection against Genocide, 42.
See, for example, Brian Urquhart, “For a UN Volunteer Force,” New York Review of Booh 40 (lO June 1993): 3–4; Carl Kaysen and George Rathjens, Peace Operations hy the United Nations: The Case for a Volunteer UN Military Force (Cambridge, MA: Committee on International Security Studies/American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1996); and Saul Mendlovitz and John Fousek, “A UN Constabulary to Enforce the Law on Genocide and Crimes against Humanity,” in Riemer, ed.. Protection against Genocide, 105–122.
Norman Dorsen and Morton H. Halperin, “Justice after Genocide,” Policy in Perspective, the Century Fund, www.tcf.org (accessed 29 March 2000); David Wippman, “Can an International Criminal Court Prevent and Punish Genocide?” in Protection against Genocide: Mission Impossible? edited by Neal Riemer (Westport, CT Praeger, 2000), 85–104.
Craig Warkentin and Karen Mingst, “International Institutions, the State, and Global Civil Society in the Age of the World Wide Web,” Global Governance 6 (April–June 2000): 237–257.
See Barbara Harff and Ted Robert Gurr, “Toward Empirical Theory of Genocides and Politicides: Identification and Measurement of Cases Since 1945,” International Studies Quarterly 32 (1988): 359–37I–
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© 2001 Kenneth J. Campbell
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Campbell, K.J. (2001). Remedy. In: Genocide and the Global Village. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780312299286_9
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