Editor's introduction: Genocide and US National Interests
Article under review: “How Genocide Became a National Security Threat” by Michael Abramowitz & Lawrence Woocher. Foreign Policy. February 26, 2010.
~ The Editors
At the last Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony in April 2009 , President Obama spoke of his commitment as president to do “everything we can to prevent and end atrocities like those that took place in Rwanda, those taking place in Darfur.” A year after Obama’s statement, Lawrence Woocher, a senior program officer at the US Institute of Peace, and Mike Abramowitz, the director of the Committee on Conscience at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, published an article in Foreign Policy Magazine examining the impact of genocide on the national security of the United States and the measures taken by Obama’s administration to enhance the capacity of the US government to prevent and respond to mass atrocities.
Woocher and Abramowitz’s article begins by explaining why preventing genocide needs to be a priority for US national security: “ Mass violence destabilizes countries and entire regions, threatening to spread trafficking in drugs, arms, and persons, as well as infectious disease pandemics and youth radicalization. When prevention fails, the United States invariably foots much of the bill for post-atrocity relief and peacekeeping operations—to the tune of billions of dollars. And even as Washington is paying, America's soft power is depleted when the world's only superpower stands idle while innocents are systematically slaughtered.”
The authors indicate that there are “ several signs that Barack Obama's administration is rethinking Washington's response to genocide.” The most recent “Quadrennial Defense Review” (QDR), a touchstone planning document for the military, states that the Defense Department should be prepared to present the president with options for preventing human suffering due to mass atrocities or large-scale natural disasters abroad. The White House has also moved in the last several weeks to create a high-level interagency committee within the National Security Council aimed at anticipating and preventing mass atrocities. This new development, according to the authors, “should take control of a process now fragmented between agencies, helping combat the bureaucratic lethargy and ad hoc decision-making that has characterized past U.S. responses to genocide.”
Woocher and Abramowitz indicate that more can be done, including a presidential statement that preventing genocide is a national security priority for the United States, and a strategy for conflict prevention in Sudan—the region most likely to experience mass atrocities in the near future. What is clearly a positive step, however, is the White House’s implementation of some of the recommendations of the Genocide Prevention Task Force Report, which signals an unprecedented commitment by Obama’s administration to include the issue of genocide as part of his foreign policy agenda.
This month’s panelists welcome the re-conceptualization of genocide prevention as part of the US national interest. However, they believe that this new approach needs to treat responding to mass atrocities not only as part of the national interest, but also as a moral obligation of the international community, an issue that is crucial when endeavoring to effectively match words with deeds on this subject. I f preventing genocide is not obviously in the national interest of the major powers—due to the high financial costs of acting or because of the high-risk situation for their soldiers—then there may be no response. Finally , the contributors emphasize that long-term and sustainable solutions to prevent mass atrocities and genocide require a strategy based on prioritizing diplomacy, multilateral institutions, and a focus on economic and social development as an integral part of conflict prevention mechanisms.
These issues and others are considered in this month’s Roundtable.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Editor's introduction: Genocide and US National Interests
by David Akerson, University of Denver
"So, while it is a positive development that President Obama has placed mass atrocity on the US national security threat list, he remains saddled with a legislative branch that would obstruct any efforts to use military force in a pure humanitarian intervention. Drones might be the answer."
Michael Abramowitz and Lawrence Woocher’s article, “How Genocide Became a National Security Threat,” flags an important milestone in American foreign policy, namely that mass atrocities might now be appropriately viewed as the national security threats that they are. The problem with translating this policy development into action is the next and not insignificant challenge. Aerial drones may be key to overcoming it.
Rwanda and Yugoslavia provided us with unequivocal examples as to why the United States will still be reluctant to go forward with humanitarian interventions despite this new policy. After the bodies of dead American soldiers were dragged through the streets in Mogadishu in the “Black Hawk Down” debacle in Somalia, President Clinton could not afford the political capital necessary to put soldiers in harm’s way in Rwanda, a country with less strategic value to the United States. Meanwhile, in Yugoslavia, US-backed NATO forces did bomb Serbia in order to stop the mass atrocities in Kosovo. But the NATO sorties were directed to bomb Serb targets at an altitude of 15,000 feet, above the reach of anti-aircraft fire, in order to eliminate the risk of incurring NATO casualties. The United States would not agree to intervene to stop the mass killings unless the NATO missions were basically risk-free. The problem is that high-altitude bombing, while removing pilots and crew from harm’s way, is very inaccurate and leads to a disproportionate number of civilian casualties. And so the simple reason that America still will choose not to intervene is that Congress cannot tolerate war casualties in conflicts that the American people simply do not care about.
So, while it is a positive development that President Obama has placed mass atrocity on the US national security threat list, he remains saddled with a legislative branch that would obstruct any efforts to use military force in a pure humanitarian intervention.
Drones might be the answer. The United States loves drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). We began the current Iraq war with fewer than ten, and now we have in excess of 10,000 in the field. The US military and CIA use weaponized UAVs to strike targets in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Yemen. The typical scenario is that “pilots” in the United States, sitting in front of panels of computer monitors, control the drones over network connections. Some missions are merely surveillance, but others identify and destroy targets. While remote computer-controlled weapons raise many issues, the silver lining may be that we are subtly developing the capability of humanitarian intervention without risk. If President Clinton could have intervened in Rwanda with drones, without putting actual soldiers at risk, he might well have done so.
UAVs provide several intriguing opportunities for the United Nations and regional organizations like NATO as well. Imagine if, when a humanitarian crisis broke out, the United Nations could immediately deploy surveillance drones to monitor and record events on the ground at the massacre sites. This would serve to chill the bravado of the average dictator, and it would gather evidence of the atrocity if and when accountability became an issue. One hopes that, in the case of imminent or active mass killings in which military force was the only remaining option that could save thousands of lives, the United States might not be so hesitant to provide drones and expertise as it has been to put its own soldiers at risk.
In short, there are many reasons to engage in a dialogue about robotic warfare. But the opportunity that drones give countries like the United States to intervene to stop a genocide with minimal political risk—now that’s intriguing.
Visiting Professor, University of Denver Sturm College of Law, Prosecutor at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, South African Lawyers for Human Rights, President Commission for the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident.
by Sonia Cardenas, Trinity College
"Redefining genocide and mass atrocity along national security lines is understandable, but the approach must be fine-tuned to avoid blowback(…) The Obama administration, however, must push for a more fully comprehensive and multilateral approach to genocide and mass atrocity, elevating the role of development and diplomacy."
The United States has long viewed genocide and mass atrocity as tragic, moral problems divorced from national interests. This may be changing under the Obama administration, with genocide and mass atrocity being reframed as problems to be solved pragmatically. Michael Abramowitz and Lawrence Woocher celebrate this “unprecedented breakthrough” in Foreign Policy, urging President Obama to follow up with specific measures: strategic military planning, interagency coordination, firm leadership, and concrete action on Darfur. Despite the promise of overcoming inaction and focusing on prevention, the new vision of genocide and mass atrocity Abramowitz and Woocher depict remains myopic. It is narrowly focused on military intervention and national security, losing sight of larger political realities.
The Genocide Prevention Task Force (GPTF), to which Abramowitz and Woocher refer, laid the foundations for a fresh and much-needed approach. Bypassing legal semantics to focus on both genocide and mass atrocity, the group’s final report (“Preventing Genocide: A Blueprint for U.S. Policymakers”) made at least three essential contributions:
First, the GPTF recognized the possibility of success. Contrary to popular views, the group rejected the notion that genocide is inevitable, reflecting primordial hatred and irrational leaders. Genocide and mass atrocity, the task force contends, can be prevented or at least kept from escalating. Political will, not the intractability of conflict, has been the main problem.
Second, the GPTF linked the prevention of genocide and mass atrocity to US national interests, not by means of moral suasion, but with a strategic argument, emphasizing the costs of inaction (e.g., spillover of violence into volatile sub-regions, the costs of post-atrocity relief aid, and erosion of America’s soft power). Genocide and mass atrocity should thus be national priorities, an imperative to act.
Third, the GPTF broke from past US policy in identifying solutions. It paved the way for a comprehensive framework. Rather than being a mere “add-on,” preventing mass atrocity should dovetail with other US priorities and be embedded organizationally into the national security and foreign policy apparatuses. As part of this comprehensiveness, the United States should strengthen civil society in high-risk states, rather than focusing exclusively on the perpetrators and victims of atrocity.
These are all noteworthy advances in thinking about mass atrocity, but they could also potentially backfire. One risk in devising a blueprint for ridding the world of genocide and mass atrocity is that the United States perpetuates an image of moral arrogance while overlooking Western complicity. The urge to fix “them” without questioning our own role in large-scale violence should be resisted. Humanitarian crusades can damage both the effectiveness of policy and perceptions of the United States abroad.
Another risk is that a national security framework will overwhelm responses to genocide and mass atrocity, displacing more promising multilateral and non-military measures. The GPTF did what successful human rights activists do; it redefined national interests in terms of international norms. Showing the national security implications of a problem halfway around the world is crucial for changing political will, but that does not require privileging a national or military framework. Genocide and mass atrocity are problems of international and human security, entailing a broad range of multilateral tools.
A comprehensive approach will require a much greater role for development and diplomacy, addressing the root causes of violence. Poverty is known to correlate with other egregious abuses, as is armed conflict; and exclusionary ideologies marginalizing or disenfranchising groups of people are fundamental. It is not just about equipping countries to become more like us—embracing greater democracy, civil society, and rule of law. A successful comprehensive policy must address the concrete disparities and insecurities underlying mass violence. Policymakers should heed the advice of scholars of genocide and human rights violations about early warning and prevention.
Redefining genocide and mass atrocity along national security lines is understandable, but the approach must be fine-tuned to avoid blowback. In overturning a policy of inaction, it is tempting to cater to policymakers who must be convinced of the centrality of US national interests, or to publics reluctant to mobilize on behalf of geographically and socially distant human beings. The Obama administration, however, must push for a more fully comprehensive and multilateral approach to genocide and mass atrocity, elevating the role of development and diplomacy.
The United States should act to prevent mass atrocity because rampant human insecurity threatens international security (which, in a globalizing world, can harm everyone), and because Western policies are implicated in many of the world’s conflicts. Moving past inaction is a noble vision. But if humanitarian action is to protect more than harm, genocide and mass atrocity will have to be reframed broadly, reflecting both US interests and the complex sources of atrocity.
Sonia Cardenas is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Human Rights Program at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. She is the author of numerous publications, including Conflict and Compliance: State Responses to International Human Rights Pressure (2007), Human Rights in Latin America: A Politics of Terror and Hope (2009), and Chains of Justice: The Global Rise of National Human Rights Institutions (forthcoming), all from the University of Pennsylvania Press.
by Todd Landman, University of Essex
"The new thinking is a major step in the right direction and Obama can and should show leadership on this issue (as he has done on healthcare reform). However, long-term solutions rest on developing and funding multilateral institutions, increasing aid contributions to those areas of the world most in need and most at risk of genocide, and linking humanitarian arguments with vital national interests of the countries that have the power and capacity to prevent the worst forms of mass atrocity."
Abramowitz and Woocher highlight a potentially significant shift in policy discourse in international relations with respect to humanitarianism and the prevention of genocide. For many years, the United States has suffered from the twin problems of the human rights “double standard” and “Catch-22.” On the one hand, particular countries have been seen as vital by the United States for intervention on humanitarian grounds even though many believed other geostrategic interests are at stake (e.g. Kosovo in 1999) and others have not (e.g. Rwanda in 1994). On the other hand, US intervention on humanitarian grounds can be criticized as heavy-handed or masking true intentions, or its failure to act can be criticized. It is thus compelling to examine this new way of thinking about genocide, and to reflect on how the logic itself could be applied to concerns that go well beyond genocide.
In reviewing recent thinking about genocide in general and the crisis in Sudan, Abramowitz and Woocher argue that the new thinking links humanitarian arguments based on an appeal to morals to a realist focus on US national interests. Genocide (or the threat of genocide) brings with it a mix of ills, including regional destabilization, radicalization, migration, and other “spillover” effects that have variable impacts on US interests. For far too long, human rights and humanitarian appeals have fallen on deaf ears, since they have been cast in moral terms only, and have not sought to make the connection to the vital interests of the very global powers that are needed to enforce international standards. This linkage is thus welcome if it catches the attention of the very audiences that have hitherto eschewed such concerns on statist and realist grounds.
If Stephen Krasner is correct (and I think he is) in his book Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton 1999) about the need for world powers to enforce human rights standards, then these powers are needed to develop the arguments, structures, and strategies to prevent (if possible) or respond to genocide. But in the post-Bush era, such a development in policy must not be unilateral and US-centric. Rather, it must be multilateral, use the institutions and norms that have been constructed since the Second World War, and offer real solutions to the threat of genocide.
The United States cannot go it alone, partly for the historical reasons of the double standard and Catch-22 outlined above, and partly because of the reality of global politics with the rise of the BRIC powers and the reduced fiscal capacity of the United States as it recovers from the current financial crisis. Despite Obama’s victory and a shift in attitude within US foreign policy, the world remains sufficiently skeptical of US motives that makes any unilateral strategy on genocide difficult to sustain . Moreover, the resources required for the prevention and response to genocide are large, suggesting that cooperation with key partners and allies in setting up the institutions and capacity for this policy is essential if it is to be successful.
The Albright-Cohen Genocide Prevention Task Force lays out a feasible and sensible blueprint, but perhaps too much emphasis is placed on political will and leadership, which are highly variable and time-dependent, whereas structures, institutions, and monitoring systems that use the best available data and evidence can offer long-term solutions to the problem of genocide “detection” and prevention. Conflict and human rights research have made many advances in the collection and analysis of data at the local, national, and international level that can help assist in the development of appropriate systems.
The new thinking is a major step in the right direction and Obama can and should show leadership on this issue (as he has done on healthcare reform). However, long-term solutions rest on developing and funding multilateral institutions, increasing aid contributions to those areas of the world most in need and most at risk of genocide, and linking humanitarian arguments with vital national interests of the countries that have the power and capacity to prevent the worst forms of mass atrocity.
Todd Landman is Professor of Government and Director of the Institute for Democracy and Conflict Resolution at the University of Essex. His most recent publications include Measuring Human Rights (Routledge 2009), Human Rights, Volumes I-IV (Sage 2009), and the Handbook of Comparative Politics (Sage 2008). He carries out numerous international consultancies in the area of development, democracy, and human rights. www.todd-landman.com
“The international community has a duty to prevent, to halt, and to tackle genocide. Indeed, of all the duties that states have, this is one of the least controversial. Here then is the worry: linking this duty to the national interest may help to reinforce the Realist view that states should be concerned solely with the promotion of their national interests. Although this view may sometimes come to dominate states’ foreign policies, it is nevertheless important to challenge it. States have moral duties to those beyond their borders, even when these do not coincide with the national interest."
In the second presidential debate, Barack Obama said, in response to a question about the crisis in Darfur, that “when genocide is happening, when ethnic cleansing is happening somewhere around the world and we stand idly by, that diminishes us. And so I do believe that we have to consider it as part of our interests, our national interests, in intervening where possible.” In a similar vein, Michael Abramowitz and Lawrence Woocher highlight how genocide is increasingly being seen as a security threat by the White House.
I largely agree with their analysis. The prevention of genocide is in the national interests of the major Western powers. This is the case, first, when these interests are narrowly conceived. In short, genocide is costly. Consider, for instance, the large financial costs of rebuilding post-genocide societies and the international prosecution of the genocidaires. More generally, as Abramowitz and Woocher point out, genocide can have severe repercussions for regional and international stability. An example is the massive destabilization of the eastern parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo after the influx of the fleeing interhamwe from Rwanda. Second, as Obama highlights, the prevention of genocide can be in our national interests, broadly conceived. The positive effects of a state being perceived to be a good international citizen—by, for instance, helping to prevent genocide—have often been highlighted. These effects include an improved standing in international organizations and a greater ability to influence others. Yet, perhaps more important are the negative effects of being seen as an international reprobate, through negligence, indifference, or the reckless pursuit of material self-interest. The Clinton administration’s failure to support strong action in response to the Rwandan genocide has clearly harmed how history remembers that government. Likewise, France received a major blow to its international reputation by its refusal to act in a timely and effective manner in response to the genocide, and by its alleged support for the Hutu government troops.
So, there are potentially strong links between the national interest and acting effectively in response to genocide. This view is not a new one. In his “Two Concepts of Sovereignty” speech, former UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, famously called for a broader notion of the national interest, arguing that the “collective interest is the national interest.” Although such arguments, I think, are largely empirically correct, it is important to acknowledge that they are also political. Those who highlight the close links between the national interest and responding effectively to genocide often do so because they want to persuade political elites to take action. In short, such arguments are often about mobilizing political will.
There are, however, dangers with this strategy. (I should note that these dangers also apply to my own work—in my recent book, Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect: Who Should Intervene?, I argue that humanitarian intervention in response to the mass violation of basic human rights is in states’ national interests.) First, there is a danger that preventing genocide will be seen solely in self-interested terms. Self-interest may subsequently come to guide a state’s response to genocide. If preventing genocide is not obviously in the national interest—because, for instance, of the high financial costs of acting—then there may be no response. This danger is most serious if self-interest is conceived narrowly, that is, if the reputational arguments highlighted above are simply overlooked. What happens when genocide is unlikely to cause refugee flows that would affect us, is not expected to lead to a terrorist threat, is a long way from our region, and would be costly for us to tackle?
Second, and related, there is a danger that making the case for the response to genocide hang on our national interests misses something important. Responding to genocide is not simply in our interests; it is, first and foremost, a moral obligation. It is also a legal obligation under the Genocide Convention. The international community has a duty to prevent, to halt, and to tackle genocide. Indeed, of all the duties that states have, this is one of the least controversial. Here then is the worry: linking this duty to the national interest may help to reinforce the Realist view that states should be concerned solely with the promotion of their national interests. Although this view may sometimes come to dominate states’ foreign policies, it is nevertheless important to challenge it. States have moral duties to those beyond their borders, even when these do not coincide with the national interest. Therefore, although preventing genocide can be in a state’s self-interest, we need to avoid letting the case for tackling genocide hang solely on the national interest. It is far more important than this.
Dr James Pattison is a Lecturer in Politics at the University of Manchester. His research interests concern the moral issues raised when using military force abroad, including humanitarian intervention, the responsibility to protect, and the increased use of private military companies. His PhD on humanitarian intervention was awarded the Sir Ernest Barker Prize for Best Dissertation in Political Theory by the Political Studies Association in 2008. He has recently completed the book, Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect: Who Should Intervene?, which has just been published by Oxford University Press (Spring 2010). He has also published various articles on the ethics of force, including for Ethics and International Affairs, International Theory, the Journal of Military Ethics, the Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, the Journal of International Political Theory, the International Journal of Human Rights, and the Journal of Social Philosophy. Before joining Manchester, he was a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of the West of England, Bristol (from Sept 07-09). He has also spent time as a Research Affiliate at New York University and he was a temporary lecturer in the School of Geography, Politics, and Sociology at Newcastle University.