how to mobilize the political will to intervene frank chalk pretoria conference dec 2012-1

7/28/2019 How to Mobilize the Political Will to Intervene Frank Chalk Pretoria Conference Dec 2012-1

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MOBILIZING THE POLITICAL WILL TO INTERVENE TO PREVENT MASS

ATROCITIES: A NATIONAL INTEREST APPROACH1

Prepared for the University of Pretoria, Faculty of Law Human Rights Centres

Conference on Article 4(h) @ 10: How to End Mass Atrocities in Africa?6-7 December 2012.By Frank Chalk/Professor of History and Director, Montreal Institute for Genocide and

Human Rights Studies, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada([email protected] and http://migs.concordia.ca)

Introduction

Many of us concerned with preventing mass atrocities start from moral, ethical andhumanitarian concerns and are disappointed when the slaughter of civilians arouses little

more than indignation and posturing by contemporary state leaders. By now we shouldhave recognized that state leaders are focused on their own welfare which includes theprivileges of office and what they define as the national interests of their states. CardinalRichelieu and philosopher and politician Jean de Siphon served as the intellectualmidwives of the modern concept of national interest, also known as reasons of state, inseventeenth century France, amidst the Thirty Years War. Although they popularized thenotion that reasons of state were a mean between that which conscience permits andaffairs require, scholars are aware that their concept of the national interest had muchearlier roots.

Indeed, many students of such classic texts as Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, will

recall the exchange between the Athenian commanders and the leaders of the besiegedisland of Melos which articulates a concept of national interest as early as 416 BC. Themodern tone of their discussion is captured by this exchange:

Athenians: Then we on our side will use no fine phrases saying, for example, thatwe have a right to our empire because we defeated the Persians, or that we havecome against you now because of the injuries you have done usa great mass ofwords that nobody would believe. . . . Instead we recommend that you should tryto get what it is possible for you to get, taking into consideration what we bothreally do think; since you know as well as we do that, when these matters arediscussed by practical people, the standard of justice depends on the equality of

1This essay draws on Frank Chalk, Mobilizing the Will to Intervene: The Responsibility to Protect Meetsthe National Interest, in Humanitre Hilfe und staatliche Souvernitt. Mnsterscher Kongress zurhumanitren Hilfe, Joachim Gardemann, Franz Josef Jakobi and Bernadette Spinnen (eds.), (Mnster :Aschendorff Verlag, 2012), pp. 47-58 plus Bibliography; and The Responsibility to React, co-authoredwith Romeo Dallaire and Kyle Matthews, in The Routledge Handbook of The Responsibility to Protect, W.Andy Knight and Frazer Egerton, eds. (New York and London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 36-49.
mailto:[email protected]://migs.concordia.ca/mailto:[email protected]://migs.concordia.ca/


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Frank Chalk 2 Pretoria Conference

power to compel and that in fact the strong do what they have the power to do andthe weak accept what have to accept.. . .

Melians: And how could it be just as good for us to be the slaves as for you to be

the masters?

Athenians: You, by giving in, would save yourselves from disaster; we, by notdestroying you, would be able to profit from you.2

In any consideration of the public discussions by the leaders of multinationalorganizations and NGOs of Article 4 (h) of the African Union Act, as well as theResponsibility to Protect, one is struck by their emphasis on the moral and ethical basisfor intervening in a Member state. Much of the literature on intervention to prevent massatrocities denigrates the practical and self-interested motives of politicians and other stateleaders as in the report of a 2008 Stanley Foundation conference which concluded:

[T]he R2P focus is squarely on the safety and well-being of vulnerable people,rather than on the strategic and parochial interests of the external states or thedomestic government. As with the broader notion of human security, the ultimatefocus is on the safety and well-being of the people themselves.3

In contrast to this sentiment, my presentation today will emphasize the importance of thestrategic and parochial interests of the external states or the domestic governments asthe key to a strategy designed to avoid future mass atrocity crimes like those in Rwanda,Sudan and the DRC. My focus on self-interest arises from the findings of a study I co-authored on the American and Canadian responses to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda andthe Kosovo events of 1999. As one senior Canadian bureaucrat wrote in red pencil inJune 1994 at the top of deputy minister of National Defence Robert Fowlersmemorandum urging the Government of Canada to strongly support Gen. RomeoDallaires United Nations Mission in Rwanda as the genocide unfolded, Not in Canadasinterest.4

Before the African Union, the UN and other multilateral bodies can effectivelyimplement the Responsibility to Protect, states all over the world must raise their nationaldomestic capacities to contribute to this task. Much work needs to be done:

2

Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, trans. Rex Warner (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books,1954) as quoted in Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses andCase Studies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), p. 68.3Actualizing the Responsibility to Protect, 43rd Conference on the United Nations of the Next Decade(Stanley Foundation, 2008) 15 as quoted in Dan Kuwali, Art. 4 (h) + R2P: Towards A Doctrine ofPersuasive Prevention to End Mass Atrocity Crimes,Interdisciplinary Journal of Human Rights Law, 3, 1(2008-2009), p. 79.4 Alan Woods, Senior Bureaucrats Ignored Warning of Genocide in Rwanda, Toronto Star, 22 September2009, available on 3 December 2012 at http://www.thestar.com/news/world/rwanda/article/699230--senior-bureaucrats-ignored-warning-of-genocide-in-rwanda


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the hard work in each country of thinking through its national interest in

implementing Article 4 (h) and the Responsibility to Protect and explaining thatreasoning to the public;

the conceptual work of creating doctrines and policies to guide government

departments devoted to development, foreign affairs and defence in the nuancedwork of carrying out the responsibility to protect; and

the practical work of outlining future steps and highlighting key guidelines to

ensure success when intervening to intervene in a Member state pursuant to adecision of the [AU] Assembly in respect of grave circumstances, namely: warcrimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, as well as intervention to restorepeace and stability.5

THE NATIONAL INTERESTIN IMPLEMENTINGTHE RESPONSIBILITYTO PROTECT

Intervention to protect innocent civilians is the right thing to do, morally and ethically.International mass atrocity crimes like genocide, crimes against humanity, ethniccleansing and serious war crimes deeply offend the conscience of humankind. For years,human rights groups have urged political leaders to undertake humanitarian interventionto save lives endangered by such crimes and advanced moral and ethical arguments topersuade their governments to act. But their governments did not act. As we showed inour book,Mobilizing the Will to Intervene: Leadership to Prevent Mass Atrocities(McGill-Queens University Press, 2010), the perceived absence of an American or aCanadian national interest at stake in Rwanda produced overwhelming indifference at thehighest levels of government that blocked any feelings of empathy for a remote,impoverished and different part of humanity. Like the public when it assumes that each

year 25 percent of eligible Canadians and Americans donate blood to the Red Cross,when the real figure in both countries is between 2.5 and 5 percent, we advocates ofhuman rights make the mistake of assuming that our leaders are much more altruistic thanthey are when we urge them to act largely on the basis of humanitarian values.

The hidden truth is this and we ignore it at our peril: intervention to prevent massatrocities like genocide and crimes against humanity is very often in the national

interest of our countries, but we human rights advocates have failed to make that

case vividly and effectively to our nations political leaders and the people who elect

them. The implementation of the Responsibility to Protect depends on making the casefor the national interest and making it powerfully. InMobilizing the Will to Intervene, we

alert political leaders to five rapidly emerging and devastating threats to the nationalinterest which threaten to strike all of us hard if our leaders ignore the prevention of massatrocities:

5 Dan Kuwali, Art. 4 (h) + R2P: Towards A Doctrine of Persuasive Prevention to End Mass AtrocityCrimes,Interdisciplinary Journal of Human Rights Law, 3, 1 (2008-2009), pp. 55-56.


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First, mass atrocities create conditions which spawn widespread and concrete

threats from terrorism, piracy and other forms of lawlessness on the land and sea.The 9/11 attacks orchestrated by Osama bin Laden sucked the armed forces of theUnited States, Canada and other nations into distant Afghanistan where, inaddition to the significant cost in lives lost among soldiers and civilians, the

United States Army alone is hemorrhaging nearly $120billion dollars a year oftaxpayers money.6 And the latest estimate of the total cost of piracy arising fromfailed and failing states is between US$4.9-8.5 billon a year, heading for $13-15bn a year by 2015. 7

Second, mass atrocities facilitate the spread of warlordism whose tentacles block

access to vital raw materials at economically-viable prices and threaten theprosperity of every nation which depends on rare minerals like coltan essential tothe manufacture of communications and information devices;

Third, mass atrocities trigger cascades and avalanches of refugees and internally

displaced population flows that combined with global warming and booming airtravel will accelerate the incidence and international spread of lethal infectiousdiseases. The worldwide dissemination of such diseases is virtually guaranteed inan age when some 1.8 billion civilians each year purchase tickets for air travel,including some 750 million tickets for international air travel . 8

Fourth, mass atrocities inevitably generate in their aftermath single-interest

political parties and reinforce narrow political agendas which drown out morediverse political discourses in the countries where the atrocities have taken placeand in receiving countries. Increases in xenophobia and nationalist backlashes incountries hosting large numbers of refugees are the predictable consequences of

our governments indifference to mass atrocities that could have been preventedthrough early actions.

Fifth, and finally, mass atrocities foster the spread of national and transnational

criminal networks trafficking in drugs, women, arms, contraband and launderedmoney, as we observe in the cases of Somalia, the Democratic Republic ofCongo, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia.

Some forward looking thinkers have already recognized these trends. Retired CanadianGeneral Maurice Baril, who served as the military advisor to Kofi Annan when he headedthe Department of Peacekeeping Operations of the UN in 1994, characterizes

contemporary threats to national security as no longer exclusively measured ingeographic borders that are physical. Maintaining secure borders, he points out,

6The Economist, 14 May 2011, p. 31.7 The Economics of Piracy: Pirate Ransoms & Livelihoods off the Coast of Somalia, Geopolicity, May2011, p. iv. Accessed on 7 March 2012 at:http://www.geopolicity.com/upload/content/pub_1305229189_regular.pdf8 Fact Sheet: International Air Transport Association, Updated December 2011. Accessed on 7 March 2012athttp://www.iata.org/pressroom/facts_figures/fact_sheets/pages/iata.aspx
http://www.geopolicity.com/upload/content/pub_1305229189_regular.pdfhttp://www.iata.org/pressroom/facts_figures/fact_sheets/pages/iata.aspxhttp://www.iata.org/pressroom/facts_figures/fact_sheets/pages/iata.aspxhttp://www.geopolicity.com/upload/content/pub_1305229189_regular.pdfhttp://www.iata.org/pressroom/facts_figures/fact_sheets/pages/iata.aspx


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requires analyses that assess the impact of economic variables, pandemics such asH1N1 and HIV/AIDS, people movement due to climate changes, and the natureof intra-state conflicts. Borders are permeable, and money, disease, migration,ideas, and technology impact on how foreign and defence policy is and will be

determined.9

Our political leaders, like some human rights advocates, often make the mistake ofassuming that only military intervention is effective in preventing mass atrocities. Butlike many experienced senior officers, General Baril has become an advocate of what hecalls soft power. Now I would like to discuss how we can use soft power to implementthe Responsibility to Protect.

DEVELOPING GUIDELINESFORDEPARTMENTSOF DEVELOPMENT, FOREIGN AFFAIRS

AND DEFENCE IMPLEMENTINGTHE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT

Using soft power to implement the Responsibility to Protect

Maurice Baril defines soft power as the strategic use of diplomacy, persuasion, capacitybuilding, and the projection of power and influence in ways that are cost-effective andhave political and social legitimacy. 10 Soft power is most useful when structuralprevention has failed to address root causes of conflict and operational prevention isurgently needed to address the immediate causes of conflict, as well as its root causes.Optimally, inter-governmental organizations (IGOs), and especially regional and sub-regional organizations, should be the first responders to looming mass atrocities becausethey are closest to the scene and have a direct interest in preventing violence and civilconflict from spreading throughout their neighborhood. Professor Edward Kissi of theUniversity of South Florida (Tampa) is one of the pioneer advocates of implementingpractical, bottom up, local and subregional responses like those of the African Unionand its affiliates to replace existing top-down, international bureaucratic mechanisms. 11

Fulfilling the Responsibility to Protect using soft power requires a culture of preventionintegrated with regional institution-building. Inter-governmental organizations shouldcreate regional centres devoted to preventing violent conflict, incorporate mainstreamconflict prevention and peace-building into every branch of their organizations andexpand their capacity for effective action, privileging early warning and early action viadiplomacy. John Packer, former Director of the Office of the High Commissioner onNational Minorities (HCNM) for the Organization for Security and Co-operation inEurope (OSCE), presents three primary requirements for effective violence prevention--

9 Maurice Baril, Future Roles for the Canadian Forces in Rethinking Canadas International Priorities, p.20. Accessed 7 March 2012 athttp://cips.uottawa.ca/eng/documents/Priorities_Baril.pdf10 Ibid., p. 24.11 Kissi, The Holocaust as a Guidepost for Genocide Detection and Prevention in Africa, inDiscussion

Papers Journal, The Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme, (NY: United Nations,2009), pp. 50-51. Accessed 7 March 2012 athttp://www.un.org/en/holocaustremembrance/The_Holocaust_and_the_United_Nations_Outreach_Programme_Discussion_Papers_Journal.pdf
http://cips.uottawa.ca/eng/documents/Priorities_Baril.pdfhttp://cips.uottawa.ca/eng/documents/Priorities_Baril.pdfhttp://cips.uottawa.ca/eng/documents/Priorities_Baril.pdfhttp://www.un.org/en/holocaustremembrance/The_Holocaust_and_the_United_Nations_Outreach_Programme_Discussion_Papers_Journal.pdfhttp://www.un.org/en/holocaustremembrance/The_Holocaust_and_the_United_Nations_Outreach_Programme_Discussion_Papers_Journal.pdfhttp://cips.uottawa.ca/eng/documents/Priorities_Baril.pdfhttp://www.un.org/en/holocaustremembrance/The_Holocaust_and_the_United_Nations_Outreach_Programme_Discussion_Papers_Journal.pdfhttp://www.un.org/en/holocaustremembrance/The_Holocaust_and_the_United_Nations_Outreach_Programme_Discussion_Papers_Journal.pdf


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early warning, early action, and a fully-stocked toolbox of resources. Early warningdepends on building sophisticated monitoring capacities, expertise in applying analyticalskills, judgment, and excellent analyses distributed in a timely fashion. The prerequisitesof early action are direct contacts with key players, a pro-active approach, experience,perseverance, sustained engagement to build confidence, and skills in diplomacy,

negotiation, problem solving, mediation, facilitation, and assistance. The tool box foreffective violence prevention should contain options for structured dialogue to addressrecurrent issues, techniques to help all parties improve their knowledge sharing andcommunication abilities, repositories to preserve the mediators accumulation ofexperience and expertise, and fourth parties standing by to create positive conditions andincentives for peace. 12

The recent record of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe inpreventing the spread of further violence in the Balkans and the Caucuses is strong andmakes clear that over time it has raised its quiet diplomacy skills to a very high level,enabling it to contribute valuable experience to implementing the Responsibility to

Protect. Other regional and sub-regional organizations have a long way to go before theycan match the OSCEs resources and achievements in the realm of conflict prevention. 13

But what can we do when soft power fails?

Blending hard power with soft power to implement the Responsibility to Protect

Soft power can fail; that is what happened in Rwanda. Quiet diplomacy and Westernsupervised negotiations brought about the Arusha Accords, designed to bring theRwandan civil war to an end and propel a shared Hutu/Tutsi government to power in1994. When spoilers sabotaged the agreements, LtGen Romo Dallaire, the Canadiancommander of the UN Assistance Mission in Rwanda, found himself rendered virtuallypowerless because the five permanent members of the UN Security Council refused toprovide his mission with essential reinforcements and a revised mandate to preventmassive ethnic violence directed against innocent civilians. Their refusal to recognize aresponsibility to stop the Rwanda genocide offers us a perfect illustration of the fact thatsoft power is much more likely to succeed if it is paired with the credible threat of hardpower.

Every country is a potential contributor to implementing the Responsibility to Protect andhas something to offer the international communitys efforts. The broad canvas of what

12 Craig Collins and John Packer, Options and Techniques for Quiet Diplomacy, Conflict PreventionHandbook Series No. 1 (Ottawa: Initiative on Conflict Prevention through Quiet Diplomacy, 2006 andSandverken, Sweden: Folke Bernadotte Academy, 2006), especially parts 2 and 3. Accessed on 7 March2012 at http://www.hri.ca/pdfs/Vol.%201%20-%20Options%20&%20Techniqes%20for%20Quiet%20Diplomacy.pdf13 For examples of flawed interventions by regional organizations see Herbert Wulf, ed., Still underConstruction: Regional Organisations Capacities for Conflict Prevention (Essen: Institute forDevelopment and Peace, University of Duisberg-Essen, 2009), INEF-Report, 97/2009. Accessed on 7March 2012 at http://inef.uni-due.de/cms/files/report97.pdf
http://www.hri.ca/pdfs/Vol.%201%20-%20Options%20&%20Techniqes%20for%20Quiet%20Diplomacy.pdfhttp://www.hri.ca/pdfs/Vol.%201%20-%20Options%20&%20Techniqes%20for%20Quiet%20Diplomacy.pdfhttp://inef.uni-due.de/cms/files/report97.pdfhttp://inef.uni-due.de/cms/files/report97.pdfhttp://www.hri.ca/pdfs/Vol.%201%20-%20Options%20&%20Techniqes%20for%20Quiet%20Diplomacy.pdfhttp://www.hri.ca/pdfs/Vol.%201%20-%20Options%20&%20Techniqes%20for%20Quiet%20Diplomacy.pdfhttp://inef.uni-due.de/cms/files/report97.pdf


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governments must do is now clear and, ironically, the strokes on that canvas emerge fromthe experiences that intervening countries have acquired in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is the twinning of development assistance with the provision of security, as well as thenew emphasis on civil-military cooperation that progressive military thinkers now

recognize as essential prerequisites to the success of mass atrocity prevention. Wecannot shoot our way to peace, says Maurice Baril; the civil-military relationship iscritical.14

Doctrine, policies and training for mass atrocity prevention

Soldiers putting their lives on the line to protect innocent civilians deserve clear doctrinesand policies, as well as training to practice the new skills required. Genocide preventionand peace support missions are not simply one point on the broad spectrum ofconventional war fighting operations for which most military units are trained. Analystsdrew that lesson after observing Rwanda and the Balkans in the 1990s and it is just as

true today. For this reason, senior commanders in a number of countries, including theUnited States, are directing military planners to be prepared for `preventing humansuffering due to mass atrocities. . . .15 The Harvard Kennedy School of Governmentworked for two and one-half years to fill the gap in American planning, releasing in 2010Mass Atrocities Response Operations: A Military Planning Handbook, co-authored withthe US Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI).

The authors of the study point out that Mass Atrocities Response Operations (MARO)significantly differ from other military operations; they require their own doctrine andtraining. Humanitarian and relief operations normally take place in a non-violentenvironment, they emphasize, while MARO may need to combine non-combatant

evacuation operations, distribution of food and medicine, and high-intensity conventionalfighting. What is more, they observe, the enemy is often behaving differently during aMARO than in conventional warfare; instead of seeking first to defeat opposing forces,the enemy is focused on slaughtering defenceless civilians. Traditional non-combatantevacuation operations (NEO) do not usually involve Defeating combatants, protectingcivilians from continuing attacks, or creating stable conditions . . ., but MARO do. Andunlike a counterinsurgency operation in which both sides vie for the loyalty of civiliansand some civilians are allied with one side or the other, the MARO team concludes, In aMARO, protection of civilians victimized by perpetrators is the core objective of themission.16

But it is not enough to apply the latest principles of counter-insurgency warfare to thetasks of civilian protection, nor is it enough to apply a bureaucratic fix to the task ofnation-building by improving the capacity of diplomatic and development departments to

14 Baril, Future Roles, p. 24.15 See press release from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government quoting the 2010 US QuadrennialDefense Reviews directive to the US Department of Defense. Available at:http://www.hks.harvard.edu/news-events/news/press-releases/pr-maro-may10

16 Ibid.
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support civilian protection. As Nathan Hodge argues in his 2010 study,ArmedHumanitarians: The Rise of the Nation Builders, such proposals may amount to nothingmore than bureaucratic fine-tuning.17 What is really needed, as Hodges insightfullycontends in his study, is recognition that we run the risk of estranging the class of nationbuilders from ordinary voters in our own countries, widening the divide between civilians

and the military. We can begin to bridge that gap in each of our countries, he argues, byhaving a national conversation about the real cost of this commitment, the limits of whatnation building can and cannot achieve, and what place nation building plays within thelarger national interest.18

Next Steps: A Summary of Guidelines and Actions Needed to Ensure Success

Implementing the Responsibility to Protect

Building on these important observations, advocates of Responsibility to Protect policiesshould help government departments to implement the following agenda:

It is in the national interest of all countries to implement the Responsibility toProtect; political leaders and ordinary citizens should be educated to understandthat.

Gear up for preventive diplomacy and conflict resolution mediation for the

protection of civilians by establishing mediation units staffed by personnelspecially trained for this purpose

Create mediation units in regional and sub-regional organizations dedicated to

early warning, early action, and provision of resources to reward stakeholderswho cooperate in peace maintenance

Act on the premise that soft power can only succeed if it is paired with thecredible threat of hard power

Make credible your possible use of force to support peace building and mass

atrocity prevention by training your troops in mass atrocity response operationschiefly aimed at protecting civilians

Expand budgets allocated to support foreign language learning and the serious

study of foreign cultures to improve your governments capacity intelligently to

prevent violent conflict, interdict mass atrocities, and assist in post-intervention

17 Nathan Hodge,Armed Humanitarians: The Rise of the Nation Builders (New York: Bloomsbury, 2010),p. 297. On the pitfalls of counterinsurgency today, see Bing West, Counterinsurgency: A New DoctrinesFading Allure, in the Feature Report on Counterinsurgency in the Post-COIN Era, World Politics

Review, 24 January 2012, pp. 7-9. Accessed on 7 March 2012 athttp://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/11249/counterinsurgency-a-new-doctrines-fading-allure18 Hodge,Armed Humanitarians, p. 299.
http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/11249/counterinsurgency-a-new-doctrines-fading-allurehttp://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/11249/counterinsurgency-a-new-doctrines-fading-allure


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reconstruction

Focus Responsibility to Protect missions primarily on aiding citizens of the host

country to create safe and secure environments, the rule of law, stable governance,

a sustainable economy, and social well-being

Embrace Maurice Barils aphorism that We cannot shoot our way to peace; the

civil-military relationship is critical and 80 percent of the effort should be on thenon-military side through development and diplomacy

Ensure that the military arm of your government understands the requirements for

sustainable development and the development arm understands the requirementsof security building.

Support an operational culture which connects with the people at the local level

and focuses on operations that bring stability, while shielding citizens of the hostcountry from insurgent violence, corruption, and coercion

Employ strategies and tactics that avoid unnecessary casualties among innocent

host country civilians

Ensure that key personnel receive training in local languages, that tour lengths are

long enough to build continuity and ownership of success, and that all foreignpersonnel show respect for local cultures and customs, and demonstrateintellectual curiosity about the people of the host country

These recommendations may contain and nurture the seeds of neo-colonialism just ascritics on the Left often contend. The road to hell is often paved with the best ofintentions. Our job is to ensure that we recognize these dangers, contain them within theboundaries of checks and balances, engage with our critics at every opportunity, andcarry out the principles of the Responsibility to Protect so rigorously that the honest fearsof our critics are never realized. We have far to go and much to learn as we venture to gowhere democrats and advocates of human rights have rarely gone, embarking on sharedresponsibilities and sharing authority to help local advocates of community building fulfilthe potential of democratic development while advancing the national interests andsecurity of our own peoples. This is a challenge whose energy is capable of movingmountains. In many senses we are only at the end of the beginning.

SUCCESSES STARTS AT HOME: THE NEED FOR CIVIC DIALOGUES IN

EACH MAJOR CITY AND REGION


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For several years now, the Government of Canada has preferred to let other countries leadthe movement to implement the principles of the Responsibility to Protect report despitethe fact that the Canadian Government spearheaded the Responsibility to Protect study in2001. If this can happen in Canada, a country whose credentials include the Noble PeacePrize winning efforts of Lester B. Pearson and the strenuous leadership of Lloyd

Axworthy and Paul Martin, it can happen anywhere. There is a lesson to be learned by allcountries from this experience: widespread public understanding of the gains arising frommass atrocity prevention is crucial to forging a sustainable, durable foundation in publicopinion for Responsibility to Protect programs. It is not enough to foster support in thepublic service whether it be the public service of Canada or the highly professionalinternational servants of the European Union. If you want to advocate for theResponsibility to Protect, learn the lesson of Canadas experiences and start working atthe grass roots. Ceaseless and unrelenting public education is the key to achievingsuccess. Strasbourg may be on your side and Budapest may be conducting early warningobservation and analysis. But no countrys support for the Responsibility to Protect isdurable and sustainable without deep and widespread public understanding of the vital

connection between your countries national interests and implementing the principles ofthe Responsibility to Protect.

Civic dialogues are crucial to success in building bridges to engaged citizens andgovernments of countries like ours. This is how the Will to Intervene project of theMontreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies conducts its civic dialoguesacross Canada. In each major city, a lead NGO and a professional animator bring togetherabout 40 carefully chosen, influential local leaders from city and provincial governments,business, religious communities, universities and the media. The W2I team summarizesits recommendations to the Government of Canada and answers questions. The civicleaders register their concernstheir hopes and the fears about our Responsibility toProtect recommendationsand announce what they are prepared to do to advance theadoption of W2Is recommendations by the Government of Canada. Mayors, Premiers,and city and provincial councils adopt resolutions or issue proclamations supporting therecommendations and forward them to the Government of Canada. Mayors, provincialpremieres, NGO lobbyists and research institutes follow up with the Office of the PrimeMinister and the Members of Parliament. Opinion pieces, delegations from civicorganizations, and friendly parliamentarians remind the Government of the day that itneeds to implement the recommendations. Crises in every failing and failed state are alsoopportunities. Libya and Cote dIvoire, Sudan, Kyrgyzstaneach disaster can also be ateachable moment.

WHAT LESSONS FOR THE FUTURE DID WE LEARN FROM OUR WILL TO

INTERVENE STUDIES OF CANADIAN AND AMERICAN POLICIES?

1. American and Canadian politicians are risk averse to foreign interventions unlessthey see a definite security, strategic, economic, or political reason to act.

2. Activists and scholars assume a much higher degree of altruism than really existsamong Americans and Canadians.


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3. The threats which mass atrocities pose to the national interests of bystandingstates are real, but many scholars and the public are unaware of them. In a decadewhen nearly two billion human beings purchase airline tickets annually, the longpredicted global village is upon usit has arrived.

4. Mass atrocities produce the massive displacement of large numbers of peoplewhich produces conditions that encourage the spread of infectious diseasesworldwide. Mass atrocities increase the probability of new terrorist incidents inour countries. They multiply the number of failed and failing states which in turncreates more sanctuaries for pirates and terrorists. And mass atrocities are forcemultipliers for war lords fighting to extend their control of rare earth minerals andother strategic raw materials.

5. We can not prevent every mass atrocity, nor would it be prudent to try. Butpositioned between doing nothing and doing everything lies a vast terrain littered

with preventable mass atrocities. We neglect them literally at our peril . . . ourOWN peril. We must not make achieving theperfectthe enemy of achieving thegood.

6. The governments of Canada and the United States, for example, must takespecific measures to implement the lessons crystallized in the Will to Intervenestudy of Canadian and American policy, as well as the report of the PreventGenocide Commission chaired by Madeline Albright and William Cohen. It isvital that we incorporate the prevention of mass atrocities into our governmentsdefinition of the national interest.

7. Concretely, we learned that the American and Canadian governments need to dothe following:

a. Declare preventing mass atrocities a national priorityb. Place a trusted cabinet level super secretary in charge of preventing mass

atrocities to break government log jams obstructing preventionc. Mandate standing committees in Parliament and the US Congress tasked

with monitoring and reporting on what the government is doing to preventmass atrocities

d. Create interdepartmental coordinating offices for the prevention of massatrocities furnished with standard operating procedures for disseminatingintelligence on emerging mass atrocity situations throughout the whole ofgovernment

e. Appoint public servants with skills and experience in crucial areas of massatrocity prevention as members of a Civilian Prevention Corps fordeployment to sites of preventable conflict in fragile countries

f. Increase the diplomatic and development presence of your civil servants infailed and failing states


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g. Continue to enhance the capability of your military forces to prevent massatrocities by increasing their force strength and developing operationalconcepts, doctrine, force structure, and training to support civilianprotection

8. We have also learned lessons applicable to civil society organizations such asNGOs and research institutes. They need to do the following:

a. Organize civic dialogues with invited politicians, business leaders,academics, and NGO activists to spell out the threats to our countries fromneglect of mass atrocities.

b. Persuade media owners, editors and journalists to recognize theirresponsibility to report accurately the complexity of mass atrocities inAfrica and the threat they pose the welfare of their news consumers

c. Propose motions and resolutions in city councils and state or provinciallegislatures calling on our federal governments to implement the

recommendations of the Will to Intervene team and the Cohen/AlbrightCommissiond. Monitor the local language domestic media of failed and failing states for

hateful messages and incitement to commit genocide, crimes againsthumanity, ethnic cleansing and serious war crimes

e. Train diplomats, civil servants, media owners, editors and journalists inthe history of mass atrocity crimes and the patterns which precede them, aswell as their responsibility to report and educate the public about them

Adam Smith, the great political economist and author ofThe Wealth of Nations, put itbest when he wrote: It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or thebaker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.19 Self-interest is a powerful engine for good in the marketplace and can be an equally powerfulmotive and source of inspiration for state action to prevent genocide and masspersecution. In todays new global village, the lives we save may be our own.

Frank Chalk (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison), Professor of History and Director of theMontreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada) is aco-author, with Kurt Jonassohn, ofThe History and Sociology of Genocide (1990), a co-author with Gen.Romo Dallaire, Kyle Matthews, Carla Barquiero, and Simon Doyle ofMobilizing the Will to Intervene:

Leadership to Prevent Mass Atrocities (2010), and an associate editor of the 3-volume MacmillanReference USAEncyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity (2004).Professor Chalk served asPresident of the International Association of Genocide Scholars from June 1999 to June 2001. His currentresearch focuses on radio and television broadcasting in the incitement and prevention of genocide and on

domestic laws of genocide. He may be contacted at [email protected].

19 Adam Smith, Of the principle which gives occasion to the Division of Labour,An Inquiry into theNature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Book 1, Chapter 2 (1776). Accessed on 7 March 2012 athttp://geolib.com/smith.adam/won1-02.html
http://geolib.com/smith.adam/won1-02.htmlhttp://geolib.com/smith.adam/won1-02.html

how to mobilize the political will to intervene frank chalk pretoria conference dec 2012-1

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