Review: Still Standing by: Why America and the International Community Fail to Prevent

Genocide and Mass Killing

Reviewed Work(s): Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda by Michael
Barnett; Peacemaking in Rwanda: The Dynamics of Failure by Bruce D. Jones; The Limits
of Humanitarian Intervention: Genocide in Rwanda by Alan J. Kuperman; "A Problem
from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power
Review by: Benjamin A. Valentino
Source: Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Sep., 2003), pp. 565-578
Published by: American Political Science Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3688713
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Review Essays I Still Standing By

Still Standing By: Why America and the

International Community Fail to Prevent
Genocide and Mass Killing
By Benjamin A. Valentino

Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda. By Michael Barnett. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2002. 240
pages. $25.00 cloth, $17.95 paper.

Peacemaking in Rwanda: The Dynamics ofFailure. By Bruce D. Jones. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2001. 209 pages.
$49.95.

The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention: Genocide in Rwanda. By Alan J. Kuperman. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution
Press, 2001. 176 pages. $38.95 cloth, $16.95 paper.

'A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide. By Samantha Power. New York: Basic Books, 2002. 640 pages. $30.00.

tion. Yet the president's words also must have left many fee
On April
crowd of22,
10,0001993, President
people gathered for the dedicationBill
of Clinton addressed a uneasy. As Clinton could not avoid alluding to elsewhere in
the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum remarks, the worst violence in Europe since the aftermath of
(USHMM). He reminded the audience that "this museum is notWorld War was then raging in the Balkans. Elie Wi
Second
theof
for the dead alone. . . . [I]t is perhaps most of all for those Nobel
us Peace Prize laureate and Holocaust survivor, was
who were not there at all: to learn the lessons, to deepen
on theour
stage at the dedication. He spoke directly to Clinton: "
President,
memories and our humanity, and to transmit these lessons from I must tell you something. I have been in the for
Yugoslavia
generation to generation." One of the principal lessons of the last fall. I cannot sleep since what I have seen ...
must
Holocaust, he suggested, was that the United States and do something to stop the bloodshed in that country
other
Something,
countries should have done more to prevent it or to rescue more anything, must be done." Speaking later w
victims from the Nazi killing machine: reporters, Clinton said: "I think it is a challenge to all of us, to
United States and to the East and to the West to take further
Even as our fragmentary awareness of crimes grew into indisputable
tiatives
facts, far too little was done. Before the war even started, doors in Bosnia. I accept it.'"2
to lib-
As we now know, this commitment did not translate into ef
erty were shut. And even after the United States and the Allies
tive action to prevent genocide and mass killing in Bosnia or
attacked Germany, rail lines to the camps within miles of militarily
where.inThe United States and its allies did intervene for expr
significant targets were left undisturbed . . . The evil represented
this museum is incontestable. But as we are its witness, soly humanitarian
must we purposes much more frequently in the 19
remain its adversary in the world in which we live, so we than during the Cold War, sometimes even employing milit
must stop
force to humanitarian ends. As with the Holocaust itself, how
the fabricators of history and the bullies as well. Left unchallenged,
they would still prey upon the powerless; and we must not permit that
er, international intervention usually arrived too late to save m
to happen again.' victims or was not furnished with the capabilities or the man
to stop the killing. In October 1993, the deaths of 18 Amer
Many of those assembled were hopeful that the end of the
soldiers on a peacekeeping mission in Somalia prompted Clin
Cold War and the election of the first Democratic administration
to order a withdrawal of U.S. forces there. Six months later,
in 12 years would usher in a new era of humanitarian interven-
international community failed to intervene to prevent t
slaughter of between 500,000 and 800,000 Rwandans in
most unambiguous case of genocide since the Holocaust. In J
1995, of
Benjamin Valentino is an assistant professor in the Department UN peacekeepers watched as Bosnian Serb forces ente
Government at Dartmouth College (Benjamin.A. Valentino@ the so-called safe haven of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia-
Herzegovina;
dartmouth.edu). For their helpful comments, he thanks Lynn Eden, murdered an estimated 7,000 Muslim men of mil-
itaryand
John Mueller, Dan Byman, Jack Snyder, Jennifer Hochschild, age; and expelled more than 20,000 women, children, and
the anonymous reviewers at Perspectives on Politics. elderly men. Throughout the 1990s, the genocidal civil war in

www.apsanet.org 565

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 Review Essays I Still Standing By
Sudan continued unabated, leaving close to two million people,
most of them civilians, dead by the end of the decade.3 It was a
shameful record that led David Rieff to conclude that the pledge
"Never again" had come to mean "nothing more than: Never
again would Germans kill Jews in Europe in the 1940s."4
So it was that in 1998 Clinton found himself at the Kigali
airport in Rwanda expressing regret, if not quite apologizing, to sur-
vivors with language that could only highlight the hollowness of the
words he had spoken at the USHMM less than five years earlier:
The international community, together with nations in Africa, must
bear its share of responsibility for this tragedy, as well. We did not act
quickly enough after the killing began.... We cannot change the
past. But we can and must do everything in our power to help you
build a future without fear, and full of hope. We owe to those who
died and to those who survived who loved them, our every effort to
increase our vigilance and strengthen our stand against those who
would commit such atrocities in the future-here or elsewhere.5
The American-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) campaign in Kosovo in 1999 seemed to many observers
to signal a new commitment to use force to prevent mass killing.
But in fact, the operation suffered from many of the same flaws
and limitations as earlier interventions. The obsession with avoid-
ing American casualties meant that the intervention was limited
to high-altitude bombing, leaving the Kosovar Albanian popula-
tion completely vulnerable to Serb forces on the ground. The
bombing may well have contributed to the Serbian withdrawal
from Kosovo, but it could not have prevented genocide if this had
been the Serbs' intention. Indeed, the air strikes did not stop the
Serbs from killing between 2,000 and 10,000 Kosovar Albanians
and expelling almost 850,000 more.6
For his part, however, Clinton seemed to feel that the fact that
no full-fledged genocide occurred in Kosovo had redeemed
America's earlier failures in the Balkans and Rwanda. 'When asked
in the final year of his presidency whether there was such a thing
as a "Clinton Doctrine" to guide foreign policy, Clinton respond-
ed that he believed "whether within or beyond the borders of a
country, if the world community has the power to stop it, we
ought to stop genocide and ethnic cleansing."
Why have the United States, the international community, and
international organizations failed to uphold the commitment to
prevent genocide and mass killing? Over the last several years,
scholars, journalists, and human rights activists have produced
dozens of books and articles documenting the West's record of
nonintervention in the post-Cold War era. This essay addresses
four of the most recent efforts to understand the sources of this
failure: Michael Barnett's Eyewitness to a Genocide, Bruce D.
Jones's Peacemaking in Rwanda, Alan J. Kuperman's The Limits of
Humanitarian Intervention, and Samantha Power's A Problem
from Hell. The first three of these four books focus almost exclu-
sively on the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and Power devotes a sub-
stantial chapter to the subject. Therefore, this essay focuses pri-
marily on Rwanda as well, with an eye to the lessons it may hold
for future efforts to prevent genocide and mass killing.
Each of the four authors highlights different aspects of the fail-
ure to intervene in Rwanda or focuses on a different set of inter-
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national actors. As a result, although some of their arguments and
conclusions are irreconcilable, it is possible to understand the
four books as largely complementary. Unfortunately, the effect of
reading them together is deeply discouraging, even more so than
any one of these already bleak accounts seems to suggest. What
emerges is an appreciation of how massively overdetermined the
failure to prevent the genocide in Rwanda actually was. The polit-
ical, military, organizational, and psychological factors working
against effective intervention were manifold and potent. These
factors were at work not only in American institutions such as the
White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon, but in
other Western capitals and in the United Nations as well. It is
possible, even easy, to imagine how some of these obstacles might
have been surmounted. It is almost inconceivable that all of them
could have been overcome. Nor were most of these obstacles
unique to the situation in Rwanda. Indeed, in at least some
respects, Rwanda may have been an easy case for intervention.
These difficulties do not excuse inaction, especially because the
most significant barrier to effective intervention was our own
indifference. To say that the failure to prevent the genocide in
Rwanda was overdetermined is not to say that intervention was
impossible. But the lessons of Rwanda give little reason to expect
that international intervention to prevent episodes of genocide or
mass killing in other parts of the world will be attempted more
frequently or provided with the resources necessary to ensure
greater success in the future.
The authors of the books under review identify at least five
major obstacles to effective international intervention in Rwanda.
First, psychological and organizational processes delayed recogni-
tion of genocide's warning signs in Western capitals and the
United Nations. Second, a flawed understanding of the causes of
the conflict in Rwanda led policy makers to the conclusion that
military intervention was unlikely to be effective, especially in the
long term. Third, the speed with which the genocide unfolded
meant that any military intervention launched after the violence
began would have arrived too late to save many lives. Fourth, the
international community never seriously considered a major mil-
itary intervention in Rwanda because the states that possessed the
necessary capabilities for intervention, especially the United
States, lacked the will to pay even moderate costs or assume even
modest risks to prevent the genocide. Finally, the history of inter-
national involvement in Rwanda before the genocide suggests
that, if not carefully conceived and implemented with sufficient
resources, intervention is not only unlikely to succeed, but has
the potential to backfire, helping to provoke the very violence it
aims to prevent.
I will discuss each of these obstacles in detail below.
Imagining Genocide
In his speech in Kigali, President Clinton explained that the
United States had failed to do more to stop the genocide in
Rwanda because it did not comprehend the extent of the violence
until it was too late. "It may seem strange to you here . . . ," he
said, "but all over the world there were people like me sitting in
offices day after day after day, who did not fully appreciate the
depth and the speed with which you were being engulfed by this
unimaginable terror."' In the years after the genocide, however,
this justification has become harder and harder to sustain. As is
now widely known, the United Nations, the United States, and
other Western countries received numerous warnings and reports
of imminent violence long before the genocide began on April
6-7, 1994. Hutu extremists, many of whom held high positions
in the Rwandan government and military, had been organizing
militia forces, preparing death lists, conducting small-scale mas-
sacres, and speaking openly of genocide for several years (see
Power 2002).9 As Power shows, U.S. intelligence agencies had .Er.

documented large arms transfers to Rwanda and began warning

of massive violence over a year before the genocide. In January . .::?,

1994, one CIA analyst predicted that if the civil war in Rwanda
flared up again, "the worst case scenario would involve one-half
million people dying" (338). The United States was not the only :.... . . .... . ...... .
... ... . ......
country receiving these warnings. Belgium had a special interest
? , .,. .... .............
in the region because of its colonial history and because Belgium's
440 troops made up the largest Western component of the UN
peacekeeping contingent deployed to Rwanda in October 1993.
In the months before the genocide, Brussels received a number of
"highly reliable" reports warning of massacres and detailing the .......... .. .
extremists' plan for a "final solution" (see Kuperman 2001).
The most famous warning, however, came from Canadian
General Romeo Dallaire, the commander of the United Nations
Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR). On January 11, 1994,
he cabled a report to UN headquarters that has since come to be
known as "the genocide fax." In the report, Dallaire described intel-
ligence he had received from a "top level trainer in the cadre of .... ::,

[Interahamwe] armed militia [the main extremist paramilitary

5-
organization].... He has been ordered to register all Tutsi in Kigali. Mx xl"
He suspects it is for their extermination. Example he gave was that -X ...s Z
in 20 minutes his personnel could kill up to 1,000 Tutsis."1o It was A Rwandan Hutu ch
but the latest and most explicit of a series of warnings issued by water at the refug

Dallaire and other well-placed sources reaching the United

Nations, Washington, and other Western capitals in the months
before the genocide. Not only did these reports fail to prompt the limited" (348).
United Nations or its member states to reinforce the small UN cide, tending t
contingent in Rwanda; the UN Department of Peacekeeping cleansing." Ind
Operations repeatedly cabled Dallaire rejecting his proposal to seize cide fax" did n
the cache of weapons identified by the informant, reminding him Perversely, the
to maintain UNAMIR's neutrality. had the opposi
What is so difficult to understand in retrospect, and so discour- military advis
aging for future efforts to prevent genocide, is that despite this "tended to disc
mountain of seemingly incontrovertible evidence, officials in the tions of genoci
United States and the United Nations genuinely do not appear to dating back a
have grasped that genocide was imminent in Rwanda. Two main high-level Rwa
factors contributed to what Barnett calls "the fog of genocide." leap. As Marc
First, many observers discounted warnings of impending geno- ter of finance
cide because such an outcome simply seemed too fantastic or too
The idea that an
horrible to imagine. As Barnett writes, "Few dared to imagine the
me, plain crazy
apocalyptic possibility of genocide. Genocide is not simply a low person could co
probability form of violence that ranks at the bottom of any list grasp, I did not
of violent alternatives. It resides outside the realm of human nificant threat.
imagination" (156; see also Kuperman 2001). George Moose, individual politi
American assistant secretary of state for African affairs, told second that the
Power simply, "We were psychologically and imaginatively too today.... How co

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Review Essays I Still Standing By

and old people? Unfortunately, we believed that most of the oppo- in Rwandan politics and that the whole Tutsi population inside the
nents of the ... [peace] process would end up seeing reason. But as
you can see, we were horribly wrong.'2 country could be viewed as potential "fifth columnists ... ." Killing
civilians was promoted from the status of scare and intimidation tac-
tics to the role of a major strategic concept. It was from that time on
Second, as described in greatest detail in Barnett's account, out- that the idea of the genocide ... progressively began to be considered
siders tended to interpret the warnings and limited violence in the a "rational" political project.'4
months before the genocide in the context of civil war rather than
Although the extremists' racist ideology clearly supported the
impending genocide (see also Jones 2001 and Kuperman 2001).
decision for genocide, it was probably not the primary motiva-
This problem was particularly acute in the United Nations, where,
tion. Rather, the extremists simply argued that virtually all Tutsi
Barnett argues, deeply rooted organizational pathologies rein-
were supporters of the RPE As one suspected Hutu organizer of
forced the misperception. The United Nations' "ignorance was
the mass killings in Rwanda argued, "[T]he Tutsis were not killed
rooted not simply in objective uncertainty or the absence of tell-
as Tutsis, only as sympathizers of the RPE ... [N]inety-nine per-
tale indicators of genocide, but also in the UN's culture. This cul-
cent of Tutsis were pro-RPE There was no difference between the
ture provided the social optics that brought the ethnic conflict
ethnic and the political."'5 Similarly, a former Interahamwe mili-
into sharp focus and placed the crimes against humanity deep in
tia member explained that "we did not have a role of exterminat-
the background" (157). UN officials saw their mission as helping
ing all Tutsi, but it was said that every Tutsi cooperates with the
to monitor a cease-fire and implement a peace agreement in a civil
[RPF] .'16
war, not preventing genocide. They understood the reports from
It was in this context that Colonel Thboneste Bagosora, an
the field to indicate a real possibility that opponents of the peace
extremist officer who would later emerge as one of the chief
process might attempt to sabotage it and that the cease-fire might
organizers of the genocide, announced at a party just two days
collapse, but they assumed that this simply would result in a
before the killing began that if the peace process continued, "the
return to civil war. That war, which began when the Tutsi-
only plausible solution for Rwanda would be the elimination of
dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) invaded Rwanda in
the Tutsi."'7 Neither UN Special Representative to Rwanda
October 1990, already had seen its share of atrocities, leaving an
Jacques-Roger Booh-Booh nor even General Dallaire, both of
estimated 2,000 Tutsi civilians dead by the time of the genocide
whom attended the gathering, grasped the logic and, therefore,
(Kuperman 2001). Compared to many other conflicts then raging
the deadly seriousness of the remark.
in Africa, however, this level of violence was not at all unusual.
In fact, the notion that there could be a clear distinction
Ethnic Conflict
between the civil war and the genocide was itself a serious mis-
Even if Western observers had appreciated the likelihood of geno-
conception. What the United Nations and other observers failed
cide in the months before April, American and UN officials were
to recognize was that genocide might emerge as a tactic in
Rwanda's civil war-the last course of action for extremists who laboring under another serious misperception that made unlikely
a deeper commitment to preventing violence in Rwanda.
had concluded that exterminating the Tutsi was the only way to
Americans tended to view conflicts like the civil war in Rwanda
protect their interests and ensure their security (Kuperman
as "ethnic conflicts." For many people, the term did not simply
2001). In the years preceding the genocide, Hutu political and
refer to the identity of the combatants, but also seemed to imply
military leaders from across the political spectrum had attempted
something about the causes of the conflicts themselves. Whereas
to resolve the conflict with the RPF through a variety of means,
Western statesmen usually characterized the international con-
including negotiation, military action, and lower-level massacres
flicts of the last century as struggles over tangible interests such as
of Tutsi civilians. None of these processes had produced an out-
wealth, territory, and security, many saw ethnic conflicts as erupt-
come that the extremists were prepared to accept. Indeed, in
ing from irrational ethnic hatreds. From this perspective, there
February 1993, RPF forces had advanced to within 30 kilometers
was very little that outside intervention could do to end the
of the capital city of Kigali. Only the presence of French troops
bloodshed in ethnic conflicts. Military intervention would be at
there prompted the RPF to halt its offensive and declare a unilat-
best a Band-Aid solution, since it could not erase the deep enmi-
eral cease-fire. Tanzanian and French intelligence services esti-
ty between ethnic groups. Conflict would simply reemerge as
mated that without continued French military support the RPF
soon as the peacekeepers went home.
would defeat the Rwandan army.'3 In large part because of the
Power finds that this view of ethnic conflict was particularly
RPF's military strength, negotiations between the Hutu govern-
pronounced in American perceptions of the conflict in the
ment under President Juvenal Habyarimana and the RPF also
Balkans. Acting Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger said in
seemed to be leading to an agreement that the extremists saw as
1992 that "this war is not rational. There is no rationality at all
tantamount to unconditional surrender.
about ethnic conflict. It is gut, it is hatred; it's not for any set o
Although the RPF had originated from the Tutsi exile com-
values or purposes; it just goes on. And that kind of warfare is
munity living in Uganda, Tutsi civilians in Rwanda became
most difficult to bring to a halt" (282).
implicated in the civil war; they were believed to be supporting
President Clinton's national security adviser, Anthony Lake,
the RPF advance. According to Gerard Prunier:
used a similar rationale to explain America's hesitancy to inter-
[F]or the Habyarimana regime, and especially for the extremist ele- vene in Rwanda. Speaking at a White House press briefing
ments in its ranks, this meant that the [RPF] was now a direct agent in May 1994, at the height of the Rwandan genocide, Lake

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introduced the Clinton administration's new policy on peace-
keeping. Referring to Somalia, Bosnia, and Haiti, as well as
Rwanda, Lake explained that
these kinds of conflicts are particularly hard to come to grips with and
to have an effect on from outside because, basically, of course, their
origins are in political turmoil within these nations. And that politi-
cal turmoil may not be susceptible to the efforts of the international
community. So, neither we nor the international community have
either the mandate, nor the resources, nor the possibility of resolving
every conflict of this kind.18
As Barnett documents, UN officials largely accepted this logic,
concluding that the United Nations could only help prevent vio-
lence once the combatants themselves had already demonstrated
a commitment to peace.
Lake was essentially correct that the genocide in Rwanda
stemmed from internal "political turmoil," but his assumption
that little or nothing, therefore, could be done about it was not.
As each of the four authors discussed in this essay-along with
virtually every serious study of the genocide in Rwanda-has
concluded, the genocide originated with a powerful but very
small group of political and military elites seeking to stave off
what they perceived as the disastrous consequences of a power-
sharing agreement with the Tutsi minority. These extremists
could not have carried out the genocide on their own, but the
common perception that virtually the entire society participated
in the killing is not accurate. Scholars have estimated the total
number of hard-core Hutu perpetrators at between 50,000 and
100,000 people-many of them members of extremist militia
groups, the Presidential Guard, or the Army (Jones 2001).19
Larger numbers of civilians may have contributed to the genocide
in some fashion, perhaps increasing the total number of partici-
pants to 200,000 or more.20 Even this larger group, however,
would amount to less than 9 percent of the male Hutu popula-
tion over the age of 13.21 Nor were most of these perpetrators
enthusiastic killers. Hutu extremists often had to resort to force-
including executions-in order to compel civilians to kill.22
Indeed, a comprehensive inquiry carried out by the human rights
group African Rights concludes that "most Hutu who complied
[with orders to kill] were reluctant accomplices" and that "many
[Tutsi] survivors readily admitted that [many Hutu] . . . were
reluctant murderers."23 Jones reports that the architects of the
genocide did not trust even the regular Army to play its part,
sometimes deploying extremist militias behind Army units to
ensure their compliance during the genocide.
Preventing genocide in Rwanda, therefore, would not have
required reforming Rwandan culture or society, teaching Hutu
and Tutsi to accept each other, or building a full-fledged democ-
racy. The majority of Rwandans were already prepared to live in
peace, or at least coexist without resorting to genocidal violence.
What was required, therefore, was not nation building but inter-
vention designed to prevent the small but determined group of
extremists from carrying out their plan. At most this would have
meant defeating and disarming the 50,000 to 100,000 most
fanatical extremist supporters. But it is also conceivable that
removing from power the few dozen top extremist political and
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military leaders would have been sufficient to prevent or halt the
genocide.
Getting There Is Half the Battle
What capabilities would this kind of intervention have required,
and what might it have accomplished? Nearly everyone who has
investigated the prospects for intervention in Rwanda agrees that
the best chance to avert the genocide would have been to rein-
force preventively the UN forces already in the country in the
months before the slaughter began. In the aftermath of the geno-
cide, however, a wide range of scholars, human rights organiza-
tions, and other authorities on Rwanda have argued that even if
the international community had failed to react to the warning
signs of genocide until the killing had already begun, intervention
could have halted the slaughter quickly and without the deploy-
ment of large numbers of foreign troops.
Some have suggested that the United States could have
jammed or destroyed the radio transmitters that the extremists
utilized to coordinate the genocide. Others have argued that a
show of force by Dallaire's troops or by the Western forces sent to
evacuate foreign nationals from Rwanda might have deterred the
extremist ringleaders or their less fanatic accomplices from con-
tinuing the campaign. Alison Des Forges claims that had the
United States or the United Nations openly condemned the
genocide and threatened sanctions, it would have "shattered the
masquerade of legitimacy created by the interim [Hutu extremist]
government and forced Rwandans to confront the evil they were
doing. Once Rwandans were faced with the consequences for
themselves as individuals and for their nation of being declared
international outlaws, they would have made choices in a differ-
ent context."24
It is extremely difficult to evaluate these claims, since they are
based almost entirely on speculation or anecdotes about how per-
petrators would have reacted. While it seems likely that these
actions might have saved some lives, many of them give the
strong impression of wishful thinking. (For a discussion of the
limitations of many such proposals, see Kuperman 2001.)
Perpetrators did back down in the presence of Western military
forces in several locations, but they did so in the knowledge that
the genocide was proceeding apace throughout the rest of the
country. It is impossible to know how the perpetrators would
have reacted if foreign troops had attempted to interfere with
their plans on a national scale. This is not to suggest that none of
these proposals should have been attempted. Rather, it is to
emphasize that the only sure way that international intervention
could have saved Rwandan lives was by physically protecting the
potential victims.
This kind of intervention would have required deploying mil-
itary forces to capture or kill the extremist leadership, defeat the
armed Hutu perpetrators, and help defend Tutsi civilians on the
ground. General Dallaire famously argued both during and after
the genocide that he could have halted the killing in its early
stages with a force of only 5,000 troops. A subsequent analysis by
a panel of military experts largely supported Dallaire's position.25
Kuperman, however, challenges these claims, arguing that they
overestimate how quickly reinforcements could have arrived on
www.apsanet.org 569
Review Essays I Still Standing By
the scene, how rapidly the genocide progressed, and how many
troops would have been needed to stop the violence. According
to Kuperman, the Clinton administration could not have reached
a consensus that what was happening in Rwanda was genocide
until April 20, two weeks after the killing began. This is roughly
when the international press, human rights organizations, and
Dallaire himself began using the term genocide. It is also when
Barnett's account suggests that UN officials finally began to com-
prehend the genocidal nature of the violence.
Kuperman notes that the US Defense Intelligence Agency had
begun receiving credible intelligence that a campaign of system-
atic mass murder was underway within a day or two of the out-
break of violence in Rwanda. Unfortunately, the same kind of
incredulity that had hampered earlier efforts to anticipate the
genocide seems to have combined with bureaucratic and organi-
zational barriers to prevent this intelligence from being incorpo-
rated into reports reaching high-level national security policy
makers in the first weeks after the genocide began. American offi-
cials refused to acknowledge the genocide publicly until the end
of May, but even if preparations for an intervention had begun
promptly on April 20, this two-week delay would have had sig-
nificant consequences for what it might have achieved.
Kuperman estimates that a force large enough to halt the geno-
cide and provide protection for itself-approximately 15,000
troops-would have taken more than a month to arrive in
Rwanda and stop the killing. He concludes that such an inter-
vention might have saved 125,000 lives, only about 25 percent of
those actually killed. Smaller intervention forces might have
arrived earlier, but they would also have had less capability to stop
the violence.
Power and others have criticized Kuperman's analysis for over-
estimating how long it took the United States to recognize the
genocidal nature of the violence in Rwanda and overstating the
technical impediments to intervention.26 Some have even accused
him of attempting to rationalize or apologize for the West's fail-
ure to intervene.27 The latter charge is unfounded. Kuperman
does not contend that logistical impediments were the reason the
United States did not intervene in Rwanda; he simply asks what
American intervention might have accomplished had it been
attempted. He does not argue that intervention would have been
fruitless, only that it could not have fully "prevented" the geno-
cide. The many competing empirical claims regarding the
requirements and timing of the intervention cannot be resolved
here. Kuperman's research raises at least two crucial issues, how-
ever, that cannot easily be dismissed.
First, whether the United States recognized the genocide on
April 8 or April 20, Kuperman is correct to point out that due to
the extraordinary speed with which the violence unfolded, any siz-
able military intervention probably would have arrived too late to
save hundreds of thousands of lives.28 Even Des Forges, a critic of
Kuperman on this issue, concludes that "the worst massacres had
finished by the end ofApril," and "perhaps half" of the Tutsi pop-
ulation already was dead by then.29 Thus, even if the United States
recognized the genocide almost immediately, and even if it took
only half as long as Kuperman estimates for the forces to arrive
and halt the genocide, it could not have prevented these deaths.
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Whether intervention might have saved 500,000 innocent lives or
125,000, there was more than enough justification for action.
Nevertheless, it probably was not possible to "prevent" the geno-
cide once the killing began, and it is appropriate to explore the
limits of what international intervention could have achieved.
Second, Kuperman's hypothetical "maximum" intervention
force of 15,000 troops is, if anything, an underestimate of what
the American military would actually have proposed for an inter-
vention in Rwanda. A force of 15,000 would have been extreme-
ly small by historical standards. As Kuperman points out, the
planned U.S. intervention force in Haiti included approximately
21,000 troops despite the fact that Haiti "had an area about the
same, a population only 80 percent as big, a much smaller army
... a comparably sized militia ... ,and much lower levels of
violence than Rwanda" (87). It is possible that a smaller force
might have halted the genocide earlier by its mere presence, but
especially after the firefight in Somalia six months earlier, it is
highly unlikely that military planners would have counted on this
kind of best-case scenario. Indeed, after 10 Belgian peacekeepers
were killed by extremist forces on the first day of the genocide in
Rwanda, such an assumption would have been irresponsible.
Since much of the criticism of the Somalia mission had focused
on the troops' lack of heavy weapons, the U.S. military probably
would have requested even more troops than Kuperman's hypo-
thetical force, with more heavy equipment. Planners likely would
have delayed major combat operations until substantial forces
were fully in place.
No Will, No Way
The misperceptions and logistical problems described above
posed substantial obstacles to effective intervention in Rwanda.
But none of them played a significant part in the decisions of the
United States and the United Nations not to intervene more
forcefully, because-as Power, Jones, Barnett, and Kuperman
each recognize-neither the United States nor the United
Nations seriously contemplated a major military intervention at
any time before or after the genocide.
Power's account most thoroughly chronicles the shameful story
of America's lack of interest in preventing the genocide. Still reel-
ing from its experience in Somalia, the Clinton administration
had no stomach for another major intervention in Africa.
Congress and the American public generated virtually no pressure
to intervene. It was clear after the intervention in Somalia that
Americans had a shockingly low tolerance for casualties in
humanitarian operations. Although the intervention had probably
saved tens or even hundreds of thousands of lives, a few days after
the battle in which 18 American soldiers were killed, 60 percent
of Americans polled agreed with this statement: "Nothing the
U.S. could accomplish in Somalia is worth the death of even one
more soldier."30 Only six months after Somalia, many seemed to
agree with Bob Dole's position on Rwanda when he concluded: "I
don't think we have any national interest there .... The Americans
are out, and as far as I'm concerned, in Rwanda, that ought to be
the end of it" (Power 2002, 352).
The political risks of intervention were perceived to be so high
and the benefits so low that, as one senior U.S. official told
Power, "[i]t was a foregone conclusion that the United States
wouldn't intervene" (367). During the genocide, Clinton never
gathered his top advisers to discuss Rwanda. Long after it became
clear that the violence in Rwanda constituted genocide, American
officials studiously refused even to use the "G-word" for fear that
it might commit the United States, a signatory of the Genocide
Convention, to some kind of action.
Worse, Power shows that America's actions reflected more than
mere indifference. Not only did the United States fail to respond
to the genocide by organizing an American-led intervention or
offering U.S. troops to reinforce Dallaire's UN force, but it
opposed reinforcing the UN mission with troops from any coun-
try and argued vehemently for pulling out the forces already in
Rwanda.31 U.S. officials apparently were concerned that no mat-
ter whose troops were sent, the United States would be responsi-
ble for rescuing them if they got into trouble (Power 2002). After
belatedly authorizing a new UN intervention (UNAMIR II) on
May 17, the United States still refused to contribute American
troops and held up for another month the shipment of armored
personnel carriers it had agreed to lease or sell to the United
Nations for the mission. UNAMIR II did not arrive in Rwanda
until mid-August, by which time the genocide was already over.
Perhaps even more discouraging than America's lack of deter-
mination to save Rwanda was the tepid response of the United
Nations to the genocide. Barnett documents how the United
Nations repeatedly instructed Dallaire not to confront the
extremists or undertake operations to protect civilians before or
even after the genocide. In the crucial first weeks of the genocide,
the UN secretariat under Secretary General Boutros Boutros-
Ghali did not argue forcefully at the Security Council or make a
case to the public for reinforcing UNAMIR. Rather, Barnett
argues, " [m] ost of the Secretariat's statements and actions provid-
ed subtle but important support for reducing UNAMIR's expo-
sure."(119; see also Jones 2001). Barnett raises the possibility that
the UN secretariat intentionally withheld information from the
Security Council, including Dallaire's reports, which presented
recommendations for intervention and might have clarified the
genocidal nature of the violence earlier. Only after the Council
had already voted on April 21 to reduce UNAMIR to a skeleton
force of 270 men did Boutros-Ghali issue a public statement
indicating that he regretted that the Security Council had not
taken more forceful action.
To a large extent, the lack of determination at the United
Nations reflected the lack of will of its member states. Barnett
argues that UN officials understood there was little interest in
serious military action among the states that could make it hap-
pen, and that the secretariat probably feared a halfhearted inter-
vention would risk a Somalia-like disaster. Another high-profile
failure could have dealt the United Nations a crushing blow, per-
haps undermining support for future UN peacekeeping opera-
tions of any kind. The United States was already withholding
more than a billion dollars in back dues from the organization. As
Barnett points out, however, it is the role of the UN secretariat to
advocate for intervention if it believes that lives can be saved:
"The UN is responsible for the 'international community' and
has a duty to intervene where states fear to tread." (169). The
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UN's most influential tool over its members may be its power to
shame them. Barnett probably overestimates the chances that a
more resolute stance by the secretariat actually would have led to
effective intervention in Rwanda, but he is correct that once the
United Nations abdicated its role as an advocate, it virtually guar-
anteed that no one else would take up the call. Rwanda's fate was
sealed.
Unintended Consequences
What if the international community had intervened in Rwanda
earlier? As Jones reminds us, it did intervene. It is easy to forget
that, despite the relatively low intensity of the Rwandan civil war
up to 1994, the conflict attracted a surprising level of regional
and international attention, culminating in an internationally
brokered peace agreement at Arusha, Tanzania, and a UN peace-
keeping operation to monitor the implementation of the accords.
Yet both Jones and Kuperman suggest that not only did the inter-
vention fail to prevent the genocide; it may have inadvertently
contributed to the tragedy.
According to Jones and Kuperman, the Arusha accords repre-
sented a victor's deal for the RPE The accords all but locked the
Hutu extremist parties out of power. The RPF, on the other hand,
which represented roughly 10 percent of Rwanda's population,
garnered one-third of the seats in the transitional parliament (the
same as the governing Hutu party had) and 50 percent of the
command posts in the army. The moderate Hutu political parties
were prepared to acquiesce to this deal, but the extremists could
never have accepted it. Its biased terms simultaneously steeled
their resolve to deal with the "Tutsi problem" by any means nec-
essary and played into the extremists' strategy of polarizing
Rwandan politics and society.
Even many moderate Hutu saw the accords as a sellout and
feared a return to domination by the Tutsi minority. Those who
doubted the potential for such an outcome needed only to look
across the border to Burundi, where the Tutsi minority continued
to repress the Hutu majority. Beginning in the late 1980s,
Burundi had attempted to democratize, but this experiment was
brought to an abrupt halt in October 1993, when extremist Tutsi
army officers assassinated the newly elected Hutu president,
Melchior Ndadaye. The assassination set off a massive wave of
ethnic violence, killing tens of thousands of people and leading to
a return to Tutsi domination. Kuperman concludes (with some
hyperbole) that "Western powers pressured the Hutu government
to sign a peace agreement that in effect handed over power to the
opposing Tutsi rebels. This surrender threatened the vital interests
of the entrenched extremist Hutu elite, who perceived the mass
killing of the Tutsi as the only way to retain power and avoid ret-
ribution. Had the international community intended to promote
genocide, it could hardly have devised a better strategy" (110).32
Jones places less emphasis on the role of Western pressure in
the negotiations, casting doubt on whether a balanced peace deal
could have been brokered given the intransigence of the parties
during negotiations and the strength of the RPF's military posi-
tion on the ground. Even if international intervention could not
have encouraged a more equitable deal, however, Kuperman and
Jones agree that the UN force sent to implement the accords was
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Review Essays I Still Standing By

dangerously unprepared for its mission. As Jones writes, "The after other alternatives have failed to achieve these goals or
United Nations sent a small, poorly equipped, reactive mission these threats. Given the perceived stakes, the costs impos
possibly capable of monitoring a generally accepted peace to a policies like sanctions or even air strikes simply may not be
country in which the peace deal was a source of aggravated dis- enough to persuade perpetrators to relent.
agreement" (110; see also Kuperman 2001). The United Nations Limited strategies of intervention may seem more likely to
failed even to plan for the contingency of violent opposition to ceed than they actually are because outside observers have
the peace process. "Correctly understood," Jones asserts, culty comprehending how perpetrators could see unarmed
"Rwanda is not a tale that illustrates the need for early action. ians as a serious threat. But a powerful indication of the im
Rather it is a cautionary tale about the limits of conflict preven- tance that perpetrators place on dealing with their victims
tion and the potentially disastrous consequences of peacemaking frequently perpetrators have elected to divert scarce militar
done poorly" (6). economic resources away from ongoing war efforts with fo
powers in order to carry out their genocidal plans. This pa
The Lessons of Failure repeated itself in several of the cases discussed in Power's
The books examined in this essay each present a bleakincluding
picture ofArmenia, Nazi Germany, Iraq, and Rwanda. Th
the international response to the Rwandan genocide. Yet each
actions have often been interpreted as a sign of the perpetr
author also concludes with at least somewhat hopeful lessons commitment to an ideology that calls for killin
irrational
killing's
about the possibilities for preventing genocide and mass killing sake.
in As in Rwanda, however, in each of these cas
the future. Unfortunately, because the books emphasizeperpetrators
different actually seem to have perceived genocide as ine
sets of obstacles to effective international intervention, the linked
cably task with military victory.
may be even more difficult than any one of the authors For instance, during the Armenian genocide in 1915, Tu
implies.
As Power underscores most compellingly, until the United
leaders blamed the Armenian population for fomenting upri
against
States and the international community can muster the the Turks and supporting the Russian invaders. A
political
determination to stop genocide, the other obstacles toTurkish minister of war explained to the American ambassa
effective
1915: "[Ylou
intervention are not relevant. If the international community is must understand that we are now fighting fo
not willing to make a serious effort to stop genocide, itlives
is of. little
. . and that we are sacrificing thousands of men. Whi
are engaged
consequence whether we can recognize the warning signs, learn in such a struggle as this, we cannot permit peo
our own country to attack us in the back."33 Similarly, H
to avoid the misperception that ethnic conflicts are intrinsically
believed
insoluble, or overcome the practical military problems that it would not be possible to triumph in the S
of inter-
vention. Likewise, it matters little if the United Nations
World can
War without first dealing with the "Jewish ques
become a more effective advocate for intervention if its member
Hitler blamed Germany's defeat in the First World War on a
states refuse to support UN efforts. in the back" by domestic forces that he believed had been o
In the final chapter of her book, Power expresses the ized
hopeby the Jews. He was determined to avoid a similar fa
that
Germany
America eventually will find the courage of its convictions. Butin the next war. "Before foreign enemies are
her own account of America's 100-year-long record ofquered," he had concluded in Mein Kampf, "the enemy w
noninter-
vention, from Armenian genocide to Rwandan genocide, must be annihilated. . . . Once so much as the shadow of
pro-
vides the strongest evidence of how improbable this grazes a people that is not free of internal enemies [i.e., the J
is. Tacitly
its she
acknowledging the limits of what America is likely to do, force of resistance will break and the foe will be the fina
cau-
tor."34
tions that the "United States should not frame its policy In Iraq, one of the primary motives for the mass kil
options
Kurdish
in terms of doing nothing or unilaterally sending in the civilians in 1988 appears to have been the belief of
marines"
Ba'ath
(513). She suggests a variety of measures short of full-scale Party officials that Kurdish civilians were support
mili-
tary intervention-ranging from public condemnationguerrilla
of perpe-insurgency against Iraq in the midst of its war
trators, to the threat of war crimes prosecution, to Iran.35
economic
More
sanctions, to the use of air power-that could save lives, important
even if than the possibility that limited forms of
intervention
such tactics are not likely to prevent genocide altogether. Thesemight be insufficient to deter attacks on groups that
perpetrators of
kinds of suggestions reflect a general trend among proponents perceive as mortal threats, however, is the significant
human rights toward advocacy of strategies that take into account strategies may actually promote the very violence
risk that these
they seek
political realities, especially the deep reluctance of the to prevent-the problem highlighted by Kuperman and
United
States to risk military casualties. Jones. Sanctions or air strikes may succeed in increasing the costs
The lessons of Rwanda and other recent cases of humanitarian
of mass killing for perpetrators, but if perpetrators simply blame
intervention, however, indicate that the international communi-
the victims for the upheavals and suffering inflicted by these
policies,
ty should implement limited intervention strategies with the incentives to engage in mass killing-and possibly
caution.
even popular
Perpetrators do not take lightly the decision to embark upon support
a for it-may rise. Since punitive policies
cannot resort
policy of genocide or mass killing. On the contrary, groups physically protect people from violence on the ground,
these impor-
to this kind of violence in an effort to achieve their most measures can constitute a provocation to mass killing.
tant goals or counter what they perceive to be the most Sanctions also take time to work and therefore are unlikely to be
danger-
ous threats to their interests and survival. They usually do so onlyviolence is imminent.
effective when

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 As Jones points out, the international community did use
threats of foreign-aid cutbacks and diplomatic pressure to force
the Hutu-dominated regime to negotiate with the Tutsi rebels
prior to the genocide. These punitive policies, however, could not
compare with what Hutu extremists saw as the existential danger
posed by the Tutsi themselves. Indeed, international pressure on
the regime may have helped contribute to this perception not
only among the extremists, but also among moderate Hutu. The
tiny UN force eventually deployed to oversee the implementation
of the peace agreement between Hutu and Tutsi forces was nei-
ther equipped nor authorized to protect the Tutsi after the geno-
cide began.
A similar pattern played out in Kosovo in 1999. Western
diplomatic and economic sanctions failed to force Slobodan
Milosevic to cease the violent repression of Kosovo's Albanian
minority. Nevertheless, American officials came to believe that a
short bombing campaign would convince Milosevic of the West's
determination and provide him with the political cover he need-
ed to back down. Even Power admits that this strategy was an
exercise in "wishful thinking" that may actually have resulted in
an escalation of the violence and ethnic cleansing.36 The bomb-
ing also appears to have hardened Serbian opinion against the
Kosovar Albanians and rallied public support behind Milosevic,
at least initially.37 Because Clinton publicly ruled out the use of
ground forces, the United States signaled to Milosevic that it
would not protect civilians on the ground inside Kosovo. On the
contrary, America's extreme aversion to casualties meant that
NATO aircraft were forced to operate at high altitude, a policy
that may have contributed to several incidents of mistaken attacks
on Kosovar Albanian civilians.
Once a truly total campaign of genocide is under way, of
course, neither public condemnation nor sanctions nor air strikes
could make things any worse. These measures would then be
more than justified, even if they saved only a few lives. Before the
slaughter has begun, however, the lessons of these recent cases call
for much greater attention to the potential for unintended con-
sequences of limited intervention.
Both Kuperman and Jones conclude that the best way to avoid
this dynamic in the future is through the preventive deployment
of more robust peacekeeping forces capable of protecting victims
in the case of violence. Unfortunately, to be viable, such a strate-
gy would be heavily dependent on an improved ability to distin-
guish conflicts at risk for genocide or mass killing from the
dozens of ongoing conflicts that will never escalate to this level.
Rwanda shows how unprepared we are for this task. Power con-
tends, "We are responsible for our incredulity. The stories that
emerge from genocidal societies are by definition incredible ....
In case after case of genocide, accounts that sounded far-fetched
and that could not be independently verified repeatedly proved
true. With so much wishful thinking debunked, we should long
ago have shifted the burden of proof away from the refugees and
to the skeptics .... A bias toward belief would do less harm than
a bias toward disbelief" (505-6). She is right, but the costs of
intervening preemptively with robust peacekeeping forces proba-
bly would be prohibitively expensive, even if the international
community substantially increased its willingness to act.
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Intervention in Rwanda in Comparative
Perspective
The lessons of Rwanda for preventing genocide are perhaps most
discouraging because, in many ways, Rwanda represented a com-
paratively easy case for intervention.38 The warning signs of geno-
cide were probably as timely and explicit as we are likely to see
anywhere in the future. Rwanda is a tiny country in both popu-
lation and geography. The architects of the genocide were a small,
unrepresentative group on the radical fringe of Rwandan politics
and society, backed by a small, poorly disciplined army and mili-
tia. UN forces were already on the scene when the killing began,
with at least some knowledge of the country and the major actors,
awaiting only reinforcements. The RPF had capable military
forces on the ground that could assist in defeating the perpetra-
tors. Intervention would not have conflicted with other major
U.S. strategic interests, nor did major regional powers vigorously
oppose intervention.
Kuperman argues that intervention in Rwanda probably would
have required more troops and saved fewer lives than some have
claimed, but compared to the forces utilized in many traditional
military operations, the numbers would have been extremely
small. The rapid victory of the RPF army, a lightly armed force of
between 20,000 and 25,000 men, over the Hutu perpetrators
suggests that, once on the scene, a well-equipped Western mili-
tary force would have faced relatively light opposition and suf-
fered relatively few casualties.39
From a comparative perspective, the most significant obstacles
to intervention in Rwanda were its geographic isolation and the
tremendous speed with which the genocide took place. Yet one
need only briefly consider the obstacles to effective intervention
in other examples of genocide and mass killing described by
Power-the Holocaust, the mass killings in Cambodia under the
Khmer Rouge, and the Iraqi mass killings of Kurds-to under-
stand how much greater the challenges can be.
The Holocaust
International intervention halted the Holocaust, but doing so
ultimately required the most devastating war in human history.
Allied leaders have been criticized for not speaking out publicly
against the Holocaust earlier and more frequently after they
received credible intelligence that systematic murder was taking
place.40 Any delay in recognizing or publicizing the Holocaust,
however, would have had little impact on the Allies' ability to pre-
vent it. In fact, the Allied war against Germany actually began
almost two years before the Nazis initiated the Holocaust some-
time in the late summer or fall of 1941. Yet victory still came too
late to save between five and six million lives, two-thirds of the
European Jewish population. Although the Holocaust continued
until the end of the Second World War, as with the Rwandan
genocide, the most significant killing was over quickly. The Nazis
killed approximately 3.8 million Jews in the first 18 months of
the genocide, between the summer of 1941 and the end of
1942.4'
It is highly unlikely that anything short of total military defeat
could have deterred Hitler from continuing the genocide, since
he believed Germany was locked in an existential struggle against
www.apsanet.org 573
Review Essays I Still Standing By
the Jews. Neither the prospect of war against the combined mili-
tary forces of the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union,
nor the Allied strategic bombing campaign that killed between
300,000 and 600,000 Germans was sufficient to dissuade him.42
On the contrary, Hitler simply blamed the war and its depriva-
tions on Jewish influence in Allied capitals, a conclusion that, if
anything, stiffened his resolve to deal with the Jews.
Nevertheless, a substantial literature has emerged around the
question of whether the Allies might have done more to rescue
the Jews. Most of the literature has focused on two major missed
opportunities. First, critics point to the Allies' refusal to permit
more Jews fleeing the Nazis to immigrate before the war-and
the failure to help more Jews escape from Europe once the killing
began.43 Second, some scholars have argued that Britain and the
United States should have bombed the railways leading to the
death camps or destroyed the camps themselves.44
It is not possible to examine these debates in detail here, but it
should be sufficient for the purposes of this essay to underscore
two points.
First, it is important to keep in mind that even the propo-
nents of increased rescue efforts and bombing of the death
camps usually accept that such measures could not have saved
most of those who died. Because the vast majority of Holocaust
victims lived in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union-regions
that were not under Nazi control before the war-more open
immigration laws would not have saved them. The death camps
did not come into the range of Allied bombers until the end of
1943, by which time roughly 4.4 million Jews already had been
murdered.45 Even if the bombers could have destroyed the rail
lines and the gas chambers and kept them out of operation for
long periods, this would not have halted the genocide. The Nazis
had proved during the early phases of the genocide, before the
death camps became operational, that they could kill large num-
bers of Jews in mass shootings, without deportation to camps.
An estimated 1.3 million Jews were murdered in this way.46 Even
David Wyman, who offers one of the most optimistic accounts
of the Allies' various options for saving Jews, acknowledges,
"Most likely it would not have been possible to rescue millions.
But without impeding the war effort, additional tens of thou-
sands-probably hundreds of thousands-could have been
saved."47 This is an enormous number of lives. It is small only in
comparison to the number that could not have been saved.
Second, although other scholars have disputed these estimates,
arguing that the Allies could have saved few if any lives, it is dif-
ficult to imagine how they could have made things substantially
worse with a total genocide already under way. Bombing the
death camps at Auschwitz would undoubtedly have killed many
Jewish inmates, but since only a handful of them would survive
to see the end of the war, it was a chance that many inmates prob-
ably would have been willing to take. The amount of military
resources required for such a raid would not have detracted
appreciably from the overall Allied war effort. If these strategies
had any potential to save lives, they deserved to be tried. At least
it would have sent a signal to both the victims and the perpetra-
tors of the Holocaust about the Allies' determination to stop the
killing.48 As in Rwanda, indifference, politics, and a lack of
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imagination probably outweighed pragmatic considerations in
the rejection of these proposals.
Cambodia
Trying to prevent the mass killing in Cambodia from 1975
through 1978 would have presented a different set of problems
for any potential international intervention. Unlike Nazi
Germany, the Khmer Rouge regime was militarily weak, having
come to power primarily because of the incompetence of the
American-backed regime under Lon Nol. Like the Hutu extrem-
ists in Rwanda, the Khmer Rouge perpetrators comprised a rela-
tively small organization without mass support, operating on the
radical fringes of society. As Power notes, the Vietnamese invasion
of Cambodia in late 1978 dislodged the Khmer Rouge from
power in a matter of days with a force of 100,000 men and
20,000 Cambodian supporters.
Nevertheless, the costs of intervention in Cambodia would
likely have been substantially greater than those of any proposed
intervention in Rwanda. Although the Vietnamese invasion
ended the mass killing in Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge were
not defeated. Khmer Rouge forces could not challenge the
Vietnamese in conventional warfare, but they continued to wage
a determined guerrilla war against the Vietnamese occupation
until the early 1990s. Vietnam has admitted losing 25,000 troops
during the conflict.49
An American military intervention in Cambodia almost cer-
tainly would have faced as much or more resistance than did
Vietnam. Few Cambodians supported the Khmer Rouge, but it
is highly unlikely that the population would have welcomed
American troops either. American bombing of Cambodia during
the Vietnam War had killed between 30,000 and 150,000
Cambodian civilians.50 Indeed, the Khmer Rouge had relied
heavily on the bombing and anti-American propaganda to recruit
supporters in the civil war against Lon Nol. An American inter-
vention also would have carried a considerable risk of drawing
Vietnam into the fight. Vietnam may have wanted rid of the
Khmer Rouge, but it is hard to believe that it would have accept-
ed a major American military presence on its border so soon after
the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam.
The killing in Cambodia proceeded considerably more slowly
than in Rwanda, but even if foreign intervention to defeat the
Khmer Rouge had been launched almost immediately after they
assumed power, it would probably have arrived too late to save
tens of thousands of victims. The Khmer Rouge forcibly evacuat-
ed Cambodia's major cities within days of their victory. In Phnom
Penh alone, an estimated 20,000 were executed immediately or
died during the arduous trek to the countryside.51 It is impossi-
ble to know how many people the Khmer Rouge might have
killed if left to their own devices. By the time Vietnam invaded,
however, as many as two million Cambodians had already per-
ished, approximately one-quarter of the country's population.52
As with Nazi Germany, there is little reason to believe that any-
thing less than military defeat would have succeeded in saving Pol
Pot's victims. In fact, it is hard to imagine a state less likely to have
been influenced by international economic or political sanctions
than Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. The xenophobic regime
intentionally had cut itself off from the world both economically Iraqi oil and canceling Iraq's agricultural and export-import cred-
and diplomatically in an effort to achieve complete self-sufficiency. its (211). It does not seem likely that these measures would have
Pol Pot showed that he was prepared to accept the starvation of been effective. Saddam Hussein viewed the Kurds (some of
hundreds of thousands of Cambodian citizens rather than change whom, as noted above, had been collaborating with Iran against
course.
Iraq in the ongoing war between the two states) as a grave threat
As Power acknowledges, however, by far the most
to his regime. His significant
refusal to bend to the will of the international
community
barriers to an American military intervention in the face of intensive
in Cambodia were economic and diplomatic
political. Intervention almost certainly would have
sanctions touched
both before and after off a Gulf War suggests that
the Persian
firestorm of opposition at home. There was simply no direct
nothing less than support for
military intervention could have protect-
another war in Southeast Asia. Neither Ford ed
nor Carter
the Kurds. Indeed, even
at the endcon-
of the war, international sanc-
tions didbeen
sidered it. The American left, which might have not prevent Saddam fromto
expected turning on the Kurds once
call for some kind of intervention, had become
again and so distrustful
killing thousands of them. of
Only military intervention
the government after Vietnam that many simply
to establish Kurdishrefused
"safe havens" into
northern Iraq prevented an
believe the reports of mass killing in Cambodia (Power
even greater catastrophe.2002). In
August 1978, Senator George McGovern called Even ifontheythe Carter
would have failed to save the Kurds, sanctions
administration to consider a UN-organized military
might still have intervention
been considered for their symbolic value, but
to stop the killing, but few took the proposal seriously.
there would have been aThe
real riskidea
that they might have resulted in
was considered so unrealistic that The Washington Post in
even greater suffering reported
Iraq. Many have blamed the sanctions
that the suggestion had led some people to question
imposed on Iraq"whether the
after the Gulf War for the deaths of hundreds of
famous foe of the Vietnam war had taken momentary leave mostly
thousands of Iraqi civilians, of his
children.55 Sanctions enacted
senses."53
in the name of the Kurds might have increased support among the
Unlike Rwanda, international intervention in Cambodia Iraq people for harsher measures against the Kurdish population.
would also have faced substantial political opposition from major Much more than in Rwanda, American economic and
powers abroad. China, Cambodia's principal ally, would have geostrategic interests combined to make meaningful sanctions
vetoed any intervention proposal at the United Nations. Since the against Iraq, let alone military intervention, almost impossible.
United States was seeking to develop a closer relationship with During the Iran-Iraq War, the United States had sided with Iraq
China as part of the effort to isolate the Soviet Union, in an effort to prevent Iran from achieving dominance over the
Washington rejected even aggressive diplomatic measures against region's oil resources. Even after the war, American officials were
the Khmer Rouge, such as revoking Cambodia's UN credentials, reluctant to undercut Iraq's position in the region. To make mat-
for fear of undermining this important strategic relationship. In ters worse, Turkey, a member of NATO and one of America's
fact, after the Vietnamese invasion ousted the Khmer Rouge, the closest allies in the Middle East, also would probably have
United States called on Vietnam to withdraw from Cambodia opposed any intervention. Intervention on behalf of the Kurds
and refused to allow the new Vietnamese-backed government to would have set a bad precedent for the Turks, who were waging
assume Cambodia's seat at the United Nations. their own bloody war against Kurdish insurgents in eastern
Turkey.
Iraq
Intervention to prevent the mass killing of Iraq's Kurdish minor- War for Other Ends
ity in the late 1980s also would have faced substantially greater This history suggests that preventing genocide and mass killing i
military and political obstacles than did intervention in Rwanda. the future will be more difficult than many have suggested. Full
Once again, the killing proceeded at a terrible pace. Human scale military intervention may encounter deep political opposi
Rights Watch estimates that between 50,000 and 100,000 tion at home and abroad. Limited strategies of intervention lik
Kurds, almost all civilians, were killed in the eight months the ones suggested by Power are unlikely to succeed and, if imple
between February and September 1988, including several thou- mented prior to the outbreak of large-scale violence, have the
sand who are believed to have perished in chemical weapons potential to backfire. If the United States and other nations failed
attacks on Kurdish villages.54 The American victory in the to act in Rwanda, where so many of the practical and politica
Persian Gulf War of 1991 only a few years later-and again in impediments to effective intervention present in other episodes o
2003-demonstrated that the United States could have inter- genocide and mass killing were diminished or absent, there seem
vened in Iraq with relatively few casualties. But waging each of little chance that they will do so more frequently in the future.
these wars still required hundreds of thousands of troops and a In spite of these conclusions, I believe that the obstacles t
military buildup that took months to complete. In the months intervention should not be allowed to serve as an excuse for th
before the war in 1991, and to a lesser extent in 2003, many ana- failure of the United States and the international community t
lysts predicted that American casualties would be far higher than live up to its pledge to prevent genocide. The lesson of the
they turned out to be. Holocaust, after all, was not that preventing genocide is easy. Th
Power argues that Iraq "cared about the outside world's opin- pledge "never again" was made in the aftermath of a war involvin
ion" and that the United States should have condemned Iraq pub- tremendous sacrifices. It did not include the qualification "so lon
licly and imposed economic sanctions barring the importation of as there is virtually no risk of casualties." Preventing or haltin

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Review Essays I Still Standing By

genocide and mass killing may not be as easy as some have making sure the next century will be remembered as a less
claimed, but it is hardly impossible. Intervention can save lives if violent era. A primary lesson of Rwanda is that bringing about
we are willing to pay the price of our convictions. this outcome will not be easy. The most important obstacles in
If we wish to prevent crimes against humanity, we should not our way, however, are of our own making. Unless we can over-
expect to do it on the cheap. One reason for the repeated failure come them, all signs suggest that the turn of the next century
to anticipate genocide has been the tendency to view it as funda- will find us where we are today-standing by.
mentally different from war rather than as a strategy used by
groups seeking to prevail in political or military conflict. For the References
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Notes
1 Bureau of Public Affairs 1993, 322.
2 Allen 1993, Al.
3 Greenberg 2000, A23. Rabbi Greenberg, the chairman of
the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, writes
that the actions of the government of Sudan "threaten
genocide." The death toll estimate is from 1983 through
2000.
4 Rieff 1996, 27.
5 Clinton in Africa 1998, A12.
6 Judah 2000. On the failure of air power to prevent
Serbian military forces from carrying out their missions,
including ethnic cleansing, see Hosmer 2001.
7 Kelly 1999, A31.
8 Clinton in Africa 1998, A12.
9 See also Des Forges 1999.
10 The complete text of the fax can be found on the Web
site of the Frontline documentary The Triumph of Evil.
See www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/evil/
warning/cable.html.
11 Although the terms ethnic cleansing and genocide are often
conflated, they are not the same. Ethnic cleansing refers
to the forcible removal of members of targeted ethnic
groups from certain territories, a process that often but
not always results in massive violence. See Naimark 2001.
12 African Rights 1995, 89.
13 Jones 1999.
14 Prunier 1998, 132. Italics in original.
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Review Essays I Still Standing By

15 Gourevitch 1995, 85. 32 See also Kuperman 1996.

16 African Rights 1995, 65.
17 Des Forges 1999, 172.
18 Press briefing 1994. For more on U.S. officials' views
about the "tribal" roots of the conflict in Rwanda, see
Des Forges 1999, 624.
19 See also Mueller 2000; Prunier 1995.
20 The preliminary findings of a new research project con-
ducted by Scott Straus, including extensive surveys and
interviews with perpetrators and survivors of the genocide,
suggest roughly similar numbers. Personal communication
with author.
21 Mueller 2000.
22 African Rights 1995.
23 Ibid., 994, 999.
24 Des Forges 1999, 26.
25 Feil 1998.
26 Power 2001a; Power 2001b; Kaufmann 2002. For
Kuperman's reply to Kaufmann, see Kuperman 2002.
27 Des Forges 2000; Innes 2001. Kuperman's reply to Innes is42
available at www.jha.ac/books/br024a.htm. 43
28 Using more optimistic assumptions, Kaufmann 2002 esti-
mates that between 300,000 and 700,000 of those killed
33 Suny 1993, 113.
34 Hitler 1971, 682. After the war broke out, Hitler also
blamed the Jews for organizing the partisan guerrilla
resistance movements that had tied down German forces
on the Eastern Front.
35 Human Rights Watch 1995.
36 Power ultimately concludes, however, that the death toll
"was far lower than if NATO had not acted at all" (472).
37 Hosmer 2001; Doder and Branson 1999; Judah 2000;
Glenny 2000.
38 Downs and Stedman 2002.
39 Although 10 Belgian peacekeepers were killed by extremist
forces at the outset of the genocide, these troops were
only lightly armed, isolated from the rest of the already
small UN contingent in Rwanda, and not prepared for
combat. See Melvern 2000.
40 Breitman 1999; Laqueur 1980.
41 Hilberg 1985.
Sherry 1987.
Friedman 1973; Bauer 1994. For the argument that the
Allies could not have saved more Jews, see Rubinstein
1997.

might have been saved. Since Kaufmann relies on an esti-44 Neufeld and Berenbaum 2000; Wyman 1984.
mate of 800,000 killed, this would mean that between 45 Hilberg 1985.
100,000 and 500,000 still would not have survived the 46 Ibid.
genocide. 47 Wyman 1984, 331.
29 Des Forges 1999, 283. 48 Weinberg 2000.
30 Larson 1996, 47. 49 Richburg 1988.
31 Belgium had initially hoped for reinforcements, but when 50 The low estimate is from Margolin 1999. The high figure
it became clear that none were forthcoming, it announced is from Kiernan 1996.
on April 12 that it had decided to withdraw its forces 51 Kiernan 1996.
(Barnett 2002). Ultimately, the United States acquiesced 52 Mydans 1996.
to leave a small UN force of 270 men behind (540 actu- 53 Oberdorfer 1978, A8.
ally stayed) to help protect approximately 20,000 Tutsi 54 Human Rights Watch 1995.
civilians who had taken refuge with UN forces in various 55 Simons 1998.
locations around Kigali. 56 Melvern 2000.

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