The Munk Debates Page 6

  Let’s start the debate with Gareth Evans.

  GARETH EVANS: I hope that this debate begins and ends with a simple proposition. The proposition is this: whatever mistakes we make in the conduct of international relations, in responding to deadly conflict and human rights violations, let’s not, as an international community, ever again fail to respond adequately to mass atrocities, to genocide, to ethnic cleansing, to other major crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Let’s ensure that when another man-made humanitarian catastrophe like Cambodia or Rwanda or Bosnia or Darfur looms on the horizon, as it surely will, we, as an international community, will not have to look back at yet another disastrous failure. Let’s get to the point where we won’t ever again ask ourselves, with a mixture of anger and incomprehension and shame, how we could possibly have let this happen.

  But how do we make that happen? Responsibility to end man-made humanitarian crises doesn’t mean that for every problem of this kind the answer is to send in the marines. Collusive military force is a blunt and extreme instrument, and it should be used only in the most extreme and exceptional circumstances.

  Professional soldiers usually agree, but civilians tend to be a little bit more gung-ho about the use of military force.

  The trouble is that most of the debate on these issues is being conducted as if the use of extreme military force were the only option. Send in the marines or do nothing at all. There are, of course, cases where rapid and forceful coercive military intervention will be the only option. Roméo Dallaire was right about the need for military intervention in Rwanda in 1994. The Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia a year later was another case when the failure to react militarily was catastrophic. Kosovo in 1999 was another case where, although more controversial, military intervention was absolutely necessary in practice and thoroughly justified, if not legally, then morally.

  But there are plenty of other cases where coercive military force — in the sense of mounting a full-scale military invasion as distinct from a consensual peacekeeping operation — is not the right answer, if only because to do so would cause considerably more harm than good.

  We are deeply conscious of the unresolved crises in each of the particular countries that we’re discussing in this debate — Sudan, Zimbabwe, Burma — and how much appalling human misery continues to be suffered by innocent civilians. We do have to rule out coercive military force as an option for reasons which we can debate later in detail.

  That doesn’t mean, however, that the alternative is to do nothing. There is a whole range of responses — from the supportive, to the persuasive, to the coercive. There is a toolbox of measures — diplomatic, economic, legal, and military — that can and should be used by the international community to prevent atrocities from occurring in the first place. These measures should be used to react to atrocities when they do occur, to rebuild societies that are shattered by crises, and to ensure the underlying causes are addressed so that these situations don’t occur again.

  This is the approach that is at the heart of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine. The international community endorsed R2P unanimously at the 2005 World Summit. Canada was instrumental in persuading the international community to embrace the doctrine. It is a more multi-layered and nuanced concept than the one-dimensional military-focused battle cry for humanitarian intervention. It is already apparent that this approach generates the kind of global reflex consensus response we need if we are going to respond effectively to these catastrophic, criminal situations.

  Getting the public to appreciate the differences between the kinds of responses that are available is not going to be easy. Getting them to accept that ending humanitarian crises doesn’t always mean using extreme and intrusive military force, and encouraging sensible discussion about other options, is not going to be easy either. I hope that during the course of this debate we’ll be able to persuade you that there is a viable set of responses that don’t involve military action.

  My last word in opening this debate is to acknowledge that international engagement of any kind — whether it be extreme military action, or throwing resources at a problem, or trying to come to a solution through diplomatic mediation — is not cost- free for any government or for any of the individuals involved, particularly when it involves the willingness to spill blood for the cause in question.

  So what is the justification for incurring that kind of cost? Doesn’t charity begin at home? Where is the national interest in mounting any of these international adventures, however noble the cause may be? Well, there is a national interest, and we want to talk about that national interest during this debate. It has a number of dimensions, but the critical one is this: in this day and age, the national interest is not something that can be pursued by the most expedient form of protection of immediate national security and economic interests. In this interdependent, globalized era, every country has a national interest in ensuring that atrocity crime situations in other countries are prevented or stopped. Even when they occur in faraway countries, it is in the national interest of everyone to prevent or stop them.

  States that cannot or will not stop internal atrocity crimes are the kinds of states that cannot or will not stop terrorism, or weapons proliferation, or drug and people trafficking, or the spread of health pandemics, or other global risks which every country in the world wants to avoid. This debate is not just about national interests. It is about our common humanity.

  There is a complex selection of tools at our disposal, and we should use them for reasons of national interest and we should do so for reasons of our common morality. If we don’t respond to atrocity crime situations in this way, we simply won’t be able to live with ourselves.

  BRIAN STEWART: Thank you, Gareth. Ambassador Bolton, please. To be followed by Mia Farrow and then General Hillier.

  JOHN BOLTON: Thank you very much. When advocates of the Responsibility to Protect talk, they talk in terms of the international community. I know where the international community lives. It’s where I flew from yesterday, and it puts me in mind of the great American humorist Will Rogers, who once said, “I’ve been around so long I can remember way back when a liberal was someone who was generous with his own money and his own soldiers.”

  We’re told that the use of military force with respect to humanitarian intervention is only a small part of the game. We’re told that economic and diplomatic pressure can be applied as well. That’s certainly true. But when it comes down to where the rubber meets the road, the point the humanitarian intervenors make is that it comes down to military force. And if you ignore that point, that’s really saying nothing more than, “Do good, my children.”

  I won’t argue against that sentiment. The point to consider is that R2P is not the same as UN peacekeeping. UN peacekeeping successes have occurred in the past because the parties involved in the dispute have consented to the UN’s involvement. That is not the case in the Responsibility to Protect doctrine. UN peacekeeping is typically neutral between the parties of dispute. The point of the Responsibility to Protect is not to be neutral. And finally, UN peacekeeping operations have very limited rules of engagement. This is precisely the opposite of what humanitarian intervention implies.

  Moreover, the rhetoric of humanitarian intervention is far broader than its advocates believe. This is one of the reasons why the debate over humanitarian intervention is not comprehensible at an abstract level.

  Let’s take, for example, the case of the citizens of North Korea, where over decades the height and weight of the average North Korean has declined. Despite this, no one considers humanitarian intervention in North Korea. What about a country where the government kills its political opponents, bans political parties, suppresses the press, and even goes so far as to threaten children with lower grades if their parents don’t vote the right way? Am I talking about Zimbabwe? No, I’m talking about the last presidential election in Russia. Where is the Responsibility to Protect there? The fact is, these cases are too ha
rd. So instead, the R2P focuses on those cases that are easy and cheap, or that people think will be easy and cheap.

  The classic example was Somalia, which started off with an effort to open up channels of humanitarian aid distribution and ended with a failed exercise in nation-building. During the Battle of Mogadishu, eighteen American Rangers were dragged through the dusty streets of the city, and the situation in Somalia was worse after the intervention than before. Consider the consequences of the use of military force in Iraq and Afghanistan. Do you think it’s easy, even for the U.S. military, the most powerful military in the history of the world, to avoid casualties to itself or to innocent civilians?

  Consider those cases before casually advocating the use of military force even for high moral purposes. Then, ask yourself: who is responsible for making decisions on behalf of the international community? The advocates of Responsibility to Protect say it is the UN Security Council. The UN was unable to do anything during the great crises of the twentieth century and during the Cold War. It has also failed to respond adequately to international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

  The UN has struggled for three years to put an effective peacekeeping force in Darfur, and has so far failed. This is a body that could barely bring itself to put Zimbabwe and Burma on its agenda, let alone try and reach some kind of substantive decision on those points. This is the body that you want to entrust to decide for the Responsibility to Protect? It is a frail reed, indeed.

  I recognize that those who advocate for the Responsibility to Protect are well-intentioned. I respect those who believe in it as a doctrine, and I would simply say to all of you — and I say it to you with great respect: If you want to engage in humanitarian intervention, do it with your own sons and daughters, not with mine.

  BRIAN STEWART: Mia Farrow, please.

  MIA FARROW: If we were to debate whether or not we are obligated to act in the case of mass atrocities, then we are debating an obligation to which we are already committed. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948 already obliges the countries that have signed it. In the case of genocide, the Genocide Convention of 1948 binds every party to it, and in the case of other major crimes against humanity, other treaties and conventions and declarations make up a body of international law that is clear and unequivocal.

  The international community formed the United Nations precisely because of such crimes. If the UN, or even the idea of an international community, is to mean anything, we must acknowledge our moral and legal obligations to act to protect civilians from mass atrocity crimes.

  The most pragmatic reasons for early actions are irrefutable. It is far better and more effective to prevent such crimes than to respond after they have begun. We look first, of course, at the cost in human lives. But we must also consider the financial costs and the diplomatic complexity of trying to end a full-blown conflict. We should anticipate that unchecked mass atrocities will destabilize neighbouring countries, raising issues of international insecurity. We have only to look at Congo today to see the far-reaching, devastating effects of a crisis that began in Rwanda fourteen years ago.

  We must also acknowledge that since interventions of one kind or another will inevitably occur, it is prudent to clarify and strengthen some established set of multilateral rules to limit the frequency of such interventions and to enhance their legitimacy.

  The Genocide Convention, which was written sixty years ago, was clear and explicit. In 2005, this obligation was unanimously reaffirmed by the international community in the World Summit outcome document, which states that when states are manifestly failing to protect their population and should peaceful means be inadequate, we, as a community, must be prepared to take collective action. The member states have spoken. With the cumulative weight of these documents and the establishment of the International Criminal Court [ICC], a new concept of the international community is emerging. Sovereignty comes with responsibility. The World Summit outcome document was explicit on prevention. When early warning signs point to the fact that a nation is sliding toward a point where mass atrocity crimes are likely to occur, the UN, or its member states, need to dispatch the highest level envoys to negotiate a halt on such a slide. It is exclusively within the power of the UN Security Council to make sure that such envoys have at their disposal the full range of economic and diplomatic leverage, including sanctions and other penalties such as suspension of aid and trade, suspension of membership in international institutions, public criticism, arms embargo, a criminal investigation, and prosecution by the ICC. Detailed knowledge of a country could determine the sticks and the carrots.

  You will note that I haven’t mentioned military intervention. The core of this approach is preventative diplomacy — that is, de-escalating a situation before mass violence begins and before positions become entrenched. However, in my own view, it would be imprudent not to have a contingency plan. The idea that the United Nations might have a standing force to protect civilians from mass atrocity crimes and to allow humanitarian aid to reach those displaced by violence should be open for debate on its own merits. While people of good conscience hope and work tirelessly for the United Nations to become the peacekeeping, peace-building institution it was intended to be, the people of Darfur would remind us that we cannot rely solely on the UN.

  As a community we must admit our best systems have failed too often. As evidenced in Darfur, Burma, Somalia, and Congo, we have seen that if we take a clear and unflinching look at the UN, we see a painfully divided Security Council and the resultant paralysis. We have seen the tragic failures of the United Nations and its failure to protect the most vulnerable citizens on this planet.

  For my own part, as a human being, I can only lend my voice to the chorus around the globe insisting that our leaders must do better. I believe our voices are insistent, and I believe that our moral determination can, if we are prepared to work tirelessly, produce the political resolve to shape a world in which all populations have the right to protection under the rule of law and to live without fear. We are standing at the threshold of a great evolution both in the United Nations and in the lifetime of humankind.

  BRIAN STEWART: Thank you very much, Mia Farrow. Next, General Hillier.

  RICK HILLIER: Our opponents have made some excellent points. The late, great baseball player Yogi Berra used to say, “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.” So that’s what I’m going to talk to you about — the practice of intervention.

  I realize that I’m the only one participating in this debate who has actually had the experience of being involved in intervention operations, and so I talk to you from the point of view of a soldier. And believe me, the responsibility falls to soldiers when diplomats and those who want to do good things — without question, for good reasons — scream that we must do something. That is always the answer — a vague “something.” And we always believe that doing that “something” is going to be easy.

  The diplomatic, legal, and financial pressures that we hear about and that should be applied usually don’t work. If they did, we probably wouldn’t have had to fight World War II, North Korea would be a democracy, and Osama bin Laden would be in jail somewhere as we speak. Remember, we are talking about armed men who operate from very base motives, and have used violence to win power, gain money, and remain immune from prosecution.

  As a soldier, I saw that the international community had shown itself incapable of developing a strategy for any intervention efforts that it undertook. Tactics without strategy are akin to roads that are going nowhere and will lead to short-term focus on a mission. Let’s face it, there is no strategy for Darfur. You can’t have a strategy for Darfur, because then you must actually have one for Sudan, and you can’t have a strategy for Sudan because you must have one for the region and the seven nations that border on Darfur. So, actually, what you’re talking about is a grand strategy for the f
ailed continent of Africa. Sadly, the international community hasn’t shown the capacity or the capability to develop a strategy for Africa, let alone any of the other strategies that must therein be inclusive.

  This lack of strategy results in incoherence in command and control, and it leads to short-term tactical benefits that disappear as soon as the troops depart. International cohesion is usually the first casualty of having tactics without a strategy to guide you.

  In addition to this lack of strategy, there are institutions in the international community that are unfit for the present security environment. We have already been critical of the UN during this debate, but as one of my commanders once said, the United Nations is really about lessons observed from past intervention operations. In fact, a further comment of his was that the United Nations could not run a one-man rush to the latrine.

  As for NATO, it is still very much focused on the Cold War. NATO simply does not work; its command structure reflects exactly that. With twenty-six to twenty-eight nations operating in consensus, making even minor tactical decisions is difficult. Where is the individual or the country that can actually put their lips on the blue lips of the decomposing corpse of those two organizations and breathe life back into them?

  Further, the capacities and the capabilities necessary for intervention operations simply do not exist. In the military, special forces, intelligence, unmanned aerial vehicles [UAVs], and amphibious platforms are necessary for intervention operations, but they are simply not available. Of course, you also need soldiers, you need boots on the ground. If we were serious about participating in humanitarian interventions, the armed forces of Australia and Canada would have to be doubled in size. The civilian capabilities are simply not there.