The Munk Debates Read online

  We’ve seen evidence of that when we talk about pirates off the coast of Somalia. Pirates are off the coast of Somalia because it is a collapsed state. If Darfur were a separate nation it would be a collapsed state. We see how the situation in Darfur is destabilizing Chad, we see its effect on the Central African Republic, and I go back to the African Union force. Let’s not too readily dismiss them, because wherever those troops are deployed — and I’ve seen it firsthand — those people feel safe, those women are able to go out and collect firewood. The basic right of a human being to wake up in the morning and not live in terror. That was the benefit provided by the African Union force.

  I’ll be sorry when that force leaves, and everyone along that border land will be, as well. I think you have to credit them with some measure of success. They’re altruistic, they’re not looking for regime change. They are simply protecting a civilian population, the people in camps, and the humanitarian workers trying to sustain them.

  RICK HILLIER: We need a strategy for Darfur that encompasses all of its neighbouring countries, which equates roughly to the northern part of Africa. I would be happy to see a strategy for the Congo and Zimbabwe and all of their neighbours, which encompasses essentially the southern part of Africa as opposed to the failed continent of Africa, as I stated. That was the wrong way to put it.

  JOHN BOLTON: Based on my experience dealing with African ambassadors at the UN headquarters in New York, and from private conversations, there is no group more acutely aware of the failings of the United Nations and its inability to deliver aid to Africa than the Africans themselves. Once they break loose from the stifling political correctness, you’d be surprised to hear what they have to say about the UN, but not publicly.

  MIA FARROW: What would you propose instead? We all agree the United Nations needs to be improved. What are you proposing to do about that?

  JOHN BOLTON: It’s not my obligation. The Responsibility to Protect specifically says it’s the Security Council that decides when the intervention will take place, agreed? That’s what it says, which is where we are in Darfur.

  GARETH EVANS: But nobody is arguing that Darfur is the place for military intervention.

  JOHN BOLTON: We are talking about military intervention in Darfur and the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force. The argument is about replacing the failed inadequate African Union force with a more robust force. Kofi Annan once proposed NATO-equipped troops with greater logistical capability and more helicopter transport to overcome the lack of infrastructure. That’s what Kofi Annan wanted, and that’s what has been prevented from taking place in the Security Council. So you can talk about aspirations all you want, but until you explain how we get through the problem of the Security Council, you’re just spinning wheels.

  GARETH EVANS: Let’s clarify that there is a huge difference between a voluntary consensual peacekeeping force of the kind that has now been approved in full by the Security Council and sending in an invasion force. We’re sure the Sudanese government is being obstructive, but individual states, including the Western states, are unable or unwilling to supply this peacekeeping force with the resources — including helicopters — that it needs.

  There’s a difference between that set of problems and a humanitarian intervention in the traditional sense, and you’re just running the two things together. Nobody is arguing for an invasion force in Darfur, because to do so would be wholly unproductive for the survival of the two and a half million refugees there.

  MIA FARROW: The protection of civilians and humanitarians is a different issue. We’re not talking about Iraq. We’re talking about going in to protect civilians and humanitarians.

  JOHN BOLTON: What I was trying to say was — and this is the point I made at the beginning — that I think it’s especially important to understand that humanitarian intervention is very different from traditional UN peacekeeping. In the case of Darfur, Sudan and its allies on the Security Council have, for more than three years, prevented the deployment of the peacekeeping force. It is still not clear when that will actually happen on the ground in Darfur, as opposed to the halls of the United Nations. In the meantime the tragedy goes on. If you fault the governments of the West for not contributing troops, how do you get past the African Union, which doesn’t want Western forces occupying the region?

  GARETH EVANS: They want helicopters, John, and they’re not going to get them.

  JOHN BOLTON: Well, it is fine to complain about inaction, but at some point you have to say that the inaction reflects the unwillingness of governments to do what people are calling for. This is what Rick Hillier was saying before. If you’re not attuned to the reality you can propose remedies that won’t happen, and while you’re proposing them the situation will deteriorate even more.

  MIA FARROW: Who was in government? You, sir. So, yes, I think when you’re talking about the failure of governments you’re talking about the failure of my government and your government.

  JOHN BOLTON: Actually, three of us have been in government at different points, but I want to tell you I wish you could have been with the U.S. mission in New York when we were arguing to put Burma on the agenda of the Security Council. I wish you could have sat with us during those negotiations — not in the public chamber of the Security Council that we see on television, but in the informal meeting chamber arguing with China and other countries about why they didn’t want us to talk about Burma.

  GARETH EVANS: I agree. It’s a travesty, you’re right.

  BRIAN STEWART: Big power politics and the ability of the superpowers to use leverage and get things done is part of the reality of the world. I still don’t quite understand why, on the Security Council, there has not been a concerted effort to embarrass China and embarrass Russia if necessary. The Olympic Games proved very useful when it came to embarrassing China.

  JOHN BOLTON: May I just give you one example? One of the overwhelming cultural attributes of the Security Council is the desire for unanimity. Most countries — including Britain, France, almost all of the members of the European Union that serve on the Council, and the majority of Third World countries — argue that it’s more important to have a unanimous Security Council resolution than a more effective resolution that has a couple of negative votes. I think that it is wrong. I think it’s in fact a good thing to make countries stand out in the rain from time to time.

  The U.S. has to stand out in the rain occasionally when members of the Security Council veto resolutions that are unfair to Israel. It doesn’t bother me to do that, nor should it bother governments on the Security Council to say we’re not going to compromise this resolution any further, let’s go to a vote. And if China wants to stand out and veto it, fine. Let China face the consequences.

  My view is in a distinct minority. But if you think that consensus decision-making on the Security Council is so important that it should override these other concerns, then you have to acknowledge that you’re not going to have resolutions that are as effective or as positive as you might otherwise have.

  RICK HILLIER: This conversation confirms everything that scared me when I was on a mission working for the United Nations and I was trying to interpret the mumbo-jumbo that came from UN headquarters.

  BRIAN STEWART: I have a question from the audience here addressed to Gareth Evans: “Was Russia’s use of the humanitarian rationale for invading Georgia precipitated? Was it a result of NATO’s humanitarian intervention in Kosovo?”

  GARETH EVANS: Russia’s attempt to explain its actions in Georgia in terms of the Responsibility to Protect was a travesty of the first order. Defending their own citizens when they created those citizens by issuing Russian passports for them, then going into Georgia with the use of military force when the provocation was probably there, but certainly not such as to justify military intervention. It certainly wasn’t a last resort, just as the United States and Britain’s use of the concept of humanitarian intervention or Responsibility to Protect was utterly misguided in the c
ontext of Iraq in 2003.

  I have no doubt that Russia felt itself slightly justified in doing what it did in Georgia because of the events that took place in Kosovo. But frankly, there was no contest in terms of the nature of those two exercises. Kosovo in 1999 was a situation of massive ethnic cleansing, and given all that President Slobodan Miloševic had done previously, there was every reason to believe it was going to be followed by genocide. It was a totally justified case for international military intervention.

  The Security Council didn’t endorse military intervention, so the coalition took action with NATO without the endorsement of the Security Council. That made it a very tough call for those of us wrestling with the rectitude of this response. The only answer you could possibly give was it was not legally right for the U.S. and other nations to do what they did, but it was certainly morally justified. It’s the international equivalent to mitigation in domestic law.

  Yes, we broke the law, but we were justified in doing so. You can do that occasionally, but you can’t do it all the time.

  JOHN BOLTON: I’m glad that point came up, because it shows that you can ignore the Security Council in some cases when it happens to be convenient for you, and yet attack other nations when their positions are inconvenient.

  GARETH EVANS: It just happened to be convenient for a few hundred thousand Kosovo citizens who weren’t killed, but I really do think that’s a debating point that ought to be avoided.

  RICK HILLIER: That’s simplifying the issue also, though, because tens of thousands of Kosovo Serbian citizens in the northern part of the province now feel themselves under massive threat and feel their homes and their lives are going to be destroyed, or have been destroyed, by those same implications from the intervention itself. So it is not always cut and dried, and, yes, maybe some lives were saved. But the long-term implications still have not been felt in the southern part of Eastern Europe.

  BRIAN STEWART: We’re moving toward the end of the debate, but first we have closing statements. I will ask John Bolton to speak first, followed by Mia Farrow, Rick Hillier, and Gareth Evans. Three minutes each, please.

  JOHN BOLTON: We’ve discussed morality a lot during this debate, and obviously all of us view moral questions as the most important we face as individuals. They should be, but I think it’s very important to understand that morality does not always point in one direction. There can be legitimate disagreements among conflicting moral principles. You may not agree with the operational conclusions that follow from one set of moral arguments, but that doesn’t mean that you’re ignoring the moral question or that you’re prepared to act immorally.

  The highest morality that an American president has is the protection of American life. He is elected under our Constitution to lead the nation, to be the Commander-in-Chief, and to defend American interests and values around the world. Every American president thinks long and hard before deploying American forces into harm’s way, and it should not be an object of denigration when an American president says, “In my judgement, as horrible as the situation across the sea may be, my moral imperatives lead me to conclude that American troops should not be deployed into that situation.”

  That’s not immoral. That’s a disagreement about moral principles, and when the disagreement can be played out in the loss of life of young men and women, it is serious indeed. So when you think about this question, I simply urge you to not be casual with other people’s blood.

  MIA FARROW: On a personal note, some of you may know that I am a mother of fourteen children. My children and I are not, for the most part, related by blood, but by something much stronger, by love and the deepest kind of commitment. My children come to me from all the corners of the earth. We are a multiracial family, and I tell my children that we are part of the larger human family. When we speak of loss of life, I don’t restrict the value of human life to that of my own country, because this larger human family is important to me, to my children, and to the cultures from which they come.

  I want to talk to you about it because I think there are people who have not been represented here — the people of the Darfur region. I came here to bring them into the discussion and since 2004, when I was first in Darfur, I have worn this necklace around my neck. It was given to me by a woman named Halima. She was wearing it when her village was attacked and when her baby son was torn from her arms and murdered. Three of her five children were similarly killed on that day, and her husband, too. But Halima survived, and she gave me this talisman for my protection. I could offer her no protection, and Halima clasped my two hands and asked me to tell people what is happening in Darfur: “Tell them we will all be slaughtered, tell them we need help.”

  Since that moment, I have conducted my life with Halima and the courageous people in Darfur who are facing terrible atrocities as we speak. And it isn’t only Darfur. Now we’re looking at Congo and other places, and I do think being a human being involves being responsible. I tell my children, with knowledge comes responsibility. But for the most part our world leaders don’t reflect that principle at all, and I’m not sure that that was reflected fully on this stage by everyone. I do feel if we know that horrific things are happening, that we must then do our utmost, and nothing less than that, to address them with whatever means are available. And I leave it to you, because I do think this is a defining moment. Who are we?

  Elie Wiesel wrote: “What astonished us after the torment, after the tempest, was not that so many killers killed so many victims, but that so few cared about us at all.” We have to decide whether we are among the few or among the many.

  RICK HILLIER: My remarks will be brief. You know, it is soldiers who guarantee democracy, not politicians. It is soldiers who guarantee freedom of speech, not reporters. It is the flag-draped coffin of the soldier that we’ll see if we don’t get those interventions right. I agree with interventions, if you can guarantee that you have a strategy in place with which you are going to achieve an effect that will last beyond the duration of a six- month tour or a twelve-month rotation. Without a strategy your actions are incoherent and short-term.

  Actions and strategies are also susceptible to being hijacked by everyone who comes into that theatre, and by everyone with an opinion — nothing was more frightening to me as commander than the seventy-two-hour visitor who arrived on the ground, instantly assessed everything that they saw, and pierced through the complexities of the situation with a simple solution which was invariably wrong. Institutions like the UN are not capable of giving us the direction, the support, the synergy, the coherence in the international community. I think we’ve shown that here during this debate.

  We do not have the right capacities and capabilities, we don’t have government in a box, we don’t have developmental organizations that can work to improve a region and help its people. I’m not talking about one or two individuals, I’m not talking about drive-by Ph.D. students. I’m talking about a deployable capability, not somebody who can work only out of the loan hospital or loan school, valuable as that might be.

  We do not have the robustness of will in our society to support a long-term mission. I know that as Chief of Defence I always felt that before our first soldier stepped foot on that hostile foreign soil, Canadians had better be stepping with them. We do not have the capacities or the capabilities to develop the expertise in the short term. Yes, we can do it in the long term, but there all kinds of things which unfortunately do occur and for which we are ill-prepared. I give you the example of trying to remove toy guns from the streets of Kabul. Children were using guns to point at our soldiers and we had some dangerous incidents. The soldiers were concerned about this, so we offered prizes for kids to turn in toy guns. In Afghanistan a toy gun is one that is not working; they look very real, and we quickly realized that we were collecting more toy guns than existed in Afghanistan. In fact, guns were being brought in from Pakistan and turned in to the staff troops in Afghanistan.

  We don’t always understand all of
those things that need to be in place before an operation. You simply don’t build a team on the run if you’re going to be successful. The NATO response has almost always been a complete failure at getting countries to ante up the necessary forces. And without that kind of support, we do not have the moral right to ask our young men and women to go somewhere and do something for which they might pay with their lives, and at the same time not have the effect of saving lives on the other end.

  GARETH EVANS: President George W. Bush once famously said to Senator Joe Biden that he didn’t do nuance. I think both John Bolton and Rick Hillier have shown tonight that they’d rather learn something from the master in that respect. I think it is a pity that we spent so much of this debate talking past each other about absolutes and about alternatives which are not the real alternatives we face in a world where mass atrocity crimes are an all-too-present reality, and for which we have to struggle to find collective solutions.

  When we talk about ending man-made humanitarian crises we’re not talking about conflicts generally, we’re not talking about human rights violations generally. We’re talking about quite a small subset of really tough, really ugly cases where governments — either because of their unwillingness or their incapacity — are allowing or are themselves perpetrating terrible crimes.

  We, the international community, have to think about what our responses to those situations are going to be, and in that respect all the options have to be on the table. Diplomatic persuasion, the use of economic sanctions and incentives, the use of legal instruments, and, yes — ultimately, of course, we have to keep open the option of military force.

  But let’s be nuanced in our understanding of this issue. Military force is only one option, and really the most extreme measure of addressing humanitarian crises, and it is something we should only agree to because of the stakes that are involved — not the least of which is the blood of our own kids. We have to be very cautious about ever embarking on military missions, but that shouldn’t stop us from doing other things that don’t involve that kind of traumatic choice.