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Stopping Genocide and Securing “Justice”: Learning by Doing
- Social Research: An International Quarterly
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 69, Number 4, Winter 2002
- pp. 1099-1113
- 10.1353/sor.2002.0025
- Article
- Additional Information
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Stopping Genocide and Securing “Justice”: Learning by Doing BY SAMANTHA POWER IN this paper I will examine the United States record in responding to genocide, drawing from my research over the last six years and highlighting a few larger lessons. I will then look specifically at the international tribunals. Instead of plunging into the debate about whether those tribunals have lived up to an undefined standard of justice, I will begin by spelling out some of the metrics that we might use to gauge achievement. Only by deciding on the criteria by which we want to judge these tribunals and future courts can we measure improvements and setbacks and think constructively about what might be done differently—and better—at the International Criminal Court. First, the United States record. Clearly the best way to punish war crimes, war criminals, crimes against humanity, and genocidaire is to stop them. And this is something that we in the United States have never managed to orient our system or our leaders to do. The United States record is strikingly consistent across time— irrespective of the personalities involved in shaping American policy, irrespective of the geopolitical standing of the United States, irrespective of the political ideology of American decisionmakers . The American response to genocide, again and again, is what might be termed “all systems shutdown.” This is true at the macro level—if we look at what comes out of the black box of the United States government. But it is also true at a micro level—in how individuals within or outside the Beltway perceive atrocities SOCIAL RESEARCH, Vol. 69, No. 4 (Winter 2002) while they are under way. The tendency among all of us is to look away, to cast doubt on horror stories, to take refuge in what I call the “do not compute” aspects of genocide. It is a crime that defies belief. And we refuse to let the magnitude of the atrocities or the moral imperative seep in. With this happening at a micro level, it is unsurprising that bureaucracies, which notoriously insulate individuals from notions of personal responsibility, amplify the propensity for denial and inaction. The record is the same across a vast time span, from the 1915 Armenian genocide—though the crime was not then called “genocide” because the word was not invented until 1944—up until Bosnia, Rwanda, and the other egregious atrocities of the 1990s. In normal circumstances policymakers have at their disposal a toolbox containing all kinds of tools that can be deployed at various times, depending on the threat to United States interests . The tools might include “soft” sanctions on the diplomatic side, such as high-level denunciation, with senior officials like the president himself calling the crime “genocide.” United States officials might threaten prosecution in international courts or in national courts after regime change. They might expel officials representing a genocidal regime from the United States, closing down their embassies in Washington or teaming up with UN Security Council allies to deny such officials diplomatic credentials at the UN. They might freeze the regime’s foreign assets—genocidaire tend to care a lot about money. They might use United States technical assets to jam hate radio, or hate television, which is often exploited to demonize the would-be victims—”Sanitize the cockroaches!” Hutu militants chanted on Radio Mille Collines in Rwanda, “Kill or be killed!”—and to pass instructions to the killers: “So and so is traveling in a red car, license plate XYZ1234.” They might rally peacekeeping (or genocide-stopping) troops from other countries, and then use America’s unique airlift and logistic support capacities to ferry those willing troops into the region. They might create “safe areas” that are actually safe (unlike those in Bosnia), patrolling these refugee havens from 1100 SOCIAL RESEARCH the sky with NATO or US air power that is actually prepared to retaliate against those who disobey American or UN Security Council demands. When genocide happens, one might imagine taking any one or all of these steps. Indeed, in light of the domestic constituency behind the postwar pledge of “never again,” one might even send American troops into battle to stop genocide. What is shocking about...