MOBILIZING THE POLITICAL WILL TO INTERVENE TO PREVENT MASS ATROCITIES: A NATIONAL INTEREST APPROACH1 Prepared for the University

of Pretoria, Faculty of Law Human Rights Centres Conference on Article 4(h) @ 10: How to End Mass Atrocities in Africa? 6-7 December 2012. By Frank Chalk/Professor of History and Director, Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada (drfrank@alcor.concordia.ca and http://migs.concordia.ca) Introduction Many of us concerned with preventing mass atrocities start from moral, ethical and humanitarian concerns and are disappointed when the slaughter of civilians arouses little more than indignation and posturing by contemporary state leaders. By now we should have recognized that state leaders are focused on their own welfare which includes the privileges of office and what they define as the national interests of their states. Cardinal Richelieu and philosopher and politician Jean de Siphon served as the intellectual midwives of the modern concept of national interest, also known as reasons of state, in seventeenth century France, amidst the Thirty Years War. Although they popularized the notion that reasons of state were a mean between that which conscience permits and affairs require, scholars are aware that their concept of the national interest had much earlier roots. Indeed, many students of such classic texts as Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, will recall the exchange between the Athenian commanders and the leaders of the besieged island of Melos which articulates a concept of national interest as early as 416 BC. The modern tone of their discussion is captured by this exchange: Athenians: Then we on our side will use no fine phrases saying, for example, that we have a right to our empire because we defeated the Persians, or that we have come against you now because of the injuries you have done usa great mass of words that nobody would believe. . . . Instead we recommend that you should try to get what it is possible for you to get, taking into consideration what we both really do think; since you know as well as we do that, when these matters are discussed by practical people, the standard of justice depends on the equality of
1

This essay draws on Frank Chalk, Mobilizing the Will to Intervene: The Responsibility to Protect Meets the National Interest, in Humanitre Hilfe und staatliche Souvernitt. Mnsterscher Kongress zur humanitren Hilfe, Joachim Gardemann, Franz Josef Jakobi and Bernadette Spinnen (eds.), (Mnster : Aschendorff Verlag, 2012), pp. 47-58 plus Bibliography; and The Responsibility to React, co-authored with Romeo Dallaire and Kyle Matthews, in The Routledge Handbook of The Responsibility to Protect, W. Andy Knight and Frazer Egerton, eds. (New York and London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 36-49.

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power to compel and that in fact the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what have to accept. ... Melians: And how could it be just as good for us to be the slaves as for you to be the masters? Athenians: You, by giving in, would save yourselves from disaster; we, by not destroying you, would be able to profit from you.2 In any consideration of the public discussions by the leaders of multinational organizations and NGOs of Article 4 (h) of the African Union Act, as well as the Responsibility to Protect, one is struck by their emphasis on the moral and ethical basis for intervening in a Member state. Much of the literature on intervention to prevent mass atrocities denigrates the practical and self-interested motives of politicians and other state leaders as in the report of a 2008 Stanley Foundation conference which concluded: [T]he R2P focus is squarely on the safety and well-being of vulnerable people, rather than on the strategic and parochial interests of the external states or the domestic government. As with the broader notion of human security, the ultimate focus is on the safety and well-being of the people themselves.3 In contrast to this sentiment, my presentation today will emphasize the importance of the strategic and parochial interests of the external states or the domestic governments as the key to a strategy designed to avoid future mass atrocity crimes like those in Rwanda, Sudan and the DRC. My focus on self-interest arises from the findings of a study I coauthored on the American and Canadian responses to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and the Kosovo events of 1999. As one senior Canadian bureaucrat wrote in red pencil in June 1994 at the top of deputy minister of National Defence Robert Fowlers memorandum urging the Government of Canada to strongly support Gen. Romeo Dallaires United Nations Mission in Rwanda as the genocide unfolded, Not in Canadas interest.4 Before the African Union, the UN and other multilateral bodies can effectively implement the Responsibility to Protect, states all over the world must raise their national domestic capacities to contribute to this task. Much work needs to be done:

Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, trans. Rex Warner (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1954) as quoted in Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), p. 68. 3 Actualizing the Responsibility to Protect, 43rd Conference on the United Nations of the Next Decade (Stanley Foundation, 2008) 15 as quoted in Dan Kuwali, Art. 4 (h) + R2P: Towards A Doctrine of Persuasive Prevention to End Mass Atrocity Crimes, Interdisciplinary Journal of Human Rights Law, 3, 1 (2008-2009), p. 79. 4 Alan Woods, Senior Bureaucrats Ignored Warning of Genocide in Rwanda, Toronto Star, 22 September 2009, available on 3 December 2012 at http://www.thestar.com/news/world/rwanda/article/699230--seniorbureaucrats-ignored-warning-of-genocide-in-rwanda

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the hard work in each country of thinking through its national interest in implementing Article 4 (h) and the Responsibility to Protect and explaining that reasoning to the public; the conceptual work of creating doctrines and policies to guide government departments devoted to development, foreign affairs and defence in the nuanced work of carrying out the responsibility to protect; and the practical work of outlining future steps and highlighting key guidelines to ensure success when intervening to intervene in a Member state pursuant to a decision of the [AU] Assembly in respect of grave circumstances, namely: war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, as well as intervention to restore peace and stability.5

THE NATIONAL INTEREST IN IMPLEMENTING THE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT Intervention to protect innocent civilians is the right thing to do, morally and ethically. International mass atrocity crimes like genocide, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and serious war crimes deeply offend the conscience of humankind. For years, human rights groups have urged political leaders to undertake humanitarian intervention to save lives endangered by such crimes and advanced moral and ethical arguments to persuade their governments to act. But their governments did not act. As we showed in our book, Mobilizing the Will to Intervene: Leadership to Prevent Mass Atrocities (McGill-Queens University Press, 2010), the perceived absence of an American or a Canadian national interest at stake in Rwanda produced overwhelming indifference at the highest levels of government that blocked any feelings of empathy for a remote, impoverished and different part of humanity. Like the public when it assumes that each year 25 percent of eligible Canadians and Americans donate blood to the Red Cross, when the real figure in both countries is between 2.5 and 5 percent, we advocates of human rights make the mistake of assuming that our leaders are much more altruistic than they are when we urge them to act largely on the basis of humanitarian values. The hidden truth is this and we ignore it at our peril: intervention to prevent mass atrocities like genocide and crimes against humanity is very often in the national interest of our countries, but we human rights advocates have failed to make that case vividly and effectively to our nations political leaders and the people who elect them. The implementation of the Responsibility to Protect depends on making the case for the national interest and making it powerfully. In Mobilizing the Will to Intervene, we alert political leaders to five rapidly emerging and devastating threats to the national interest which threaten to strike all of us hard if our leaders ignore the prevention of mass atrocities:

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

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First, mass atrocities create conditions which spawn widespread and concrete threats from terrorism, piracy and other forms of lawlessness on the land and sea. The 9/11 attacks orchestrated by Osama bin Laden sucked the armed forces of the United States, Canada and other nations into distant Afghanistan where, in addition to the significant cost in lives lost among soldiers and civilians, the United States Army alone is hemorrhaging nearly $120billion dollars a year of taxpayers money.6 And the latest estimate of the total cost of piracy arising from failed and failing states is between US$4.9-8.5 billon a year, heading for $1315bn a year by 2015. 7 Second, mass atrocities facilitate the spread of warlordism whose tentacles block access to vital raw materials at economically-viable prices and threaten the prosperity of every nation which depends on rare minerals like coltan essential to the manufacture of communications and information devices; Third, mass atrocities trigger cascades and avalanches of refugees and internally displaced population flows that combined with global warming and booming air travel will accelerate the incidence and international spread of lethal infectious diseases. The worldwide dissemination of such diseases is virtually guaranteed in an age when some 1.8 billion civilians each year purchase tickets for air travel, including some 750 million tickets for international air travel . 8 Fourth, mass atrocities inevitably generate in their aftermath single-interest political parties and reinforce narrow political agendas which drown out more diverse political discourses in the countries where the atrocities have taken place and in receiving countries. Increases in xenophobia and nationalist backlashes in countries hosting large numbers of refugees are the predictable consequences of our governments indifference to mass atrocities that could have been prevented through early actions. Fifth, and finally, mass atrocities foster the spread of national and transnational criminal networks trafficking in drugs, women, arms, contraband and laundered money, as we observe in the cases of Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia.

Some forward looking thinkers have already recognized these trends. Retired Canadian General Maurice Baril, who served as the military advisor to Kofi Annan when he headed the Department of Peacekeeping Operations of the UN in 1994, characterizes contemporary threats to national security as no longer exclusively measured in geographic borders that are physical. Maintaining secure borders, he points out,
6 7

The Economist, 14 May 2011, p. 31. The Economics of Piracy: Pirate Ransoms & Livelihoods off the Coast of Somalia, Geopolicity, May 2011, p. iv. Accessed on 7 March 2012 at: http://www.geopolicity.com/upload/content/pub_1305229189_regular.pdf 8 Fact Sheet: International Air Transport Association, Updated December 2011. Accessed on 7 March 2012 at http://www.iata.org/pressroom/facts_figures/fact_sheets/pages/iata.aspx

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requires analyses that assess the impact of economic variables, pandemics such as H1N1 and HIV/AIDS, people movement due to climate changes, and the nature of intra-state conflicts. Borders are permeable, and money, disease, migration, ideas, and technology impact on how foreign and defence policy is and will be determined. 9 Our political leaders, like some human rights advocates, often make the mistake of assuming that only military intervention is effective in preventing mass atrocities. But like many experienced senior officers, General Baril has become an advocate of what he calls soft power. Now I would like to discuss how we can use soft power to implement the Responsibility to Protect. DEVELOPING GUIDELINES FOR DEPARTMENTS OF DEVELOPMENT, FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND DEFENCE IMPLEMENTING THE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT Using soft power to implement the Responsibility to Protect Maurice Baril defines soft power as the strategic use of diplomacy, persuasion, capacity building, and the projection of power and influence in ways that are cost-effective and have political and social legitimacy. 10 Soft power is most useful when structural prevention has failed to address root causes of conflict and operational prevention is urgently needed to address the immediate causes of conflict, as well as its root causes. Optimally, inter-governmental organizations (IGOs), and especially regional and subregional organizations, should be the first responders to looming mass atrocities because they are closest to the scene and have a direct interest in preventing violence and civil conflict from spreading throughout their neighborhood. Professor Edward Kissi of the University of South Florida (Tampa) is one of the pioneer advocates of implementing practical, bottom up, local and subregional responses like those of the African Union and its affiliates to replace existing top-down, international bureaucratic mechanisms. 11 Fulfilling the Responsibility to Protect using soft power requires a culture of prevention integrated with regional institution-building. Inter-governmental organizations should create regional centres devoted to preventing violent conflict, incorporate mainstream conflict prevention and peace-building into every branch of their organizations and expand their capacity for effective action, privileging early warning and early action via diplomacy. John Packer, former Director of the Office of the High Commissioner on National Minorities (HCNM) for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), presents three primary requirements for effective violence prevention-9

Maurice Baril, Future Roles for the Canadian Forces in Rethinking Canadas International Priorities, p. 20. Accessed 7 March 2012 at http://cips.uottawa.ca/eng/documents/Priorities_Baril.pdf 10 Ibid., p. 24. 11 Kissi, The Holocaust as a Guidepost for Genocide Detection and Prevention in Africa, in Discussion Papers Journal, The Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme, (NY: United Nations, 2009), pp. 50-51. Accessed 7 March 2012 at http://www.un.org/en/holocaustremembrance/The_Holocaust_and_the_United_Nations_Outreach_Program me_Discussion_Papers_Journal.pdf

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early warning, early action, and a fully-stocked toolbox of resources. Early warning depends on building sophisticated monitoring capacities, expertise in applying analytical skills, judgment, and excellent analyses distributed in a timely fashion. The prerequisites of early action are direct contacts with key players, a pro-active approach, experience, perseverance, sustained engagement to build confidence, and skills in diplomacy, negotiation, problem solving, mediation, facilitation, and assistance. The tool box for effective violence prevention should contain options for structured dialogue to address recurrent issues, techniques to help all parties improve their knowledge sharing and communication abilities, repositories to preserve the mediators accumulation of experience and expertise, and fourth parties standing by to create positive conditions and incentives for peace. 12 The recent record of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in preventing the spread of further violence in the Balkans and the Caucuses is strong and makes clear that over time it has raised its quiet diplomacy skills to a very high level, enabling it to contribute valuable experience to implementing the Responsibility to Protect. Other regional and sub-regional organizations have a long way to go before they can match the OSCEs resources and achievements in the realm of conflict prevention. 13 But what can we do when soft power fails? Blending hard power with soft power to implement the Responsibility to Protect Soft power can fail; that is what happened in Rwanda. Quiet diplomacy and Western supervised negotiations brought about the Arusha Accords, designed to bring the Rwandan civil war to an end and propel a shared Hutu/Tutsi government to power in 1994. When spoilers sabotaged the agreements, LtGen Romo Dallaire, the Canadian commander of the UN Assistance Mission in Rwanda, found himself rendered virtually powerless because the five permanent members of the UN Security Council refused to provide his mission with essential reinforcements and a revised mandate to prevent massive ethnic violence directed against innocent civilians. Their refusal to recognize a responsibility to stop the Rwanda genocide offers us a perfect illustration of the fact that soft power is much more likely to succeed if it is paired with the credible threat of hard power. Every country is a potential contributor to implementing the Responsibility to Protect and has something to offer the international communitys efforts. The broad canvas of what

12

Craig Collins and John Packer, Options and Techniques for Quiet Diplomacy, Conflict Prevention Handbook Series No. 1 (Ottawa: Initiative on Conflict Prevention through Quiet Diplomacy, 2006 and Sandverken, Sweden: Folke Bernadotte Academy, 2006), especially parts 2 and 3. Accessed on 7 March 2012 at http://www.hri.ca/pdfs/Vol.%201%20-%20Options%20&%20Techniqes%20for%20Quiet %20Diplomacy.pdf 13 For examples of flawed interventions by regional organizations see Herbert Wulf, ed., Still under Construction: Regional Organisations Capacities for Conflict Prevention (Essen: Institute for Development and Peace, University of Duisberg-Essen, 2009), INEF-Report, 97/2009. Accessed on 7 March 2012 at http://inef.uni-due.de/cms/files/report97.pdf

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governments must do is now clear and, ironically, the strokes on that canvas emerge from the experiences that intervening countries have acquired in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is the twinning of development assistance with the provision of security, as well as the new emphasis on civil-military cooperation that progressive military thinkers now recognize as essential prerequisites to the success of mass atrocity prevention. We cannot shoot our way to peace, says Maurice Baril; the civil-military relationship is critical. 14 Doctrine, policies and training for mass atrocity prevention Soldiers putting their lives on the line to protect innocent civilians deserve clear doctrines and policies, as well as training to practice the new skills required. Genocide prevention and peace support missions are not simply one point on the broad spectrum of conventional war fighting operations for which most military units are trained. Analysts drew that lesson after observing Rwanda and the Balkans in the 1990s and it is just as true today. For this reason, senior commanders in a number of countries, including the United States, are directing military planners to be prepared for `preventing human suffering due to mass atrocities. . . .15 The Harvard Kennedy School of Government worked for two and one-half years to fill the gap in American planning, releasing in 2010 Mass Atrocities Response Operations: A Military Planning Handbook, co-authored with the US Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI). The authors of the study point out that Mass Atrocities Response Operations (MARO) significantly differ from other military operations; they require their own doctrine and training. Humanitarian and relief operations normally take place in a non-violent environment, they emphasize, while MARO may need to combine non-combatant evacuation operations, distribution of food and medicine, and high-intensity conventional fighting. What is more, they observe, the enemy is often behaving differently during a MARO than in conventional warfare; instead of seeking first to defeat opposing forces, the enemy is focused on slaughtering defenceless civilians. Traditional non-combatant evacuation operations (NEO) do not usually involve Defeating combatants, protecting civilians from continuing attacks, or creating stable conditions . . ., but MARO do. And unlike a counterinsurgency operation in which both sides vie for the loyalty of civilians and some civilians are allied with one side or the other, the MARO team concludes, In a MARO, protection of civilians victimized by perpetrators is the core objective of the mission.16 But it is not enough to apply the latest principles of counter-insurgency warfare to the tasks of civilian protection, nor is it enough to apply a bureaucratic fix to the task of nation-building by improving the capacity of diplomatic and development departments to
14 15

Baril, Future Roles, p. 24. See press release from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government quoting the 2010 US Quadrennial Defense Reviews directive to the US Department of Defense. Available at: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/news-events/news/press-releases/pr-maro-may10
16

Ibid.

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support civilian protection. As Nathan Hodge argues in his 2010 study, Armed Humanitarians: The Rise of the Nation Builders, such proposals may amount to nothing more than bureaucratic fine-tuning.17 What is really needed, as Hodges insightfully contends in his study, is recognition that we run the risk of estranging the class of nation builders from ordinary voters in our own countries, widening the divide between civilians and the military. We can begin to bridge that gap in each of our countries, he argues, by having a national conversation about the real cost of this commitment, the limits of what nation building can and cannot achieve, and what place nation building plays within the larger national interest.18 Next Steps: A Summary of Guidelines and Actions Needed to Ensure Success Implementing the Responsibility to Protect Building on these important observations, advocates of Responsibility to Protect policies should help government departments to implement the following agenda: It is in the national interest of all countries to implement the Responsibility to Protect; political leaders and ordinary citizens should be educated to understand that. Gear up for preventive diplomacy and conflict resolution mediation for the protection of civilians by establishing mediation units staffed by personnel specially trained for this purpose Create mediation units in regional and sub-regional organizations dedicated to early warning, early action, and provision of resources to reward stakeholders who cooperate in peace maintenance Act on the premise that soft power can only succeed if it is paired with the credible threat of hard power Make credible your possible use of force to support peace building and mass atrocity prevention by training your troops in mass atrocity response operations chiefly aimed at protecting civilians Expand budgets allocated to support foreign language learning and the serious study of foreign cultures to improve your governments capacity intelligently to prevent violent conflict, interdict mass atrocities, and assist in post-intervention

17

Nathan Hodge, Armed Humanitarians: The Rise of the Nation Builders (New York: Bloomsbury, 2010), p. 297. On the pitfalls of counterinsurgency today, see Bing West, Counterinsurgency: A New Doctrines Fading Allure, in the Feature Report on Counterinsurgency in the Post-COIN Era, World Politics Review, 24 January 2012, pp. 7-9. Accessed on 7 March 2012 at http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/11249/counterinsurgency-a-new-doctrines-fading-allure 18 Hodge, Armed Humanitarians, p. 299.

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Focus Responsibility to Protect missions primarily on aiding citizens of the host country to create safe and secure environments, the rule of law, stable governance, a sustainable economy, and social well-being Embrace Maurice Barils aphorism that We cannot shoot our way to peace; the civil-military relationship is critical and 80 percent of the effort should be on the non-military side through development and diplomacy Ensure that the military arm of your government understands the requirements for sustainable development and the development arm understands the requirements of security building. Support an operational culture which connects with the people at the local level and focuses on operations that bring stability, while shielding citizens of the host country from insurgent violence, corruption, and coercion Employ strategies and tactics that avoid unnecessary casualties among innocent host country civilians Ensure that key personnel receive training in local languages, that tour lengths are long enough to build continuity and ownership of success, and that all foreign personnel show respect for local cultures and customs, and demonstrate intellectual curiosity about the people of the host country

These recommendations may contain and nurture the seeds of neo-colonialism just as critics on the Left often contend. The road to hell is often paved with the best of intentions. Our job is to ensure that we recognize these dangers, contain them within the boundaries of checks and balances, engage with our critics at every opportunity, and carry out the principles of the Responsibility to Protect so rigorously that the honest fears of our critics are never realized. We have far to go and much to learn as we venture to go where democrats and advocates of human rights have rarely gone, embarking on shared responsibilities and sharing authority to help local advocates of community building fulfil the potential of democratic development while advancing the national interests and security of our own peoples. This is a challenge whose energy is capable of moving mountains. In many senses we are only at the end of the beginning. SUCCESSES STARTS AT HOME: THE NEED FOR CIVIC DIALOGUES IN EACH MAJOR CITY AND REGION

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For several years now, the Government of Canada has preferred to let other countries lead the movement to implement the principles of the Responsibility to Protect report despite the fact that the Canadian Government spearheaded the Responsibility to Protect study in 2001. If this can happen in Canada, a country whose credentials include the Noble Peace Prize winning efforts of Lester B. Pearson and the strenuous leadership of Lloyd Axworthy and Paul Martin, it can happen anywhere. There is a lesson to be learned by all countries from this experience: widespread public understanding of the gains arising from mass atrocity prevention is crucial to forging a sustainable, durable foundation in public opinion for Responsibility to Protect programs. It is not enough to foster support in the public service whether it be the public service of Canada or the highly professional international servants of the European Union. If you want to advocate for the Responsibility to Protect, learn the lesson of Canadas experiences and start working at the grass roots. Ceaseless and unrelenting public education is the key to achieving success. Strasbourg may be on your side and Budapest may be conducting early warning observation and analysis. But no countrys support for the Responsibility to Protect is durable and sustainable without deep and widespread public understanding of the vital connection between your countries national interests and implementing the principles of the Responsibility to Protect. Civic dialogues are crucial to success in building bridges to engaged citizens and governments of countries like ours. This is how the Will to Intervene project of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies conducts its civic dialogues across Canada. In each major city, a lead NGO and a professional animator bring together about 40 carefully chosen, influential local leaders from city and provincial governments, business, religious communities, universities and the media. The W2I team summarizes its recommendations to the Government of Canada and answers questions. The civic leaders register their concernstheir hopes and the fears about our Responsibility to Protect recommendationsand announce what they are prepared to do to advance the adoption of W2Is recommendations by the Government of Canada. Mayors, Premiers, and city and provincial councils adopt resolutions or issue proclamations supporting the recommendations and forward them to the Government of Canada. Mayors, provincial premieres, NGO lobbyists and research institutes follow up with the Office of the Prime Minister and the Members of Parliament. Opinion pieces, delegations from civic organizations, and friendly parliamentarians remind the Government of the day that it needs to implement the recommendations. Crises in every failing and failed state are also opportunities. Libya and Cote dIvoire, Sudan, Kyrgyzstaneach disaster can also be a teachable moment. WHAT LESSONS FOR THE FUTURE DID WE LEARN FROM OUR WILL TO INTERVENE STUDIES OF CANADIAN AND AMERICAN POLICIES? 1. American and Canadian politicians are risk averse to foreign interventions unless they see a definite security, strategic, economic, or political reason to act. 2. Activists and scholars assume a much higher degree of altruism than really exists among Americans and Canadians.

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3. The threats which mass atrocities pose to the national interests of bystanding states are real, but many scholars and the public are unaware of them. In a decade when nearly two billion human beings purchase airline tickets annually, the long predicted global village is upon usit has arrived. 4. Mass atrocities produce the massive displacement of large numbers of people which produces conditions that encourage the spread of infectious diseases worldwide. Mass atrocities increase the probability of new terrorist incidents in our countries. They multiply the number of failed and failing states which in turn creates more sanctuaries for pirates and terrorists. And mass atrocities are force multipliers for war lords fighting to extend their control of rare earth minerals and other strategic raw materials. 5. We can not prevent every mass atrocity, nor would it be prudent to try. But positioned between doing nothing and doing everything lies a vast terrain littered with preventable mass atrocities. We neglect them literally at our peril . . . our OWN peril. We must not make achieving the perfect the enemy of achieving the good. 6. The governments of Canada and the United States, for example, must take specific measures to implement the lessons crystallized in the Will to Intervene study of Canadian and American policy, as well as the report of the Prevent Genocide Commission chaired by Madeline Albright and William Cohen. It is vital that we incorporate the prevention of mass atrocities into our governments definition of the national interest. 7. Concretely, we learned that the American and Canadian governments need to do the following: a. Declare preventing mass atrocities a national priority b. Place a trusted cabinet level super secretary in charge of preventing mass atrocities to break government log jams obstructing prevention c. Mandate standing committees in Parliament and the US Congress tasked with monitoring and reporting on what the government is doing to prevent mass atrocities d. Create interdepartmental coordinating offices for the prevention of mass atrocities furnished with standard operating procedures for disseminating intelligence on emerging mass atrocity situations throughout the whole of government e. Appoint public servants with skills and experience in crucial areas of mass atrocity prevention as members of a Civilian Prevention Corps for deployment to sites of preventable conflict in fragile countries f. Increase the diplomatic and development presence of your civil servants in failed and failing states

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g. Continue to enhance the capability of your military forces to prevent mass atrocities by increasing their force strength and developing operational concepts, doctrine, force structure, and training to support civilian protection 8. We have also learned lessons applicable to civil society organizations such as NGOs and research institutes. They need to do the following: a. Organize civic dialogues with invited politicians, business leaders, academics, and NGO activists to spell out the threats to our countries from neglect of mass atrocities. b. Persuade media owners, editors and journalists to recognize their responsibility to report accurately the complexity of mass atrocities in Africa and the threat they pose the welfare of their news consumers c. Propose motions and resolutions in city councils and state or provincial legislatures calling on our federal governments to implement the recommendations of the Will to Intervene team and the Cohen/Albright Commission d. Monitor the local language domestic media of failed and failing states for hateful messages and incitement to commit genocide, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and serious war crimes e. Train diplomats, civil servants, media owners, editors and journalists in the history of mass atrocity crimes and the patterns which precede them, as well as their responsibility to report and educate the public about them Adam Smith, the great political economist and author of The Wealth of Nations, put it best when he wrote: It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.19 Selfinterest is a powerful engine for good in the marketplace and can be an equally powerful motive and source of inspiration for state action to prevent genocide and mass persecution. In todays new global village, the lives we save may be our own.
Frank Chalk (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison), Professor of History and Director of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada) is a co-author, with Kurt Jonassohn, of The History and Sociology of Genocide (1990), a co-author with Gen. Romo Dallaire, Kyle Matthews, Carla Barquiero, and Simon Doyle of Mobilizing the Will to Intervene: Leadership to Prevent Mass Atrocities (2010), and an associate editor of the 3-volume Macmillan Reference USA Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity (2004).Professor Chalk served as President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars from June 1999 to June 2001. His current research focuses on radio and television broadcasting in the incitement and prevention of genocide and on domestic laws of genocide. He may be contacted at drfrank@alcor.concordia.ca.

19

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