WILL TO INTERVENE (W2I) PROJECT REPORT BY FRANK CHALK

Transcription

1 WILL TO INTERVENE (W2I) PROJECT REPORT BY FRANK CHALK PUBLIC LECTURE/UNIV. OF CALGARY JANUARY 26, 2010 CALGARY, ALBERTA

2 Will to Intervene (W2I)) Project Today s presentation: An Outline 1. Brief introduction to W2I 2. Case studies : A. Rwanda and the US Response B. Rwanda and the Canadian Response C. Kosovo: US + Canadian responses 3. Q&A/General discussion

3 Will to Intervene (W2I)) Project W2I Mission Statement: Develop practical tools to generate sufficient political will in Canada and the United States to prevent genocide and other crimes against humanity

4 Will to Intervene (W2I W2I) ) Project W2I s goal was to: i. map the processes of Canadian and US domestic political will generation to prevent genocide and other crimes against humanity; ii. identify the deficiencies, key intervention points, and influences within these processes; iii. develop practical tools to generate sufficient political will, based upon these findings.

5 Will to Intervene (W2I W2I) ) Project W2I s Phase One research focus was on: Rwanda, 1994: failed intervention Kosovo, 1999: successful intervention Current crises: Darfur, DRC, Zimbabwe

6 Will to Intervene (W2I W2I) ) Project W2I Project Overview: Staff: 3 full-time researchers and 1 part-time administrative assistant worked on the W2I project. Literature analysis: A thorough literature analysis was completed in 2007 during the first phase of the project. The researchers continued to research and analyze academic articles and monographs in the field. Workshop: A concepts workshop was held on 14 April 2008, bringing together nine leading academics from across Canada and the US, followed by a second academic consultation workshop on 10 November 2008 in Montreal.

7 Will to Intervene (W2I W2I) ) Project Research Steering Committee The RSC is comprised of 19 members. The first RSC meeting was held on 26 May 2008, and was attended by nine members. They assisted by: - providing strategic advice - facilitating future interviews - suggesting new interviewees - nominating new RSC members RSC members reviewed the final W2I report prior to its publication in September 2009.

8 Will to Intervene (W2I W2I) ) Project W2I Project Update: Project Finances: i. W2I secured CDN$474,000 in funding

9 Will to Intervene (W2I W2I) ) Project Responsibility to Protect (R2P): i. The R2P report, sponsored by the Canadian government, was published in 2001 by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. It came as a response to the 1990s -- the failure to intervene in Rwanda and the NATO-led intervention in Kosovo. ii. In 2006, UN Security Council Resolution 1674 reaffirmed the provisions of paragraphs 138 and 139 of the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document proclaiming the responsibility to iii. iv. protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. R2P is open to military force as a last resort. R2P allows for alternative ti legitimating bodies if the Security Council does not come to a consensus in a timely manner.

10 Will to Intervene (W2I W2I) ) Project Responsibility to Protect and W2I: W2I recognizes the limits it of soft power; it also understands that without credible coercive force waiting in the wings, predatory regimes will not comply with R2P principles.

11 Approach of R2P to the Will to Intervene The Responsibility to Protect report states that: To mobilize domestic political will, and to enlist as varied a coalition as possible, respect for institutional processes and strong arguments in favor of action are required. Arguments to intervene may have four different foundations moral, financial, national interest and partisan political.

12 Approach of R2P to the Will to Intervene I. Moral: rests on the understanding that the prevention of human suffering is a strong political motive. The challenge in using the moral appeal is to convey the urgency of a situation when prevention is still possible, rather than after the fact. II. III. IV. Financial: stresses that t the earlier an appropriate intervention ti is launched, the less costly it will be. Post-disaster measures whether humanitarian, military or focused on reconstruction will be many times more expensive. National Interest: t focuses on the negative consequences to your nation s interests of another nation s instability, including destabilizing refugee outflows, threats to public health, and interruption of regional trade and communication networks. Partisan Political arises from the demands put forward by a democratic government s main base of electoral support, which then influences government to take action. Drawing on partisan interests is a complex matter, risking the alienation of parts of society while appealing to an immediate support base.

13 Rwanda

14 US policy and response to Rwanda Context of US By-standing in 1994: Rejecting the Powell Doctrine Somalia, 1993 Somalia had already represented a defeat for the Powell Doctrine. Bush had intervened against Powell s advice and allowed the operation combining humanitarian activity and peacekeeping, two things that the U.S. military was allegedly not designed to do. The intervention, which came after Bush s defeat at the polls [Nov. 1992], was designed d to protect t U.N. food relief organizations from warlords and their gangs. -- Richard A. Clarke, Your Government Failed You, p.41

15 US policy and response to Rwanda Context of US By-standing in 1994: Powell s Foot-dragging g Leads to Blackhawk Down Shortly before Powell s tenure as Chairman expired, he acquiesced to the use of Special Operations forces to deal with the warlord, whose forces had now killed American troops, but he still did not agree to send tanks or AC-130 gunships. Less than a month after he left office, U.S. Special Operations forces became trapped in a shoot-out out [3 Oct. 2003]. There were no U.S. tanks or AC-130 gunships to run to their rescue. In the Black Hawk down incident, eighteen American troops died. -- Richard A. Clarke, Your Government Failed You, p. 45

16 US policy and response to Rwanda Bl;ack Hawk Down Leads Clinton to Duck and Hide The Secretary of Defense, Les Aspin, resigned. Clinton ordered in more U.S. forces, including tanks and AC-130 gunships, and kept them there six months more until sufficient U.N. forces arrived to take over the mission, as originally planned. He instructed me to work with the military to ensure that the operation was successful and that there would be no more U.S. combat deaths. In the six months that it took to bring the UN forces up to full strength In the six months that it took to bring the UN forces up to full strength, the US forces suffered no fatalities. -- Richard A. Clarke, Your Government Failed You, p. 45

17 US policy and response to Rwanda The Republican attack on Clinton over Somalia Partisan politics were very important, just the furor over Somalia of course cast a long shadow over the US policy response to Rwanda It [Somalia] was something that was dumped at the door step of President Clinton and it became a kind of rallying cry for conservatives who had been waiting for a long time to do two things: One, attack Clinton and his foreign policy and Two, attack the United Nations and peacekeeping. p In other words that constituency did not get created by Somalia; Somalia became an opportunity or offered an opportunity to that constituency to really kick into overdrive. Samantha Power, W2I interview

18 US policy and response to Rwanda Looming Congressional Elections The Republican Congress, which came into power in the 1994 midterm elections, still stunned that t Clinton had defeated d an incumbent Republican President, saw in the expanding support for U.N. peacekeeping a way of further attacking the Democrats as being anti-military. They accused the Clinton administration of putting U.S. troops in foreign uniforms and under foreign command, ceding U.S. sovereignty to some odd collection of third-world socialists in New York. -- Richard A. Clarke, Your Government Failed You, p. 41

19 US policy and response to Rwanda Looming Congressional Elections In 1994, Republicans in the House ran on a platform called the Contract with America, pledging to pass laws that would keep U.S. troops out of foreign uniforms, foreign command, and peacekeeping. Colin Powell suggested that U.S. forces should be used only for offensive operations, like the Desert Storm war against Iraq, not peacekeeping or other postwar nation-building roles. The not-too-subtle implication was that American troops were real soldiers and should not have to do the kinds of lesser missions that Indians, Bangladeshis, and Pakistanis did for the United Nations. None of this anti-united Nations sentiment had been apparent to me months earlier when I was a Bush White House staffer, as the President pushed the United Nations into a leading role in his New World Order. The sudden Republican opposition to U.S. support for U.N. peacekeeping, the vehement opposition to nation building, seemed to me disingenuous. -- Richard A. Clarke, Your Government Failed You, p. 42

20 US policy and response to Rwanda Clinton Never Paid a Political Price tor Bystanding over the Rwanda genocide Nobody effectively criticized Clinton during the 1994 Congressional elections for not intervening in Rwanda. There was no major backlash against his policy of non-intervention during the Rwanda genocide.

21 US policy and response to Rwanda US foreign policy and Africa Early 1990s saw a continuation of Cold War thinking among US foreign policy experts Strong US focus on ending apartheid and exclusive white rule in South Africa emerged in 1993 and 1994

22 Government of the United States: Key Branches and Departments, Checks and Balances Legislative Branch Congress Executive Branch President Vice President National Security Council Judicial Branch Supreme Court House of representatives Senate Department of Defense Department of State

23 US policy and response to Rwanda Decision-Making Process for Rwanda In subsequent work we determined that in fact it appeared that the Somali case was the key critical turning point, and that was certainly the impression a lot of people had, but we ve tried to demonstrate the fact that it occurred much earlier, that the decision not to interfere preceded the Somali syndrome and was a matter of priorities and expenditure of the US government. They didn t want to spend money essentially on Africa; it wasn t their priority and interests. Howard Adelman, W2I interview

24 US policy and response to Rwanda Decision-Making Process for Rwanda I mean, the criteria was Don t engage in peacekeeping unless there s peace, essentially, was it was just such strict criteria [PDD 25 after Somalia]. And you have to have an exit strategy. Hah! Would that criteria still be our policy today? It was clear that the interagency did not want us to engage in a peacekeeping operation in Rwanda. Prudence Bushnell, Principal i Deputy Assistant t Secretary for African Affairs

25 US policy and response to Rwanda Clinton backs away from UN peacekeeping in Rwanda But I think he [Clinton] signalled by the way he responded to Somalia, which is seven people get killed we pull out, we blame it on the UN which had nothing to do with it, we pull back from the whole effort to beef up the UN, he makes it clear that he doesn t want to hear from UN peacekeeping operations, and then this thing happens and nobody is prepared to go to him and say we should do it. Morton Halperin, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Democracy at the National Security Council ( ), W2I interview

26 US policy and response to Rwanda The Real World of US Foreign Policy Making I think one of the things that has been missing in the analysis of Rwanda is that the assumption often is that the context of the decision making is kind of foreign policy. Well, the context, it s a pie in three pieces: part of it s foreign policy, part of it s domestic policy, either what s tugging at their attention or are their tradeoffs on expenditure, whatever it may be, and the other third of the pie is politics, what are the politics of this. Gayle Smith, Senior Advisor to the Administrator and Chief of Staff, US AID ( ), W2I interview

27 US policy and response to Rwanda KEY POLICY IMPLEMENTER: RICHARD CLARKE Richard Clarke, Director, Directorate for Global Issues and Multilateral Affairs, National Security Council, Special Assistant to the President, and chair of the inter-agency Peacekeeping Core Group (PCG) under President Clinton. Tasked by President Clinton himself, Clarke vigorously blocked all efforts from lower level US officials to involve the US in Rwanda during the genocide of 1994.

28 US policy and response to Rwanda Clarke ensured that Rwanda became the first test case for applying PDD The apathy of the President and the National Security Advisor, led Clarke to believe that Rwanda was to be an early test case for the United States to say no to peacekeeping in areas that were not of strategic interest. As a result, Clarke dominated the interagency meetings and was successful in keeping Rwanda off the desks of the President, National Security Advisor, and senior officials. --Jared Cohen, One Hundred Days of Silence: America and the Rwandan Genocide, p. 6

29 US policy and response to Rwanda Clarke believes he was just doing his job and he was According to then National Security Advisor Anthony Lake, Dick Clarke reflected back on his role in Rwanda within a context that exempted him from any guilt. Lake explained that Clarke felt he was given a very specific purpose of restricting peacekeeping and he set out to achieve those objectives. Jared Cohen, One Hundred Days of Silence: America and the Rwandan Genocide, p. 177

30 US policy and response to Rwanda KEY POLICY DECISIONS One CIA report completed on 14 March 1994, envisaging possible scenarios, predicted 300, ,000 deaths in Rwanda if the civil war spun out of control. Widely read because of the scale of deaths it anticipated, no one in the US Government took the report seriously enough to urge US preventative action Secretary of State Warren Christopher instructed UN Ambassador Albright to vote for the withdrawal of UNAMIR fll following a meeting of the PCG on 13 April His order was not explicitly authorised by President Clinton, the National Security Advisor or the Secretary of Defense, but it almost certainly reflected the consensus among them

31 Actors who mobilize domestic political will NGOs Media Government [Executive and Legislative Branches and Departments] Diaspora groups Religious groups

32 US policy and response to Rwanda Stifling Domestic Political Will Several NGOs were lobbying Anthony Lake, the National Security Advisor, who told them to make more noise. Lake s response was a cheap excuse. It s basically saying force us to do it because we re not going g to take the political risks involved to do the right thing on our own. Kenneth Roth, Executive Director, Human Rights Watch

33 US policy and response to Rwanda Several NGOs did button hole members of Congress and testified about Rwanda before Congressional committees. Some members of Congress demonstrated leadership and sent personal letters to the President urging US involvement.

34 US policy and response to Rwanda The US knew a genocide was underway in Rwanda NGO officials like Roger Winter also briefed the US intelligence community in Washington regularly on developments in Rwanda before and during the genocide. I would generally be there [Rwanda] for about ten days, go back to Washington and there would be meetings set up for me to brief the intelligence wings of the Defense Department and the State Department and, of course, the CIA.. Roger Winter, former executive director, US Committee on Refugees, W2I interview

35 US policy and response to Rwanda The US media did not report extensively on Rwanda On the occasions that it did, it incorrectly reported the genocide as being an inter-ethnic ethnic conflict. Unlike Somalia, the CNN factor did not influence US decision makers. Well, the media just got it dead wrong, in the West French media and Belgian media much more accurately... But the first newspaper in North America to get it right was the Globe and Mail in Toronto and that s already roughly three weeks after the genocide started. Up till then, they were portraying it as Hutu and Tutsi killing one another, rather than a central conspiracy to kill civilians, separated off from the war. So they never separated the war from the war against the civilians. Howard Adelman

36 US policy and response to Rwanda Key Deficiency Identified: There WAS political will in Washington it was President There WAS political will in Washington it was President Clinton s political will NOT to get involved in Rwanda

37 US policy and response to Rwanda Presidential Leadership But again you can t separate that from the utter vacuum of leadership. Had President Clinton given one serious speech about this or issued one Presidential Decision Directive, or had he chaired a principals meeting or a cabinet meeting, you know a lot of that goes by the wayside, he is the President, he gets to decide, that s why they pay him the big bucks. Samantha Power

38 US policy and response to Rwanda Oh well of course it s the executive branch. You don t need an act of Congress in order to send the handful of troops that would have been necessary to stop the Rwandan genocide. The buck stops at Clinton. It was his refusal to take the political l risks involved that t are ultimately the cause of the lack of US response. Kenneth Roth, Executive Director, Human Rights Watch

39 US policy and response to Rwanda Key Missed Intervention Points Sending US troops to Rwanda was seen as a political risk, but less robust actions, such as radio-jamming, could have been, but were not implemented. Official reason: Concern about violating Rwanda s sovereignty and the First Amendment to the US Constitution protecting freedom of speech. Read reason: Research informs us that the US did not want to risk being pulled into the conflict by taking the less robust actions, fearing they would place the US on a slippery slope leading to direct involvement in the Rwandan crisis.

40 US policy and response to Rwanda Other actions not pursued include: Introducing a travel ban for Rwandan authorities and their families The placing of a personal call by President Clinton to the highest level of the Rwandan Government Counter-propaganda with broadcasting directly to the people of Rwanda denouncing what their leaders were doing and the killings of Tutsi civilians Freezing the financial assets of the génocidaires The severing of diplomatic ties with Rwanda

41 Canadian policy and response to Rwanda A. Context: Canadian deployment to Somalia Canada was very involved in stabilizing other crises, most notable were Haiti and Bosnia. Key Domestic Political Priority in the early 1990s: Balancing the federal budget

42 Canadian policy and response to Rwanda Example of Political Will: Mulroney s letters to the Rwandan President One of the things we discovered when we did our research is that t there was only one statesman t in the world who wrote to Habyarimana about his human rights abuses, and that was Mulroney and he wrote two different letters. Howard Adelman

43 The Structure of Canadian Government Legislative Parliament Executive Prime Minister Judicial Supreme Court House of Commons Senate PM's office Cabinet Ministries and Civil Service Privy Council

44 Canadian policy and response to Rwanda B. Decision-Making Process for Rwanda The second thing is the role of the Canadian government, and it s on all kinds of levels. You had a situation in which CIDA had been very much a big backer of Habyarimana, and for some good reasons. I mean he ran a fairly relatively honest government. He wasn t an oppressive military, he wasn t persecuting the Tutsi in the 80s. Howard Adelman So when you had the switch at the end of the 80s and beginning with restructuring t and the change in government attitude, the beginning i of growth of corruption of a significant nature, the war and then the growth of extremism. All this was a kind of shock to the people in Ottawa. It wasn t something they d expected, it ran against what they believed in Howard Adelman

45 Canadian policy and response to Rwanda C. Political Will Process MPs from the official opposition (Bloc Quebecois) called for action as did a handful of Liberal MPs C. Deficiencies Identified -Canadian offer to the UN Department of Peace Keeping Operations was tied to unrealistic conditions -slow deployment of Canadian forces to the region; they arrived only after the genocide ended - there was no Canadian diplomatic presence in Kigali - Canada had very little intelligence capacity

46 Canadian policy and response to Rwanda E. Key Missed Intervention Points The failure to impose a travel ban on Rwandan authorities and their families Ignoring g the May 1994 memo of Robert Fowler calling for strong aid to Gen. Dallaire by the Government of Canada The failure to place a personal call by PM Jean Chrétien to the highest h level l of the Rwandan Government The failure to freeze the financial assets of the génocidaires The failure to freeze the visas of Rwandan students in Canada whose families were associated with the key leaders of the genocide

47 US policy and response to Kosovo The intervention was illegal but morally the right thing to do. Allan Gotlieb, g y g g, Canadian ambassador to the US ( ) and scholar)

48 US policy and response to Kosovo The US played a key role in the Dayton Accords in Diplomatic efforts were pursued until it became obvious that military threat t and then military deployment would be necessary. These efforts, led by the US, involved leaders from across Europe. US domestic criticism of the intervention was focused on national interests. The intervention bypassed the UN Security Council and was channeled through h NATO.

49 US policy and response to Kosovo The catastrophe of Rwanda helped get us off our butts in Bosnia, again a bit more slowly than ideally we should have, but that was partly because we kept hearing from the Europeans, you know, We ll take care of this. As reports of massacres in the former Yugoslavia grew, he said, there was a lot of talk about Rwanda. Rwanda became a synonym for what we don t ever want to happen for never again. Strobe Talbott, Deputy Secretary of State ( )

50 US policy and response to Kosovo Decision-Making Process for Kosovo Led by the US Secretary of State Failure of Rambouillet and the Račak massacre played a key role in moving from diplomatic efforts to military intervention.

51 US policy and response to Kosovo Mobilizing Domestic Political Will Some NGO lobbying (i.e. the Balkans Action Council, that was funded by George Soros; its members included Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz), but mostly top down government leadership Extensive media coverage of the Račak massacre

52 Canadian policy and response to Kosovo Impact of Rwanda Emergence of Human Security as an integral part of Canadian foreign policy Political Will: Top Down

53 Canadian policy and response to Kosovo A. Context Canada had been involved in peacekeeping operation in the Balkans since the early 1990s The Cold War had ended, everyone was trying to figure out what they wanted to do and we had picked up on the human security idea, which was the fact that t your foreign policy must be equally focused on the protection of people as it was on national sovereignty and nation-states. we were heavily involved in the Balkans issue; the broader issue of Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, in which Canada had been a participant in the United Nations force and we had been struck by the ineffectuality of the UN force, or the mandate. Not the force, but the mandate. Lloyd Axworthy, Minister of Foreign Affairs,

54 Canadian policy and response to Kosovo Decision-Making Process for Kosovo Key offices and departments were the PMO, PCO, DFAIT and DND I think there were essentially three components to the Canadian involvement in Kosovo. One was, I think, a genuine humanitarian concern, the well being of the Kosovars. Second was the relationship with the United States. The United States, President Clinton wanted to do this and was inviting all of his friends and allies to come on board, and Canada participating was part of the Canada-US relationship. The third was NATO to NATO solidarity. Louis Delvoie, Assistant t Deputy Minister i for Policy, Department t of National Defence

55 Canadian policy and response to Kosovo So we watched this thing unfolding and we, I think we were both of the same mind, as was the Prime Minister, the three of us were the prime people on this file, were of the similar thought that we couldn t allow this to continue, that we had to have some intervention on it... So I think we were all of the same mind on it. Certainly I became quite convinced we should intervene. Art Eggleton, Minister of National Defence,

56 Canadian policy and response to Kosovo Canada lobbied for action within the G8 I mean I d been talking to Albright, talking to Robin Cook, Fischer in Germany and people like that to just say look, this is-- we can t let this go We were proposing to bring a resolution together- a Security Council mandate. The Russians said they would veto and the Americans said if there was going to be a veto there was no point having it turned down by the Security Council because it would inhibit any further developments. Lloyd Axworthy, Minister of Foreign Affairs,

57 Canadian policy and response to Kosovo Mobilizing Domestic Political Will Canadian political will was not an issue. So all of a sudden from a political point of view, from the people in the PMO and you know, the political mavens in the party, this was seen as being a fairly good political result for us. Lloyd Axworthy, Minister of Foreign Affairs,

58 Canadian policy and response to Kosovo Mobilizing Domestic Political Will Consensus within the Liberal Caucus and the parliament And I think as a result we re becoming much more sensitized, as a Cabinet and as a Foreign Minister, about the whole discrepancy that existed between the willingness to do international intervention and the capacity to do it. Lloyd Axworthy, Minister of Foreign Affairs,

59 Canadian policy and response to Kosovo Opposition came from the Serbian diaspora in Canada and faith based groups Some NGOs supported the intervention although no strong lobbying was needed on their part Kosovo was the antithesis of Rwanda

60 Next Steps Looking forward Thank you! DISCUSSION/Q&A

61

62

63 TO CONTACT US Frank Chalk, Prof. of History, Concordia University, and Director, MIGS: ca Kyle Matthews, W2I Project Leader: URL: