A Problem From Hell

by Samantha Power

  But although U.S. officials did not know all there was to know about the nature and scale of the violence, they knew a remarkable amount. From Henry Morgenthau Sr., the well-connected U.S. ambassador in Constantinople in 1915, to Jon Western, the junior intelligence analyst on Bosnia in 1993, U.S. officials have pumped a steady stream of information up the chain to senior decision-makers—both early warnings ahead of genocide and vivid documentation during it. Much of the best intelligence appeared in the morning papers. Back in 1915, when communications were primitive, the New York Times managed to publish 145 stories about the Turkish massacre of Armenians. Nearly eighty years later, the same paper reported just four days after the beginning of the Rwanda genocide that “tens of thousands” of Rwandans had already been murdered. It devoted more column inches to the horrors of Bosnia between 1992 and 1995 than it did to any other single foreign story.

  In an age of instant information, U.S. officials have gone from claiming that they “didn’t know” to suggesting—as President Clinton did in his 1998 Rwanda apology—that they “didn’t fully appreciate.” This, too, is misleading. It is true that the atrocities that were known remained abstract and remote, rarely acquiring the status of knee-buckling knowledge among ordinary Americans. Because the savagery of genocide so defies our everyday experience, many of us failed to wrap our minds around it. We gradually came to accept the depravity of the Holocaust, but then slotted it in our consciousness as “history”; we resisted acknowledging that genocide was occurring in the present. Survivors and witnesses had trouble making the unbelievable believable. Bystanders were thus able to retreat to the “twilight between knowing and not knowing.”

  But this is not an alibi. We are responsible for our incredulity. The stories that emerge from genocidal societies are by definition incredible. That was the lesson the Holocaust should have taught us. In case after case of genocide, accounts that sounded far-fetched and that could not be independently verified repeatedly proved true. With so much wishful thinking debunked, we should long ago have shifted the burden of proof away from the refugees and to the skeptics, who should be required to offer persuasive reasons for disputing eyewitness claims. A bias toward belief would do less harm than a bias toward disbelief.

  U.S. officials have been reluctant to imagine the unimaginable because of the implications. Indeed, instead of aggressively hunting for deeper knowledge or publicizing what was already known, they have taken shelter in the fog of plausible deniability. They have used the search for certainty as an excuse for paralysis and postponement. In most of the cases of genocide documented in this book, U.S. officials who “did not know” or “did not fully appreciate” chose not to.

  Influence

  A second response to the question of why the United States did so little is that it could not have done much to stop the horrors. Although Albert Hirschman’s categories (futility, perversity, jeopardy) helped classify the main U.S. justifications for inaction, they do not help us determine what the United States could have achieved, or at what cost. The only way to ascertain the consequences of U.S. diplomatic, economic, or military measures would have been to undertake them. We do know, however, that the perpetrators of genocide were quick studies who were remarkably attuned both to the tactics of their murderous predecessors and to the world’s response. From their brutal forerunners, they learned lessons in everything from dehumanizing their victims and deploying euphemisms to constructing concentration camps and lying about and covering up their crimes. And from the outside world they learned the lesson of impunity.

  If anything testifies to the U.S. capacity for influence, it is the extent to which the perpetrators kept an eye trained on Washington and other Western capitals as they decided how to proceed. Talaat Pasha frequently observed that no one had prevented Sultan Abdul Hamid from murdering Armenians. Hitler was emboldened by the fact that absolutely nobody “remembered the Armenians.” Saddam Hussein, noting the international community’s relaxed response to his chemical weapons attacks against Iran and his bulldozing of Kurdish villages, rightly assumed he would not be punished for using poison gases against his own people. Rwandan gunmen deliberately targeted Belgian peacekeepers at the start of their genocide because they knew from the U.S. reaction to the deaths of eighteen U.S. soldiers in Somalia that the murder of Western troops would likely precipitate their withdrawal. The Bosnian Serbs publicly celebrated the Mogadishu casualties, knowing that they would never have to do battle with U.S. ground forces. Milosevic saw that he got away with the brutal suppression of an independence movement in Croatia and reasoned he would pay no price for committing genocide in Bosnia and Kosovo. Because so many individual perpetrators were killing for the first time and deciding daily how far they would go, the United States and its allies missed critical opportunities to try to deter them. When they ignored genocide around the world, U.S. officials certainly did not intend to give the perpetrators the go-ahead. But since at least some killers thought they were doing the world a favor by “cleansing” the “undesirables,” they likely interpreted silence as consent or even support.

  Although it is impossible to prove the outcome of actions never tried, the best testament to what the United States might have achieved is what the United States did achieve. For all the talk of the likely futility of U.S. involvement, in the rare instances that the United States did act, it made a difference. After Secretary of State George Shultz’s condemnations and Senator Claiborne Pell’s abortive sanctions effort in 1988, Saddam Hussein did not again use gas against the Kurds. After the appeals of Turkey and the personal encounter of Secretary of State James Baker with Kurdish refugees, the United States joined its allies in creating a safe haven in northern Iraq, enabling more than a million Kurds to return to their homes. A Rwandan hotel owner credits a U.S. diplomat’s mere phone calls with helping convince militias not to attack the Tutsi inhabitants of his hotel during the genocide. NATO bombing in Bosnia, when it finally came, rapidly brought that three-and-a-half-year war to a close. NATO bombing in Kosovo in 1999 liberated 1.7 million Albanians from tyrannical Serb rule. And a handful of NATO arrests in the former Yugoslavia has caused dozens of suspected war criminals to turn themselves in. One cannot assume that every measure contemplated by U.S. officials would have been effective, but there is no doubt that even these small or belated steps saved hundreds of thousands of lives. If the United States had made genocide prevention a priority, it could have saved countless more.

  Will

  The real reason the United States did not do what it could and should have done to stop genocide was not a lack of knowledge or influence but a lack of will. Simply put, American leaders did not act because they did not want to. They believed that genocide was wrong, but they were not prepared to invest the military, financial, diplomatic, or domestic political capital needed to stop it. The U.S. policies crafted in response to each case of genocide examined in this book were not the accidental products of neglect. They were concrete choices made by this country’s most influential decisionmakers after unspoken and explicit weighing of costs and benefits.

  In each case, U.S. policymakers in the executive branch (usually with the passive backing of most members of Congress) had two objectives. First, they wanted to avoid engagement in conflicts that posed little threat to American interests, narrowly defined. And second, they hoped to contain the political costs and avoid the moral stigma associated with allowing genocide. By and large, they achieved both aims. In order to contain the political fallout, U.S. officials overemphasized the ambiguity of the facts. They played up the likely futility, perversity, and jeopardy of any proposed intervention. They steadfastly avoided use of the word “genocide,” which they believed carried with it a legal and moral (and thus political) imperative to act. And they took solace in the normal operations of the foreign policy bureaucracy, which permitted an illusion of continual deliberation, complex activity, and intense concern. One of the most important conclusions I have reached, therefore, is t
hat the U.S. record is not one of failure. It is one of success. Troubling though it is to acknowledge, U.S. officials worked the system and the system worked.

  To understand why the United States did not do more to stem genocide, it is not enough, of course, to focus on the actions of presidents or their foreign policy teams. In a democracy even an administration disinclined to act can be pressured into doing so. This pressure can come from inside or outside. Bureaucrats within the system who grasp the stakes can patiently lobby or brazenly agitate in the hope of forcing their bosses to entertain a full range of options. Unfortunately, although every genocide generated some activism within the U.S. foreign policy establishment, civil and foreign servants typically heeded what they took to be presidential indifference and public apathy. They assumed U.S. policy was immutable, that their concerns were already understood by their superiors, and that speaking (or walking) out would only reduce their capacity to improve the policy. Bosnia was the sole genocide of the twentieth century that generated a wave of resignations from the U.S. government. It is probably not coincidental that this was the one case where the protests of the foreign servants were bolstered daily by sustained public and press protest outside Foggy Bottom.

  The executive branch has also felt no pressure from the second possible source: the home front. American leaders have been able to persist in turning away because genocide in distant lands has not captivated senators, congressional caucuses, Washington lobbyists, elite opinion shapers, grassroots groups, or individual citizens. The battle to stop genocide has thus been repeatedly lost in the realm of domestic politics. Although isolated voices have protested the slaughter, Americans outside the executive branch were largely mute when it mattered. As a result of this society-wide silence, officials at all levels of government calculated that the political costs of getting involved in stopping genocide far exceeded the costs of remaining uninvolved. The exceptions that have proven the rule were the ratification of the genocide convention after Reagan’s Bitburg debacle and the NATO air campaign in Bosnia after Senate majority leader Bob Dole united with elite and grassroots activists to make President Clinton feel he was “getting creamed” for allowing Serb atrocities.

  With foreign policy crises all over the world affecting more traditional U.S. interests, genocide has never secured top-level attention on its own merits. It takes political pressure to put genocide on the map in Washington. When Alison Des Forges of Human Rights Watch met with National Security Adviser Anthony Lake two weeks into the Rwanda genocide, he informed her that the phones were not ringing. “Make more noise!” he urged. Because so little noise has been made about genocide, U.S. decision-makers have opposed U.S. intervention, telling themselves that they were doing all they could—and, most important, all they should—in light of competing American interests and a highly circumscribed understanding of what was domestically “possible” for the United States to do.

  In the end, however, the inertia of the governed can not be disentangled from the indifference of the government. American leaders have both a circular and a deliberate relationship to public opinion. It is circular because their constituencies are rarely if ever aroused by foreign crises, even genocidal ones, in the absence of political leadership, and yet at the same time U.S. officials continually cite the absence of public support as grounds for inaction. The relationship is deliberate because American leadership has not been absent in such circumstances: It has been present but devoted mainly to minimizing public outrage.

  Accountability

  One mechanism for altering the calculus of U.S. leaders would be to make them publicly or professionally accountable for inaction. U.S. officials fear repercussions for their sins of commission—for decisions they make and policies they shape that go wrong. But none fear they will pay a price for their sins of omission. If everyone within the government is motivated to avoid “another Somalia” or “another Vietnam,” few think twice about playing a role in allowing “another Rwanda.”

  Other countries and institutions whose personnel were actually present when genocide was committed have undertaken at least some introspection. The Netherlands, France, and the UN have staged inquiries into their responsibility for the fall of Srebrenica and the massacres that followed. But when the UN’s investigators approached the U.S. mission in New York for assistance, their phone calls were not returned. In the end the UN team was forbidden from making any independent contact with U.S. government employees. The investigators were granted access to a group of hand-picked junior and midlevel officials who revealed next to nothing about what U.S. officials knew during the Srebrenica massacres.

  The French, the Belgians, the UN, and the OAU have staged investigations on their roles in the Rwanda genocide. But in the United States, when some disgruntled members of the Congressional Black Caucus attempted to stage hearings on the part the U.S. played (or failed to play), they were rebuffed. Two officials in the Clinton administration, one at the National Security Council, the other at the State Department, conducted internal studies on the administration’s response to the Rwanda slaughter. But they examined only the paper trail and did not publicly disclose their findings. The United States needs congressional inquiries with the power to subpoena documents and to summon U.S. officials of all ranks in the executive and legislative branches. Without meaningful disclosure, public awareness, and official shame, it is hard to imagine the U.S. response improving the next time around.

  Even nongovernmental attempts at accountability might make a difference. In September 2001, the Atlantic Monthly published the results of my three-year investigation into the Clinton administration’s response to the genocide in Rwanda. A few weeks later, according to officials on the National Security Council, a memo made its way to the desk of President George W. Bush on the subject of genocide prevention. The memo summarized the findings of the Atlantic article and warned of the likely outbreak of ethnic violence in Burundi. During the presidential campaign the previous year, Bush had said stopping genocide was not America’s business. “I don’t like genocide and I don’t like ethnic cleansing,” Bush had told Sam Donaldson of ABC, “but I would not send our troops.”2 After being elected and being presented with an account of the Clinton administration’s failure, however, Bush wrote in firm letters in the margin of the memo: “NOT ON MY WATCH.” While he was commander in chief, he was saying, genocide would not recur.

  Bush’s note certainly constituted a welcome statement of intent, but the president was in fact falling back into line with the other American presidents who pledged “never again.” In order to put the sentiment into action, he would have to make meaningful public and bureaucratic commitments to stop genocide. He and his top foreign policy aides would need to issue an explicit presidential decision directive, rally support in their speeches, and demand the preparation of “off-the-shelf” contingency military planning. Otherwise, it is highly unlikely that U.S. officials or citizens would behave differently the next time ethnic chauvinists begin systematically wiping out a minority group. In any event, on September 11, 2001, just days after the president jotted his marginalia, Islamic terrorists turned four American civilian airliners into human fuel bombs, murdering more than 3,000 civilians, shattering the nation’s sense of invulnerability, and causing the president to focus U.S. resources on a long-term “war on terrorism.”

  The Future

  The September 11 attack on the United States will of course alter U.S. foreign policy. The attack might enhance the empathy of Americans inside and outside government toward peoples victimized by genocide. The fanatics who target the United States resemble the perpetrators of genocide in their espousal of collective responsibility of the most savage kind. They target civilians not because of anything they do personally but because of who they are. To earn a death sentence, it was enough in the twentieth century to be an Armenian, a Jew, or a Tutsi. On September 11, it was enough to be an American. In 1994 Rwanda, a country of just 8 million, experienced the numerical eq
uivalent of more than two World Trade Center attacks every single day for 100 days. On an American scale this would mean 23 million people murdered in three months. When, on September 12, 2001, the United States turned for help to its friends around the world, Americans were gratified by the overwhelming response. When the Tutsi cried out, by contrast, every country in the world turned away.

  Even if Americans become better able to imagine slaughter and identify with its victims, the U.S. government is likely to view genocide prevention as an undertaking it can not afford as it sets out to better protect Americans. Many are now arguing, understandably, that fighting terrorism means husbanding the country’s resources and avoiding humanitarian intervention, which is said to harm U.S. “readiness.” The Kosovo intervention and the Milosevic trial, once thought to mark important precedents, may come to represent high-water marks in genocide prevention and punishment.

  This would be a tragic and ultimately self-defeating mistake. The United States should stop genocide for two reasons. The first and most compelling reason is moral. When innocent life is being taken on such a scale and the United States has the power to stop the killing at reasonable risk, it has a duty to act. It is this belief that motivates most of those who seek intervention. But history has shown that the suffering of victims has rarely been sufficient to get the United States to intervene.