Genocide has come to the fore in the minds of 20th Century peoples. Since the Shoah of World War II, the killing fields of Cambodia, the purges of Stalin, the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, the wholesale slaughter of Rwandans, and on and on, it can be said that no one is ignorant of the fact of genocide. Samantha Powell has called it “The Problem from Hell” and that is perhaps an understatement. After each genocide the rallying cry is “Never again” and “Never forget”, and yet genocide continues unabated. The world comes up with new phrases to describe the indescribable: ‘killing fields, purges, ethnic cleansing,’ and one wonders if this is not the human minds’ willed confusion to avoid the naming of a thing so as to not have to come to terms with it. In the same way the United Nations took decades to agree upon a definition of genocide, so unwilling is the human heart to look into that particular abyss.
And when the world is willing to appropriate the name of genocide and attach it to ongoing events in a part of the world, still very little is offered in the way of an intervention. Those enduring the slaughter wonder if no one knows, or if the world does not care. Yet, one can find numerous private groups and organizations mobilized to help the helpless and to bring about an end to the suffering. The world does care, and yet fails to offer an effective response. Genocide reaches into our neighborhoods and living rooms when we see how people who look just like each other, who have lived for generations as neighbors, can become involved in a slaughter of innocents. It permeates countries and cultures and political frameworks. We too, if we are human, are at risk for genocide. Yes, and our neighbors too.
Genocide is not a new problem. History can be gleaned for instances of this particular mode of man’s inhumanity to man. It can be described as mere tribalism, now multiplied exponentially. Modern weaponry, modern communications, the confusion of multitudes, all these lead to this relic of tribalism, but on steroids. The world is not, I believe, uncaring, or unwilling in these matters. But the world has not found a way to craft an appropriate response, and is as helpless as the helpless we would hope to save. Can this change? Can there be a creative, effective, carefully crafted response to genocide?
The world once transitioned from systems of tribes to systems of city-states, and from there to nation states. The modern challenge comes as a transition to a global state, politically following what is already in effect economically. More than ever we are subject to John Donne’s pronouncement that “No man is an island’. Indeed no country is an island either. In this period of transition, we must ask, what are the rules? Are they the same? Do we still apply the theories of just war, or of realism? Is it possible in the face of slaughter to remain a pacifist? The problem of genocide sidesteps some of the cautions that might adhere if we are wondering about whether to intervene in civil wars, or military coups, or dictatorships. We are no longer asking only about the rights of a people to be left alone to determine their welfare. This is a question of a peoples’ right to existence, and what is permissible or even obligatory to those who, if they did act, could make a difference in preserving those lives.
I am not arguing here for a particular decision, but for a new discussion regarding what the framework should be for permissible and/or obligatory intervention on the part of the worlds’ more powerful actors. The precept, borrowed from medicine, of “first do no harm” may be, on the face of it, the most difficult hurdle to pass. In an increasingly complex world it may be vanishingly improbable that enough information is ever at hand to be able to anticipate the unintended consequences that all actions are susceptible to. Where it is impossible to know beforehand whether more harm may ensue can there still be a moral argument to take action? Here I would argue that, even after events unfold, the complexity of our modern world is such that we still can not with certainty claim that less or more harm would have ensued had we taken a different course. Therefore we must answer this question from a moral standpoint, rather than a utilitarian standpoint.
The criteria of “The Probability of Success” fails in the same regard as the first. We cannot know beforehand, or even afterwards, regarding the effectiveness of our action in relation to if we had not acted at all. Therefore again, this question must be answered from a moral standpoint. But this does not mean that we cannot also make arguments toward what we hope will be more effective courses of action. And information of this sort might not be available until the world has had more experience with intervening in genocides. We have simply not intervened often enough to be able to collect enough relevant data to make empirical statements about what works.
Intervention would not conflict with the criteria of ‘Just Cause’ and ‘Right Intentions’, for what could be a more just cause than that which has the sole purpose and intent of stopping the deaths of innocents? The difficulty seems to lie in the criteria of ‘Competent Authority’ and ‘Last Resort.’ Here again, the global nature of the modern world creates a scenario not unlike that which social scientists call the “bystander effect”. Each authority is waiting for another authority to step in, with no nation wishing to take the first act. And this is not easily overcome when there is always the suspicion that not everything has been tried, that we need not yet take intervening action as a Last Resort.
Perhaps some of the modern difficulty is an artifact of where the world finds itself in the modern arena, with discrete nations which are nevertheless economically intertwined, but which have not yet developed any kind of effective and agreed upon central authority with which to bring problems of the nature and magnitude of genocide. The United Nations ought to be this kind of central authority, but has not yet developed or been invested with the ability to respond to the question of intervening in a genocide. My hope is that a discussion around these issues can lead to a consensus concerning the criteria that would be sufficient to permit intervention and necessary to obligate an intervention. Through such means it may be that the world will find itself less able to remain frozen in the stillness of a bystander.
