Preventing Genocide. It’s Not Going to Happen

Dan Glickman writes in the Huffington Post about a proposal for the new American administration that would help prevent future mass atrocities and genocides around the world.

Over the past year, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the American Academy of Diplomacy, and the United States Institute of Peace worked on identifying “practical steps that could enhance the capacity of the US government to prevent and respond to genocide and mass atrocities.”

The Genocide Prevention Task Force, co-chaired by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Secretary of Defense William Cohen “proposes a blueprint for the next administration and for the future, to help ensure that senior officials have all the information they need to act -- and to act in time -- when faced with the next genocide.”

The task force concluded that “what is needed is a comprehensive, coordinated, government-wide plan to prevent these odious crimes from happening around the world.”

The most important point Glickman makes is that “the first and most important ingredient to prevent genocide and mass atrocities is political will and leadership -- from the president on down.”

But will this ever happen? Will there be will from the American or any other Western government to step in and prevent another Rwanda or Darfur? Will the international community care about a conflict in a small country that has no oil, gold, diamonds, or else?

The current world order is based on realism, or realpolitik, the oldest and most common theory of international relations. The realist views states as rational and unitary factors focused solely on self-interests, national security, and balance of power. Realism influences states to pursue national interests even if they are contrary to the interests of other people and states. Morals, ethics, and legality are the least important principles for realists.

That’s why countries like the United States and France don’t care when almost a million people get slaughtered in Rwanda in 1994 in only 100 days. If there is no interest, then people don’t matter.

We have to change the system that is the basis of the international relations in order to get countries to be interested in stopping mass atrocities and genocides. This will probably not happen in our lifetimes.

It’s interesting that Madeleine Albright was on this Genocide Prevention Task Force. Fourteen years ago, she prevented any action at the UN during the Rwandan genocide. Albright and the Clinton administration even prevented other countries from doing anything to stop the slaughter of hundreds of thousands in Rwanda.

I hope Madeleine Albright and Bill Clinton can't sleep at night if they have any conscience.

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Savo Heleta is the author of "Not My Turn to Die: Memoirs of a Broken Childhood in Bosnia" (March 2008, AMACOM Books, New York) and a postgraduate student in Conflict Transformation and Management at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Visit www.savoheleta.com for more info.