Eyewitness to a Genocide

The United Nations and Rwanda

Michael Barnett

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780801465123
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Genocidio e crimini di guerra

Why was the UN a bystander during the Rwandan genocide? Do its sins of omission leave it morally responsible for the hundreds of thousands of dead? Michael Barnett, who worked at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations from 1993 to 1994, covered Rwanda for much of the genocide. Based on his first-hand experiences, archival work, and interviews with many key participants, he reconstructs the history of the UN's involvement in Rwanda. In the weeks leading up to the genocide, the author documents, the UN was increasingly aware or had good reason to suspect that Rwanda was a site of crimes against humanity. Yet it failed to act. In Eyewitness to a Genocide, Barnett argues that its indifference was driven not by incompetence or cynicism but rather by reasoned choices cradled by moral considerations.

Employing a novel approach to ethics in practice and in relationship to international organizations, Barnett offers an unsettling possibility: the UN culture recast the ethical commitments of well-intentioned individuals, arresting any duty to aid at the outset of the genocide. Barnett argues that the UN bears some moral responsibility for the genocide. Particularly disturbing is his observation that not only did the UN violate its moral responsibilities, but also that many in New York believed that they were "doing the right thing" as they did so. Barnett addresses the ways in which the Rwandan genocide raises a warning about this age of humanitarianism and concludes by asking whether it is possible to build moral institutions.

1

It Was a Very Good Year

The atmosphere at the UN during the early 1990s was positively triumphant. The sheer exhilaration of the moment can be fully appreciated by knowing what the organization had endured in the previous years. The 1980s had represented a low-water mark for the UN. It had made an impressive and active contribution to the remarkably peaceful decolonization process of the 1960s, but since then had been sidelined and maligned. Decolonization changed the character and the agenda of the General Assembly, bringing to numerical majority the emerging Third World. However, the more anti-American the UN became, the more the United States treated it as a misbehaving adolescent not deserving of any responsibility. In 1975 the General Assembly passed the infamous resolution equating Zionism with racism, which made even some of its closest friends worry that the UN was making bad choices for the wrong reasons. Soon thereafter, two U.S. representatives to the UN, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick, became household names because of their willingness to publicly ridicule the organization. The UN also had to endure a secretary-general, Kurt Waldheim, accused of being a Nazi war criminal. The Security Council, never a model deliberative body, became hopelessly gridlocked by an increasingly confrontational U.S.-Soviet rivalry. The years during the presidency of Ronald Reagan unleashed a string of indignities, as his unilateral approach made it clear from beginning to end that he had little patience for multilateral organizations that were at best talk shops and at worst potential usurpers of American power if given the chance. “Morning in America” meant “twilight for the United Nations.”

The UN’s fortunes began to change with the thawing of the Cold War. After 1986 the United States and the Soviet Union began to work in concert to end various regional conflicts, including those in Africa and Central America, and to convince their war-weary clients that it was better to negotiate than to fight. They enlisted the UN in their conflict-resolving efforts, viewing it as a credible intermediary because of its perceived impartiality. UN diplomats shuttled to some of the world’s toughest spots, but unlike in years past when they had to wait outside in the hallways, they were now admitted into the negotiating sanctums. Certainly the Soviet-American détente and willingness to turn off the arms pipeline created the conditions for conflict resolution, but the UN also distinguished itself and received its just due.

Aiding the resuscitation of the UN was Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet premier who was now stressing simultaneously the importance of international cooperation and the centrality of the UN. His reasons for singing the UN’s praises were many, but a prime consideration was that by strengthening this international body where the Soviets had a permanent seat and veto power, he might help buffer the Soviet Union’s declining power and prestige. The change in American administrations also produced a more sympathetic ear. Unlike the Reagan administration that was scornful of the United Nations, President George H. W. Bush, a former U.S. ambassador to the UN, made clear at the outset of his term that he was a cautious multilateralist and held a more charitable view of the world body.

These important changes in the world, and their resulting effects on the UN, could not prepare the organization for the global attention that would come its way. The rapid-fire and relatively nonviolent revolutions in Eastern Europe, the in-the-blink-of-an-eye end to the Cold War, and the peaceful implosion of the Soviet Union introduced an almost ethereal quality to world politics. The Cassandras were silenced. The UN was a prime beneficiary of these changes.

To begin with, when the Cold War was over the Soviets and the Americans signaled their readiness to redistribute the security load as they tended to long-ignored domestic ills. World politics abhors a security vacuum, and almost by default the UN became a prime candidate to help organize international peace and security. Moreover, the defining conflicts of the period favored the UN. Ethnonationalist conflicts were erupting in places that had little strategic relevance to the Great Powers, but the humanitarian consequences of these conflicts were impossible to ignore. The UN provided the ready answer for states that wanted to do something but not too much. Or, as less charitably put by former UN official Sir Brian Urquhart, the UN proved to be a useful dumping ground. Furthermore, policymakers were now openly talking about dismantling militaries and building institutions to promote a stable peace. The UN’s commitment to security through peaceful means and multilateral institutions represented a perfect fit for the security moment. Finally, even when the UN sanctioned force, as it did with the Gulf War, many took it as a sign of progress; after all, such operations represented not the familiar imperial imposition but rather collective security as it was originally envisioned.

The UN became the darling of the international community. The early 1990s produced a steady stream of glowing testimonials to the long-suffering but never-more-needed-than-now UN. Independent commissions, study groups, newspaper editorials, and news weeklies rediscovered the UN. Leading dailies routinely stressed how the UN was capable of assisting in the peaceful resolution of disputes and should be given the chance by the Great Powers. The Commission on Global Governance observed that the end of the Cold War and cascading globalization were creating new opportunities and problems in their wake, that the obvious solution to these problems was greater global management, and that the UN was the right steering mechanism to confront these challenges. In his 1992 address to the General Assembly, a post–Gulf War euphoric President Bush gave an impassioned speech in favor of the UN, praised its contributions to peacekeeping, pledged the United States’ support to peacekeeping efforts, and advised the American military to take a more active role in logistics, communications, and training.

These psalms of promise imagined a UN that personified the central values of the international community, defended and spread those values, and was a central instrument in the management of international peace and security. This represented a radical reappraisal of the UN’s role in global politics. For most of its life, the UN was instructed to protect the interests of states, which almost invariably revolved around the promotion of state security and the preservation of state sovereignty. None of this was very surprising. After all, notwithstanding the pretense to represent all of humanity, the UN is an intergovernmental organization: only sovereign states can be formal members, only sovereign states can sit in the General Assembly and on the Security Council, and only sovereign states can give formal instructions to the Secretariat. The predictable result was that while states might have a nominal interest in promoting the values of the international community, they have a far greater interest in protecting and promoting their individual security and sovereignty.

And when states did speak of the life-giving values of the international community, the vast majority conveniently defined those values in a way that furthered their security and protected their sovereignty (oftentimes to the detriment of their citizens). For decades the subject of human rights was virtually taboo in the UN, seen as an ideological whip of the West and representing a violation of the principle of noninterference—that is, unless human rights was defined as full and complete independence for colonized and recently decolonized states. Equality referred less to the rule of law and protections for all citizens than it did to sovereign equality between states. Questions of democracy were treated as an illegitimate intrusion into domestic affairs, an insidious and unwelcome attempt to impose Western standards. This was a state’s world.

But as states ascended from the bomb shelter that was the Cold War, they rediscovered and reswore their commitment to these foundational values. The peaceful end to the Cold War seemed nearly miraculous after a decade filled with nuclear clocks and apocalyptic arms races, and states were now filing into the UN to give their benedictions and recite the values that bound them as a single community. Human rights, liberalism, peaceful settlement of disputes, freedom, progress, development—these and other values were ritualistically recited in General Assembly addresses and populated UN documents. States insisted that while these values had always been present in the founding texts and the UN Charter, the Cold War had prevented them from fulfilling and honoring that initial vision. These values, they reminded themselves at every turn, were cosmopolitan and transcendental. States had rights, but so too did individuals and peoples. A “rights” discourse now bubbled to the surface. This development was remarkable and almost revolutionary given that in decades past states had vigorously and collectively railed against such claims because of the threat they potentially posed to their sovereign prerogatives.

The values of the international community were not only ends in themselves but also means to achieve genuine and stable international peace and security. During the Cold War international peace and security meant state security. “Threats to international peace and security,” therefore, largely revolved around the projected and realized dangers posed by two opposing, militarized states. In an international system where peace was a chimera and war was either present or in preparation, the best that could be hoped for was international stability secured through a balance of power and sovereignty’s mutual recognition of the right to exist. Not only was there no place for shared values in the management and diminution of international conflict, but also allowing values to hijack foreign policy could lead to ideologically minded campaigns and violations of the principle of noninterference, creating the conditions for instability and war. A mutually recognized balance of power, and not a mutually recognized community of values, was stability’s best friend.

The end of the Cold War introduced a reconceptualization of the meaning of security and its accomplishment. Whereas during the Cold War security meant the security of states, there was now a willingness to consider “human” and “cosmopolitan” security, the security of individuals and peoples. This alteration in the concept of security was due to two related “discoveries.” The state frequently was not the guardian it pretended to be but rather was the principal threat to its citizens. In theory the state was to provide security against foreign intruders, but in practice many societies had more to fear from their imposed protector than they did from other states. Also, domestic and civil wars seemed to be outstripping international wars in number and ferocity. Interstate war, though far from solved, paled in comparison to the growing number of ethnonational conflicts that were producing grim upheavals, crimes against humanity, and mass population movements. These conflicts would jar visions at any time but did so particularly now because of the presumption that a kinder, gentler world was to succeed the Cold War. Something had to be done.

These new security threats called for new security remedies. If domestic conflicts were a security threat and a potential source of regional instability, then these societies had to be reconstructed and redirected in ways that eliminated the roots of these conflicts. Domestic stability was essential for international stability. Stable states make for a stable international order. This was a revolution in strategic thought. The Cold War emphasis on balances of power and noninterference was steadily eclipsed by the belief that international security was best attained by creating regions that had shared values and by creating states that had domestic legitimacy and the rule of law. The strategic logic ran as follows: international order is premised on domestic order, domestic order is contingent on the state being viewed as legitimate by its society, states are most legitimate when they operate with the consent of their societies and honor the rule of law, and the principles of consent and the enshrinement of the rule of law are tantamount to democracy.

Because of the emergent belief that the domestic rule of law promotes the international rule of law, democracy was increasingly treated as a principle of international order and a cornerstone of international security. The diagnostic implication was that widening the circle of democracies automatically would widen the zone of peace. The prescriptive implication was that the international community should feel no shame in promoting and nurturing democratic norms. In contrast to the Cold War period when projects designed to cast states in certain molds were treated as destabilizing, now such projects were viewed as essential for promoting a genuinely stable peace.

The Secretariat lent support to this new security discourse. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the new secretary-general, frequently stressed “human” security, arguing that the UN must be as concerned with the security of peoples and individuals as it is with the security of states. The clearest and boldest statement on such matters is An Agenda for Peace. The Security Council invited the secretary-general to outline his vision of the UN’s future security role. As Boutros-Ghali recalled, he quickly capitalized on the opportunity to deliver a more ambitious, far-reaching, and forward-looking proposal than was expected.1

The heart of the document is a meditation on the changing nature of security and the UN as the midwife for a new international order. State security should not be allowed to overshadow individual security. Individuals’ security and safety were more likely to be endangered by food scarcity, a crumbling economy, environmental degradation, and political instability than by an invading army. Indeed, the state was frequently not a source of protection but rather a source of harm. The combined effect of state-sponsored insecurity and a crumbling domestic environment was to suggest that domestic security overshadowed international security. The oft-made claim was that the location of most security crises occurred within states and not between them. The only way to fix this problem was to promote the rule of law, a point made in countless speeches and documents.

Enter the UN. The near consensus was that the best way to strengthen the values of the international community and the prospects for international peace and security was to strengthen its principal organ—the UN. The UN provided the legitimation forum. Only by enshrining these values in the international community’s singular and universal organization would they obtain legitimacy, retain a magnetic appeal, and compel states to honor them. But the UN was expected to be more than a clearinghouse and debating parlor for these ideas. It also was entrusted with a new mission, to become a missionary. The UN would spread the word and convert non-believers. It was better suited for this globalizing project than states were because it was perceived to be neutral and because it had a legitimacy that came from its status as a global organization.

Boutros-Ghali and other high-ranking UN officials insisted that this work was an integral part of their job and not an interference in states’ domestic affairs. In large measure most states agreed, though important dissenters like China, Egypt, and India objected on the grounds that these intrusions mocked the principle of noninterference. Locked into place was a growing view that expanding the values of the international community would deepen the prospects for international peace, and the UN represented the right applicator.

UN staff were thrilled with this sudden burst of attention, acclaim, and activity, which nearly healed the psychic and institutional wounds caused by decades of smear campaigns and humiliations. Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, who suffered through some of the worst of times only to savor the beginning of the best, captured the mood in his farewell address in late 1991:

I need hardly recount all the areas in which operations of unprecedented versatility, nature or scope have been mounted during these [recent] years. You know them all, since you have served in them. You know what innovative ideas, what improvisation, what harnessing of resources, often at short notice, they have required. You know also their reward: how much human pain has been reduced and the waste of conflict averted by these operations. . . . For us, it has not only been an exciting period, but also one of greater responsibility. I know that most of us came to the United Nations because of a profound commitment—this was not to be “just another job,” with whatever degree of prestige and material reward. We came to serve the United Nations through our conviction that there is no worthier form of service. We were prepared to accept sacrifices and hazards in pursuing the aims of the United Nations charter. . . . I am quite aware that over the years some of you have had a sense of frustration as you have felt your talents and idealism have not been fully utilized. There was, in addition, deep consternation and even bewilderment, as hostile and clamorous voices berated the United Nations and those who serve it. You bore these unjust attacks without flinching.2

A few months later the new secretary-general, Boutros-Ghali, spoke for the entire organization when he beamed that “[n]ever before has the United Nations been so popular with its member states. Never before have its services been requested with such frequency.”3

The Secretariat bathed in the limelight and capitalized on every imaginable opportunity to reinforce the emerging conclusion that the Cold War provided an opening for both a more peaceful world and a rejuvenated UN whose purpose was to bring about that vision. The building was alive with activity and a new spirit, a sense that anything was possible and that everyone involved was part of a new global project. As Kofi Annan, who at the time was undersecretary general for peacekeeping, reflected on this period, “[W]e were all expectant. It was thrilling, and we saw possibilities of doing . . . what the organization was expected to do [in 1945]. So we were all excited.”4

For once the UN was not merely a talk shop but a place of action. Whereas once the Security Council was a fairly moribund institution, now it had its hands full as it was becoming the forum to handle matters of international peace and security. During the Cold War it was not unusual for days to pass without a single session; now it was unusual if the Security Council did not have both morning and afternoon sessions. The eruption of peacekeeping operations was the most visible indicator of this new activism. The Security Council established a total of thirteen operations between 1945 and 1988, and then authorized that same number in the next three years; in short, the UN had taken on as much in three and a half years as it had in the previous forty. With more operations there was an unprecedented number of peacekeepers. Whereas in 1978 there were only 9,700 peacekeepers, by 1994 there were over 73,000 peacekeepers in seventeen UN operations (with an additional 21,000 in the U.S.-led Haiti operation). The peacekeeping budget rose eightfold between 1988 and 1992 and then doubled in ...