I would like to share a few things from the documentary "Ghosts of Rwanda". Both comments relate to the other.
In part two, Philippe Gaillard who is a leader in the International Red Cross talks about his first-hand experience in Rwanda. Keep in mind that the success of the IRC is highly dependent on its position of neutrality in armed conflicts and has been able to accomplish much that other organizations could never do because it does not traditionally take sides.
In the video, Gaillard says, "If you don't at least speak out, clearly, you are participating in the genocide...moraly, ethically you cannot shut up...it's a responsibility to talk, to speak up."
To me this is a little surprising but also very powerful because it seems to contradict the values that the IRC has been founded upon. But in the case of Rwanda, even the IRC was willing to break the rules a bit and speak out.
Now, my question is, do you agree with the statement by Gaillard?
Next, a human rights activist who almost lost her life in the conflict fled from Rwanda to the US to lobby for help. She talked to a congressional official in charge of Rwanda who told her that the "The United States has no friends, the United States has interests and in the United States there is no interest in Rwanda...there is no motivation" If the US was going to help it would have been purely a humanitarian mission and US lives would have been lost. Do you think the US should have helped anyway, or was inaction the right thing to do?
In response to your last paragraph - That congressional official was thinking in Realist terms. In realist political thought a countries actions are determined solely by their interest. Because they are not an individual they are not subject to the morality of an individual and are justified in taking amoral action for the greater interests of its citizens. I believe that it was a French prime minister who said similarly "The United States has no friends only interests" I think its really easy to jump to a quick judgement and say that the US was completely in the wrong and that we had a moral obligation to do something but one needs to remember that there are many policy makers and political thinkers that think this way and have very compelling arguments for doing so that cant be covered here. Now, I don't agree with them but don't call them short sighted or ignorant. I call them philosophically opposed. It makes them sound smarter.
ReplyDeleteNow, this is why I disagree with them: Realist leave it to the state to determine what their interest are. I think that this opens a state to be in the wrong. After all how well can we know our own true interests? Just like the question in desceminating aid "What do they think they need vs. what to they really need?" Whats not to say that the safety of the people of Rawanda isnt really in the interest of the United States?
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ReplyDeleteI believe that the US should have intervened in 1994. I agree with the comment that if you're not doing anything, then you're somewhat assisting the genocide. It's like a sin of omission.
ReplyDeleteHowever, Jesse brings up a good point. Governments, more often than not, follow a realist approach in foreign policy. Being that our humanitarian efforts in Somalia just a year earlier in 1993 led to the death of some Americans, it would have been very difficult to intervene just a year later. The descent of the American population prohibited it.
So, yes, I think we should have intervened, but this normative approach wouldn't have been supported in a realist world.
Do you think we (or any other Western country) will ever interven in a genocide? After the Holocaust we made a vow to never let genocide occur again, but since then genocide has taken place numerous times and I don't know of a single incedent where the West has intervened (although I've never studied the subject so who knows, maybe we have. Serbia?) How many times are we going to let it happen and say that it all depends on how you define genocide?
ReplyDeleteI definitely don't think that inaction was the right thing to do..how can that be the right thing? To let people die like that? Of course, this is coming out of a young girl's mouth. Jesse is right, the realist viewpoint that gripped that Congressional chairman's view led him to believe that it is not in the United State's interest to intervene in Rwanda. Jesse, I'm curious as to how you would answer your own question that you posted at the end, "Whats not to say that the safety of the people of Rawanda isnt really in the interest of the United States?" How would it have been in our national interest to ensure the safety of the people of Rwanda?
ReplyDeleteYou can take two approaches to answering that question. A simple one and a crazy one. The simple one being that after the fact we lost a lot of cred on the world stage, soft power blah blah ect. and had we known, as we do now, that it would have been in our interest to act, we would have done so.
ReplyDeleteThe more far out a nebulous answer fundamentally challenges realist thinking. Knowing what is in your interest includes future and unknowable events and therefore one cannot know perfectly what your interest are and then should not use them as a perfect guide for action.
I have to agree with Jesse on this one, although I believe that morally the US and the rest of the world (UK, France, Spain, Italy,...etc.) had and has a duty to intervene, the realist view of the governments stop them from intervening. The question is asked is an age old one "Will performing this action serve our interests or not?" if it will, then yes the world will intervene, if it doesn't then there are a million reasons not to intervene (legal reasons, 'we didn't have all the info', that intervention is too dangerous, etc.)
ReplyDeleteSo as long as the above question is asked before taking action, it seems to me, that it is hopeless for us to think that governments will intervene in a foreign nation because morals demand that they do.