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BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: One of the consequences of 9/11 was a new U.S. strategic doctrine. It supported the use of force not only in response to an attack but to prevent one. The idea of preventive war is now part of an ongoing debate about armed intervention generally -- for military and for humanitarian reasons. Phil Jones has our special report.
PHIL JONES: As Americans viewed the annual April beauty of Washington's cherry blossoms, one of the darkest foreign policy clouds in post-Cold War history moved over the White House. The year was 1994.
Bill Clinton, in only his second year as president, was worried about a nuclear threat from North Korea and ethnic tensions in Bosnia. Then one morning, Nancy Soderberg, who was on the national security staff, got more troubling news -- from Rwanda.
NANCY SODERBERG (Vice President, International Crisis Group): The information that you have initially is that there are some reports of potential ethnic violence in a place in the middle of Africa that most people in the White House apparatus aren't really sure where it is: "Rwanda? Where's that?"
JONES: During the Cold War years, military action had more to do with long-term strategy and its impact on the great superpowers: the United States and the Soviet Union.
In the early nineties, after the end of the Cold War, policy makers faced different strategic and moral challenges dealing with messy interethnic civil wars -- and questions of when intervention was legal. When was war strategically and morally justified? Did America have any business in places like Rwanda?
Ms. SODERBERG: I remember asking the CIA briefers in the morning, who had come in, "What's the worst-case scenario here?" And they said, "Well, probably another cycle of violence where 20 to 40,000 people might get killed."
JONES: It would turn out to be far worse than that: Africa's worst genocide in modern history.
Ms. SODERBERG: We didn't know that that was what was happening. It was, you know, really inconceivable that a million people would be hacked to death in the weeks coming ahead, and so we didn't really say at the time, "Boy, if we deploy troops we can prevent a genocide."
JONES: Rwanda happened six months after America's humanitarian intervention in Somalia, which would later become the subject of a book and movie about the bloody mission of elite American Rangers sent to remove top lieutenants of a Somalian warlord.
For the Clinton national security staff, the images were painful.
Ms. SODERBERG: When 18 Rangers lost their lives, and you look at those pictures sitting [in] the White House Situation Room, you just feel sick.
RICHARD HAASS (Former State Department Policy Planner): What you had was a gun-shy administration, and indeed a gun-shy international community, which on one hand recognized how awful things were, though perhaps some were in denial. But I think most people understood how bad things were. But had a collective unwillingness to act.
JONES: Richard Haass is a former State Department policy planner in the current Bush administration. He's considered an expert on the use of military force.
Mr. HAASS: The decision not to use military force is just a big as any decision to use it. The moral stakes are no less if you decide not to intervene. Policy makers and others should never forget that.
JONES: The United Nations Charter has only complicated decisions on humanitarian intervention. The UN Charter prohibits the use of military action unless it is to maintain or restore peace and security. Time after time, the UN has found it very difficult to reach a consensus on what to do.
Mr. HAASS: There's a tension in the UN Charter between respect for sovereignty, because after all, it's nation states who are the building blocks and members of the UN. At the same time, there's a tension between that, on one hand, and, on the other hand, trying to protect people.
JONES: Father Bryan Hehir, former head of Harvard Divinity School, is one of those immersed in the world debate on when military intervention is justified.
PHIL JONES: As Americans viewed the annual April beauty of Washington's cherry blossoms, one of the darkest foreign policy clouds in post-Cold War history moved over the White House. The year was 1994.
Bill Clinton, in only his second year as president, was worried about a nuclear threat from North Korea and ethnic tensions in Bosnia. Then one morning, Nancy Soderberg, who was on the national security staff, got more troubling news -- from Rwanda.
NANCY SODERBERG (Vice President, International Crisis Group): The information that you have initially is that there are some reports of potential ethnic violence in a place in the middle of Africa that most people in the White House apparatus aren't really sure where it is: "Rwanda? Where's that?"JONES: During the Cold War years, military action had more to do with long-term strategy and its impact on the great superpowers: the United States and the Soviet Union.
In the early nineties, after the end of the Cold War, policy makers faced different strategic and moral challenges dealing with messy interethnic civil wars -- and questions of when intervention was legal. When was war strategically and morally justified? Did America have any business in places like Rwanda?
Ms. SODERBERG: I remember asking the CIA briefers in the morning, who had come in, "What's the worst-case scenario here?" And they said, "Well, probably another cycle of violence where 20 to 40,000 people might get killed."
JONES: It would turn out to be far worse than that: Africa's worst genocide in modern history.
Ms. SODERBERG: We didn't know that that was what was happening. It was, you know, really inconceivable that a million people would be hacked to death in the weeks coming ahead, and so we didn't really say at the time, "Boy, if we deploy troops we can prevent a genocide."JONES: Rwanda happened six months after America's humanitarian intervention in Somalia, which would later become the subject of a book and movie about the bloody mission of elite American Rangers sent to remove top lieutenants of a Somalian warlord.
For the Clinton national security staff, the images were painful.
Ms. SODERBERG: When 18 Rangers lost their lives, and you look at those pictures sitting [in] the White House Situation Room, you just feel sick.
RICHARD HAASS (Former State Department Policy Planner): What you had was a gun-shy administration, and indeed a gun-shy international community, which on one hand recognized how awful things were, though perhaps some were in denial. But I think most people understood how bad things were. But had a collective unwillingness to act.JONES: Richard Haass is a former State Department policy planner in the current Bush administration. He's considered an expert on the use of military force.
Mr. HAASS: The decision not to use military force is just a big as any decision to use it. The moral stakes are no less if you decide not to intervene. Policy makers and others should never forget that.
JONES: The United Nations Charter has only complicated decisions on humanitarian intervention. The UN Charter prohibits the use of military action unless it is to maintain or restore peace and security. Time after time, the UN has found it very difficult to reach a consensus on what to do.
Mr. HAASS: There's a tension in the UN Charter between respect for sovereignty, because after all, it's nation states who are the building blocks and members of the UN. At the same time, there's a tension between that, on one hand, and, on the other hand, trying to protect people.
JONES: Father Bryan Hehir, former head of Harvard Divinity School, is one of those immersed in the world debate on when military intervention is justified.
JONES: The United Nations has spent an estimated $17 billion on peacekeeping missions since the end of the Cold War in 1989 -- while the suffering and killing continue unabated. After all the scenes of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo, the UN Secretary-General sent a strong warning to nations that their sovereignty is not sacrosanct -- that there are times when the use of force may be legitimate in the pursuit of peace.
President GEORGE W. BUSH: Tonight the coalition forces have begun the process of disarming Iraq.
Fr. HEHIR: Well, the cost was calculated in the way the question was put to us. It was never a strategic question. It was never a vital interest question. It was a moral question, and [the cost of the] failure on a moral question of serious significance to a nation of our capability and our values, I think, was high.
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