Q: You worked in the Clinton White House on national security. You were involved with the UN Security Council apparatus during the whole business of Rwanda. What was it like during that period? What were people thinking? What was the atmosphere?
A: In the case of Somalia, when 18 Rangers lost their lives, you look at those pictures sitting in the White House Situation Room, [and] you just feel sick. You say, "How did this happen? How did we let this happen?" You think of the families. In Rwanda, watching the bodies floating down the rivers, you say, "How did this happen? How could this be?" You realize we could have done more to prevent it, and it's just an awful feeling.But when you're in a position of power in Washington, as things are unveiling they are never as perfect as they seem today -- particularly the case of Rwanda. The sense of responsibility that the world feels now in many cases in Africa didn't really exist then. It wasn't our job to stop that. Also, we didn't have perfect information. We didn't really know there was a genocide unfolding, even though some of the reports that you hear now would lead you to believe otherwise. I'm a big believer that the theory of chaos over conspiracy largely reigns at the center of power in Washington.
Q: Take me inside. You're there, and all of this information is beginning to come in on Rwanda. What is the information you have at the time, and what's the mindset?
A: The information that you have initially is that there are some reports of potential ethnic violence in a place in the middle of Africa; most people in the White House apparatus aren't really sure where it is: "Rwanda? Where's that? Burundi?" We've heard of Hutus and Tutsis somewhere in the back of our brains; it's not in the forefront. You're worried about war with North Korea. You're worried about trying to get some action going in Bosnia. This issue is not on your front burner.
I remember asking the CIA briefers who had come in the morning, "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." You have to remember 100,000 people in Burundi had been killed that fall, and no one really even paid any attention to that. There are reports floating around [of] impending genocide, but, frankly, we didn't get those reports at the time. We didn't know that was what was happening. It was really inconceivable that a million people would be hacked to death in the weeks ahead, so we didn't really say at the time, "If we deploy troops, can we prevent a genocide?" It's much more chaotic as it evolves through the process.
Q: Did anyone say, "This may turn into genocide"? Did the word get used?
A: During the killing, there was a debate about whether to use "genocide," which I think none of us are particularly proud about. It was clearly genocide once it started. It took about two or three weeks to unfold. I think by the third week in April, it was very clear it was genocide. It took the State Department much longer than it should have to actually use the word, and we all deserve some blame for that. I don't think that would happen again. It was clearly genocide. As it unfolded -- I would say within two or three weeks -- it became clear.
At the time, though, the last thing you want to do is insert troops into the middle of a genocide. Nobody really knew what to do at that stage. The lessons from that period are you have to do a lot more early on: preventive deployments -- get the UN deployments right. Those lessons have actually been learned, I think. You're seeing very strong action in Liberia today, although I personally think it's too late. But there is movement there that will prevent widespread killings and chaos that could easily emerge in the aftermath of Charles Taylor's departure. The British went into Sierra Leone. The French have gone into Ivory Coast. We are making progress, although not as much as I' d like to see.
Q: What's the reluctance, the fear, of using the word "genocide" -- because of what it would have actually required?
A: Well, in theory. You know, you can parse words, but it was clearly genocide. There's no excuse for not having labeled it that early on, and there was, I think, some concern that we would be required to do something; but there was no definition of what we're required to do, either. We should have said much earlier on, "This is happening" and put a stronger force in there.
Before the genocide erupts -- that's the way to present these things. Once they start, it's very hard to convince troops to go into the middle of a very chaotic situation, particularly troops that are not from the region. If you look at the history of intervention in conflicts, it's almost always troops from the neighboring countries. NATO and the U.S. went into Bosnia and Kosovo. The Nigerians are the ones who have been going into Sierra Leone and now Liberia; you had the Australians going into East Timor. They're the ones who are the first-trigger troops, who are willing to go. They're willing to take the casualties. They understand very quickly -- much more quickly than troops from other parts of the world -- how dangerous this is.
Q: But there you are, officials in the embassy and in a presidential administration, and you're talking on a rather routine basis about 20 to 40,000 people who might be killed. Does that happen every day? Every week?
A: Well, in that part of the world, it does tend to happen on occasion. What was so wrong about [Rwanda] was they thought it was just going to be another contained cycle of violence. There's a famous genocide fax that was sent back from the UN rep on the ground, Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire. [Now people say,] "Oh, this genocide fax went all around the UN."
Actually, if you read that cable, it was asking for permission to go and seize an arms cache. The cable itself didn't really set off alarm bells: "Oh, there's a coming genocide." When you read it with hindsight, there was possible prediction of genocide in there. But until it really was about two or three weeks into it, there was not a large-scale sense that there was going to be genocide on that scale.
With hindsight, I think the lesson of Rwanda is the need to act quickly and firmly. The fear of another Somalia -- the response to that is not, "Never go in again," which was a little bit of what was going on in Rwanda, really; not "Forget it, we're not looking at that again," but look at those signs, have a genocide alert network where people see these signs. Rwanda was not the first time people invented genocide. It's in the evil side of human nature, and it could pop up anywhere around the world. In its traditional signs, you see ethnic targeting, minority targeting, the use of hate radio. And when you see those signs, the world needs to move in quickly and forcefully to stop it. That is the lesson from Rwanda being applied today in many of the African conflicts. Although it took a decade to be implemented, I think it is being implemented now.
Q: What's the tipping point between what appears to be ethnic cleansing and possible genocide?
A: People who haven't sat in the seats of power fail to realize just how messy the decisions are. You don't really know. You're guessing. The military comes in with some assumptions that may or may not be real. You get on the ground, and you don't really know. Those who want quick action have to understand that militaries are reluctant to put their own men on the ground in a situation where they don't know what they're going into and they certainly have no idea how they're getting out.
That's why early action is so much easier, because it's easier to prevent things than to contain them once they've broken out. What policy makers faced in the early nineties was a new kind of warfare -- not between states like we had in the Cold War, but these interethnic, messy things. It took us a while to figure it out. And, certainly, in the early days of the Clinton administration, we did not have it right. In Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Haiti -- all of those early crises -- we hadn't gotten the balance of force and diplomacy right in these areas.
But over the course of the last ten years, we have figured it out to a large extent. What you're seeing in the Bush administration in Liberia is the need to act now before it erupts. And to their credit, they're doing it -- although too late and too little, in my view. But I think it is working, and it's moving slowly. They're beginning to do nation building and peacekeeping in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and those are all the lessons we learned in the last decade that are now being applied.
Perhaps the most important shift in the last 10 years is [the question of] whose responsibility it is to stop genocide around the world. What you've seen is a shift recognizing that the international community has a responsibility to protect innocent civilians when their own governments fail to do that. That is a major shift, really, in the last five years. Many haven't noticed it, but it has made a huge impact on the psyche of those who are making these decisions.
Q: Yet, time after time, when it comes to finding a consensus on this, the UN has failed.
A: This is not necessarily a job that the UN itself can do. You have to remember that the UN is a bunch of member states who have to agree; it's really the permanent five members of the Security Council who have to agree. If you can get China, Russia, the U.S., the UK, and France together on an issue, the UN works great. If they're divided, as we saw in Iraq, it's embarrassing; it's a mess. That's not Kofi Annan's fault. If you can work it out, basically, between Moscow, Washington, and Europe, China usually will go along.
What you've seen in these conflicts is disagreements in some of these cases, but increasing agreement. They've just voted a UN Security Council resolution on Liberia. There were a couple of abstentions on that one, but, overall, they've agreed to authorize this force there.
In Kosovo, there wasn't agreement in the Security Council, because the U.S. felt that the Chinese and the Russians would veto the resolution; but they acted. And in East Timor, there was agreement to send the international force in once the Indonesians agreed to do so.
There's a different case for each place, and it's really not the UN's fault that the member states can't agree. Until the Security Council and the permanent five members agree to authorize an action, the UN is hamstrung. The focus needs to be on the recognition in the key capitals of the need to move quickly and forcefully in some of these areas. It's moving in the right direction, but it's not there yet in key cases.
Q: What is the fallout from Iraq on future situations where these key members of the Security Council need to have a consensus?
A: I think you'll see the pendulum swing back. Iraq was really a mess in the Security Council. The U.S. was isolated in wanting to go to war. They' d gone to the council asking for unanimous support and got unanimous support for sending the inspectors back. The inspectors were back in. Everyone wanted to give it time, and the U.S. pulled the plug, failed completely on the diplomacy side, and went to war.
Everyone was furious. Bush isn't talking to the Germans, and the French are getting criticized from all sorts of quarters. And poor little French fries are not accepted anymore in some quarters in Washington. But that's changing, because reality tends to intrude on the politics of these things. The U.S. needs the United Nations, and it needs the other allies. You can see what's happening in Iraq already. Already, they're bringing the UN in, in much stronger terms than they expected. They're trying to get the Germans and the French to send troops. They're going to have to go back to the Security Council to get a resolution for that. They're probably going to have to share some of the lucrative contracts that have been going primarily to the U.S. The pendulum will swing back, and all of a sudden, the UN will seem like a pretty good thing to use, but you have to use it correctly.
Q: Even if President Clinton had wanted to intervene in Rwanda, could he have found the support to do it?
