Roguely Stated

Recently, the Boston Herald published an Associated Press report where Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama reportedly stated “…the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn’t a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there”.

“Well, look, if that’s the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now - where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife - which we haven’t done,” Obama said.

While the senator is correct when he says that preventing genocide is not currently a criteria for U.S. decision making, the question I hope readers will ask themselves is: if preventing genocide is not a legitimate reason to use American military power, then what is? Furthermore, with regard to genocide, does the United States have a either a moral or legal obligation to act? Does our refusal to prevent genocide either strengthen or detract from: Our national power? Our ability to influence the international community? Our ability to accomplish our national goals?

However, before we explore these questions further, let’s take a brief look at Senator Obama’s specific comments. This is not the first time the senator has sent a confusing message on how and when he would advocate the use of military force. To that end, Niall Ferguson has done an excellent job of identifying some apparent inconsistencies in Senator Obama’s foreign policy objectives, specifically regarding his position on intervention in Rwanda when compared to his position on Iraq. Ferguson notes that Senator Obama has stated that in the case of Rwanda “an international show of force …might have stopped the slaughter”.

While military intervention is clearly not a “one size fits all” policy option, Obama’s Rwanda example still sounds oddly like using military force to solve humanitarian problems to me. But while pundits on all sides try to either interpret, defend, ridicule or divine the true nature of the senator’s remarks, I believe they actually expose a larger and more immediate question that American policy makers (and the American public) have yet to ask themselves:

If there is a humanitarian disaster (or genocide) in Iraq following an American withdrawal, what if anything is the United States prepared to do about it?

Unfortunately, if history is any indicator, the answer is probably nothing.

Generally, I find the latest remarks on genocide to be very odd, especially coming from Senator Obama; the man who had Samantha Power, Harvard professor and founding executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights, on his senatorial campaign in 2005 and whom he credits in the acknowledgments section of his book “The Audacity of Hope“. Power, a former correspondent who covered the grisly events in Bosnia and Srebrenica from 1993-1996, received the Pulitzer Prize for her 2002 book: “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide” in which she rightfully condemns America’s failure to respond to the successive genocides throughout the twentieth century.

One of her book’s major conclusions regarding why the United States has failed to respond can be summarized as follows:

U.S. officials spin themselves (as well as the American public) about the nature of the violence in question and the likely impact of American intervention. They render the bloodshed two-sided and inevitable, not genocidal. They insist that any proposed U.S. response will be futile. Indeed, it may even do more harm then good, bringing perverse consequences to the victims and jeopardizing other precious American moral or strategic interests. They brand as “emotional” those U.S. officials who urge intervention and who make moral arguments in a system that speaks principally in the cold language of interests. They avoid use of the word “genocide”. Thus, they can in good conscience favor stopping genocide in the abstract, while simultaneously opposing American involvement in the moment.

Does any of this sound familiar? It should …both to policy wonks and Iraq veterans alike. Experts across the political spectrum have already begun to refer to the killing and sectarian violence in Iraq as two-sided and inevitable.

I’m sure at this point, there are plenty of realpolitik naysayers lamenting any potential “humanitarian” advocacy; and while it is true that there are obvious humanitarian and moral reasons to prevent genocide, I think there are also reasons for both idealists and realists to make genocide prevention part of their policy agendas. Samantha Power notes that America is still an opinion leader in global diplomacy, an observation backed-up by the Pew Research Center.

I think that countries look to the United States in ways that we underestimate. Even now, when we are hated in so many corners of the world, there is still a tremendous normative impact that the words of American leaders have.

With frustration about the war at an all time high, the pressure to leave Iraq sooner rather than later is increasing. In fact, many friends and colleagues have called for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, even though they believe that there will be a significant increase in bloodshed when we leave. But should we do this at the cost of allowing a genocide to occur after we leave?

The long-term national security implications of answering that question incorrectly could be enormous. Especially, if we simultaneously fail to consider all of the long term strategic impacts associated with how the withdrawal is executed. A poorly planned withdrawal, marred by the same haphazard planning process that led us to our current predicament, could spur an increase in sectarian violence, as well as lead to greater the instability in the region. Therefore, how the United States moves forward on its foreign policy agenda in Iraq will matter greatly, both on the ground (defined by the number of lives saved or lost), as well as in terms of American credibility as a global leader.

Regarding our credibility, I believe the quintessential American strengths - soft power concepts such as democracy, legitimacy, transparency, and liberty - will come to be seen as merely the empty rhetoric of the world’s only remaining superpower, if genocide occurs in Iraq, and the U.S. takes no decisive action.

This, in turn, will lessen our international influence even further, by reducing the incentive for allies and potential allies to cooperate and to follow our lead. On this note, it is important to keep in mind what lessening our influence in the international system puts at risk. The current international system - a system comprised of U.S. dominated multilateral organizations such as the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank, G8, WTO, etc. - has been in place since the late 1940s, mainly due to the efforts of United States. At the behest of Washington, these multilateral regimes have promoted trade liberalization, open capital markets, and nuclear nonproliferation, ensuring relative peace and prosperity for six decades — with untold benefits for the U.S.

Simply put, losing influence in the international system jeopardizes these hard-won benefits.

In our haste to leave Iraq and correct the associated policy failures since “mission accomplished”, we need to be careful not create a larger problem in our wake for the sake of political expediency. Fortunately, the U.S. can learn from its past mistakes. Power’s analysis of our disastrous exit from Vietnam and the subsequent genocide in Cambodia is illustrative in this effort. She writes:

…with the United States smothering under the legacy of Vietnam War, which had just ended …no individual or organization convinced the U.S. decision makers that the deaths of Cambodians mattered enough to Americans to warrant their attention. Thus, while analogies of the Holocaust were invoked and isolated appeals made, in three years of systematic terror, a U.S. policy of silence was never really contested. It would have been politically unthinkable to intervene militarily and emotionally unpleasant to pay close heed to the horrors unfolding, but it was cost-free to look away. And this is what two U.S. Presidents and most lawmakers, diplomats, journalists and citizens did, before, during, and after the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror”.

Senator Obama and his colleagues running for President (both Democrats and Republicans) need to heed Samantha’s words of warning with regard to genocide, while they consider the policy options available to them in Iraq. Whether the ultimate answer is some version of stay the course, strategic repositioning or a complete withdrawal, the necessity of embedding these decisions in the context of a larger strategy is paramount. Ours must be a strategy that minimizes bloodshed on all sides and seriously considers what actions should be taken if a genocide occurs if/when we leave - even if that answer is re-engagement with American military power - albeit this time, it should be under the auspicious of the United Nations and executed in a truly multi-lateral effort.

Not possible you say? Too much damage already done and too much U.S. credibility already lost to allow for a UN mission to prevent genocide if one occurs? Well, this is where the realpolitik camp comes back into play. India, Russia and China have way too much invested (militarily, politically and economically - the energy issues alone would be enough) in the region to let everything collapse into chaos. If these states are indeed rational actors, then they are all coming to the Middle East in one way or another - either in cooperation with the U.S. and the UN to help build a positive future for the region … or separately (and competitively) in an attempt to fix our catastrophic mistakes and seek individual advantage.

Which would you prefer?
More:

Never Again …Again: Samantha Power, the author of “A Problem From Hell,” explores why America—the home of Holocaust awareness—did all but nothing to stop the genocides of the twentieth century