It is wonderful to be here again. Just a note on the structure, this is lessons on failure. I don’t think you can understand failure without understanding lessons from success. I don’t think you can know what was possible without knowing what has been achieved in other circumstances. I’m really looking forward to a dialogue with you, because I have obviously been engaged in an awful lot of unilateralism, so it’s really time that we hear from the delegations. We have very limited time, so I will speak relatively quickly; I hope that’s OK, because I want to talk about lessons learned from failure for three categories of individuals: journalists, non-governmental organizations and governments. And as I speak, again keep in mind that the only thing I claim expertise on is the United States. I do think many of the lessons I have learned about American failures are applicable, but I leave it to you to tell me whether I’m right.

First, journalists:

In the journalistic coverage of atrocities of the kind of magnitude that we’re talking about, we, journalists, are for the most part learning on the job, learning on the fly. So if we take, for instance, Rwanda, much of the press coverage of the genocide owed almost entirely to the fact that the genocide coincided with the South African election and the fact that so many hundreds – thousands – of journalists had converged on Johannesburg and on Pretoria for this wonderful celebration. Many journalists parachuted into Rwanda on their way out of Africa. It was serendipity that they were there at all. But they were learning as they went, and, as a result, in the early weeks of coverage, one finds a reliance on tribal imagery, a deference to official state authorities and official statements, and a learning curve that is very steep. quite impressive but not altogether conducive to policy reliance on journalistic coverage. That’s one example.

For the second example of the media’s inadequacies, I offer my own experience trying to investigate US responses to genocide in the twentieth century. My book and my research was utterly unsustainable on the free market. If I hadn’t been able to get a grant from George Soros and the Open Society Institute, there is no way that I could have done the kind of investigative reporting that I needed to do in order to show (and not tell) my readers the mechanics of bystanding. The “market failure” is evident not only with regard to investigative reporting but also regarding coverage of regions that fall outside the realm of traditional national interest. Media priorities tend to replicate or be derivative of state priorities. Trips to these kinds of places are very expensive, which I think surprises people and so from a standpoint of an editor, with the cost-benefit analysis, the benefit is, “we write about the Congo or Sudan or Burundi for the sake of mankind and for some metaphysical good;” the cost is dollars, time, and often considerable risk. If one hopes to be deployed to a place like Burundi or Aceh or Sudan, the funding, the seeding, and the incentives often have to come from someplace other than an editor. So prescriptively, let us ask, how can we create incentives for sustained (not parachute) reporting, where a journalist doesn’t simply descend at the moment of massive crisis but actually familiarizes herself with a place, and offers early warning of imminent tragedy.

 

Recognizing that media coverage is absolutely necessary but not at all sufficient, we have to deal with the necessary part. Coverage is needed to create a political appetite and climate for political pressure. Media images are not sufficient to generate action because they are easily repackaged. Policymakers and citizens may not be able to deny facts perhaps, but, the facts can lend themselves to multiple interpretations, as well as competing implications.

Second, NGOs:

Here I’m talking mainly about some of the more sophisticated human rights NGOs – the documenters, the fact-finders, people who have become so rigorous in their methodology over the course of the last decade or two, but who are suffering the affects of a mobilization gap. Despite the extensive documentation, which is at a new scale, a new level, backed by new budgetary resources, and new partnerships with local NGOs. Yet there still exists an inability to actually turn knowledge or information into political noise and political pressure. Let me give you just one example. Amnesty International in the United States has more than 350,000 members, people who pay a small fee every year, people who are truly committed, who have these little candles up on their refrigerators or on their car bumpers. They’re ready, they believe in human rights. When a colleague of mine who had been a senior policy advisor to Ted Kennedy in the Senate went on to work in Amnesty International’s Washington office he noticed to his shock that Amnesty’s members had never been grouped in Amnesty International’s database by congressional district. So, they existed as a list of well-wishers and do-gooders, but they were never thought about as a political force. They had never been grouped so that they could be summoned in the moment they were needed.

A second example which I think again is more of an example of success but as well is prescriptively something we have to think concerns Bosnia advocacy. Jewish groups in America identified with the images of men behind barbed wire in concentration camps in Europe. American Jews became a great ally for the rescue of Bosnian Muslims. This is an example of a superficially unlikely alliance that strong pressure on the executive branch. So, I think we have to look to, perhaps, unlikely partners, but people who have the capacity to mobilize.

Third, governments:

Governments are very important. The diplomatic imagination has proven itself to be lacking when it comes to genocide. What does it mean to be a diplomat? – You have to be diplomatic, if you’re a diplomat! What does it mean to deal with genocide or atrocity? You have to abandon your neutrality and actually take a stand; you have to be undiplomatic. We need to think about how we are training our foreign servants, the people who are entering the Foreign Service. We know that they are being trained in the language of diplomacy, in cease-fire pursuits and so on, but are they being taught how to respond when one group sets out to systematically destroy another group? Is the imagination, the diplomatic tool-kit, prepared for what lies ahead? Foreign servants have all seen Holocaust documentaries and increasingly they are being introduced to Rwanda, but even Rwanda runs the same danger as the Holocaust of putting the bar at such a high place at 800,000 – or in the case of the Holocaust, it’s six million – that anything that happens in our lifetime, hence forth, will pale by comparison. We probably won’t understand that what we’re seeing is what we said we would prevent.

The alibi that states have at their disposal at a time of non-intervention is, of course, the difficulty in mobilizing troops for military intervention. Diplomats say, “Well, where can we find troops? It takes so long. If you go to developing countries, the troops aren’t equipped.” Here Sweden can play an essential role. Sweden, and 2-3 states – say Canada, Nigeria or South Africa – could undertake a truly global initiative. We have to revisit the idea of a rapid reaction force. If the Secretary General or the Security Council had a standing army or a standing battalion, capable of responding, it would at least remove one of the mail alibis so the light shines where it belongs which is on UN Security Council members who are uninterested in acting.

Crucially, when we think about atrocity, we have to think in terms of a toolbox. It can’t be all or nothing, it can’t be “send the marines or do nothing at all.” We have to look at the host of options, from prosecution to naming names to creating safe areas and no fly zones to freezing foreign assets, to radio jamming, to arms embargoes, to using Western leadership such as it is, to rally troops from the region. We have to think creatively and in terms of a continuum of intervention.

Final points:
First, we have talked a lot about the importance of prevention. Previous is hard. If we can’t get a response when bodies are already floating down the river, how do you get a response when you say: “Hey, if you don’t do anything, bodies will be floating down the river.” The answer is again political leadership. Once a government makes a political decision to respond to atrocities, what you will see, I think – I don’t know because it has never been tried – is a ripple effect back stream into the area of prevention. Nobody wants to suppress genocide because it is politically costly in every way conceivable, so prevention would become far more preferable.

Second, if we are serious, coming out of this conference, every head of state or head of delegation has to go home and try to convince the operational arm of his or her government to hold, what in my country would be the equivalent of a cabinet meeting to discuss genocide prevention, suppression and punishment. Instead of repeating the slogans you must actually talk about what kind of presidential decision directive you are prepared to issue, if any at all.

And now, my final point. The legislature is essential. The legislature has the power to agenda-set while a crisis is under way or ahead of a crisis it can put the executive branch and the equivalent of the State Department or the Foreign Service on the spot to demand intelligence and action. But moreover, and this is my final prescription, after the fact, the legislative branch can create accountability for those executives and presidents and government administrations that have done nothing about genocide. That means congressional investigations and inquiries which in turn create a kind of “foot step-effect” such that future officials are afraid of ending up on the record as bystanders to genocide.

Thank you!