Once Again

The financial costs of such forces (approximately $1 billion per year after start-up costs) are modest relative to the military expenditures of most major nations. Still, the United States and several other countries have consistently opposed any autonomous U.N. capacity for military action. Alternatives do exist. Canada and several other states have created a multinational brigade for rapid deployment, but each participating state retains, on a case-by-case basis, the right to refuse to go.

An alternative to a U.N. standing force would be for regional security organizations to take on the task of humanitarian intervention. Yet this is hardly an encouraging prospect. Most regional organizations lack the finances, professional military expertise and mandate to carry out actions to prevent genocide. The African Union force sent to the Sudan, for example, is of token size, ill-equipped and too poorly deployed to have any effect on events in Darfur.

The only exception may be the European Union, which has a newly functional Rapid Reaction Force of about 60,000 soldiers. Still, this is not a standing army and EU member states can restrict the deployment of their own soldiers. Furthermore, it is not clear to what extent European states would be willing to deploy such a force "out of area." The recent international parallel is France's military intervention in the Ivory Coast. France acted only after its own nationals were killed, and it acted alone; no other nation had any direct interest there.

Ideally, an international force to stop genocide would intervene prior to the large-scale outbreak of killing, rather than later. This presumes some type of "early warning" system. Yet states committing genocide have great incentives to conceal their deeds, which sometimes are apparent only years later when mass graves are unearthed.

One of the functions of Annan's special adviser is to provide early warning of genocide to the Security Council or Secretary General. Non-governmental organizations, such as International Alert, also play that role. But in the case of Rwanda, Dallaire sent many early warnings to the United Nations without result.

In some ways, the international community has made little progress since Japan's invasion of Manchuria in the 1930s. The League of Nations sent a fact-finding mission to investigate alleged atrocities, but by the time the mission arrived six months later, Japanese control over the area was a fait accompli. In a strikingly similar fashion, the United Nations sent a commission of inquiry to Darfur well after the onset of violence there. The final report, released in January, concluded that genocide had not occurred even though a variety of international crimes had. Would that have been enough to trigger intervention by a standing international force?

International legal authority for action is also ambiguous. Although there is now consensus that nations have a moral obligation to stop genocide, international law isn't so clear. The 1948 U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, despite its name, is largely concerned with defining genocide and creating rules for prosecuting perpetrators rather than preventing or stopping genocide before or as it occurs. Article 8 grants states the right to appeal to the U.N. for help, but it gives states no right to take military steps outside the U.N. framework unless it is in self-defense.

It is still not widely accepted that states can intervene in the domestic affairs of other states, even though international courts and other bodies may hold those responsible for any crimes in the aftermath. The United Nations can act when "international peace and security" are threatened, and this could provide a legal basis for action in cases of genocide. But the U.N. has been reluctant to exercise that prerogative, notably failing to bless NATO efforts to protect ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. And when it comes to Sudan, both China and Russia have opposed military intervention because of the precedents it might set for their conflicts in Tibet and Chechnya, respectively. Even neighboring African states have opposed military intervention in Sudan.

Even if a multinational force existed, the U.N. or some other body would have to authorize action. And action comes with risks that no nation was willing to take in Rwanda or Srebrenica. Dallaire believes that a modest number of troops could have stopped the Rwanda killings. "Would we have risked more U.N. casualties?" he asks in his memoir. "Yes, but surely soldiers and peacekeeping nations should be prepared to pay the price of safeguarding human life and human rights."

Given all the obstacles, talk of an international humanitarian intervention force may be nothing more than an academic exercise. But for the people destined to be the victims of the next genocide, the question of how to assure intervention is anything but academic.

Author's e-mail: pdiehl@uiuc.edu

Paul F. Diehl is Henning Larsen Professor of Political Science at the University of Illinois and director of the Correlates of War project, which collects data on international conflicts.