Shame: Rationalizing Western Apathy on Rwanda

My article relies on three main findings. First, the Rwandan genocide of 1994 was perpetrated extremely quickly; about half the ultimate Tutsi victims were dead before the end of the third week. Second, because of the intentional deception by the perpetrators of the genocide and incomplete reporting by Western sources, President Clinton could not have known that a nationwide genocide against Rwanda's Tutsi was occurring until two weeks into the killing. Third, owing to constraints of strategic airlift and military doctrine, several weeks would have been required for a U.S. intervention to stop the genocide. Thus, my article concludes that even if President Clinton had ordered a maximum intervention as soon as he knew genocide was occurring in Rwanda, at most one-fourth of the ultimate Tutsi victims could have been saved, but the majority would not have survived.

Des Forges takes issue with each of these findings. First, she asserts that my article "exaggerates the early extent and the speed of the slaughter." This is puzzling, given her own recent writing on the subject. My article states that "perhaps 250,000 [Tutsi were killed] in just over two weeks." But her 1999 book for Human Rights Watch, Leave None to Tell the Story, states, "By two weeks into the campaign, they had slain hundreds of thousands of Tutsi." If anything, my estimate is more conservative than her own.

Second, Des Forges claims that President Clinton knew almost immediately that a genocide was under way because of past ethnic violence in Rwanda, an earlier CIA analysis, and news reports during the first two days that extremists had taken control. Each of these arguments falls apart under closer analysis. Des Forges' book estimates that during the approximately three years of civil war prior to the genocide, about 2,000 Tutsi civilians had been killed -- a rate of about 50 per month. Although such killing was extremely troubling, it did not suggest that the death rate would suddenly jump to 250,000 in the following month.

Furthermore, the CIA study was a "desk-level" analysis that contained three possible scenarios, only one of which predicted such mass killings. Intelligence analysts routinely include such a worst-case scenario to cover themselves in case events go awry. Moreover, low-level studies of this sort rarely reach the president. U.S. officials did know, by the second day, about the bloody coup, the large-scale violence in the capital, and the renewed civil war. But they also expected the Tutsi rebels to win quickly. There is no reason to believe that President Clinton or any other U.S. observer knew immediately of the nationwide genocide. Indeed, Des Forges herself, in a Washington Post op-ed published on April 17, 1994 (11 days after the outbreak of violence), failed to raise even the prospect of "genocide." Des Forges' hindsight may be 20-20, but the picture was more muddled at the time.

Third, Des Forges claims that deploying intervention forces throughout Rwanda would not have been necessary to stop the genocide. Either "international censure" or quick military action in the capital by the few European evacuation troops present would have been sufficient, she claims. Although anything is possible, this smacks of wishful thinking. The lightly armed Western evacuators were outnumbered five to one by Hutu forces in the capital, so quick victory would have been unlikely. Meanwhile, large-scale massacres ignited throughout most of the country within the first week and continued for three months -- in the face of repeated international condemnation and sanctions -- until Tutsi rebels and late-arriving French troops ventured out to the countryside to stop them. This strongly suggests that once nationwide genocide began, only large-scale military intervention could have assured its rapid end.

Schulz, by contrast, criticizes three purported claims that are nowhere to be found in my article. First, he claims that I am "at pains to deny ... [that] the U.N.'s inaction ... was caused by an utter failure of will." To the contrary, my article discusses how a lack of will led the United States and the United Kingdom to quash efforts to bolster the peacekeeping force prior to the genocide. Moreover, my article underscores that if the West had possessed sufficient will to launch an intervention immediately upon learning of the attempted genocide, it could have saved up to 125,000 Tutsi.

Second, Schulz claims that my "thesis is that we are under a moral imperative to stop genocide only when we can stop it completely." Although my article debunks previous claims that military intervention in Rwanda after the outbreak of violence could have averted the genocide completely, it never suggests that this "exempts us from making the effort." Rather, it offers detailed recommendations for improving the effectiveness of military intervention. In addition, my article suggests devoting more attention to diplomacy, which offers the best hope of actually averting genocide.

Third, Schulz writes that I "cannot seriously contend" that the innocent victims in ethnic conflict "calculatedly invited their fates." What my article actually states is that the leaders of such groups sometimes provoke retaliation against their own civilians in order to galvanize domestic and, especially, international support. This was a repeated tactic of the Bosnian government in its 1992-95 war, as documented by at least two U.N. commanders on the ground. More recently, this cynical tactic was copied with even greater success by the Kosovo Liberation Army. As long as the West comes to the military assistance of groups being victimized because of their own violent provocations, we risk fostering an escalation of ethnic conflict.