[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 118 (Friday, August 19, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 19, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                       PREVENTING FUTURE RWANDAS

 Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, as we spend hundreds of millions of 
dollars to fund the largest refugee relief operation in recent history, 
we have to ask ourselves if there was not something we could have done 
to stop the slaughter of over half a million people in Rwanda. Could a 
properly trained and equipped U.N. military force have intervened 
sooner, without great risk, and provided protection to some of the 
thousands of innocent people who lost their lives to gangs of machete-
wielding thugs? Could it also have saved some of the many millions of 
dollars we are spending now to care for the refugees?
  As a starting point for considering how to avoid similar catastrophes 
in the future, I urge all Senators to read the July 31, 1994 op-ed 
piece in the Washington Post by Agency for International Development 
Administrator Brian Atwood. Mr. Atwood wrote that ``the horror of 
Rwanda is but the latest of the many faces of chaos. The debate over 
this tragedy has led us to ask critical questions about the nature and 
speed of our response. Was it too little, too late? Is UN machinery 
adequate to handle disasters of this magnitude? Should we have sent 
peacekeepers into a civil war?''
  Obviously, the establishment of such a multilateral rapid response 
force would be controversial and costly, but these are crucial 
questions that urgently need answers. History has shown that it is only 
a matter of time before we will be confronted with another Rwanda-like 
crisis. We will again be faced with the agonizing question of whether 
to intervene and try to prevent a greater tragedy, or wait until the 
violence stops and then try to alleviate the suffering of those who 
survived the slaughter. We and the rest of the international community 
must examine our response, or initial lack of response, to the Rwanda 
crisis and consider whether we can prevent such acts of genocide in the 
future.
  The other point that Mr. Atwood makes, and which I have made time and 
again, is that if future Rwandas are to be averted we need to focus on 
crisis prevention, not crisis response. ``No amount of international 
resources of organizational capacity can serve as a substitute for 
building stable, pluralistic societies * * *. Sustainable development 
that creates chains of enterprise, respects the environment and 
enlarges the range of freedom and opportunity over generations should 
be pursued as the principle antidote to social disarray.'' Mr. Atwood 
goes on to urge patience, a quality we Americans are not known for. 
``We will not transform societies overnight.''
  Too often, we want to solve a problem quickly, or not at all. Somalia 
is an example. Throughout the 1970's and 1980's, the Russians and the 
United States gave millions of dollars in military aid to repressive 
Somali Governments. Then the cold war ended and Somalia erupted in 
violence, which led to massive famine. I supported the use of American 
troops to prevent the starvation of half a million people, but when we 
pulled out the United Nations was unable to prevent the resurgence of 
violence.
  Mr. President, we have got to face the fact that if we are going to 
avoid future Somalias and Rwandas, which are costing billions and 
billions of dollars in emergency relief aid, we have to invest in the 
less glamorous, long-term process of building stable, sustainable 
economies and supporting pluralistic, democratic governments. These are 
the antidotes of violence and famine, but they take time and patience. 
They also cost money, but the alternatives, as we have seen most 
recently in Rwanda and Haiti, are far more costly.
  I want to commend Brian Atwood for raising these issues, and for his 
efforts to focus our foreign assistance program on sustainable 
development and supporting the building blocks of democracy. 
Simultaneously, I urge the administration to vigorously seek to build 
support within the United Nations to strengthen multilateral 
capabilities to respond to genocide or other violence that threatens 
the lives of large numbers of civilians. If we have learned anything 
from these recent disasters it is that we are not adequately prepared 
to respond to such crises, and that far more must be done to prevent 
them from occurring in the first place.
  Mr. President, I ask that Mr. Atwood's op-ed piece be printed in the 
Record.
  The article follows:

               [From the Washington Post, July 31, 1994]

                            Suddenly, Chaos

                          (By J. Brian Atwood)

       Bosnia, Haiti, Rwanda. These troubling and unique crises in 
     disparate regions of the globe share a common thread. They 
     are the dark manifestations of a strategic threat that 
     increasingly defines America's foreign policy challenge. 
     Disintegrating societies and failed states with their civil 
     conflicts and destabilizing refugee flows have emerged as the 
     greatest menace to global stability.
       Containment of communism defined our national security 
     policy for nearly half a century. A previous generation of 
     Americans built new institutions, alliances and strategies in 
     the wake of World War II to meet the demands of that era. 
     Now, we must forge the tools and policies needed to meet a 
     threat that can best be summarized by the word ``chaos.'' It 
     is a threat that demands a response far more complex than the 
     zero-sum arithmetic of the Cold War.
       Increasingly, we are confronted by countries without 
     leadership, without order, without governance itself. The 
     pyre of failed states is being fired by common fuels: long-
     simmering ethnic, religious and territorial disputes; 
     proliferating military stockpiles built dangerously high 
     during the Cold War; endemic poverty; rapid population 
     growth; food insecurity; environmental degradation; and 
     unstable and undemocratic governments.
       Pre-crisis Rwanda was the most densely populated nation in 
     Africa; per capita food production was in decline, land was 
     in dispute, and political power was jealously guarded. 
     Extremists exploited those volatile conditions, precipitating 
     the orgy of genocidal violence that ensued.
       The horror of Rwanda is but the latest of the many faces of 
     chaos. The debate over this tragedy has led us to ask 
     critical questions about the nature and speed of our 
     response. Was it too little, too late? Is U.N. machinery 
     adequate to handle disasters of this magnitude? Should we 
     have sent peace-keepers into a civil war? These questions are 
     inevitable in a democracy, and they are important. But they 
     deal with our response to crisis, not to any efforts to 
     prevent it. If we do not question our collective 
     responsibility to treat the causes of such social implosions, 
     we are doomed to a future of ever-escalating global trauma.
       Failed states and the human misery they create are 
     extracting an unprecedented price. The international 
     community spent more on peacekeeping operations in 1993 than 
     in the previous 48 years combined. In that same year 
     investments in development declined by 8 percent. Reversing 
     this trend--and reducing the security risks, human suffering 
     and economic losses it represents--will require a much 
     greater emphasis on prevention.
       This effort is already underway. The Clinton administration 
     has made crisis prevention a central theme of its foreign 
     policy. The U.N. secretary general has embraced the need for 
     preventive diplomacy. Our common objective is clear: to help 
     societies build the capacity to deal with the social, 
     economic and political forces that threaten to tear them 
     apart.
       The building blocks of a successful Cold War foreign policy 
     were military alliances, nuclear deterrence, international 
     organizations and a body of international law that formed a 
     framework for cooperation, dispute resolution and interstate 
     relations. Geostrategic considerations dominated the policy 
     approach, and relative power, measured in economic, political 
     and military terms, was a constant measure of success.
       This system and those considerations cannot be abandoned 
     overnight, nor should they be. But we are in a transition 
     period. We are just beginning to wrestle with the 
     necessities, and the frustrations, of multilateral diplomacy. 
     A highly dynamic and increasingly independent set of 
     nongovernmental variables--information and financial flows, 
     international citizen networks, proliferating and accessible 
     weapons of war and millions of migrating people--are 
     challenging our analytical capacity and undermining 
     traditional diplomacy. We are still in the process of 
     defining the elements required to combat the new, multi-
     dimensional threats.
       Some of the components are clear. We cannot prevent failed 
     states with a top-down approach. No amount of international 
     resources or organizational capacity can serve as a 
     substitute for building stable, pluralist societies. New 
     partnerships and new tools are needed to strengthen the 
     indigenous capacity of people to manage and resolve conflict 
     within their own societies. Technology should be better 
     exploited and shared to empower individuals and enhance the 
     networking of nongovernmental groups, increase food supplies, 
     slow population growth and preserve natural resources. 
     Sustainable development that creates chains of enterprise, 
     respects the environment and enlarges the range of freedom 
     and opportunity over generations should be pursued as the 
     principle antidote to social disarray.
       Finally, we need to acquire a quality we Americans are not 
     known for--patience. We will not transform societies 
     overnight. Dramatic victories will be rare and setbacks 
     common. Consensus building and development require long-term 
     commitments and staying power. These are the techniques of 
     crisis prevention, and our political system will have to 
     accommodate them, or we will fail in these endeavors.
       President Clinton has sent me on two missions to East 
     Africa in the past two months. The first was to marshal 
     international support to prevent a drought from triggering a 
     famine. The second was to survey the dimensions of the 
     massive human tragedy in Rwanda. The first mission gained 
     less attention, but it could save more lives, for it was an 
     exercise in crisis prevention not crisis response.

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