Thomas Hobbes
The ideas of American democratic citizenship
did not evolve entirely on the western side of the
Atlantic Ocean. We can see a profound influence
from the political discussions taking place in
Europe particularly during the 17th and 18th
centuries. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) has been
chosen for inclusion in your reader for his
contributions to our understanding of the nature
of civil society, natural rights, and natural laws.
Hobbes’ greatest work, Leviathan (1651) is a
carefully argued defense of the theory of political
absolutism. This theory should not be confused
with the theory of divine right of kings, which was
defended by some of his contemporaries. For
divine rights theorists, the sovereign is justified in
his rule by reason of his hereditary right of
succession to the throne, granted by God. For
Hobbes, the “right” to rule reduces simply to the
sovereign’s ability to stay in power and this power
must come from the governed.
Hobbes’ grounds his political philosophy by
exploring human nature. He argues that man is
essentially motivated by a desire for selfpreservation. Without a powerful sovereign
(leviathan) to hold man in awe, we would live in a
constant state of war as we each struggle to
protect our persons. In essence, life would be
“solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” While
absolutism may be contrary to our desire for
liberty, it is the only thing that will provide us with
security.
Absolutism is indeed contrary to the
American system of government, but Hobbes’ use
of the theory of liberalism launched a tradition of
political thought that decisively influenced all
future political theory. The fundamental pillar of
this philosophy is the primacy of the value of
individual liberty. Classic liberals assume that
humans are possessed of an innate, naturally
bestowed personal freedom, understood as their
right to be and remain free from encroachments
from external sources. Yet, since governments are
necessary to maintain the peace, the liberal must
voluntarily choose to part with some individual
freedom as the price for enjoying the remainder in
greater security. The chief dilemma within
classical and modern liberalism alike is to decide
just how much liberty one is willing to part with in
order to achieve the security which governments
alone can provide.
As you read the following selections from
Leviathan, keep in mind the following questions.
What does Hobbes consider to be the natural state
of all men? Why do men need to form a civil
society? Why do men go to war and how does this
shape their societies? What is life like in the state
of nature? Where does law come from and what
makes it enforceable? What is Hobbes’ definition
of the social contract? Why is absolute power
critical to a successful civil society?
Sources: Perez Zagorin, “Thomas Hobbes” in
International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences
(New York, 1968); William Ebenstein and Alan O.
Ebenstein, “Hobbes,” in Great Political Thinkers:
Plato to the Present (Fort Worth, 1991), 397-406;
Raymond J. Langley, “Hobbes,” in McGraw-Hill
Encyclopedia of World Biography (New York,
1973).
Leviathan
The Introduction
Nature, the art whereby God hath made and
governs the world, is by the art of man, as in
many other things, so in this also imitated, that it
can make an artificial animal. For seeing life is
but a motion of limbs, the beginning whereof is in
some principal part within; why may we not say,
that all automata (engines that move themselves
by springs and wheels as doth a watch) have an
artificial life? For what is the heart, but a spring;
and the nerves, but so many strings; and the joints,
but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole
body, such as was intended by the artificer? Art
goes yet further, imitating that rational and most
excellent work of nature, m a n . For by art is
created that great LEVIATHAN called a
COMMONWEALTH, or STATE, in Latin
CIVITAS, which is but an artificial man; though
of greater stature and strength than the natural, for
whose protection and defence it was intended; and
in which the sovereignty is an artificial soul, as
giving life and motion to the whole body; the
magistrates, and other officers of judicature and
execution, artificial j o i n t s ; r e w a r d and
punishment, by which fastened to the seat of the
sovereignty every joint and member is moved to
perform his duty, are the nerves, that do the same
in the body natural; the wealth and riches of all
the particular members, are the strength; salus
p o p u l i , the people’s safety, its b u s i n e s s ;
counsellors, by whom all things needful for it to
know are suggested unto it, are the memory;
equity, and laws, an artificial reason and will;
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concord, health; sedition, sickness; and civil war,
death. Lastly, the pacts and covenants, by which
the parts of this body politic were at first made, set
together, and united, resemble that fiat, or the let
us make man, pronounced by God in the creation.
CHAPTER XIII
Of the Natural Condition of Mankind
as Concerning Their Felicity, and
Misery
Nature hath made men so equal, in the faculties of
the body, and mind; as that though there be found
one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body,
or of quicker mind than another; yet when all is
reckoned together, the differences between man,
and man, is not so considerable, as that one man
can thereupon claim to himself any benefit, to
which another may not pretend, as well as he. For
as to the strength of body, the weakest has
strength enough to kill the strongest, either by
secret machination, or by confederacy with others,
that are in the same danger with himself.
And as to the faculties of the mind, setting
aside the arts grounded upon words, and
especially that skill of proceeding upon general,
and infallible rules, called science; which very few
have, and but in few things; as being not a native
faculty, born with us; nor attained, as prudence,
while we look after somewhat else, I find yet a
greater equality amongst men, than that of
strength. For prudence, is but experience; which
equal time, equally bestows on all men, in those
things they equally apply themselves unto. That
which may perhaps make such equality incredible,
is but a vain conceit of one’s own wisdom, which
almost all men think they have in a greater degree,
than the vulgar; that is, than all men but
themselves, and a few others, whom by fame, or
for concurring with themselves, they approve. For
such is the nature of men, and howsoever they
may acknowledge many others to be more witty,
or more eloquent, or more learned; yet they will
hardly believe there be many so wise as
themselves; for they see their own wit at hand, and
other men’s at a distance. But this proveth rather
that men are in that point equal, than unequal. For
there is not ordinarily a greater sign of the equal
distribution of any thing, than that every man is
contented with his share.
From this equality of ability, ariseth equality
of hope in the attaining of our ends. And
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therefore if any two men desire the same thing,
which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they
become enemies; and in the way to their end,
which is principally their own conservation, and
sometimes their delectation only, endeavour to
destroy, or subdue one another. And from hence
it comes to pass, that where an invader hath no
more fear, than another man’s single power; if one
plant, sow, build, and possess a convenient seat,
others may probably be expected to come
prepared with forces united, to dispossess, and
deprive him, not only of the fruit of his labour, but
also of his life, or liberty. And the invader again
is in the like danger of another.
And from this diffidence of one another, there
is no way for any man to secure himself, so
reasonable, as anticipation; that is, by force, or
wiles, to master the persons of all men he can, so
long, till he see no other power great enough to
endanger him: and this is no more than his own
conservation requireth, and is generally allowed.
Also because there be some, that taking pleasure
in contemplating their own power in the acts of
conquest, which they pursue farther than their
security requires; if others, that otherwise would
be glad to be at ease within modest bounds, should
not by invasion increase their power, they would
not be able, long time, by standing only on their
defence, to subsist. And by consequence, such
augmentation of dominion over men being
necessary to a man’s conservation, it ought to be
allowed him.
Again, men have no pleasure, but on the
contrary a great deal of grief, in keeping company,
where there is no power able to over-awe them all.
For every man looketh that his companion should
value him, at the same rate he sets upon himself:
and upon all signs of contempt, or undervaluing,
naturally endeavors, as far as he dares, (which
amongst them that have no common power to
keep them in quiet, is far enough to make them
destroy each other), to extort a greater value from
his contemners, by damage: and from others, by
example.
So that in the nature of man we find three
principal causes of quarrel. First, competition;
secondly, diffidence; thirdly, glory.
The first, maketh men invade for gain; the
second for safety; and the third, for reputation.
The first use violence, to make themselves masters
of other men’s persons, wives, children, and
cattle; the second, to defend them; the third, for
trifles, as a word, a smile, a different opinion, and
any other sign of undervalue, either direct in their
persons or by reflection in their kindred, their
friends, their nation, their profession, or their
name.
Hereby it is manifest that during the time men
live without a common power to keep them all in
awe, they are in that condition which is called
war; and such a war as is of every man against
every man. For WAR consisteth not in battle
only, or the act of fighting, but in a tract of time,
wherein the will to contend by battle is
sufficiently known: and therefore the notion of
time is to be considered in the nature of war, as it
is in the nature of weather. For as the nature of
foul weather lieth not in a shower or two of rain,
but in an inclination thereto of many days
together: so the nature of war consisteth not in
actual fighting, but in the known disposition
thereto during all the time there is no assurance to
the contrary. All other time is PEACE.
Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time
of war, where every man is enemy to every man;
the same is consequent to the time wherein men
live without other security than what their own
strength and their own invention shall furnish
them withal. In such condition there is no place
for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain:
and consequently no culture of the earth; no
navigation, nor use of the commodities that may
be imported by sea; no commodious building; no
instruments of moving and removing such things
as require much force; no knowledge of the face
of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters;
no society; and which is worst of all, continual
fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of
man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
It may seem strange to some man, that has not
well weighed these things; that Nature should thus
dissociate and render men apt to invade and
destroy one another: and he may therefore, not
trusting to this inference, made from the passions,
desire perhaps to have the same confirmed by
experience. Let him therefore consider with
himself: when taking a journey, he arms himself
and seeks to go well accompanied; when going to
sleep, he locks his doors; when even in his house
he locks his chests; and this when he knows there
be laws and public officers, armed, to revenge all
injuries shall be done him; what opinion he has of
his fellow subjects, when he rides armed; of his
fellow citizens, when he locks his doors; and of
his children, and servants, when he locks his
chests. Does he not there as much accuse
mankind by his actions as I do by my words? But
neither of us accuse man’s nature in it. The
desires, and other passions of man, are in
themselves no sin. No more are the actions that
proceed from those passions till they know a law
that forbids them; which till laws be made they
cannot know, nor can any law be made till they
have agreed upon the person that shall make it.
It may peradventure be thought, there was
never such a time nor condition of war as this; and
I believe it was never generally so, over all the
world: but there are many places where they live
so now. For the savage people in many places of
America, except the government of small families,
the concord whereof dependeth on natural lust,
have no government at all, and live at this day in
that brutish manner, as I said before. Howsoever,
it may be perceived what manner of life there
would be, where there were no common power to
fear, by the manner of life which men that have
formerly lived under a peaceful government use to
degenerate into a civil war.
But though there had never been any time
wherein particular men were in a condition of war
one against another, yet in all times kings and
persons of sovereign authority, because of their
independency, are in continual jealousies, and in
the state and posture of gladiators, having their
weapons pointing, and their eyes fixed on one
another; that is, their forts, garrisons, and guns
upon the frontiers of their kingdoms, and
continual spies upon their neighbours, which is a
posture of war. But because they uphold thereby
the industry of their subjects, there does not
follow from it that misery which accompanies the
liberty of particular men.
To this war of every man, this also is
consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The
notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice,
have there no place. Where there is no common
power, there is no law: where no law, no injustice.
Force, and fraud, are in war the two cardinal
virtues. Justice, and injustice are none of the
faculties neither of the body, or mind. If they
were, they might be in a man that were alone in
the world, as well as his senses, and passions.
They are qualities, that relate to men in society,
not in solitude. It is consequent also to the same
condition, that there be no propriety, no dominion,
no mine and thine distinct; but only that to be
every man’s that he can get; and for so long, as he
can keep it. And thus much for the ill condition,
which man by mere nature is actually placed in;
though with a possibility to come out of it,
consisting partly in the passions, partly in his
reason.
The passions that incline men to peace, are
fear of death; desire of such things as are
necessary to commodious living; and a hope by
their industry to obtain them. And reason
suggesteth convenient articles of peace, upon
12
which men may be drawn to agreement. These
articles, are they, which otherwise are called the
Laws of Nature, whereof I shall speak more
particularly in the two following chapters.
Chapter XIV
Of the First and Second Natural Laws,
and of Contracts
The RIGHT OF NATURE, which writers
commonly call jus naturale, is the liberty each
man hath, to use his own power, as he will
himself, for the preservation of his own nature;
that is to say, of his own life; and consequently, of
doing any thing, which in his own judgement and
reason, he shall conceive to be the aptest means
thereunto.
By LIBERTY is understood, according to the
proper signification of the word, the absence of
external impediments; which impediments may
oft take away part of a man’s power to do what he
would, but cannot hinder him from using the
power left him according as his judgement and
reason shall dictate to him.
A LAW OF NATURE, lex naturalis, is a
precept or general rule, found out by reason, by
which a man is forbidden to do that, which is
destructive of his life, or taketh away the means of
preserving the same; and to omit that, by which he
thinketh it may be best preserved. For though
they that speak of this subject, use to confound
jus, and lex, right and law: yet they ought to be
distinguished; because RIGHT, consisteth in
liberty to do, or to forbear; whereas LAW,
determinith, and bindeth to one of them: so that
law, and right, differ as much, as obligation and
liberty; which in one and the same matter are
incosistent.
And because the condition of man, as hath
been declared in the precedent chapter, is a
condition of war of every one against every one:
in which case every one is governed by his own
reason; and there is nothing he can make use of,
that may not be a help unto him, in preserving his
life against his enemies; it followeth, that in such a
condition, every man has a right to every thing;
even to another’s body. And therefore, as long as
this natural right of every man to every thing
endureth, there can be no security to any man,
how strong or wise soever he be, of living out the
time, which nature ordinarily alloweth men to
live. And consequently it is a precept, or general
13
rule of reason, that every man, ought to endeavour
peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it; and
when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek, and
use, all helps, and advantages of war. The first
branch of which rule, containeth the first and
fundamental law of nature; which is, to seek
peace, and follow it. The second, the sum of the
right of nature; which is, by all means we can , to
defend ourselves.
From this fundamental law of nature, by
which men are commanded to endeavour peace, is
derived this second law; that a man be willing,
when others are so too, as far forth, as for peace,
and defence of himself he shall think it necessary,
to lay down this right to all things; and be
contented with so much liberty against other men
as he would allow other men against himself. For
as long as every man holdeth this right, of doing
any thing he liketh; so long are all men in the
condition of war. But if other men will not lay
down their right, as well as he; then there is no
reason for any one, to divest himself of his: for
that were to expose himself to prey, which no man
is bound to, rather than to dispose hiemself to
peace. This is that law of the Gospel; whatsoever
you require that othesr should do to you, that do
ye to them. And that law of all men, quod tibi fieri
non vis, alteri ne feceris.
To lay down a man’s right to any thing, is to
divest himself of the liberty, of hindering another
of the benefit of his own right to the same. For he
that renounceth, or passeth away his right, giveth
not to any other man a right which he had not
before; because there is nothing to which every
man had not right by nature: but only standeth out
of his way, that he may enjoy his own original
right, without hindrance from him; not without
hindrance from another. So that the effect which
redoundeth to one man, by another man’s defect
of right, is but so much diminution of
impediments to the use of his own right original.
Right is laid aside, either by simply
renouncing it, or by transferring it to another. By
simply RENOUNCING, when he cares not to
whom the benefit thereof redoundeth. By
TRANSFERRING, when he intendeth to benefit
thereof to some certain person or persons. And
when a man hath in either manner abandoned or
granted away his right, then is he said to be
OBLIGED, or BOUND, not to hinder those to
whom such right is granted, or abandoned, from
the benefit of it: and that he ought, and it is
DUTY, not to make void that voluntary act of his
own: and that such hindrance is INJUSTICE, and
INJURY, as being sine jure; the right being before
renounced or transferred. So that injury or
injustice, in the controversies of the world, is
somewhat like to that which in the disputations of
scholars is called absurdity. For as it is there
called an absurdity to contradict what one
maintained in the beginning; so in the world it is
called injustice, and injury voluntarily to undo that
which from the beginning he had voluntarily done.
The way by which a man either simply renounceth
or transferreth his right is a declaration, or
signification, by some voluntary and sufficient
sign, or signs, that he doth so reounce or transfer,
or hath so renounced or transferred the same, to
him that accepteth it. And these signs are either
words only, or actions only; or, as it happeneth
most often, both words and actions. And the same
are the BONDS, by which men are bound and
obliged: bonds that have their strength, not from
their own nature (for nothing is more easily
broken than a man’s word), but from fear of some
evil consequence upon the rupture.
Whensoever a man transferreth his right, or
renounceth it, it is either in consideration of some
right reciprocally transferred to himself, or for
some other good he hopeth for thereby. For it is a
voluntary act: and of voluntary acts of every man,
the object is some good to himself. And therefore
there be some rights which no man can be
understood by any words, or other signs, to have
abandoned or transferred. As first a man cannot
lay down the right of resisting them that assault
him by force to take away his life, because he
cannot be understood to aim thereby at any good
to himself. The same may be said of wounds, and
chains, and imprisonment, both because there is
no benefit consequent to such patience, as there is
to the patience of suffering another to be wounded
or imprisoned, as also because a man cannot tell
when he seeth men proceed against him by
violence whether they intend his death or not.
And lastly the motive and end for which this
renouncing and transferring of right is introduced
is nothing else but the security of a man’s person,
in his life, and in the means of so preserving life
as not to be weary of it. And therefore if a man by
words, or other signs, seem to despoil himself of
the end for which those signs were intended, he is
not to be understood as if he meant it, or that it
was his will, but that he was ignorant of how such
words and actions were to be interpreted.
The mutual transferring of right is that which
men call CONTRACT.
There is difference between transferring of
right to the thing, and transferring or tradition, that
is, delivery of the thing itself. For the thing may
be delivered together with the translation of the
right, as in buying and selling with ready money,
or exchange of goods or lands, and it may be
delivered some time after. Again, one of the
contractors may deliver the thing contracted for on
his part, and leave the other to perform his part at
some determinate time after, and in the meantime
be trusted; and then the contract on his part is
called PACT, or COVENANT: or both parts may
contract now to perform hereafter, in which case
he that is to perform in time to come, being
trusted, his performance is called keeping of
promise, or faith, and the failing of performance,
if it be voluntary, violation of faith.
When transferring of right is not mutual, but
one of the parties transferreth in hope to gain
thereby friendship or service from another, or
from his friends; or in hope to gain the reputation
of charity, or magnanimity; or to deliver his mind
from the pain of compassion; or in hope of reward
in heaven; this is not contract, but GIFT, FREE
GIFT, GRACE: which words signify one and the
same thing. . . .
If a covenant be made, wherein neither of the
parties perform presently, but trust one another; in
the condition of mere nature, which is a condition
of war of every man against every man, upon any
reasonable suspicion, it is void: but if there be a
common power set over them both, with right and
force sufficient to compel performance, it is not
void. For he that performeth first, has no
assurance the other will perform after; because the
bonds of words are too weak to bridle men’s
ambition, avarice, anger, and other passions,
without the fear of some coercive power; which in
the condition of mere nature, where all men are
equal, and judges of the justness of their own
fears, cannot possibly be supposed. And therefore
he which performeth first, does but betray himself
to his enemy; contrary to the right, he can never
abandon, of defending his life, and means of
living.
But in a civil estate, where there is a power
set up to constrain those that would otherwise
violate their faith, that fear is no more reasonable;
and for that cause, he which by the covenant is to
perform first, is obliged so to do. . . .
The force of words, being, as I have formerly
noted, too weak to hold men to the performance of
their covenants; there are in man’s nature, but two
imaginable helps to strengthen it. And those are
either a fear of the consequence of breaking their
word; or a glory, or pride in appearing not to need
to break it. This latter is a generosity too rarely
found to be presumed on, especially in the
pursuers of wealth, command, or sensual
pleasures, which are the greatest part of mankind.
The passion to be reckoned upon, is fear. . . .
14
Chapter XVII
Chapter XV
Of Other Laws of Nature
From that law of nature, by which we are obliged
to transfer to another, such rights, as being
retained, hinder the peace of mankind, there
followeth a third; which is this, that men perform
their covenants made: without which, covenants
are in vain, and but empty words; and the right of
all men to all things remaining, we are still in the
condition of war.
And in this law of nature, consisteth the
fountain and original of JUSTICE. For where no
covenant hath preceded, there hath no right been
transferred, and every man has right to every
thing; and consequently, no action can be unjust.
But when a covenant is made, then to break it is
unjust: and the definition of INJUSTICE, is no
other than the not performance of covenant. And
whosoever is not unjust, is just.
But because covenants of mutual trust, where
there is a fear of not performance on either part, as
hath been said in the former chapter, are invalid;
though the original of justice be the making of
covenants: yet injustice actually there can be none,
till the cause of such fear be taken away; which,
while men are in the natural condition of war,
cannot be done. Therefore before the names of
just, and unjust can have place, there must be
some coercive power, to compel men equally to
the performance of their covenants, by the terror
of some punishment, greater than the benefit they
expect by the breach of their covenant; and to
make good that propriety, which by mutual
contract men acquire, in recompense of the
universal right they abandon: and such power
there is none before the erection of a
commonwealth. And this is also to be gathered
out of the ordinary definition of justice in the
Schools: for they say, that justice is the constant
will of giving to every man his own. And
therefore where there is no own, that is no
propriety, all men having right to all things:
therefore where there is no commonwealth, there
nothing is unjust. So that the nature of justice,
consisteth in keeping of valid covenants: but the
validity of covenants begins not but with the
constitution of a civil power, sufficient to compel
men to keep them: and then it is also that propriety
begins. . .
15
Of the Causes, Generation,
And Definition of a Commonwealth
The final cause, end, or design of men, who
naturally love liberty, and dominion over others,
in the introduction of that restraint upon
themselves, in which we see them live in
commonwealths, is the foresight of their own
preservation, and of a more contented life thereby;
that is to say, of getting themselves out from that
miserable condition of war, which is necessarily
consequent, as hath been shown in Chapter XIII,
to the natural passions of men, when there is no
visible power to keep them in awe, and tie them
by fear of punishment to the performance of their
covenants, and observation of those laws of nature
set down in fourteenth and fifteenth chapters.
For the laws of nature, as justice, equity,
modesty, mercy, and, in sum, doing to others, as
we would be done to, of themselves, without the
terror of some power, to cause them to be
observed, are contrary to our natural passions, that
carry us to partiality, pride, revenge, and the like.
And covenants, without the sword, are but words,
and of no strength to secure a man at all.
Therefore notwithstanding the laws of nature,
which every one hath then kept, when he has the
will to keep them, when he can do it safely, if
there be no power erected, or not great enough for
our security; every man will, and may lawfully
rely on his own strength and art, for caution
against all other men. And in all places, where
men have lived by small families, to rob and spoil
one another, has been a trade, and so far from
being reputed against the law of nature, that the
greater spoils they gained, the greater was their
honour; and men observed no other laws therein,
but the laws of honour; that is, to abstain from
cruelty, leaving to men their lives, and instruments
of husbandry. And as small families did then; so
now do cities and kingdoms which are but greater
families, for their own security, enlarge their
dominions, upon all pretences of danger, and fear
of invasion, or assistance that may be given to
invaders, and endeavour as much as they can, to
subdue, or weaken their neighbours, by open
force, and secret arts, for want of other caution,
justly; and are remembered for it in after ages with
honour.
Nor is it the joining together of a small
number of men, that gives them this security;
because in small numbers, small actions on the
one side or the other, make the advantage of
strength so great, as is sufficient to carry the
victory; and therefore gives encouragement to an
invasion. The multitude sufficient to confide in
for our security, is not determined by any certain
number, but by comparison with the enemy we
fear; and is then sufficient, when the odds of the
enemy is not of so visible and conspicuous
moment, to determine the event of war, as to
move him to attempt.
And be there never so great a multitude; yet if
their actions be directed according to their
particular judgments, and particular appetites, they
can expect thereby no defence, nor protection,
neither against a common enemy, nor against the
injuries of one another. For being distracted in
opinions concerning the best use and application
of their strength, they do not help but hinder one
another; and reduce their strength by mutual
opposition to nothing: whereby they are easily, not
only subdued by a very few that agree together;
but also when there is no common enemy, they
make war upon each other, for their particular
interests. For if we could suppose a great
multitude of men to consent in the observation of
justice, and other laws of nature, without a
common power to keep them all in awe, we might
as well suppose all mankind to do the same; and
then there neither would be, nor need to be, any
civil government or Commonwealth at all,
because there would be peace without subjection.
Nor is it enough for the security, which men
desire should last all the time of their life, that
they be governed and directed by one judgement
for a limited time; as in one battle, or one war.
For though they obtain a victory by their
unanimous endeavour against a foreign enemy,
yet afterwards, when either they have no common
enemy, or he that by one part is held for an enemy
is by another part held for a friend, they must
needs by the difference of their interests dissolve,
and fall again into a war amongst themselves.
It is true that certain living creatures, as bees
and ants, live sociably one with another (which
are therefore by Aristotle numbered amongst
political creatures), and yet have no other
direction than their particular judgements and
appetites; nor speech, whereby one of them can
signify to another what he thinks expedient for the
common benefit: and therefore some man may
perhaps desire to know why mankind cannot do
the same. To which I answer,
First, that men are continually in competition
for honour and dignity, which these creatures are
not; and consequently amongst men there ariseth
on that ground, envy, and hatred, and finally war;
but amongst these not so.
Secondly, that amongst these creatures the
common good differeth not from the private; and
being by nature inclined to their private, they
procure thereby the common benefit. But man,
whose joy consisteth in comparing himself with
other men, can relish nothing but what is eminent.
Thirdly, that these creatures, having not, (as
man,) the use of reason, do not see, nor think they
see, any fault in the administration of their
common business: whereas amongst men there are
very many that think themselves wiser and abler
to govern the public better than the rest, and these
strive to reform and innovate, one this way,
another that way; and thereby bring it into
distraction and civil war.
Fourthly, that these creatures, though they
have some use of voice in making known to one
another their desires and other affections, yet they
want that art of words by which some men can
represent to others that which is good in the
likeness of evil; and evil, in the likeness of good;
and augment or diminish the apparent greatness of
good and evil, discontenting men and troubling
their peace at their pleasure.
Fifthly, irrational creatures cannot distinguish
between injury and damage; and therefore as long
as they be at ease, they are not offended with their
fellows: whereas man is then most troublesome
when he is most at ease; for then it is that he loves
to show his wisdom, and control the actions of
them that govern the Commonwealth.
Lastly, the agreement of these creatures is
natural; that of men is by covenant only, which is
artificial: and therefore it is no wonder if there be
somewhat else required, (besides covenant,) to
make their agreement constant and lasting; which
is a common power to keep them in awe and to
direct their actions to the common benefit.
The only way to erect such a common power,
as may be able to defend them from the invasion
of foreigners, and the injuries of one another, and
thereby to secure them in such sort as that by their
own industry and by the fruits of the earth they
may nourish themselves and live contentedly, is to
confer all their power and strength upon one man,
or upon one assembly of men, that may reduce all
their wills by plurality of voices, unto one will;
which is as much as to say, to appoint one man, or
assembly of men, to bear their person; and every
one to own and acknowledge himself to be author
of whatsoever he that so beareth their person shall
act, or cause to be acted, in those things which
concern the common peace and safety; and therein
to submit their wills, every one to his will, and
16
their judgements to his judgement. This is more
than consent, or concord; it is a real unity of them
all in one and the same person, made by covenant
of every man with every man, in such manner as if
every man should say to every man: I authorise
and give up my right of governing myself to this
man, or to this assembly of men, on this condition;
that thou give up, thy right to him, and authorise
all his actions in like man. This done, the
multitude so united in one person is called a
COMMONWEALTH; in Latin CIVITAS. This is
the generation of that great LEVIATHAN, or
rather, (to speak more reverently) of that mortal
god to which we owe, under the immortal God,
our peace and defence. For by this authority,
given him by every particular man in the
Commonwealth, he hath the use of so much power
and strength conferred on him that, by terror
thereof, he is enabled to form the wills of them all,
to peace at home, and mutual aid against their
enemies abroad. And in him consisteth the
essence of the Commonwealth; which, (to define
it,) is: one person, of whose acts a great multitude,
by mutual covenants one with another, have made
themselves every one the author, to the end he
may use the strength and means of them all as he
shall think expedient for their peace and common
defence.
And he that carryeth this person is called
SOVEREIGN, and said to have sovereign power;
and every one besides, his SUBJECT.
The attaining to this sovereign power is by
two ways. One, by natural force: as when a man
maketh his children to submit themselves, and
their children, to his government, as being able to
destroy them if they refuse; or by war subdueth
his enemies to his will, giving them their lives on
that condition. The other, is when men agree
amongst themselves to submit to some man, or
assembly of men, voluntarily, on confidence to be
protected by him against all others. This latter
may be called a political Commonwealth, or
Commonwealth by Institution; and the former, a
Commonwealth by Acquisition.
17
The Atlantic | September 2001 | Bystanders to Genocide | Power
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The Atlantic Monthly | September 2001
Bystanders to Genocide
WHY THE UNITED STATES LET THE RWANDAN TRAGEDY HAPPEN
The author's exclusive interviews with scores of the participants in the decision-making, together with her
analysis of newly declassified documents, yield a chilling narrative of self-serving caution and flaccid will—and
countless missed opportunities to mitigate a colossal crime
BY S AM AN TH A P OW ER
.....
I. PEOPLE SITTING IN OFFICES
n the course of a hundred days in 1994 the Hutu government of Rwanda and its extremist
allies very nearly succeeded in exterminating the country's Tutsi minority. Using firearms,
machetes, and a variety of garden implements, Hutu militiamen, soldiers, and ordinary
citizens murdered some 800,000 Tutsi and politically moderate Hutu. It was the fastest,
most efficient killing spree of the twentieth century.
A few years later, in a series in The New Yorker, Philip Gourevitch recounted in horrific detail
the story of the genocide and the world's failure to stop it. President Bill Clinton, a famously
avid reader, expressed shock. He sent copies of Gourevitch's articles to his second-term
national-security adviser, Sandy Berger. The articles bore confused, angry, searching queries
in the margins. "Is what he's saying true?" Clinton wrote with a thick black felt-tip pen beside
heavily underlined paragraphs. "How did this happen?" he asked, adding, "I want to get to the
bottom of this." The President's urgency and outrage were oddly timed. As the terror in
Rwanda had unfolded, Clinton had shown virtually no interest in stopping the genocide, and
his Administration had stood by as the death toll rose into the hundreds of thousands.
Why did the United States not do more for the Rwandans at the time of the killings? Did the
President really not know about the genocide, as his marginalia suggested? Who were the
people in his Administration who made the life-and-death decisions that dictated U.S. policy?
Why did they decide (or decide not to decide) as they did? Were any voices inside or outside
the U.S. government demanding that the United States do more? If so, why weren't they
heeded? And most crucial, what could the United States have done to save lives?
So far people have explained the U.S. failure to respond to
the Rwandan genocide by claiming that the United States
didn't know what was happening, that it knew but didn't care,
or that regardless of what it knew there was nothing useful to
be done. The account that follows is based on a three-year
investigation involving sixty interviews with senior, mid-level,
From Atlantic Unbound:
Interviews: "Never Again
Again" (March 14, 2002)
Samantha Power, the author of "A
Problem From Hell," explores why
America—the home of Holocaust
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and junior State Department, Defense Department, and
awareness—did all but nothing to
stop the genocides of the twentieth
National Security Council officials who helped to shape or
century
inform U.S. policy. It also reflects dozens of interviews with
Rwandan, European, and United Nations officials and with
peacekeepers, journalists, and nongovernmental workers in Rwanda. Thanks to the National
Security Archive (www.nsarchive.org), a nonprofit organization that uses the Freedom of
Information Act to secure the release of classified U.S. documents, this account also draws on
hundreds of pages of newly available government records. This material provides a clearer
picture than was previously possible of the interplay among people, motives, and events. It
reveals that the U.S. government knew enough about the genocide early on to save lives, but
passed up countless opportunities to intervene.
In March of 1998, on a visit to Rwanda, President Clinton issued what would later be known
as the "Clinton apology," which was actually a carefully hedged acknowledgment. He spoke
to the crowd assembled on the tarmac at Kigali Airport: "We come here today partly in
recognition of the fact that we in the United States and the world community did not do as
much as we could have and should have done to try to limit what occurred" in Rwanda.
This implied that the United States had done a good deal but not quite enough. In reality the
United States did much more than fail to send troops. It led a successful effort to remove most
of the UN peacekeepers who were already in Rwanda. It aggressively worked to block the
subsequent authorization of UN reinforcements. It refused to use its technology to jam radio
broadcasts that were a crucial instrument in the coordination and perpetuation of the
genocide. And even as, on average, 8,000 Rwandans were being butchered each day, U.S.
officials shunned the term "genocide," for fear of being obliged to act. The United States in
fact did virtually nothing "to try to limit what occurred." Indeed, staying out of Rwanda was
an explicit U.S. policy objective.
With the grace of one grown practiced at public remorse, the President gripped the lectern
with both hands and looked across the dais at the Rwandan officials and survivors who
surrounded him. Making eye contact and shaking his head, he explained, "It may seem
strange to you here, especially the many of you who lost members of your family, but all over
the world there were people like me sitting in offices, day after day after day, who did not
fully appreciate [pause] the depth [pause] and the speed [pause] with which you were being
engulfed by this unimaginable terror."
Clinton chose his words with characteristic care. It was true that although top U.S. officials
could not help knowing the basic facts—thousands of Rwandans were dying every day—that
were being reported in the morning papers, many did not "fully appreciate" the meaning. In
the first three weeks of the genocide the most influential American policymakers portrayed
(and, they insist, perceived) the deaths not as atrocities or the components and symptoms of
genocide but as wartime "casualties"—the deaths of combatants or those caught between
them in a civil war.
Yet this formulation avoids the critical issue of whether Clinton and his close advisers might
reasonably have been expected to "fully appreciate" the true dimensions and nature of the
massacres. During the first three days of the killings U.S. diplomats in Rwanda reported back
to Washington that well-armed extremists were intent on eliminating the Tutsi. And the
American press spoke of the door-to-door hunting of unarmed civilians. By the end of the
second week informed nongovernmental groups had already begun to call on the
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Administration to use the term "genocide," causing diplomats and lawyers at the State
Department to begin debating the word's applicability soon thereafter. In order not to
appreciate that genocide or something close to it was under way, U.S. officials had to ignore
public reports and internal intelligence and debate.
The story of U.S. policy during the genocide in Rwanda is not a story of willful complicity
with evil. U.S. officials did not sit around and conspire to allow genocide to happen. But
whatever their convictions about "never again," many of them did sit around, and they most
certainly did allow genocide to happen. In examining how and why the United States failed
Rwanda, we see that without strong leadership the system will incline toward risk-averse
policy choices. We also see that with the possibility of deploying U.S. troops to Rwanda
taken off the table early on—and with crises elsewhere in the world unfolding—the slaughter
never received the top-level attention it deserved. Domestic political forces that might have
pressed for action were absent. And most U.S. officials opposed to American involvement in
Rwanda were firmly convinced that they were doing all they could—and, most important, all
they should—in light of competing American interests and a highly circumscribed
understanding of what was "possible" for the United States to do.
One of the most thoughtful analyses of how the American system can remain predicated on
the noblest of values while allowing the vilest of crimes was offered in 1971 by a brilliant and
earnest young foreign-service officer who had just resigned from the National Security
Council to protest the 1970 U.S. invasion of Cambodia. In an article in Foreign Policy, "The
Human Reality of Realpolitik," he and a colleague analyzed the process whereby American
policymakers with moral sensibilities could have waged a war of such immoral consequence
as the one in Vietnam. They wrote,
The answer to that question begins with a basic intellectual approach which
views foreign policy as a lifeless, bloodless set of abstractions. "Nations,"
"interests," "influence," "prestige"—all are disembodied and dehumanized terms
which encourage easy inattention to the real people whose lives our decisions
affect or even end.
Policy analysis excluded discussion of human consequences. "It simply is not done," the
authors wrote. "Policy—good, steady policy—is made by the 'tough-minded.' To talk of
suffering is to lose 'effectiveness,' almost to lose one's grip. It is seen as a sign that one's
'rational' arguments are weak."
In 1994, fifty years after the Holocaust and twenty years after America's retreat from
Vietnam, it was possible to believe that the system had changed and that talk of human
consequences had become admissible. Indeed, when the machetes were raised in Central
Africa, the White House official primarily responsible for the shaping of U.S. foreign policy
was one of the authors of that 1971 critique: Anthony Lake, President Clinton's first-term
national-security adviser. The genocide in Rwanda presented Lake and the rest of the Clinton
team with an opportunity to prove that "good, steady policy" could be made in the interest of
saving lives.
II. THE PEACEKEEPERS
wanda was a test for another man as well: Romeo Dallaire, then a major general in the
Canadian army who at the time of the genocide was the commander of the UN
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Assistance Mission in Rwanda. If ever there was a peacekeeper who believed wholeheartedly
in the promise of humanitarian action, it was Dallaire. A broad-shouldered French-Canadian
with deep-set sky-blue eyes, Dallaire has the thick, calloused hands of one brought up in a
culture that prizes soldiering, service, and sacrifice. He saw the United Nations as the
embodiment of all three.
Before his posting to Rwanda Dallaire had served as the commandant of an army brigade that
sent peacekeeping battalions to Cambodia and Bosnia, but he had never seen actual combat
himself. "I was like a fireman who has never been to a fire, but has dreamed for years about
how he would fare when the fire came," the fifty-five-year-old Dallaire recalls. When, in the
summer of 1993, he received the phone call from UN headquarters offering him the Rwanda
posting, he was ecstatic. "It was answering the aim of my life," he says. "It's all you've been
waiting for."
Dallaire was sent to command a UN force that would help to keep the peace in Rwanda, a
nation the size of Vermont, which was known as "the land of a thousand hills" for its rolling
terrain. Before Rwanda achieved independence from Belgium, in 1962, the Tutsi, who made
up 15 percent of the populace, had enjoyed a privileged status. But independence ushered in
three decades of Hutu rule, under which Tutsi were systematically discriminated against and
periodically subjected to waves of killing and ethnic cleansing. In 1990 a group of armed
exiles, mainly Tutsi, who had been clustered on the Ugandan border, invaded Rwanda. Over
the next several years the rebels, known as the Rwandan Patriotic Front, gained ground
against Hutu government forces. In 1993 Tanzania brokered peace talks, which resulted in a
power-sharing agreement known as the Arusha Accords. Under its terms the Rwandan
government agreed to share power with Hutu opposition parties and the Tutsi minority. UN
peacekeepers would be deployed to patrol a cease-fire and assist in demilitarization and
demobilization as well as to help provide a secure environment, so that exiled Tutsi could
return. The hope among moderate Rwandans and Western observers was that Hutu and Tutsi
would at last be able to coexist in harmony.
Hutu extremists rejected these terms and set out to terrorize Tutsi and also those Hutu
politicians supportive of the peace process. In 1993 several thousand Rwandans were killed,
and some 9,000 were detained. Guns, grenades, and machetes began arriving by the
planeload. A pair of international commissions—one sent by the United Nations, the other by
an independent collection of human-rights organizations—warned explicitly of a possible
genocide.
But Dallaire knew nothing of the precariousness of the Arusha Accords. When he made a
preliminary reconnaissance trip to Rwanda, in August of 1993, he was told that the country
was committed to peace and that a UN presence was essential. A visit with extremists, who
preferred to eradicate Tutsi rather than cede power, was not on Dallaire's itinerary.
Remarkably, no UN officials in New York thought to give Dallaire copies of the alarming
reports from the international investigators.
The sum total of Dallaire's intelligence data before that first trip to Rwanda consisted of one
encyclopedia's summary of Rwandan history, which Major Brent Beardsley, Dallaire's
executive assistant, had snatched at the last minute from his local public library. Beardsley
says, "We flew to Rwanda with a Michelin road map, a copy of the Arusha agreement, and
that was it. We were under the impression that the situation was quite straightforward: there
was one cohesive government side and one cohesive rebel side, and they had come together to
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sign the peace agreement and had then requested that we come in to help them implement it."
Though Dallaire gravely underestimated the tensions brewing in Rwanda, he still felt that he
would need a force of 5,000 to help the parties implement the terms of the Arusha Accords.
But when his superiors warned him that the United States would never agree to pay for such a
large deployment, Dallaire reluctantly trimmed his written request to 2,500. He remembers, "I
was told, 'Don't ask for a brigade, because it ain't there.'"
Once he was actually posted to Rwanda, in October of 1993, Dallaire lacked not merely
intelligence data and manpower but also institutional support. The small Department of
Peacekeeping Operations in New York, run by the Ghanaian diplomat Kofi Annan, now the
UN secretary general, was overwhelmed. Madeleine Albright, then the U.S. ambassador to
the UN, recalls, "The global nine-one-one was always either busy or nobody was there." At
the time of the Rwanda deployment, with a staff of a few hundred, the UN was posting
70,000 peacekeepers on seventeen missions around the world. Amid these widespread crises
and logistical headaches the Rwanda mission had a very low status.
Life was not made easier for Dallaire or the UN peacekeeping office by the fact that
American patience for peacekeeping was thinning. Congress owed half a billion dollars in UN
dues and peacekeeping costs. It had tired of its obligation to foot a third of the bill for what
had come to feel like an insatiable global appetite for mischief and an equally insatiable UN
appetite for missions. The Clinton Administration had taken office better disposed toward
peacekeeping than any other Administration in U.S. history. But it felt that the Department of
Peacekeeping Operations needed fixing and demanded that the UN "learn to say no" to
chancy or costly missions.
Every aspect of the UN Assistance Mission in Rwanda was run on a shoestring. UNAMIR
(the acronym by which it was known) was equipped with hand-me-down vehicles from the
UN's Cambodia mission, and only eighty of the 300 that turned up were usable. When the
medical supplies ran out, in March of 1994, New York said there was no cash for resupply.
Very little could be procured locally, given that Rwanda was one of Africa's poorest nations.
Replacement spare parts, batteries, and even ammunition could rarely be found. Dallaire spent
some 70 percent of his time battling UN logistics.
Dallaire had major problems with his personnel, as well. He commanded troops, military
observers, and civilian personnel from twenty-six countries. Though multinationality is meant
to be a virtue of UN missions, the diversity yielded grave discrepancies in resources. Whereas
Belgian troops turned up well armed and ready to perform the tasks assigned to them, the
poorer contingents showed up "bare-assed," in Dallaire's words, and demanded that the
United Nations suit them up. "Since nobody else was offering to send troops, we had to take
what we could get," he says. When Dallaire expressed concern, he was instructed by a senior
UN official to lower his expectations. He recalls, "I was told, 'Listen, General, you are
NATO-trained. This is not NATO.'" Although some 2,500 UNAMIR personnel had arrived
by early April of 1994, few of the soldiers had the kit they needed to perform even basic
tasks.
The signs of militarization in Rwanda were so widespread that even without much of an
intelligence-gathering capacity, Dallaire was able to learn of the extremists' sinister
intentions. In January of 1994 an anonymous Hutu informant, said to be high up in the inner
circles of the Rwandan government, had come forward to describe the rapid arming and
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training of local militias. In what is now referred to as the "Dallaire fax," Dallaire relayed to
New York the informant's claim that Hutu extremists "had been ordered to register all the
Tutsi in Kigali." "He suspects it is for their extermination," Dallaire wrote. "Example he gave
was that in 20 minutes his personnel could kill up to 1000 Tutsis." "Jean-Pierre," as the
informant became known, had said that the militia planned first to provoke and murder a
number of Belgian peacekeepers, to "thus guarantee Belgian withdrawal from Rwanda."
When Dallaire notified Kofi Annan's office that UNAMIR was poised to raid Hutu arms
caches, Annan's deputy forbade him to do so. Instead Dallaire was instructed to notify the
Rwandan President, Juvénal Habyarimana, and the Western ambassadors of the informant's
claims. Though Dallaire battled by phone with New York, and confirmed the reliability of the
informant, his political masters told him plainly and consistently that the United States in
particular would not support aggressive peacekeeping. (A request by the Belgians for
reinforcements was also turned down.) In Washington, Dallaire's alarm was discounted.
Lieutenant Colonel Tony Marley, the U.S. military liaison to the Arusha process, respected
Dallaire but knew he was operating in Africa for the first time. "I thought that the neophyte
meant well, but I questioned whether he knew what he was talking about," Marley recalls.
III. THE EARLY KILLINGS
n the evening of April 6, 1994, Romeo Dallaire was sitting on the couch in his
bungalow residence in Kigali, watching CNN with Brent Beardsley. Beardsley was
preparing plans for a national Sports Day that would match Tutsi rebel soldiers against
Hutu government soldiers in a soccer game. Dallaire said, "You know, Brent, if the shit
ever hit the fan here, none of this stuff would really matter, would it?" The next instant the
phone rang. Rwandan President Habyarimana's Mystère Falcon jet, a gift from French
President François Mitterrand, had just been shot down, with Habyarimana and Burundian
President Cyprien Ntaryamira aboard. Dallaire and Beardsley raced in their UN jeep to
Rwandan army headquarters, where a crisis meeting was under way.
Back in Washington, Kevin Aiston, the Rwanda desk officer, knocked on the door of Deputy
Assistant Secretary of State Prudence Bushnell and told her that the Presidents of Rwanda and
Burundi had gone down in a plane crash. "Oh, shit," she said. "Are you sure?" In fact nobody
was sure at first, but Dallaire's forces supplied confirmation within the hour. The Rwandan
authorities quickly announced a curfew, and Hutu militias and government soldiers erected
roadblocks around the capital.
Bushnell drafted an urgent memo to Secretary of State Warren Christopher. She was
concerned about a probable outbreak of killing in both Rwanda and its neighbor Burundi. The
memo read,
If, as it appears, both Presidents have been killed, there is a strong likelihood that
widespread violence could break out in either or both countries, particularly if it
is confirmed that the plane was shot down. Our strategy is to appeal for calm in
both countries, both through public statements and in other ways.
A few public statements proved to be virtually the only strategy that Washington would
muster in the weeks ahead.
Lieutenant General Wesley Clark, who later commanded the NATO air war in Kosovo, was
the director of strategic plans and policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon. On
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learning of the crash, Clark remembers, staff officers asked, "Is it Hutu and Tutsi or Tutu and
Hutsi?" He frantically called for insight into the ethnic dimension of events in Rwanda.
Unfortunately, Rwanda had never been of more than marginal concern to Washington's most
influential planners.
America's best-informed Rwanda observer was not a government official but a private citizen,
Alison Des Forges, a historian and a board member of Human Rights Watch, who lived in
Buffalo, New York. Des Forges had been visiting Rwanda since 1963. She had received a
Ph.D. from Yale in African history, specializing in Rwanda, and she could speak the
Rwandan language, Kinyarwanda. Half an hour after the plane crash Des Forges got a phone
call from a close friend in Kigali, the human-rights activist Monique Mujawamariya. Des
Forges had been worried about Mujawamariya for weeks, because the Hutu extremist radio
station, Radio Mille Collines, had branded her "a bad patriot who deserves to die."
Mujawamariya had sent Human Rights Watch a chilling warning a week earlier: "For the last
two weeks, all of Kigali has lived under the threat of an instantaneous, carefully prepared
operation to eliminate all those who give trouble to President Habyarimana."
Now Habyarimana was dead, and Mujawamariya knew instantly that the hard-line Hutu
would use the crash as a pretext to begin mass killing. "This is it," she told Des Forges on the
phone. For the next twenty-four hours Des Forges called her friend's home every half hour.
With each conversation Des Forges could hear the gunfire grow louder as the militia drew
closer. Finally the gunmen entered Mujawamariya's home. "I don't want you to hear this,"
Mujawamariya said softly. "Take care of my children." She hung up the phone.
Mujawamariya's instincts were correct. Within hours of the plane crash Hutu militiamen took
command of the streets of Kigali. Dallaire quickly grasped that supporters of the Arusha
peace process were being targeted. His phone at UNAMIR headquarters rang constantly as
Rwandans around the capital pleaded for help. Dallaire was especially concerned about Prime
Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, a reformer who with the President's death had become the
titular head of state. Just after dawn on April 7 five Ghanaian and ten Belgian peacekeepers
arrived at the Prime Minister's home in order to deliver her to Radio Rwanda, so that she
could broadcast an emergency appeal for calm.
Joyce Leader, the second-in-command at the U.S. embassy, lived next door to
Uwilingiyimana. She spent the early hours of the morning behind the steel-barred gates of her
embassy-owned house as Hutu killers hunted and dispatched their first victims. Leader's
phone rang. Uwilingiyimana was on the other end. "Please hide me," she begged.
Minutes after the phone call a UN peacekeeper attempted to hike the Prime Minister over the
wall separating their compounds. When Leader heard shots fired, she urged the peacekeeper
to abandon the effort. "They can see you!" she shouted. Uwilingiyimana managed to slip with
her husband and children into another compound, which was occupied by the UN
Development Program. But the militiamen hunted them down in the yard, where the couple
surrendered. There were more shots. Leader recalls, "We heard her screaming and then,
suddenly, after the gunfire the screaming stopped, and we heard people cheering." Hutu
gunmen in the Presidential Guard that day systematically tracked down and eliminated
Rwanda's moderate leadership.
The raid on Uwilingiyimana's compound not only cost Rwanda a prominent supporter of the
Arusha Accords; it also triggered the collapse of Dallaire's mission. In keeping with the plan
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to target the Belgians which the informant Jean-Pierre had relayed to UNAMIR in January,
Hutu soldiers rounded up the peacekeepers at Uwilingiyimana's home, took them to a military
camp, led the Ghanaians to safety, and then killed and savagely mutilated the ten Belgians. In
Belgium the cry for either expanding UNAMIR's mandate or immediately withdrawing was
prompt and loud.
In response to the initial killings by the Hutu government, Tutsi rebels of the Rwandan
Patriotic Front—stationed in Kigali under the terms of the Arusha Accords—surged out of
their barracks and resumed their civil war against the Hutu regime. But under the cover of that
war were early and strong indications that systematic genocide was taking place. From April
7 onward the Hutu-controlled army, the gendarmerie, and the militias worked together to
wipe out Rwanda's Tutsi. Many of the early Tutsi victims found themselves specifically, not
spontaneously, pursued: lists of targets had been prepared in advance, and Radio Mille
Collines broadcast names, addresses, and even license-plate numbers. Killers often carried a
machete in one hand and a transistor radio in the other. Tens of thousands of Tutsi fled their
homes in panic and were snared and butchered at checkpoints. Little care was given to their
disposal. Some were shoveled into landfills. Human flesh rotted in the sunshine. In churches
bodies mingled with scattered hosts. If the killers had taken the time to tend to sanitation, it
would have slowed their "sanitization" campaign.
IV. THE "LAST WAR"
he two tracks of events in Rwanda—simultaneous war and genocide—confused
policymakers who had scant prior understanding of the country. Atrocities are often
carried out in places that are not commonly visited, where outside expertise is limited.
When country-specific knowledge is lacking, foreign governments become all the more
likely to employ faulty analogies and to "fight the last war." The analogy employed by many
of those who confronted the outbreak of killing in Rwanda was a peacekeeping intervention
that had gone horribly wrong in Somalia.
On October 3, 1993, ten months after President Bush had sent U.S. troops to Somalia as part
of what had seemed a low-risk humanitarian mission, U.S. Army Rangers and Delta special
forces in Somalia attempted to seize several top advisers to the warlord Mohammed Farah
Aideed. Aideed's faction had ambushed and killed two dozen Pakistani peacekeepers, and the
United States was striking back. But in the firefight that ensued the Somali militia killed
eighteen Americans, wounded seventy-three, and captured one Black Hawk helicopter pilot.
Somali television broadcast both a video interview with the trembling, disoriented pilot and a
gory procession in which the corpse of a U.S. Ranger was dragged through a Mogadishu
street.
On receiving word of these events, President Clinton cut short a trip to California and
convened an urgent crisis-management meeting at the White House. When an aide began
recapping the situation, an angry President interrupted him. "Cut the bullshit," Clinton
snapped. "Let's work this out." "Work it out" meant walk out. Republican Congressional
pressure was intense. Clinton appeared on American television the next day, called off the
manhunt for Aideed, temporarily reinforced the troop presence, and announced that all U.S.
forces would be home within six months. The Pentagon leadership concluded that
peacekeeping in Africa meant trouble and that neither the White House nor Congress would
stand by it when the chips were down.
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Even before the deadly blowup in Somalia the United States had resisted deploying a UN
mission to Rwanda. "Anytime you mentioned peacekeeping in Africa," one U.S. official
remembers, "the crucifixes and garlic would come up on every door." Having lost much of its
early enthusiasm for peacekeeping and for the United Nations itself, Washington was nervous
that the Rwanda mission would sour like so many others. But President Habyarimana had
traveled to Washington in 1993 to offer assurances that his government was committed to
carrying out the terms of the Arusha Accords. In the end, after strenuous lobbying by France
(Rwanda's chief diplomatic and military patron), U.S. officials accepted the proposition that
UNAMIR could be the rare "UN winner." On October 5, 1993, two days after the Somalia
firefight, the United States reluctantly voted in the Security Council to authorize Dallaire's
mission. Even so, U.S. officials made it clear that Washington would give no consideration to
sending U.S. troops to Rwanda. Somalia and another recent embarrassment in Haiti indicated
that multilateral initiatives for humanitarian purposes would likely bring the United States all
loss and no gain.
Against this backdrop, and under the leadership of Anthony Lake, the national-security
adviser, the Clinton Administration accelerated the development of a formal U.S.
peacekeeping doctrine. The job was given to Richard Clarke, of the National Security
Council, a special assistant to the President who was known as one of the most effective
bureaucrats in Washington. In an interagency process that lasted more than a year, Clarke
managed the production of a presidential decision directive, PDD-25, which listed sixteen
factors that policymakers needed to consider when deciding whether to support peacekeeping
activities: seven factors if the United States was to vote in the UN Security Council on peace
operations carried out by non-American soldiers, six additional and more stringent factors if
U.S. forces were to participate in UN peacekeeping missions, and three final factors if U.S.
troops were likely to engage in actual combat. In the words of Representative David Obey, of
Wisconsin, the restrictive checklist tried to satisfy the American desire for "zero degree of
involvement, and zero degree of risk, and zero degree of pain and confusion." The architects
of the doctrine remain its strongest defenders. "Many say PDD-25 was some evil thing
designed to kill peacekeeping, when in fact it was there to save peacekeeping," Clarke says.
"Peacekeeping was almost dead. There was no support for it in the U.S. government, and the
peacekeepers were not effective in the field." Although the directive was not publicly released
until May 3, 1994, a month into the genocide, the considerations encapsulated in the doctrine
and the Administration's frustration with peacekeeping greatly influenced the thinking of U.S.
officials involved in shaping Rwanda policy.
V. THE PEACE PROCESSORS
ach of the American actors dealing with Rwanda brought particular institutional
interests and biases to his or her handling of the crisis. Secretary of State Warren
Christopher knew little about Africa. At one meeting with his top advisers, several
weeks after the plane crash, he pulled an atlas off his shelf to help him locate the
country. Belgian Foreign Minister Willie Claes recalls trying to discuss Rwanda with his
American counterpart and being told, "I have other responsibilities." Officials in the State
Department's Africa Bureau were, of course, better informed. Prudence Bushnell, the deputy
assistant secretary, was one of them. The daughter of a diplomat, Bushnell had joined the
foreign service in 1981, at the age of thirty-five. With her agile mind and sharp tongue, she
had earned the attention of George Moose when she served under him at the U.S. embassy in
Senegal. When Moose was named the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, in 1993,
he made Bushnell his deputy. Just two weeks before the plane crash the State Department had
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dispatched Bushnell and a colleague to Rwanda in an effort to contain the escalating violence
and to spur the stalled peace process.
Unfortunately, for all the concern of the Americans familiar with Rwanda, their diplomacy
suffered from three weaknesses. First, ahead of the plane crash diplomats had repeatedly
threatened to pull out UN peacekeepers in retaliation for the parties' failure to implement
Arusha. These threats were of course counterproductive, because the very Hutu who opposed
power-sharing wanted nothing more than a UN withdrawal. One senior U.S. official
remembers, "The first response to trouble is 'Let's yank the peacekeepers.' But that is like
believing that when children are misbehaving, the proper response is 'Let's send the babysitter home.'"
Second, before and during the massacres U.S. diplomacy revealed its natural bias toward
states and toward negotiations. Because most official contact occurs between representatives
of states, U.S. officials were predisposed to trust the assurances of Rwandan officials, several
of whom were plotting genocide behind the scenes. Those in the U.S. government who knew
Rwanda best viewed the escalating violence with a diplomatic prejudice that left them both
institutionally oriented toward the Rwandan government and reluctant to do anything to
disrupt the peace process. An examination of the cable traffic from the U.S. embassy in Kigali
to Washington between the signing of the Arusha agreement and the downing of the
presidential plane reveals that setbacks were perceived as "dangers to the peace process" more
than as "dangers to Rwandans." American criticisms were deliberately and steadfastly leveled
at "both sides," though Hutu government and militia forces were usually responsible.
The U.S. ambassador in Kigali, David Rawson, proved especially vulnerable to such bias.
Rawson had grown up in Burundi, where his father, an American missionary, had set up a
Quaker hospital. He entered the foreign service in 1971. When, in 1993, at age fifty-two, he
was given the embassy in Rwanda, his first, he could not have been more intimate with the
region, the culture, or the peril. He spoke the local language—almost unprecedented for an
ambassador in Central Africa. But Rawson found it difficult to imagine the Rwandans who
surrounded the President as conspirators in genocide. He issued pro forma demarches over
Habyarimana's obstruction of power-sharing, but the cable traffic shows that he accepted the
President's assurances that he was doing all he could. The U.S. investment in the peace
process gave rise to a wishful tendency to see peace "around the corner." Rawson remembers,
"We were naive policy optimists, I suppose. The fact that negotiations can't work is almost
not one of the options open to people who care about peace. We were looking for the hopeful
signs, not the dark signs. In fact, we were looking away from the dark signs ... One of the
things I learned and should have already known is that once you launch a process, it takes on
its own momentum. I had said, 'Let's try this, and then if it doesn't work, we can back away.'
But bureaucracies don't allow that. Once the Washington side buys into a process, it gets
pursued, almost blindly." Even after the Hutu government began exterminating Tutsi, U.S.
diplomats focused most of their efforts on "re-establishing a cease-fire" and "getting Arusha
back on track."
The third problematic feature of U.S. diplomacy before and during the genocide was a
tendency toward blindness bred by familiarity: the few people in Washington who were
paying attention to Rwanda before Habyarimana's plane was shot down were those who had
been tracking Rwanda for some time and had thus come to expect a certain level of ethnic
violence from the region. And because the U.S. government had done little when some
40,000 people had been killed in Hutu-Tutsi violence in Burundi in October of 1993, these
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officials also knew that Washington was prepared to tolerate substantial bloodshed. When the
massacres began in April, some U.S. regional specialists initially suspected that Rwanda was
undergoing "another flare-up" that would involve another "acceptable" (if tragic) round of
ethnic murder.
Rawson had read up on genocide before his posting to Rwanda, surveying what had become a
relatively extensive scholarly literature on its causes. But although he expected internecine
killing, he did not anticipate the scale at which it occurred. "Nothing in Rwandan culture or
history could have led a person to that forecast," he says. "Most of us thought that if a war
broke out, it would be quick, that these poor people didn't have the resources, the means, to
fight a sophisticated war. I couldn't have known that they would do each other in with the
most economic means." George Moose agrees: "We were psychologically and imaginatively
too limited."
VI. FOREIGNERS FIRST
avid Rawson was sitting with his wife in their residence watching a taped broadcast of
The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour when he heard the back-to-back explosions that
signaled the destruction of President Habyarimana's plane. As the American
ambassador, he was concerned primarily for American citizens, who, he feared, could
be killed or injured in any outbreak of fighting. The United States made the decision to
withdraw its personnel and nationals on April 7. Penned into his house, Rawson did not feel
that his presence was of any use. Looking back, he says, "Did we have a moral responsibility
to stay there? Would it have made a difference? I don't know, but the killings were taking
place in broad daylight while we were there. I didn't feel that we were achieving much."
Still, about 300 Rwandans from the neighborhood had gathered at Rawson's residence
seeking refuge, and when the Americans cleared out, the local people were left to their fates.
Rawson recalls, "I told the people who were there that we were leaving and the flag was
coming down, and they would have to make their own choice about what to do ... Nobody
really asked us to take them with us." Rawson says he could not help even those who worked
closest to him. His chief steward, who served dinner and washed dishes at the house, called
the ambassador from his home and pleaded, "We're in terrible danger. Please come and get
us." Rawson says, "I had to tell him, 'We can't move. We can't come.'" The steward and his
wife were killed.
Assistant Secretary Moose was away from Washington, so Prudence Bushnell, the acting
assistant secretary, was made the director of the task force that managed the Rwanda
evacuation. Her focus, like Rawson's, was on the fate of U.S. citizens. "I felt very strongly
that my first obligation was to the Americans," she recalls. "I was sorry about the Rwandans,
of course, but my job was to get our folks out ... Then again, people didn't know that it was a
genocide. What I was told was 'Look, Pru, these people do this from time to time.' We
thought we'd be right back."
At a State Department press conference on April 8 Bushnell made an appearance and spoke
gravely about the mounting violence in Rwanda and the status of Americans there. After she
left the podium, Michael McCurry, the department spokesman, took her place and criticized
foreign governments for preventing the screening of the Steven Spielberg film Schindler's
List. "This film movingly portrays ... the twentieth century's most horrible catastrophe," he
said. "And it shows that even in the midst of genocide, one individual can make a difference."
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No one made any connection between Bushnell's remarks and McCurry's. Neither journalists
nor officials in the United States were focused on the Tutsi.
On April 9 and 10, in five different convoys, Ambassador Rawson and 250 Americans were
evacuated from Kigali and other points. "When we left, the cars were stopped and searched,"
Rawson says. "It would have been impossible to get Tutsi through." All told, thirty-five local
employees of the embassy were killed in the genocide.
Warren Christopher appeared on the NBC news program Meet the Press the morning the
evacuation was completed. "In the great tradition, the ambassador was in the last car,"
Christopher said proudly. "So that evacuation has gone very well." Christopher stressed that
although U.S. Marines had been dispatched to Burundi, there were no plans to send them into
Rwanda to restore order: they were in the region as a safety net, in case they were needed to
assist in the evacuation. "It's always a sad moment when the Americans have to leave," he
said, "but it was the prudent thing to do." The Republican Senate minority leader, Bob Dole, a
spirited defender of Bosnia's besieged Muslims at the time, agreed. "I don't think we have any
national interest there," Dole said on April 10. "The Americans are out, and as far as I'm
concerned, in Rwanda, that ought to be the end of it."
Dallaire, too, had been ordered to make the evacuation of foreigners his priority. The UN
Department of Peacekeeping Operations, which had rejected the field commander's proposed
raid on arms caches in January, sent an explicit cable: "You should make every effort not to
compromise your impartiality or to act beyond your mandate, but [you] may exercise your
discretion to do [so] should this be essential for the evacuation of foreign nationals. This
should not, repeat not, extend to participating in possible combat except in self-defense."
Neutrality was essential. Avoiding combat was paramount, but Dallaire could make an
exception for non-Rwandans.
While the United States evacuated overland without an American military escort, the
Europeans sent troops to Rwanda so that their personnel could exit by air. On April 9 Dallaire
watched covetously as just over a thousand French, Belgian, and Italian soldiers descended on
Kigali Airport to begin evacuating their expatriates. These commandos were clean-shaven,
well fed, and heavily armed, in marked contrast to Dallaire's exhausted, hungry, ragtag
peacekeeping force. Within three days of the plane crash estimates of the number of dead in
the capital already exceeded 10,000.
If the soldiers ferried in for the evacuation had teamed up with UNAMIR, Dallaire would
have had a sizable deterrent force. At that point he commanded 440 Belgians, 942
Bangladeshis, 843 Ghanaians, 60 Tunisians, and 255 others from twenty countries. He could
also call on a reserve of 800 Belgians in Nairobi. If the major powers had reconfigured the
thousand-man European evacuation force and the U.S. Marines on standby in Burundi—who
numbered 300—and contributed them to his mission, he would finally have had the numbers
on his side. "Mass slaughter was happening, and suddenly there in Kigali we had the forces
we needed to contain it, and maybe even to stop it," he recalls. "Yet they picked up their
people and turned and walked away."
The consequences of the exclusive attention to foreigners were felt immediately. In the days
after the plane crash some 2,000 Rwandans, including 400 children, had grouped at the Ecole
Technique Officielle, under the protection of about ninety Belgian soldiers. Many of them
were already suffering from machete wounds. They gathered in the classrooms and on the
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playing field outside the school. Rwandan government and militia forces lay in wait nearby,
drinking beer and chanting, "Pawa, pawa," for "Hutu power." On April 11 the Belgians were
ordered to regroup at the airport to aid the evacuation of European civilians. Knowing they
were trapped, several Rwandans pursued the jeeps, shouting, "Do not abandon us!" The UN
soldiers shooed them away from their vehicles and fired warning shots over their heads.
When the peacekeepers had gone out through one gate, Hutu militiamen entered through
another, firing machine guns and throwing grenades. Most of the 2,000 gathered there were
killed.
In the three days during which some 4,000 foreigners were evacuated, about 20,000
Rwandans were killed. After the American evacuees were safely out and the U.S. embassy
had been closed, Bill and Hillary Clinton visited the people who had manned the emergencyoperations room at the State Department and offered congratulations on a "job well done."
VII. GENOCIDE? WHAT GENOCIDE?
ust when did Washington know of the sinister Hutu designs on Rwanda's Tutsi? Writing
in Foreign Affairs last year, Alan Kuperman argued that President Clinton "could not
have known that a nationwide genocide was under way" until about two weeks into the
killing. It is true that the precise nature and extent of the slaughter was obscured by the
civil war, the withdrawal of U.S. diplomatic sources, some confused press reporting, and the
lies of the Rwandan government. Nonetheless, both the testimony of U.S. officials who
worked the issue day to day and the declassified documents indicate that plenty was known
about the killers' intentions.
A determination of genocide turns not on the numbers killed, which is always difficult to
ascertain at a time of crisis, but on the perpetrators' intent: Were Hutu forces attempting to
destroy Rwanda's Tutsi? The answer to this question was available early on. "By eight A.M.
the morning after the plane crash we knew what was happening, that there was systematic
killing of Tutsi," Joyce Leader recalls. "People were calling me and telling me who was
getting killed. I knew they were going door to door." Back at the State Department she
explained to her colleagues that three kinds of killing were going on: war, politically
motivated murder, and genocide. Dallaire's early cables to New York likewise described the
armed conflict that had resumed between rebels and government forces, and also stated
plainly that savage "ethnic cleansing" of Tutsi was occurring. U.S. analysts warned that mass
killings would increase. In an April 11 memo prepared for Frank Wisner, the undersecretary
of defense for policy, in advance of a dinner with Henry Kissinger, a key talking point was
"Unless both sides can be convinced to return to the peace process, a massive (hundreds of
thousands of deaths) bloodbath will ensue."
Whatever the inevitable imperfections of U.S. intelligence early on, the reports from Rwanda
were severe enough to distinguish Hutu killers from ordinary combatants in civil war. And
they certainly warranted directing additional U.S. intelligence assets toward the region—to
snap satellite photos of large gatherings of Rwandan civilians or of mass graves, to intercept
military communications, or to infiltrate the country in person. Though there is no evidence
that senior policymakers deployed such assets, routine intelligence continued to pour in. On
April 26 an unattributed intelligence memo titled "Responsibility for Massacres in Rwanda"
reported that the ringleaders of the genocide, Colonel Théoneste Bagosora and his crisis
committee, were determined to liquidate their opposition and exterminate the Tutsi populace.
A May 9 Defense Intelligence Agency report stated plainly that the Rwandan violence was
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not spontaneous but was directed by the government, with lists of victims prepared well in
advance. The DIA observed that an "organized parallel effort of genocide [was] being
implemented by the army to destroy the leadership of the Tutsi community."
From April 8 onward media coverage featured eyewitness accounts describing the widespread
targeting of Tutsi and the corpses piling up on Kigali's streets. American reporters relayed
stories of missionaries and embassy officials who had been unable to save their Rwandan
friends and neighbors from death. On April 9 a front-page Washington Post story quoted
reports that the Rwandan employees of the major international relief agencies had been
executed "in front of horrified expatriate staffers." On April 10 a New York Times front-page
article quoted the Red Cross claim that "tens of thousands" were dead, 8,000 in Kigali alone,
and that corpses were "in the houses, in the streets, everywhere." The Post the same day led
its front-page story with a description of "a pile of corpses six feet high" outside the main
hospital. On April 14 The New York Times reported the shooting and hacking to death of
nearly 1,200 men, women, and children in the church where they had sought refuge. On April
19 Human Rights Watch, which had excellent sources on the ground in Rwanda, estimated
the number of dead at 100,000 and called for use of the term "genocide." The 100,000 figure
(which proved to be a gross underestimate) was picked up immediately by the Western media,
endorsed by the Red Cross, and featured on the front page of The Washington Post. On April
24 the Post reported how "the heads and limbs of victims were sorted and piled neatly, a
bone-chilling order in the midst of chaos that harked back to the Holocaust." President
Clinton certainly could have known that a genocide was under way, if he had wanted to
know.
Even after the reality of genocide in Rwanda had become irrefutable, when bodies were
shown choking the Kagera River on the nightly news, the brute fact of the slaughter failed to
influence U.S. policy except in a negative way. American officials, for a variety of reasons,
shunned the use of what became known as "the g-word." They felt that using it would have
obliged the United States to act, under the terms of the 1948 Genocide Convention. They also
believed, understandably, that it would harm U.S. credibility to name the crime and then do
nothing to stop it. A discussion paper on Rwanda, prepared by an official in the Office of the
Secretary of Defense and dated May 1, testifies to the nature of official thinking. Regarding
issues that might be brought up at the next interagency working group, it stated,
1. Genocide Investigation: Language that calls for an international investigation
of human rights abuses and possible violations of the genocide convention. Be
Careful. Legal at State was worried about this yesterday—Genocide finding
could commit [the U.S. government] to actually "do something." [Emphasis
added.]
At an interagency teleconference in late April, Susan Rice, a rising star on the NSC who
worked under Richard Clarke, stunned a few of the officials present when she asked, "If we
use the word 'genocide' and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the
November [congressional] election?" Lieutenant Colonel Tony Marley remembers the
incredulity of his colleagues at the State Department. "We could believe that people would
wonder that," he says, "but not that they would actually voice it." Rice does not recall the
incident but concedes, "If I said it, it was completely inappropriate, as well as irrelevant."
The genocide debate in U.S. government circles began the last week of April, but it was not
until May 21, six weeks after the killing began, that Secretary Christopher gave his diplomats
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permission to use the term "genocide"—sort of. The UN Human Rights Commission was
about to meet in special session, and the U.S. representative, Geraldine Ferraro, needed
guidance on whether to join a resolution stating that genocide had occurred. The stubborn
U.S. stand had become untenable internationally.
The case for a label of genocide was straightforward, according to a May 18 confidential
analysis prepared by the State Department's assistant secretary for intelligence and research,
Toby Gati: lists of Tutsi victims' names and addresses had reportedly been prepared;
Rwandan government troops and Hutu militia and youth squads were the main perpetrators;
massacres were reported all over the country; humanitarian agencies were now "claiming
from 200,000 to 500,000 lives" lost. Gati offered the intelligence bureau's view: "We believe
500,000 may be an exaggerated estimate, but no accurate figures are available. Systematic
killings began within hours of Habyarimana's death. Most of those killed have been Tutsi
civilians, including women and children." The terms of the Genocide Convention had been
met. "We weren't quibbling about these numbers," Gati says. "We can never know precise
figures, but our analysts had been reporting huge numbers of deaths for weeks. We were
basically saying, 'A rose by any other name ...'"
Despite this straightforward assessment, Christopher remained reluctant to speak the obvious
truth. When he issued his guidance, on May 21, fully a month after Human Rights Watch had
put a name to the tragedy, Christopher's instructions were hopelessly muddied.
The delegation is authorized to agree to a resolution that states that "acts of
genocide" have occurred in Rwanda or that "genocide has occurred in Rwanda."
Other formulations that suggest that some, but not all of the killings in Rwanda
are genocide ... e.g. "genocide is taking place in Rwanda"—are authorized.
Delegation is not authorized to agree to the characterization of any specific
incident as genocide or to agree to any formulation that indicates that all killings
in Rwanda are genocide.
Notably, Christopher confined permission to acknowledge full-fledged genocide to the
upcoming session of the Human Rights Commission. Outside that venue State Department
officials were authorized to state publicly only that acts of genocide had occurred.
Christine Shelly, a State Department spokesperson, had long been charged with publicly
articulating the U.S. position on whether events in Rwanda counted as genocide. For two
months she had avoided the term, and as her June 10 exchange with the Reuters
correspondent Alan Elsner reveals, her semantic dance continued.
Elsner: How would you describe the events taking place in Rwanda?
Shelly: Based on the evidence we have seen from observations on the ground, we
have every reason to believe that acts of genocide have occurred in Rwanda.
Elsner: What's the difference between "acts of genocide" and "genocide"?
Shelly: Well, I think the—as you know, there's a legal definition of this ... clearly
not all of the killings that have taken place in Rwanda are killings to which you
might apply that label ... But as to the distinctions between the words, we're
trying to call what we have seen so far as best as we can; and based, again, on the
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evidence, we have every reason to believe that acts of genocide have occurred.
Elsner: How many acts of genocide does it take to make genocide?
Shelly: Alan, that's just not a question that I'm in a position to answer.
The same day, in Istanbul, Warren Christopher, by then under severe internal and external
pressure, relented: "If there is any particular magic in calling it genocide, I have no hesitancy
in saying that."
VIII. "NOT EVEN A SIDESHOW"
Once the Americans had been evacuated, Rwanda largely dropped off the radar of most senior
Clinton Administration officials. In the situation room on the seventh floor of the State
Department a map of Rwanda had been hurriedly pinned to the wall in the aftermath of the
plane crash, and eight banks of phones had rung off the hook. Now, with U.S. citizens safely
home, the State Department chaired a daily interagency meeting, often by teleconference,
designed to coordinate mid-level diplomatic and humanitarian responses. Cabinet-level
officials focused on crises elsewhere. Anthony Lake recalls, "I was obsessed with Haiti and
Bosnia during that period, so Rwanda was, in William Shawcross's words, a 'sideshow,' but
not even a sideshow—a no-show." At the NSC the person who managed Rwanda policy was
not Lake, the national-security adviser, who happened to know Africa, but Richard Clarke,
who oversaw peacekeeping policy, and for whom the news from Rwanda only confirmed a
deep skepticism about the viability of UN deployments. Clarke believed that another UN
failure could doom relations between Congress and the United Nations. He also sought to
shield the President from congressional and public criticism. Donald Steinberg managed the
Africa portfolio at the NSC and tried to look out for the dying Rwandans, but he was not an
experienced infighter and, colleagues say, he "never won a single argument" with Clarke.
The Americans who wanted the United States to do the most were those who knew Rwanda
best. Joyce Leader, Rawson's deputy in Rwanda, had been the one to close and lock the doors
to the U.S. embassy. When she returned to Washington, she was given a small room in a back
office and told to prepare the State Department's daily Rwanda summaries, drawing on press
and U.S. intelligence reports. Incredibly, despite her expertise and her contacts in Rwanda,
she was rarely consulted and was instructed not to deal directly with her sources in Kigali.
Once, an NSC staffer did call to ask, "Short of sending in the troops, what is to be done?"
Leader's response, unwelcome, was "Send in the troops." Throughout the U.S. government
Africa specialists had the least clout of all regional specialists and the smallest chance of
effecting policy outcomes. In contrast, those with the most pull in the bureaucracy had never
visited Rwanda or met any Rwandans. They spoke analytically of "national interests" or even
"humanitarian consequences" without appearing gripped by the unfolding human tragedy.
The dearth of country or regional expertise in the senior circles of government not only
reduces the capacity of officers to assess the "news." It also increases the likelihood—a
dynamic identified by Lake in his 1971 Foreign Policy article—that killings will become
abstractions. "Ethnic bloodshed" in Africa was thought to be regrettable but not particularly
unusual.
As it happened, when the crisis began, President Clinton himself had a coincidental and
personal connection with the country. At a coffee at the White House in December of 1993
Clinton had met Monique Mujawamariya, the Rwandan human-rights activist. He had been
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struck by the courage of a woman who still bore facial scars from an automobile accident that
had been arranged to curb her activities. Clinton had singled her out, saying, "Your courage is
an inspiration to all of us." On April 8, two days after the onset of the killing, The Washington
Post published a letter that Alison Des Forges had sent to Human Rights Watch after
Mujawamariya had hung up the phone to face her fate. "I believe Monique was killed at 6:30
this morning," Des Forges had written. "I have virtually no hope that she is still alive, but will
continue to try for more information. In the meantime ... please inform everyone who will
care." Word of Mujawamariya's disappearance got the President's attention, and he inquired
about her whereabouts repeatedly. "I can't tell you how much time we spent trying to find
Monique," one U.S. official remembers. "Sometimes it felt as though she was the only
Rwandan in danger." Miraculously, Mujawamariya had not been killed—she had hidden in
the rafters of her home after hanging up with Des Forges, and eventually managed to talk and
bribe her way to safety. She was evacuated to Belgium, and on April 18 she joined Des
Forges in the United States, where the pair began lobbying the Clinton Administration on
behalf of those left behind. With Mujawamariya's rescue, reported in detail in the Post and
The New York Times, the President apparently lost his personal interest in events in Rwanda.
During the entire three months of the genocide Clinton never assembled his top policy
advisers to discuss the killings. Anthony Lake likewise never gathered the "principals"—the
Cabinet-level members of the foreign-policy team. Rwanda was never thought to warrant its
own top-level meeting. When the subject came up, it did so along with, and subordinate to,
discussions of Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia. Whereas these crises involved U.S. personnel and
stirred some public interest, Rwanda generated no sense of urgency and could safely be
avoided by Clinton at no political cost. The editorial boards of the major American
newspapers discouraged U.S. intervention during the genocide. They, like the Administration,
lamented the killings but believed, in the words of ...
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