Another option is a UN rapid response capability, as proposed several years ago by an international commission headed by Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi in 2000. This panel called for expanding UN standby arrangements “to include several coherent, multinational, brigade-size forces and the necessary enabling forces, created by Member States working in partnership, in order to better meet the need for the robust peacekeeping forces.” One problem is that the report makes no provision for the coordination of airlift operations. Only the US military has a large, long-haul cargo air fleet; rapid reaction to most parts of the world is impossible unless the United States participates. A further problem is that even if UN member states were willing to commit troops in advance for humanitarian intervention, it is uncertain they would actually deploy them when called upon. Relying on a UN force that might not materialize when needed could prove even worse than today’s ad hoc system—in which states at least know that the buck stops with them.

Reduce Moral Hazard

As noted, some sub-state groups have been emboldened by the prospect of humanitarian intervention to launch armed challenges against states, provoking genocidal retaliation. One superficially attractive solution would be for the international community to launch timely humanitarian military intervention in every case of genocidal violence. However, this is unfeasible for two reasons. First, even if the political will for such extensive intervention existed (which it does not), the number of actual cases of such violence would soon exhaust our resources. The 1990s alone witnessed major civil violence in at least 16 areas (some on several occasions): Albania, Algeria, Angola, Azerbaijan (mainly in Nagorno-Karabakh), Bosnia, Cambodia, Congo Republic, Croatia, Ethiopia, Liberia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Tajikistan, and Zaire (and its successor, the Democratic Republic of Congo). Moreover, by the logic of moral hazard, each instance of humanitarian intervention raises expectations of further intervention and thus encourages additional armed challenges that may provoke still more genocidal retaliation—further overwhelming the international capacity for intervention.

Two means exist to mitigate moral hazard. First, the international community should reward non-violent protest movements, rather than armed rebellions. In Kosovo, it did the opposite, ignoring a non-violent ethnic Albanian resistance for eight years and then rewarding its violent counterpart with military assistance. So long as disgruntled ethnic groups believe they can attract Western intervention with violence rather than with passive resistance, Western states encourage rebellions that provoke genocidal retaliation.

The second solution is drawn from the economics literature on moral hazard, which suggests we should not pay claims that arise solely because of the provision of insurance coverage. In other words, the international community should not intervene on behalf of groups that provoke retaliation in the hope of garnering humanitarian intervention. If the West adopted this policy, and stuck to it, such cynical rebellions would likely peter out fairly quickly. Such a policy still would permit humanitarian intervention on behalf of groups that suffer genocidal violence through no fault of their own—for example, at the hands of leaders like Adolf Hitler or Pol Pot—as the concept originally envisioned.

A policy of not intervening in cases of intentionally provoked genocide is open to criticism as being hard-hearted. This is especially true in cases where the victims of retaliation did not endorse the armed challenge or did not know it would provoke a backlash. However, if the theory of moral hazard is correct, a policy of not intervening in response to deliberate provocations eventually would reduce the number of such cases—and thereby the overall incidence of genocidal violence. If so, such a policy would not be hard-hearted, but actually compassionate, at least from a long-term perspective.

Avoid Pyromaniac Diplomacy

A third lesson is that the international community needs to better coordinate its diplomacy with military intervention. Since the end of the Cold War, the West has tried to coerce authoritarian governments (or rebels) to hand over power to opponents by applying economic or military sanctions. However, in several cases, including Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and East Timor, the targets of coercion have responded instead by ethnically cleansing their opponents. To prevent this eventuality, the West needs to preventively deploy robust intervention forces, prior to exercising coercive diplomacy. Unfortunately, most preventive deployments so far have been feeble. When violence breaks out, as in Rwanda and Srebrenica, they provide little protection and then are withdrawn. Such half-hearted deployments lend a false sense of security that encourages vulnerable groups to let down their guard so that they ultimately die in greater numbers, making this type of intervention worse than nothing.

If the West is unwilling to deploy robust forces preventively, it must temper its use of coercive diplomacy aimed at compelling rulers or rebels to surrender power, because of the risk of inadvertently triggering massive violence. So long as the West lacks the will for adequate preventive deployments, its diplomats should focus instead on carrots, rather than sticks—offering incentives to oppressive governments and rebels, including economic assistance, in exchange for gradual power-sharing. The West also should be prepared to offer “golden parachutes”—monetary rewards, asylum, and immunity from subsequent prosecution—to entrenched leaders willing to peacefully yield power. While human rights groups abjure the prospect of cutting deals with leaders who have blood on their hands, in some cases forgiving past crimes may be the price of preventing future ones.

It may be a noble endeavor to use military force to protect victims of genocidal violence. But it is infinitely preferable to prevent the outbreak of such violence in the first place. To do so requires adoption of more enlightened policies of humanitarian intervention, tempering altruistic instincts with the stubborn realities of human nature and military logistics.

For this article, the author wishes to refer to two of his previous works: The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention: Genocide in Rwanda (2001) and “Transnational Causes of Genocide: Or How the West Inadvertently Exacerbates Ethnic Conflict” (2003)