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Inaction through Tears: Realism and U.S. Policy on Genocide
“Politics have no relation to morals.” – Niccolo Machiavelli1
By Charlotte Hill, University of California, Berkeley
PART 1
Regardless of the U.S. government’s strong condemnation of human rights abuses across the
globe, its history of inaction against genocide – arguably the worst crime known to man – belies its
criticisms. After the end of WWII and its associated travesty, the Holocaust, the United States
seemed a strong advocate for intervention in cases of genocide, its US delegation to the UN serving a
“central role”2 in the creation of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of
Genocide (UNGC), which, while not capable of actually preventing genocide, is powerful in that it
“defines a certain behavior, labels it criminal, and declares members of the international community
responsible to combat and punish the crime.”3 After this robust effort, “no one seemed to anticipate
or expect any difficulty” in achieving U.S. ratification of the convention.4 But it took thirty-nine
more years, replete with Senate hearings, ad hoc committee meetings, and endless debates, for
President Reagan to finally sign the legislation needed to finalize American ratification of the
UNGC. This was done against the best wishes of many politicians who “promoted their own
normative concern for the sanctity of America’s sovereignty,” an issue that, “despite the shocking
revelations of the Holocaust… remained a jealously guarded possession.”5 Unfortunately, this
aversion to any anti-genocide policy that might eventually negatively affect U.S. interests only
deepened with time.
In the four years between 1975 and 1979, approximately 1.5 million Cambodians were
“worked, starved, and beaten to death”6 in prison camps as their “whole nation was kidnapped and
then besieged from within”7 by the Pol Pot-led Khmer Rouge regime in a systematic campaign of
what can plausibly be termed genocide.8 In the years prior to the genocide, the United States’
military operations within Cambodia set the stage for these mass atrocities by “help[ing] to
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destabilize Cambodia and leave it vulnerable to the machinations of Pol Pot’s communist
insurgency.”9 Furthermore, after the genocide began, the American government actually “supported
the continued independent existence of the Khmer Rouge regime” in a Cold War strategy to prevent
Cambodia from being absorbed into the Soviet Union sphere of influence.10 After 1979, the U.S.
continued to defend Cambodia’s genocidal leaders and actively “opposed attempts to bring them to
justice,” refusing to “file a case against the Khmer Rouge in the International Court of Justice.”11
Twenty years later, Pol Pot died peacefully in his sleep, having successfully evaded trial throughout
the remainder of his life.12
The Rwandan genocide of 1994 provides yet another clear example of U.S. interests taking
priority over stopping genocide. Despite possessing detailed information on the atrocities being
committed against the Tutsis,13 the Clinton administration went beyond mere inaction:
In reality, the United State did much more than fail to send troops. It led a successful
effort to remove most of the UN peacekeepers that 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.14
Once again, history is repeating itself. Half a decade has passed since the first Sudanese
government-sponsored aerial attacks in Darfur marked the beginning of the twenty-first century’s
first genocide.15 And the violence – which, to date, has killed over 200,000 people16 through
helicopter bombings, village raids, displacement tactics, and the myriad subsequent diseases and food
shortages – is still occurring, with janjaweed militia attacks once again spiraling out of control.17
During the past few years, the U.S. has begrudgingly taken several steps to help end the genocide,
including passing pieces of anti-genocide legislation,18 imposing new sanctions on Sudanese
officials,19 and pressuring the U.N. Security Council to approve a hybrid U.N./African Union
peacekeeping force for the region. To be sure, these actions represent a significant departure from
the traditional way in which states have dealt with the problem of genocide – namely, to not deal
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with it at all. But they have proven too weak, too late, as evidenced by the continuation of the mass
atrocities occurring in Darfur.20 The strongest piece of anti-genocide legislation to date, the Sudan
Accountability and Divestment Act, has been qualified by a presidential “signing statement,”
rendering it practically ineffective.21 The sanctions are limited in scope and do not target the worst
offenders within the Sudanese government.22 And the hybrid force is floundering, with only one
third of its promised 26,000-strong force and hardly any attack helicopters to help these peacekeepers
cover a geographic area the size of France.23 Put simply, the U.S. response has once again proven
inadequate.
Behind every problem of violence – in this case, genocide – lies an ideology, or a system of
meaning – a set of “beliefs and values… language, forms of knowledge, and common sense, as well
as the material products, interactional practices, rituals, and ways of life established by these.”24
Typically, when studying a particular form of violence, one would attempt to decipher which
ideology leads to the most commonly proposed solutions for the problem of violence in question.
But in the case of genocide, few solutions to genocide have ever been proposed. This issue of U.S.
inaction on genocide has itself become problem of violence, which leads to the following question:
what system of meaning has caused the U.S. to fail to prioritize to the problem of genocide? What
ideology has facilitated and perpetuated U.S. inaction?
The answer is simple: the lack of any substantial effort on the part of the American
government to end the Darfur genocide and all previous genocides stems from the powerful
dominance of realist theory in U.S. policymaking.25 As a system of meaning, realism simultaneously
shapes, and is shaped by, human action in an ongoing process that Giddens terms structuration.26
But this process of structuration is not evenly balanced; realism seems to shape more often than it, in
turn, is shaped. And most human actions actually reproduce structures like realism instead of
transforming them, in a type of agency that Hays terms “structurally reproductive agency;”27 even
though “technically speaking, people are agents on a daily basis,” their actions seldom “lead to the
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possibility of change at a deeper level.”28 This powerful dominance of structure over agency can
primarily be blamed on the realist practice of attempting to carve realism’s fundamental assumptions
in stone and to elevate them to the level of fact, which thereby legitimates and reproduces them and,
consequently, realism itself.29 Understanding the core assumptions of realism and the ways in which
these assumptions are perpetuated and reproduced over time can help to eventually transform the
current realist-dominated system into one in which genocide and other mass atrocities are effectively
addressed.
Realist theory extends back into history for thousands of years;30 accordingly, numerous
versions and strands exist, all with their own slight variations on “classical realism.” However, all
forms of realism share three main assumptions: 1) that the current international system is anarchic, 2)
that states are the primary actors in this system, and 3) that these states are rational and power
seeking.31 The first assumption of an anarchic system, in which the state is the highest source of
authority, has consistently lead realist thinkers to emphasize the norm of state sovereignty,32 which
holds that it is the state’s ultimate right to exercise control over its people and territory. This
emphasis on state sovereignty, in turn, leads to a lack of will among states to intervene in cases of
genocide. In the name of sovereignty, states attempt to portray genocide as the concern of the state
in which the genocide is taking place, not as the responsibility of the rest of the international
community, often going so far as to plead leaders of genocidal regimes to self-regulate their own
actions; in his speech presenting new sanctions, President Bush called on Sudanese President Omar
el-Bashir to “stop his obstruction, and to allow the peacekeepers in, and to end the campaign of
violence that continues to target innocent men, women and children,” effectively shifting the
responsibility from the U.S. to the government of Sudan.33 But, as the UNGC of 1948 clearly sets
forth in Article 1, “The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide…is a crime under international law
which they undertake to prevent and to punish;”34 in other words, once a conflict is declared to be
genocide, the international community has a duty to respond.35 To solve this problem of being
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legally bound to intervene in cases of genocide, then, states consistently avoid labeling conflicts as
“genocide” whenever possible,36 identifying conflicts as genocide only when it is incomprehensible
for the state doing the labeling to intervene, as it appears to be at this time for the United States.37
The second assumption that states are the primary actors in the international system, with
their actions and decisions holding more importance than the actions of institutions and individuals,
leads to a “ritual of diplomacy” with other states and their leaders, even with governments that have
been accused of committing genocide. Heads of state engage in high-level diplomatic meetings,
regardless of the fact that some people present have been complicit in genocidal activities.38 In her
reflections on the Clinton administration’s diplomatic efforts during the Rwandan genocide,
Samantha Power explains:
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… institutionally oriented toward the Rwandan
government.39
These state-to-state diplomatic efforts, in turn, further perpetuate the idea that the state, as opposed to
institutions or individuals, is the most important actor where matters of genocide are concerned,
resulting in a reproduction of realist beliefs.
The third assumption of the existence of power-hungry, rational states holds that
states make decisions about foreign affairs solely on the bases of their own interests. As Ronayne
notes, “The realist emphasis on the importance of power and self-interest helps us to understand and
even predict that an American administration might demonstrate reluctance to intervene to halt
genocide because of other geostrategic priorities and domestic political concerns.”40 For example,
regardless of the legitimacy and funding the United States could lend to the International Criminal
Court (ICC), which is currently attempting to punish two orchestrators of the violence in Darfur, the
U.S. has refused to cooperate with it. Human Rights Watch explains that the U.S.’s decision stems
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from its deep-seated fear that “the ICC may exercise its jurisdiction to conduct politically motivated
investigations and prosecutions of U.S. military and political officials and personnel.”41 The
consequence of such thinking is that national security reigns supreme over human security.42
In hindsight, of course, genocide is typically viewed as a terrible, avoidable problem that the
U.S. refuses to allow to occur again. After the Rwandan genocide, President Clinton remarked, “We
must have global vigilance. And never again must we be shy in the face of evidence,” implying that
there is the potential for improvement in the way that the U.S. reacts to genocide.43 But when this
type of idealist discourse is paired with realist thinking, realism tends to triumph; as Kissinger
remarks, “To study American geopolitics is to study the performative contradictions of a state that
articulates both realism and idealism in its foreign policy, a state that acts narrowly out of selfinterests, yet sees itself as ‘the last best hope of Earth.’”44 At its base, realism is a systemmaintaining theory, not a system-transforming theory,45 and regardless of the clear fact that states
have thus far failed to stop genocide while it was happening, the notion of legitimately changing the
way that the world reacts to genocide, and thereby changing the current system, is not a priority in
realist thinking. The ultimate goal of realism is to ensure the reproduction of its fundamental
assumptions of an anarchical system and of rational, power seeking states as primary actors in this
system.
The results of this realist paradigm have been disastrous, in several ways. First and foremost,
no genocide has ever been effectively stopped. Second, perpetrators of genocide have rarely been
punished for their actions; in the sixty years since the term “genocide” was coined in 1944, the only
perpetrators that have been tried and convicted for genocide have been a few of those involved in the
1991-1995 Yugoslavian Wars.46 And third, even when warning signs of genocide in violence-torn
countries have been presented to U.S. state officials, as in the case of Rwanda, no genocide has ever
been effectively prevented.47 In addition, an often-overlooked result of realist thinking is that the
burden of responsibility for ending genocide has frequently been pushed onto the UN Security
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Council, whose veto-holding members have consistently rejected pieces of anti-genocide legislation
that appear to conflict with their national interests.48
Why, then, has realism and its “solution” to genocide – namely, not proposing any solution at
all – been perpetuated throughout the past century? It is important to remember that ideological
structures, while powerful and ever-present, must be enacted and reproduced by human actors, who
have their own goals and ambitions. Instead of falling prey to Sztompka’s illusion of reification,
which sees “states, bureaucracies, economies, political regimes, social systems,” and other structures
as “independent from our will and yet controlling our lives,” one must understand that these
structures’ “truly social, institutional nature consists entirely of people and their actions.”49 Sadly,
many human agents reproduce the realist ideology because they benefit from allowing genocide to
continue unimpeded by U.S. action. The most obvious beneficiaries are the perpetrators of genocide,
themselves, who continue to profit from realism, as they are rarely threatened with any serious legal
consequences for their actions. But the U.S. government also benefits immensely from this
framework. Resources that could potentially be invested in the military – the one institution that,
according to realism, is the “most obvious element of a state’s power” in the international system50 –
are not “wasted” on conflicts that have not been defined as national security concerns. And the norm
of state sovereignty is preserved, which especially benefits U.S. policymakers; after all, if states
continue to abide by the policy of refusing to engage in intervention in cases of genocide, a precedent
is set that allows the American government to execute potentially harmful domestic policies in the
future without being held accountable by the international community. Moreover, this perpetuation
of the norm of state sovereignty allows the realist idea of an anarchic international system, in which
independent states are the highest authorities, to persist indefinitely, thereby securing future positions
for government employees and reproducing and legitimating the realist framework.
The typical producers of realist knowledge are academics – specifically, university professors
– who, after publishing articles in political science journals and reading the work of their fellow
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academics, go about conveying this knowledge to their students.51 These same students, in turn,
become U.S. government officials, who both convey and enact the knowledge through their policy
reports and daily actions. In other words, the producers and enactors of realism are, to co-opt
Power’s phrase, “people sitting in offices.”52 Many these officials must, at some point, confront the
issue of genocide. However, their statuses and associated roles of conduct tend to limit their ability
to take action effectively.
The main role of a member of Congress is to pass laws that adequately reflect the desires of
the American population. Representatives and senators see themselves as vessels of constituent
opinion; in viewing themselves in this way, they thereby limit their own capacities to act on their
personal moral compulsions. Their ongoing efforts to appease voters and thereby defend and secure
national interests cause them to forget or to set aside their unhindered ability to serve as moral
agents; after the Rwandan genocide, former Illinois Senator Paul Simon remarked, “If each member
of Congress had received just 100 letters urging action, that would have been enough to get the
political system lumbering into action,”53 once again placing the burden of the U.S. decision to
intervene in genocide on the American public. Also, the very reactive nature of congressional
positions, which involves waiting for constituents to send letters and make phone calls as opposed to
actively soliciting their input, results in Members of Congress typically hearing more about – and
therefore doing more about – other issues than genocide. Furthermore, lobbyists often hold strong
sway over legislative officials, and since there is no powerful anti-genocide lobby, the issue of
genocide often falls to the wayside. Without the presence of a strong anti-genocide constituency,
Congress’ ability to enact change is limited.
Since the primary role of the U.S. President is to enact the laws that Congress creates, his
ability to effect change is also somewhat dependent upon constituent mobilization. But he is also
tasked with representing the U.S. and ensuring the well being of its people, serving as the national
Commander in Chief and addressing a broad range of security issues. In this broad role, the comfort
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of American citizens is held paramount, and American lives are considered more important than the
lives of non-U.S. citizens.54 And issues directly relating to U.S. interests, such as terrorism, are given
more weight than issues affecting the people of another state, such as genocide. In this endless
presidential quest to ensure the security of the American people, the realist assumption that national
interests are more important than human security is reproduced.
In the past, it had been common U.S. policy to ignore genocide while it occurred and then to
lament it afterward, as seen in the cases of both the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides. But in this
era of new information-communication technology, when the media has access to the atrocities in
Darfur and can therefore hold the U.S. accountable to its inaction (to an extent) the U.S. government
has chosen a different tactic, regularly taking pride publicly in the amount of effort it has invested in
ending the Darfur genocide; a recent U.S. Bureau of African Affairs document states, “We are using
all available diplomatic and governmental resources to achieve a durable peace.”55 The U.S. also
blames other countries for not working as diligently as America has to end the Darfur genocide, a
clear tactic to better America’s reputation in the international sphere and thereby improve its national
security.
The very “accomplishments” that the U.S. takes pride in have simultaneously reinforced and
legitimated the realist framework, thereby precluding tangible anti-genocide action in the future.
Government officials within the executive branch meet with members of the genocidal Khartoum
regime, reflecting and reinforcing the notion that states are the most important actors in the
international sphere. In addition, the U.S. has offered generous amounts of humanitarian aid to
victims of genocide in a clear attempt to appease the consciences of its domestic constituency
without actually making the long-term commitments needed to effectively end the Darfur conflict.
And, perhaps most revealingly, the United States continued its strong diplomatic and economic
relationship with China, regardless of China’s unquestioned leverage with and support of the
Sudanese government. While President Bush has encouraged China to pressure Sudan, he has not
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threatened Hu Jintao with any sort of economic punishment; both leaders understand that regardless
of Jintao’s decisions, U.S.-China relations will continue unhindered as always. This relationship
provides a clear example of the U.S. refusing to take any action that could legitimately harm its
national interests.
The Washington, D.C..–Khartoum relationship on the issue of terrorism is especially telling.
During the Sudanese North-South civil war, Osama bin Laden, the proposed planner of the 9/11
attacks on the World Trade Center, took refuge in Sudan. Consequently, the Khartoum regime now
possesses a large amount of classified information on bin Laden, information that the U.S. is
desperate to acquire. Regardless of the ongoing genocide currently taking place at the hands of the
Sudanese government, the U.S. “forges a strategic alliance with the Sudanese Mukhabarat
(intelligence services) and is anxious to maintain an intelligence-sharing relationship with the
Sudanese government.” The Bush administration has even flown General Gosh, the head of
intelligence in Khartoum whose name is on an ICC list of individuals suspected of crimes against
humanity in Darfur, to Washington, D.C. for “high-level talks.”56 This information-sharing
relationship directly undermines the occasional threats that the U.S. directs to Khartoum. Once
again, national security interests are given more importance than the lives of people suffering from
genocide, and realism is reproduced.
The United Nations also plays a large role in conveying realist assumptions, and its
statements and decisions are directly related to the United States’ decisions of how and when to
intervene in cases of genocide.57 In Chapter I of the U.N. charter, the notion of state sovereignty is
upheld by an article forbidding intervention in “matters which are essentially within the domestic
jurisdiction of any state,”58 offering the American government an excuse for non-intervention. Also,
the U.S. is concerned about its place in the international realm; therefore, if it feels it will garner
criticism from the international community by taking stronger actions against the Khartoum regime,
it will avoid taking such action. For example, the U.N. Security Council has continually refused to
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impose multilateral sanctions on Sudan, lending less legitimacy to the idea of stronger U.S.-imposed
sanctions against members of the Khartoum regime.
Discourse allows for the mutually reinforcing nature of the structure-agency dynamic,
demonstrating at the level of the individual agent what a powerful impact the realist ideology has on
the consciousnesses of realism’s producers, conveyors, and enactors. As this paper has shown thus
far, the U.S. government prefers to invest its resources in situations deemed related to America’s
“national interests,” and genocide, to this point, has not been seen by government officials as one of
these situations. Therefore, agents within the government have tried to limit the U.S.’s involvement
in ending genocide. In order to make this decision acceptable to the American public, the media, and
the rest of the international community, the U.S. must employ two forms of discourse. When
describing U.S. actions against genocide, pride-filled phrases such as “sincere compassion for the
people of Darfur,” “deep concern for the innocent civilians,” and “our steadfast commitment to end
the crisis” are employed.59 But behind closed doors, during debates over foreign policy, “to talk of
suffering is to lose ‘effectiveness;’”60 instead, policymakers utilize a discourse that discounts any
human element of genocide and “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” are affected by U.S. policy.61 This
detached language, paired with the incessant over-exaggeration of U.S. support for ending genocide,
facilitates U.S. government officials’ failure to take further action against genocide, allowing them to
maintain clear consciences while they fulfill their roles as policy-makers and –enactors within the
United States government.
Thus far, the realist paradigm has proven insufficient to prevent or end genocide. While past
mistakes cannot be remedied, the ongoing genocide in Darfur provides the U.S. with a window of
opportunity to take effective action and bring a tangible peace to the victims there. To accomplish
this goal, the U.S. must distance itself from the realist paradigm by demonstrating that it is willing to
place human interests before national interests.62
PART 2
Pioneering Responsibility: The American Anti-Genocide Movement in an Age of Realism
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“People’s ideas about what is good and what ‘should be’ in the world become translated into political reality.
People with principled commitments have made significant changes in the political landscape.”
Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink63
“The evidence is everywhere, but you don’t read it in the headlines or see it on the nightly news. But if you look
closer, you can see that the international picture is shifting considerably regarding Sudan, and it is because of
activist pressure.”
Prendergast, Spiegel, and Rogoff of ENOUGH64
Historically, the U.S. has purposefully refused to take any substantial action against
numerous genocides, both while they have occurred and after they have ended. And now,
history is repeating itself: the first genocide of the twenty-first century rages on in Darfur, and its
death toll of 200,000 innocent civilians65 serves as a reminder of the international community’s
failure to intervene. In the previous chapter, we asked the question, “What political ideology has
facilitated and perpetuated U.S. inaction in the face of genocide?” The answer was found to be
relatively straightforward: the realist system of meaning, with its three fundamental assumptions
of an anarchic system, of states as the primary actors in this system, and of these states being
rational and power seeking, has led to a lack of any substantial effort on the part of the American
government to intervene to protect innocent civilians suffering from genocide at the hands of
abusive regimes. The overwhelming result of the realist paradigm is that national interests,
viewed through a discourse of national security, trump the interests of genocide victims.66
This paper attempts to detail how the newly formed American anti-genocide movement
(AGM)67 can potentially destructure the realist system of domination and transform it into a
cosmopolitan democracy. I argue that there are two underlying assumptions behind the AGM’s
efforts: 1) that states cannot be the only actors who have political power, because ending
genocide is not often in their national interests, and 2) that states should replace their national
security-centered decision-making framework with a human security-centered one. These
assumptions lead, then, to the following major struggles of the AGM: urging that people “speak
truth to power” and directly influence those political decisions that affect them, and ensuring that
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they are able to do so; and advocating that states be held responsible for the protection of both
their own citizens and also the citizens of other countries.
Potential for Transformation
Realism is a descriptive theory; its goal is to describe its (albeit distorted) vision of the
political world today and thereby perpetuate the current international system, which is
fundamentally founded on realism’s basic assumptions about how modern politics work.68 But
when realism and its accompanying solutions to problems like genocide prove inadequate, a need
exists for something more than mere description. In such an instance, we must seek out a
prescriptive theory that will move beyond offering solutions based on what is to offering
solutions based on what ought to be.
Critical theory is the body of theoretical knowledge69 produced for this very reason: to
deconstruct the common ideologies of post-Enlightenment modernity, such as realism, and to
transform them into reflexive, malleable theories whose ultimate goal is not reproduction of the
current system but emancipation.70 In this sense, emancipation expresses both a figurative and
literal freedom from not only the commonly acknowledged categories of fear and want,71 but
also from the mentally constricting realist ideology that limits perceived opportunities and
options through the construction of false barriers, or “binary oppositions.”72 These false
dichotomies often lead individuals to take a leading role in their own systems of self-domination
in an ongoing process of governmentality;73 by accepting the binary oppositions as truth,
individuals limit their own abilities to pursue other opportunities that do not fit into the set of
opportunities offered by the traditional realist ideology. Realism, then, constrains not only the
actions but also the minds of its adherents. In turn, critical theory, when used in conjunction with
a constant process of self-evaluation, can offer emancipation from this self-perpetuating, self-
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reinforcing system of domination by envisioning a better world and using agency to modify and
shape structures in pursuit of that goal.
Ultimately, as Antonio remarks, “critical theory is concerned with contradictions between
ideology and reality.” In an attempt to learn from past theories’ mistakes, it “operate[s]
according to the method of immanent critique”74 and strives to remain reflexive throughout the
continuous process of emancipation that critical theory promotes. Reflexivity, as defined by
Soros, refers to the idea that “facts,” when determined in regards to matters of “social and
political affairs” as opposed to those of natural science, “do not necessarily constitute reliable
criteria for judging the truth of statements,” because “there is a two-way connection—a feedback
mechanism—between thinking and events” that always biases what are often otherwise seen as
ultimate truths (p. 167/47).75 Soros’ point is not to criticize the reflexivity inherent in the social
sciences; rather, he seeks to point out the tendency of most people ignore this reflexivity and
instead “identify their beliefs with ultimate truth,” as opposed to accepting their own fallibility
and constantly re-evaluating their fundamental assumptions.76
Realism, too, suffers from a lack of understanding of the reflexivity inherent in the
creation of its three main tenets; for example, anarchy is seen by critical theorists as a fluid
concept, not the rigid structure that realism presents it as.77 It is therefore difficult for realism to
remain fluid and adapt to the new circumstances it finds itself surrounded by in today’s postmodern world. To avoid realism’s pitfalls, critical theory must continually engage in a process
of reflexive self-examination; otherwise, it risks falling into the same trap as realism: continuing
to function off of modern assumptions that no longer hold true.
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Enabling Factors
Realism and its descriptive, reproductive tendencies are inadequate to deal with the
problem of genocide, and the time is ripe for a change in ideology. Various enabling factors
exist that threaten to destabilize realism, including the evolution of the human security paradigm,
de-territorialization, among others.78 Yet realism is the theory that continues to offer the
dominant solution to genocide, which, in the case of the United States, has consistently been to
remain inactive when the state’s interests are not in serious jeopardy.
New Interpretations of Human Security and R2P
This narrow focus on national security has recently come under criticism, leading to the
formation of a new concept aptly termed “human security.” The end of the Cold War in 1989
marked the beginning of a new decade, full of hope and promise of a sustainable peace. The
United Nations’ 1994 Human Development Report acknowledges that the best way to tackle
global insecurity is not for states to respond militarily by building up their weapons arsenals in
an attempt at deterrence, but rather to simultaneously promote both freedom from fear and
freedom from want.79 States’ goals, the report claims, can only fully be secured through the
promotion and protection of human interests.80
Similarly, almost a decade later, the Commission on Human Security released its final
report entitled, Human Security Now, which explains that while “the state continues to have the
primary responsibility for security,” changing conditions require changing mentalities about
what that security entails: “as security challenges become more complex and various new actors
attempt to play a role, we need a shift in paradigm. The focus must broaden from the state to the
security of people – to human security.” As the report makes clear, this new human focus is not
a substitute for the traditional focus on national interests; rather, “human security complements
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state security… by being people-centered and addressing insecurities that have not been
considered as state security threats."81
The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) Doctrine, another experiment in re-interpreting
realist concepts, was initially drafted in 2001 by the Canada-sponsored International Commission
on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS). While its main concept has since come to mean
various things to different groups of people, the authors of the initial ICISS report define R2P as
“the idea that sovereign states have a responsibility to protect their own citizens from avoidable
catastrophe – from mass murder and rape, from starvation – but that when they are unwilling or
unable to do so, that responsibility must be borne by the broader community of states.”82 This
doctrine of responsibility, in effect, transforms the notion of state sovereignty from one of a
state’s right to non-intervention to one implying each state’s responsibility for its citizens. Only
once this domestic responsibility has been fulfilled can a state earn the right of non-intervention
commonly associated with the concept of state sovereignty. If “the state in question is unwilling
or unable to halt or avert” any serious harm to its citizenry, “the principle of non-intervention
yields to the international responsibility to protect” the suffering population.83
Much like the concept of human security, the R2P doctrine effectively de-centers the
state from the notion of state sovereignty. But it also changes the focus of the concept of
humanitarian intervention, claiming that “the responsibility to protect implies an evaluation of
the issues from the point of view of those seeking or needing support, rather than those who may
be considering intervention.” Calling for a change in discourse from the “right to intervene” to
the “responsibility to protect,” the report holds that “the proposed change in terminology is also a
change in perspective, reversing the perceptions inherent in the traditional language.”84
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Upon first glance, the R2P doctrine may seem utopian, too distanced from the common
understanding of state sovereignty to find acceptance among key international players, who may
cling to sovereignty’s “traditional” definition. But as Finnemore and Sikkink suggest, state
sovereignty should not be considered just one singular norm but, rather, an institution, a
“collection of practices and rules”85 that, over the course of time, has continually evolved in an
ongoing process of “becoming.”86 Sovereignty is not set in stone. The immediate dismissal of
the concept of “sovereignty as responsibility” is tantamount to realism’s refusal to pursue a
reflexive examination of its most basic principles: both result in outdated, modern perspectives in
a post-modern, continually evolving world. And while the international community has at least
tentatively understood this, with the U.N. General Assembly adopting the R2P doctrine in 2005,
there still remains the risk of R2P failing to make a noticeable impact on realist thinking.87 The
AGM has addressed this fear through its promotion of the R2P, as addressed further below.
Deterritorialization as a New Condition
Both of the new interpretations listed above are made possible by today’s new era of
globalization88 and its associated effect of de-territorialization, which, taken together,
simultaneously broaden the conceptions of national interests and international responsibility.
De-territorialization and globalization link humans from different bounded, political entities
together, fostering the spread of solidarity and encouraging the formation of inter-state networks
and communities. New information-communication technologies (ICTs) take this process even
further, helping raise awareness of mass atrocities occurring halfway across the world and
encouraging the creation of transnational advocacy networks.89
De-territorialization is an enabler, a factor that threatens to destabilize the world as it is. 90
It offers the possibility for change and opens opportunities for new means of cooperation and
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understanding. The consequences of the de-territorialization process are, among other things, the
“development of regional and global governance structures” and the “creation of global systemic
problems,” which Held views as resulting in “a number of striking challenges to the nature and
form of governance” as we know it today.91 These challenges include “overlapping networks of
power and interaction,” as opposed to power being held solely by the traditional Westphalian
state; jurisdictional, incentive, and participation gaps that serve to “weaken political institutions,
national and international”; a “growing imbalance in global rule-making and enforcement,”
where laws promoting the well-being of elites trump those promoting human rights; and “a shift
from relatively distinct national communication and economic systems to their more complex
and diverse enmeshment at regional and global levels, and from government to multilevel
governance.”92 In response to these challenges, realism is found to be outdated and lagging; as
Held writes, “only an international or, better still, a cosmopolitan outlook can, ultimately,
accommodate itself to the political challenges of a more global era, marked by overlapping
communities of fate.”93 It is to this “cosmopolitan outlook” that we now turn.
Critical Cosmopolitanism as a Counter-Knowledge
Historically, political and social identities have been formed by the affirmation of the self
through the exclusion of the “other.”94 This exclusion has fostered the development and spread
of realism, which is enabled through its appeal to nationalist sentiments. In contrast,
cosmopolitanism is described by Beck as “a recognition of otherness, both external and internal
to any society,” without the traditional exclusion of those considered different: “in a
cosmopolitan ordering of society, differences are neither ranged in hierarchy nor dissolved into
universality, but are accepted.”95 When applied in the political realm, this acceptance of
difference can be equated to Sanders’ definition of cosmopolitanism as “world citizenship,” in
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which people are seen as citizens of the world as a whole, not as groups of people isolated from
one another by arbitrary geo-political boundaries.96 Cosmopolitanism, as Sanders explains,
stands in concrete opposition to the “partitioning of humanity into separate and conflicting
nations and cultures each demanding obeisance and allegiance from within as a necessary price
for unceasing vigilance against alien ideas and outsiders.”97 While not necessarily abolishing the
modern state as one unit of political power, cosmopolitanism rejects the notion of forming
citizen and state identity through the exclusion of the “other” and calls for more inclusionary
forms of governance.
Cosmopolitanism tasks itself with a difficult mandate: appreciating diversity while
seeking universality; or, as Sanders suggests, seeking “diversality.”98 He presses that, “in its
embrace of the global,” critical cosmopolitanism “is not to be confused with liberal universalism
and the latter’s subordination of the local and the different.”99 Its goal is to address issues at the
global level while encouraging the expression of local views in an ongoing process of
“glocalization,” Robertson’s term for a hybridization of the global and the local. In
cosmopolitanism’s effort to “differentiate itself from universalism and its totalizing impulses yet
also look for ways of making difference universally acceptable,”100 cosmopolitanism searches for
some commonality that can unite all peoples without “universalizing and totalizing” them.
The cosmopolitan ideal of recognition of difference, paired with a universal acceptance
of people’s common humanity, has existed for years.101 But somewhat paradoxically, it has most
recently been initiated in response to the mass devastation invoked by the first and second World
Wars, resulting in such institutions as the League of Nations and, later, the United Nations.102
Even with the creation of the U.N., however, cosmopolitanism’s ideals have not been adequately
addressed to date in the political sphere.103
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Cosmopolitan Democracy as an Alternative Institution
In practice, cosmopolitanism takes shape through global governance in the form of what
Held terms a “cosmopolitan democracy.”104 While critical cosmopolitanism does not call for the
abolition of the state system, it holds that governance should be multi-layered, with Archibugi
suggesting five levels: local, state, interstate, regional, and global,105 each simultaneously and
vertically present. And since claims to state sovereignty could potentially stand in the way of
facilitating a non-hierarchical relationship between these levels, Archibugi recommends
“replacing, within states as much as between states, the concept of sovereignty with that of
constitutionalism,” whereby “conflicts concerning the issue of competence arising as a result of
the different levels of governance, must be solved within the domain of a global
constitutionalism, and referred to jurisdictional bodies, which in turn must act upon the basis of
an explicit constitutional mandate.”106 Sovereignty, in this way, is once again transformed from
an absolute “given” into a system of accountability.
One of the fundamental assumptions of the cosmopolitan democracy is that while a
state’s internal democracy may “favor peace,” the mere act of being a democracy “does not
necessarily produce a virtuous foreign policy.”107 This is often the case because global forces
that are larger than the state create conditions that individual states have little control over.
Therefore, some form of democratic governance must be present at a broader level, so that those
individuals being affected by any given decision can advocate for themselves and for others.
Anti-Genocide Activists as Transformative Agents
Of course, it is unreasonable to expect a large-scale transformation from the Westphalian
state-based system to a cosmopolitan democracy within a short time frame. But as Archibugi
remarks, “It is more feasible to take little steps forward yielding tangible results” than to “see the
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creation of a global democratic system as a result of a unique and massive transformation.”108
The rapidly developing anti-genocide movement in the U.S., embodied by the Genocide
Intervention Network (GI-NET) and its student branch, STAND: A Student Anti-Genocide
Coalition,109 is taking these “little steps forward” by creating a shift in the way that the U.S.
responds to genocide. Through varied tactics, including the use of an emotional discourse of
human rights, the promotion of the R2P norm, and an emphasis on the necessity and importance
of engaging in political advocacy to end the ongoing genocide in Darfur, the AGM serves a key
role in de-structuring the realist ideology and harnessing a transformative agency that can bring
about a re-structuring of the cosmopolitan framework.
Human Rights Discourse
A coalition of “rights organizations,” the AGM consists of people who are “committed to
defending the rights of individuals regardless of their ideological affinity with the ideas of the
victim.” (p. 368/15).110 The sheer fact that the members of the AGM are working on behalf of
genocide sufferers, regardless of whether those victims’ ideologies are similar to their own, is a
testament to the saliency of the cosmopolitan outlook within the movement. Common human
rights form a basis for connectivity where other potential areas of inter-cultural overlap, such as
ideological background, may fail.
The AGM uses non-academic language that appeals to the moral senses of “everyday”
American citizens. It tends to focus on the human element of the Darfur genocide, drawing
attention to the people who have been attacked and had their lives destroyed, rather than focusing
on issues of state security and protecting national interests. GI-NET describes the Darfur
conflict in poignant terms:
The government of Sudan has sent its troops and hired militias known as the
Janjaweed ("devils on horseback") to systematically destroy the livelihoods of
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Darfurians by bombing and burning villages, looting any and all economic
resources, and committing egregious crimes by murdering, raping, and torturing
innocent civilians.111
Personal stories from genocide victims are also commonly repeated and advertised as further
means to de-center the state from the issue of genocide and re-center humans as the primary
victims and the first priorities when developing solutions to end genocidal conflicts.112
Norm Promotion
The immediate goal of many Darfur activists is strictly to end the genocide in Sudan. But
as evidenced by GI-NET’s mission statement, the AGM “envision[s] a world in which the global
community is willing and able to protect civilians from genocide and mass atrocities.”113 This
emphasis on protection is a direct reference to the R2P doctrine, which is featured and explained
prominently on the websites of both GI-NET and STAND.114 Darfur is thereby portrayed within
a larger R2P framework, which is then used to explain why certain “solutions” to the Darfur
conflict, such as non-consensual military intervention, are not appropriate. In this way, R2P
serves to not only advocate for solutions but to temper enthusiasm for inappropriate propositions.
Through its focus on R2P, the AGM promotes the notion that the U.S. has a
responsibility to anyone suffering from genocide, regardless of nationality. According to Keck
and Sikkink, this R2P norm is likely to be accepted by a large segment of the U.S.’s historically
diverse general public because of its focus on “bodily integrity and prevention of bodily harm for
vulnerable or ‘innocent’ groups.”115 Consequently, elected political officials, who are
accountable to the general public, will also tend to embrace the R2P concept, as they are more
likely to adopt norms that are accepted by the majority of U.S. citizens than they are to promote
those that are only embraced by a small percentage of voters.
Political Advocacy
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The AGM functions off the basic assumption that U.S. citizens can change the political
will of elected officials by engaging in political advocacy. While anti-genocide activists
acknowledge that the predominant mentality in Washington has proved conducive to allowing
genocide to continue unhampered, they also recognize that American constituents have not held
their legislators accountable to their (in)actions during previous genocides. This lack of a
permanent anti-genocide constituency, paired with the dominance of the realist ideology, has
directly shaped the U.S.’s policies toward genocide-stricken states and their leaders.
Members of the AGM work to influence the American political sphere, both in the shortterm through immediate policy changes116 and in the long-term through an ongoing normative
shift in the minds of both policymakers and the American populace. Their multiple methods of
activism reflect their dual understanding of why elected officials have failed to take action
against genocide thus far. Finnemore and Sikkink explain that in any given situation, the
methods used to achieve adherence to a norm will vary, depending on the norm entrepreneur’s
fundamental conception, or logic, of why people follow norms in the first place. According to
the “logic of consequences,” “actors construct and conform to norms because norms help them
get what they want.”117 Alternatively, March and Olsen hold that “actors internalize roles and
rules as scripts to which they conform, not for instrumental reasons… but because they
understand the behavior to be good, desirable, and appropriate. Habit, duty, sense of obligation
and responsibility as well as principled belief may all be powerful motivators for people and
underpin significant episodes of world politics.”118 The AGM employs various methods based
on the two different types of behavioral logic – the logic of consequences and the logic of
appropriateness – to get U.S. constituents and elected officials to adopt and act in accordance
with the R2P doctrine. Following the logic of consequences, the AGM offers elected officials
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both praise and the chance for re-election if they persistently call for the U.S. to take action
against genocide. Simultaneously, employing the logic of appropriateness, anti-genocide
activists use human rights language and the term “responsibility” to create a perception that the
R2P doctrine is “good, desirable, and appropriate.”
Conversely, the AGM causes “cognitive dissonance” in legislators by promoting the idea
that inaction on genocide is a violation of the norm of human rights and its associated
responsibility to protect people suffering from human rights violations. This “cognitive
dissonance” – a conflict between people’s understanding of “right and wrong” and their personal
failures to actually act on their moral convictions – “is aroused primarily when people notice that
their behavior leads to aversive consequences that cannot be easily rectified.” Consequently,
“State leaders conform to norms in order to avoid the disapproval aroused by norm violation and
thus to enhance national esteem (and, as a result, their own self-esteem).”119 Norm
entrepreneurs, like the AGM, “provide the information and publicity that provoke cognitive
dissonance among norm violators.”120
New Consciousness
Anti-genocide activists draw upon their unique identities as members of the American
political constituency in order to create short-term political change. In this regard, it cannot be
said that the AGM’s members truly possess the mentalities of “world citizens,” to paraphrase
Sanders.121 However, in the AGM’s longer-term struggle to promote the acceptance of the R2P
norm, in which states protect innocent civilians, regardless of their nationalities, its members are
acting from an identity that knows no political boundaries, an identity that stands in solidarity
with those suffering in Sudan and elsewhere throughout the world. By the sheer act of
participating in activism on an issue that that does not directly affect them, these activists
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effectively internalize the R2P doctrine by demonstrating that their self-perceived responsibilities
to their fellow humans transcend state borders.
Destructuring and Transforming
The AGM destructures the realist ideology by deconstructing its three fundamental
assumptions. By promoting R2P, which clearly emphasizes the importance of multilateral
decision-making, specifically in the context of the UN and regional organizations, anti-genocide
activists implicitly assume that global cooperation is both possible and necessary, thereby
helping to deconstruct the realist assumption of an anarchical system. By de-centering states
from the concept of sovereignty and re-centering humans, and by demanding that their voices be
considered in the formation of U.S. foreign policy, these activists help dismantle the view that
states are the primary actors in the political realm. And by shifting priorities from states to
humans, the AGM deconstructs realism’s dangerous belief that national security should take
precedence over human security.
In its restructuring of a cosmopolitan democracy, the AGM emphasizes the need to place
humans before state interests by promoting the R2P doctrine and the concept of “human
security.” But recognizing that states are not typically responsive to human security-based
arguments, the movement also holds that individuals should have more of a voice in the political
sphere, demanding legislators’ accountability to their constituents and emphasizing the need for
a more participatory democracy in the US, where constituents are in constant communication and
dialogue with their elected officials. While these actions are too small-scale and issue-focused to
immediately create a substantial change in the way that the international political system is
organized, they are reinventing the way that Americans perceive themselves and the U.S. and
making strides in both ending U.S. inaction on genocide and transforming the world’s perception
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of transnational responsibility.
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1
Machiavelli, Niccolo, The Prince, Trans. Luigi Ricci, Contr. Christian Gauss, London: Signet Classic, 1999,
Google Books, 3 Mar. 2008 <http://books.google.com/books?id=ZimRVieUyroC>.
2
Ronayne, Peter, Never Again?: the United States and the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide Since the
Holocaust, Rowman & Littlefield, 2001: 15, Google Books, 27 Feb. 2008 <http://books.google.com/>.
3
Ronayne, 14.
4
Ronayne, 17.
5
Ronayne, 42.
6
Kiernan, Ben, The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide Under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79, Yale
University Press, 2002: 9, Google Books, 29 Feb. 2008 <http://books.google.com/>.
7
Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime, 8.
8
For a discussion on the ways in which the Khmer Rouge’s violent campaign exhibits characteristics of genocide,
see Ronayne, 56-57.
9
Ronayne, 50.
10
Kiernan, Ben, "Conflict in Cambodia: 1945-2002," Critical Asian Studies 34 (2002): 487, 1 Mar. 2008
<http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1467271022000035893>.
11
Kiernan, Ben, “Conflict in Cambodia: 1945-2002,” 488.
12
Kiernan, Ben, “Conflict in Cambodia: 1945-2002,” 487.
13
Power, Samantha, "Bystanders to Genocide," The Atlantic Monthly Group Sept. 2001: 84-108, JSTOR, UCB
Lib., Berkeley, 27 Feb. 2008 <http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200109/power-genocide/4>. Page 84.
14
Power, 84.
15
The accuracy of calling the conflict in Darfur “genocide” is disputed internationally. The United States, however,
has officially labeled the Darfur conflict “genocide,” which is sufficient for the purposes of this paper.
16
While the number of deaths from the Darfur conflict is widely disputed, the official number cited by the United
Nations is “more than 200,000.” United Nations, Peace and Security Section, Department of Public Information,
The United Nations and Darfur Fact Sheet, Aug. 2007. 3 Mar. 2008
<http://www.un.org/News/dh/infocus/sudan/fact_sheet.pdf>.
17
Schlein, Lisa, "Sudanese Refugees Continue to Flee Attacks in West Darfur," Voice of America 26 Feb. 2008, 26
Feb. 2008 <http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-02-26-voa27.cfm>.
18
Such pieces of legislation include the Sudan Accountability and Divestment Act (S.2271) of 2007 and the Darfur
Peace and Accountability Act (S.1462) of 2006.
19
Bush, George W, Speech, Diplomatic Reception Room, White House, Washington, D.C. 29 May 2007, 26 Feb.
2008 <http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070529.html>.
20
"Thousands Flee Deadly Attacks on Three West Darfur Towns," UN News Centre 11 Feb. 2008.
21
Fowler, Jerry, "Negative Implications of the President's Signing Statement on the Sudan Accountability and
Divestment Act," Committee on Financial Services Hearing, US House of Representatives, Washington, D.C. 8 Feb.
2008, 3 Mar. 2008 <http://www.savedarfur.org/newsroom/releases>.
22
Badkhen, Anna, "Sudan Sanctions Called Inadequate," San Francisco Gate 30 May 2007, 3 Mar. 2008
<http://www.sfgate.com>.
23
"Ethiopia, Bangladesh Offer Helicopters for Darfur Hybrid Force," Sudan Tribune 6 Feb. 2008, 3 Mar. 2008
<http://www.sudantribune.com>.
24
Hays, Sharon, "Structure and Agency And the Sticky Problem of Culture," Sociological Theory 12 (1994): 96.
25
While there exist two main strands of realist theory – classical realism and neo-realism – the differences between
their core assumptions and practical implications do not have any serious impact on the U.S.’s response to the
problem of genocide; both result in a lack of US interest. For an outline on the distinctions between the two strands,
see “Contemporary mainstream approaches: neo-realism and neo-liberalism” by Steven L. Lamy, 2001.
26
Hays, 94.
27
Hays, 94.
28
Hays, 95.
29
I am not trying to create a “structural argument,” in Hays’s terms (91); I understand that “people… produce
certain forms of social structure at the same time social structures produce certain types of people” (Hays 92). My
point is that agency reshapes and perpetuates social structures more often than it fundamentally changes them.
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Charlotte Hill
30
Thucydides is typically cited as the earliest founder of realism. See Frankel, Benjamin. Roots of Realism.
Routledge: Taylor & Francis, 1997. Google Books. 27 Feb. 2008 <http://books.google.com>.
31
Gilpin, Robert, Global Political Economy: Understanding the International Economic Order, Princeton University
Press, 2001, Princeton University Press, 3 March 2008 < http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s7093.html>.
Kiernan, Ben, The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide Under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79, Yale University
Press, 2002: 9, Google Books, 29 Feb. 2008 <http://books.google.com/>.
32
While state sovereignty has recently been redefined in the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine as a responsibility
rather than a right, this definition has yet to gain popular use.
33
Bush, George W.
34
United Nations, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 9 Dec. 1948, 27 Feb. 2008
<http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/p_genoci.htm>.
35
While the word “intervene” has several negative connotations, it is used in this paper to suggest all type of
intervention, whether diplomatic, economic, or military, preferably in that order, as outlined by the International
Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty in its 2000 report, The Responsibility to Protect - SOURCE
36
The United States’ refusal to label the Rwandan conflict as “genocide,” using the term “acts of genocide” instead,
provides a clear example of this.
37
The 2003 Iraq War, along with recent military invasions of largely Muslim, oil-rich countries, has led many
scholars to highlight the potential folly of sending troops to Sudan, another predominantly Muslim, oil-rich state.
38
"Secretary Rice with Sudanese President Omar El-Bashir," 21 July 2005, U.S. Department of State, 27 Feb. 2008
<http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/pix/2005/49911.htm>.
39
Power, 90.
40
Ronayne, 4.
41
"The United States and the International Criminal Court." International Justice. 2006. Human Rights Watch. 27
Feb. 2008 <http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/icc/us.htm>.
42
Definition of human security – new concept
A clear example of this emphasis on national security is the
U.S.-Sudanese information-sharing policy on issues of terrorism. See Prendergast and Thomas-Jensen’s “Blowing
the Horn” in Foreign Affairs, March/April 2007, and “A Plan B With Teeth for Darfur” at www.enoughproject.org.
43
"Clinton Meets Rwanda Genocide Survivors," CNN 25 Mar. 1998, 27 Feb. 2008
<http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9803/25/rwanda.clinton/>.
44
Kissinger, Henry, Diplomacy, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995, 17-18.
45
Explanations of system-maintaining theory (also “problem-solving”) and of system-transforming
46
"Genocide Timeline," Committee on Conscience, 2008, US Holocaust Memorial Museum, 27 Feb. 2008
<http://www.ushmm.org/conscience/history/timeline/index.php?period=03>.
47
Even though President Clinton remarked in March 1998 that during the Rwandan genocide, he did not “fully
appreciate the depth and the speed” with which victims were attacked, evidence has recently surfaced demonstrating
that Clinton and his administration did, in fact, clearly understand this information. See Samantha Power’s
“Bystanders to Genocide” in the Atlantic Monthly, September 2001.
48
Source on China and Russia and their vetoes of UN resolutions (1706?)
49
Sztompka, Piotr, ed. Agency and Structure, Amsterdam: Gordon & Breach, 1994. 251-282. Page 272.
50
Lamy, Steven L. "Contemporary Mainstream Approaches: Neo-Realism and Neo-Liberalism." The Globalization
of World Politics: an Introduction to International Relations. Ed. John Baylis and Steve Smith. Oxford: Oxford UP,
2001. 205-217.
51
A good example is Seth Weinberger, a Political Science professor at the University of Puget Sound, who
reinforces the assumption that foreign policy should be shaped through consideration of the U.S.’s national interest
by stating, “The debate needs to be less about why Darfur is worthy of intervention, and more about why intervening
in Darfur should be understood as part of U.S. national interest” (“Recasting the Darfur Debate,
securitydilemmas.blogspot.com/2007/03/recasting-darfur-debate.html).
52
Power, 84.
53
Kristof, Nicholas D, "How to Help," On the Ground, 20 Nov. 2006, 3 Mar. 2008
<http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com>.
54
While the 1992 U.S. intervention in Somalia could be seen as an exception to the rule, President Clinton’s
subsequent decision just one year later to begin withdrawing troops after nineteen US Army Rangers were killed
could be viewed as a demonstration of his judgment that those nineteen American lives were worth more than the
350,000 Somali lives that were lost over the course of the civil war.
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55
Frazer, Jendayi E, United States, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of African Affairs, An Open Letter to the American
People: Peacekeeping Support for Darfur, 10 May 2007, 3 Mar. 2008
<http://www.state.gov/p/af/rls/rm/84613.htm>.
56
Booker, Salih, and Ann-Louise Colgan, "Africa Policy Outlook 2006," Foreign Policy in Focus (2006), 3 Mar.
2008 <http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3157>.
57
Certainly, in cases like Iraq, the U.S. has not demonstrated a keen interest in the U.N.’s opinions. However, with
Iraq, U.S. national interests were at stake, and they superseded the U.S.’s interest in following international norms.
But intervening in Darfur is not in the U.S.’s national interests, so having the U.N. support intervention (by labeling
the conflict “genocide,” supporting multilateral U.N. sanctions, etc.) would at least remove the threat of international
criticism for US policy on Darfur, rendering the U.S. more likely to take strong actions to end the conflict.
58
United Nations, Charter of the United Nations, 26 June 1945, 27 Feb. 2008.
59
Frazer.
60
Lake, Anthony, and Roger Morris, "The Human Reality of Realpolitik," Foreign Policy 4 (1971): 157-162,
JSTOR, UCB Lib., Berkeley, 3 Mar. 2008 <http://links.jstor.org>. Page 160.
61
Lake and Morris, 158-9.
62
Some initial actions it could take are imposing stronger sanctions on Sudanese government officials, severing its
terrorism information-sharing ties with the Khartoum regime, and exerting more pressure on the Chinese
government, which is complicit in the atrocities in Sudan.
63
Finnemore, Martha, and Kathryn Sikkink, p. 916, 1998.
64
Prendergast, John, Julia Spiegel, and Lisa Rogoff, 2007.
65
While the number of deaths from the Darfur conflict is widely disputed, the official number cited by the United
Nations is “more than 200,000” (United Nations, Peace and Security Section, 2007).
66
In the International Studies Quarterly, Bahman Fozouni holds “power optimization” to be “the only (i.e. a
necessary and sufficient determinant of international political behavior” (p. 480-481, 1995).
67
Prendergast, Spiegel, and Rogoff call the current anti-genocide movement “the first popular movement against a
real-time genocide since the term “genocide” was coined over half a century ago” (2007).
68
Fozouni remarks, “Few would dispute the claim that the theory of political realism, especially as articulated by
Hans J. Morgenthau nearly half a century ago, has been the nearest approximation to a reigning paradigm or, at
least, a dominant orthodoxy in the field of international politics” (p. 479, 1995).
69
The term “critical theory” refers more to a collection of theories than to one specific theory. For further
discussion, see Antonio’s work on critical theory's "heterogeneity and lack of clearly defined, widely shared, and
easily summarized set of core techniques and propositions" (p. 326, 1983).
70
For more discussion on critical theory, see Antonio’s expansion on Horkheimer’s belief that critical theory
"constructs a developing picture of society" (Horkheimer, p. 239, 1972 [1937), holding that it "exposes the
prevailing system of domination, expresses its contradictions, assesses its potential for emancipatory change, and
criticizes the system to promote that change" (Antonio, p. 331, 1983).
71
President Franklin D. Roosevelt first described the terms “freedom from fear” and “freedom from want” in his
“Four Human Freedoms,” stating that “the third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means
economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants everywhere in
the world,” and that “the fourth is freedom from fear - which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide
reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit
an act of physical aggression against any neighbor - anywhere in the world” (p. 384, 1984).
72
Morris offers examples of several such realism-based binary oppositions “that insist that male is only and always
different from female, black from white, rich from poor, west from east…” She continues to suggest that such
thinking allows for the creation and reproduction of patterns of domination, such as “in fostering the confidence
which with European nations imposed their understanding of moral identity and values upon colonised peoples.”
Morris, Pam, Realism, New York: Routledge, 2003, 32-33.
73
Foucault describes governmentality as a system of power relations in which a person’s mentality is so co-opted by
the reigning power elite that he effectively governs himself, limiting the opportunities that he makes available to
himself to those that are deemed appropriate by the people in power (Foucault, 1979).
74
According to Antonio, “Immanent critique attacks social structure from the perspective of its own legitimations by
criticizing ideology from the perspective of history and then contrasting emancipatory aspects of ideological claims
with social reality” (p. 331, 1983).
75
Soros, p. 47, 1997.
76
Soros, p. 47, 1997.
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77
A key theorist who helped lay the foundation for critical theory’s deconstruction of realist tenets is Justin
Rosenberg. See Chapter 1 of his Empire of Civil Society: A Critique of the Realist Theory of International
Relations, 1994.
78
Space does not allow thorough discussion of numerous other enablers, such as the “record of atrocities in vicious
civil wars of the 1990s” that have “served to strengthen pressures for cosmopolitan law and an increasing role for
UN intervention” (Carter, p. 200, 2001).
79
United Nations, UN Development Programme, p. 1, 1994.
80
Ibid., p. 3.
81
United Nations, Commission on Human Security, p. 1, 1993.
82
Evans, Gareth, and Mohamed Sahnoun, p. VIII, 2001.
83
Ibid., p. XI.
84
Ibid., p. 17.
85
Finnemore, Martha, and Kathryn Sikkink, p. 891, 1998.
86
Sztompka uses the term “social becoming” to reference the “mutual feedback loops” present in the current “social
reality,” in which “potentialities… are shaped by earlier conduct… themselves produced by actualizations.” In this
sense, I use the term “becoming” to refer to the constant and continuous evolution of the notion of state sovereignty,
in which, to quote Sztompka again, “there is an incessant back-and-forth oscillation between what is possible and
what actually occurs, and it extends in time” (p. 274, 1994).
87
The adoption of the R2P norm at the UN General Assembly could be a seen as a “superficial norm cascade,” in
which the majority of state actors have superficially adopted the norm but failed to implement it in practice. As of
yet, R2P has failed to emerge as a truly legal norm with built-in systems of accountability.
88
While, as Held notes, “there is nothing new about globalization,” it is important to recognize that the most recent
phase of globalization is marked by a “particular confluence of change across human activities,” characterized by
new information-communication technologies (ICTs) that are “creating a world in which the extensive reach of
human relations and networks is matched by its relative high intensity, high velocity and high impact propensity
across many facets of social life” (p. 466, 2003).
89
In support of this hypothesis, Meyer and Tarrow find that "with increased travel, communication, and education,
the potential networks of activism have broadened beyond the state” (p. 5, 1997).
90
As Sanders explains, the “de-territorialization of social space, pervasive patterns of transnational mobility, and the
condition of enforced proximity that characterize globalization serve as foundational starting points for the cultural
cosmopolitans, as they do for their political counterparts” (p. 3, forthcoming 2008).
91
Held, p. 466, 2003.
92
Ibid., p. 466-468.
93
Ibid., p. 469.
94
This exclusion of the “other” can be clearly seen in the formation of the identities of the “West” and the “Rest,”
where “the world is first divided, symbolically, into good-bad, us-them, attractive-disgusting, civilized-uncivilized,
the West-the Rest,” and this discursive split is used to both isolate “the Rest” and shape the identity of “the West”
(Hall, p. 216, 1996).
95
Beck, p. 438, 2004.
96
Sanders, p. 1, forthcoming 2008.
97
Ibid., p. 1.
98
Sanders holds that unlike traditional forms of liberal cosmopolitanism, otherwise called liberal universalism, “the
[critical] cosmopolitan disposition is poised between global and local, universality and diversity - a syncretic or
hybrid defiance of antithetical and antagonistic binary oppositions.” This hybrid of diversity and universality is
what he ultimately terms “diversality” (p. 7-8, forthcoming 2008).
99
Ibid., p. 7.
100
Beck, p. 438, 2004.
101
Sanders writes that "The idea of cosmopolitanism... derives from Greco-Roman antiquity beginning with the
Cynics in the fourth century BCE and further elaborated in subsequent centuries by Stoic philosophers and
statesmen." (p. 1, forthcoming 2008)
102
The League of Nations was created in the aftermath of the Great War to foster inter-state cooperation with the
primary goal of preventing future wars - a goal that was promptly defeated with the advent of World War II. When
that war ended with Japan's surrender in 1945, cosmopolitan ideals were once again promoted, as "the principles of
universal security, human rights, and economic development as the birthright of all humankind, were conceptualized
within a cosmopolitan framework of common cause and multilateral cooperation, if only for a brief historical
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moment"; soon after the United Nations was created to once again take up the duty of preventing such atrocities
from occurring again, the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union began (Sanders, p. 4, forthcoming 2008).
103
While the U.N. is sometimes referred to as a cosmopolitan institution, I hold that it fails to fully grasp or embrace
critical cosmopolitanism’s acceptance of diversity, which must be addressed for a true cosmopolitan democracy to
take shape.
104
The term “global governance” is widely used, so to avoid misinterpretation, I use the term “cosmopolitan
democracy” instead. Democracy, in this sense, should “be conceptualized as a process, rather than as a set of norms
and procedures,” as suggested by Archibugi (p. 439, 2004).
105
Archibugi claims it is "crucial" to "rethink the concept of democracy at all levels, from the local to the global” (p.
465, 2004). At the local level, she calls for the strengthening "local network of democratic institutions, associations,
and movements," including trans-national IGOs and NGOs; at the state level, the internal acknowledgement and
appreciation of diversity paired with the external act of “actively respecting shared norms” held with other states; at
the interstate level, the democratization of the UN and other IGOs; at the regional level, the creation and
strengthening of organizations with state and community representatives from specific regions (such as the EU and
the AU); and at the global level, the promotion of democratic forms of global representation, like a democratized
UN or, possibly, a democratic NGO with some political authority (p. 466-452).
106
Archibugi, p. 452, 2004.
107
Ibid., p. 439.
108
Ibid., p. 466.
109
As opposed to those organizations strictly functioning to end the genocide in Darfur, GI-Net and STAND have a
broader goal of preventing and ending both present and future genocides. See STAND’s “Areas of Conflict” page at
http://standnow.org/learn/other_conflicts for more information.
110
Keck and Sikkink make the distinction between “rights organizations” like the AGM and “solidarity
organizations,” which “base their appeals on common ideological commitments—the notion that those being
tortured or killed were defending a cause shared with the activists” (p. 15, 1998).
111
“Educate: Darfur,” 2008.
112
Ibid. See particularly the “Story of Halima Abdul Kalima.”
113
“About Us,” 2008.
114
“The Responsibility to Protect,” 2008. More information on R2P’s legal definition and background, in addition
to its six criteria for military intervention and links to additional websites, are available on GI-Net’s website at
http://genocideintervention.net/educate/r2p. STAND also offers its constituency more information on R2P at
www.standnow.org/educate/r2p.
115
Finnemore and Sikkink, p. 907, 1998. Although specifically referencing trans-boundary norm promotion,
Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink suggest that any norm involving preventing bodily harm to vulnerable
populations will “resonate with basic ideas of human dignity common to most cultures,” leading it to be
“particularly effective transnationally and cross-culturally” (p. 907).
116
Thus far, the AGM has made significant short-term progress in ending the genocide in Darfur. The ENOUGH
Project’s December 2007 report, “Don’t Quit Now: Bringing the Darfur Genocide to an End,” cites numerous
“activist success stories,” including the naming of a U.S. Special Envoy for Sudan, the passing of a U.N. Security
Council resolution authorizing a hybrid U.N./A.U. peacekeeping force in Darfur (which was a direct result of U.S.
lobbying at Security Council meetings), and the expansion of U.S. sanctions on the Sudanese government
(Prendergast, John, Julia Spiegel, and Lisa Rogoff, 2007). See the report for a much more comprehensive list of
“activist success stories.”
117
Ibid., p. 912.
118
Ibid.
119
Finnemore and Sikkink report that “in the area of human rights a body of empirical research is emerging that
suggests that some state leaders care deeply about their international image as human rights violators and make
significant policy changes in order to change that image” (p. 904, 1998).
120
Ibid.
121
Sanders, p. 1, forthcoming 2008.
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