Interview: Lt. Gen. Roméo Dallaire

The general who tried to stop the Rwandan genocide warns FP that the line has blurred between peacekeeping and counterinsurgency. It's a cautionary tale for the age of Afghanistan and Iraq. Are the world's militaries up to the task?

BY ELIZABETH DICKINSON | SEPTEMBER 21, 2009

There are few who can say they have been as close to stopping genocide as retired Lt. Gen Roméo Dallaire, the Canadian commander of the United Nations peacekeeping forces in Rwanda in 1994. Long before the killing began, Dallaire sounded a warning call. Then, he begged for reinforcements and a mandate to use force -- neither of which he got -- as his troops fatefully watched hundreds of thousands of Rwandans slaughtered. "You should spit in my face," says the character based on Dallaire in the 2004 film Hotel Rwanda. "[The West is] not going to stop the slaughter." The world did little then, and so in real life, Dallaire has spent much of his last decade and a half reminding the world not to let the same happen again.

Now more than ever, Dallaire tells Foreign Policy's Elizabeth Dickinson, such distant conflicts should strike world leaders as imminently close. Where unrest simmers, so does the possibility for terrorist havens, global pandemics, and massive human suffering. Preventing and abating those conflicts is not a matter of humanitarianism alone; it's a matter of realpolitik. In a world where no contagion stays local for long, Dallaire challenges leaders to weigh the consequences of conflict accordingly. That calls for a new kind of military force -- one that blurs the distinctions between traditional military efforts, counterinsurgency, and even peacekeeping. In short, there is no fine line between Rwanda and Afghanistan, only a plethora of civilian lives.

Foreign Policy: You're releasing a report today about galvanizing political will toward intervention in crisis situations. What's the secret to getting real action?

Roméo Dallaire: In this era, which began in the 1990s but is much more acute now, we are now significantly at risk -- in terms of our health and security -- from catastrophes that happen in foreign lands. We simply can't use the parameters of whether there is a moral reason for intervention; [this] has not worked. [Politicians] can bring [the reasons for intervention] a lot closer to home. The influence of catastrophic failure in these [troubled] states can reach your borders and your national security. In fact, the well-being of your nation is now linked to places that seemed far away before, [because] now, they are just next door. [The goal is to determine] how we can make the leaders much more aware of the fact that they are going to be held accountable [for responding to conflicts elsewhere], because there are people in their own countries who are going to ultimately suffer.

FP: What kind of response have you received from governments? Do you think that the administration of Barack Obama, in particular, is poised to step up in tough cases?

RD: Obama sees a global scenario in which all of humanity is interfacing. He acknowledges that some regions are putting the rest of humanity at risk. So we think that there's going to be a more interested reading, at least, of looking at intervention -- not only in a reactive way but in a preventative way. That's the "soft power" side -- international development, focusing on preventing failing states from actually going south.

It is my personal position that the NGO community, if it gets rid of some of the fringe gang and coalesces more and more, instead of being so interfighting at times, will become the voice of humanity with a massive impact on foreign policy and public opinion.

Lt. Gen Roméo Dallaire was head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Rwanda in 1994. He is currently a senator in the Canadian Parliament and codirector of the Will to Intervene project at the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, which today launched its report, "Mobilizing the Will to Intervene."

Elizabeth Dickinson is an assistant editor at FP.

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