CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

watching as lightly armed drunken thugs hacked women and children to death
….
….within a week of the genocide, 1,500 well-trained French, Italian and
Belgian troops, with several hundred US Marines standing by in Burundi, flew
into Kigali to evacuate expatriates and a few Rwandans, then left again at
once. 72
Neither the United States nor any other power with the capability to intervene
effectively in Rwanda, was prepared to do so. The lack of political will to shoulder the
challenges, costs and risks associated with intervention in Rwanda, are well described –
together with the disastrous consequences of such lack of will – by the UN mission’s
commander, Lt Gen Romeo Dallaire in his harrowing book, Shake Hands with the
Devil; the Failure of Humanity in Rwanda. This, for example from the introduction:
What I have come to realize as the root of it all, however, is the fundamental
indifference of the world community to the plight of seven to eight million black
Africans in a tiny community that had no strategic or resource value to any
world power. An overpopulated little country that turned in on itself and
destroyed its own people, as the world watched and yet could not manage to find
the political will to intervene. 73
At the time of writing (mid- 2007) two things are becoming clear: that when it comes to
a war where national interests are seen to be at stake (rightly or wrongly) the United
States having once stood accused of casualty aversion, has considerable tolerance to
losses; and that that tolerance is now running out. With both houses of Congress in
Democrat control, considerable pressure is being placed on the Administration to begin
a withdrawal from Iraq. Should that lead to an exit-strategy that leaves Iraq in worse
circumstances than those prevailing ante-bellum, then the jus ad bellum, already widely
criticised, will look emptier still. For as the position of then Secretary of State Colin
Powell was paraphrased by an aide (quoting an oft used notice in US shops) ‘if you
break it; you own it!’ 74
Whilst the desire to minimise the losses (and costs) to ones own side in conflict is
entirely natural and indeed desirable, there must remain a concern that this can lead to
disproportionate and even indiscriminate losses on the other side or to the civilian
population and that such breach of jus in bello tenets can, especially in humanitarian
interventions, also undermine the stated jus ad bellum. In general war between two or
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