Alessandra Nisch
Putin’s Wars: Testing Boyd’s Strategy of ...

President Putin made three foundational assumptions in launching his war against Ukraine that should have been correct but were not. First, Putin assumed the invasion of Ukraine would be a quick and easy fight. Second, he assumed the world would denounce the invasion but tacitly allow it. Third, Putin assumed the war would deter NATO expansion.

Putin’s Wars: Testing Boyd’s Strategy of Applied Friction

Rwanda

#Reviewing From Hope to Horror

#Reviewing From Hope to Horror

Rwanda in the early 1990s was going through a transition to democracy that obligated its society to resolve decades old disputes between two native ethnic groups, the Hutu and the Tutsi. A U.S. diplomatic team assisted in negotiations that resulted in the Arusha Accords, outlining a provisional government for the transition that included a power sharing agreement. Without a way to enforce the accords, the U.S. diplomatic team struggled to resolve embittered ethic differences so that a viable peace could be maintained, and the growing instability deteriorated into the genocide of 1994. From Hope to Horror is the detailing of the events that led to the atrocities of the Rwandan genocide written by Joyce Leader, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Rwanda from 1991-1994.

The Twilight Between Knowing and Not Knowing: US Recognition of Genocide

The Twilight Between Knowing and Not Knowing: US Recognition of Genocide

Historians, novelists, journalists, and filmmakers continue to examine the legacy of the Holocaust to draw lessons for the present generation. In the same way, it is important that we continue to examine the implications of the 1994 Rwandan genocide in order to draw out its lessons for the international system going forward.[36] Let us hope that David Kilgour (ex-Secretary of State for Africa) is wrong when he states, ‘What we seem to have learned about Rwanda is that we have learned nothing about Rwanda’.

The Twilight Between Knowing and Not Knowing: The United Nations and International Apathy

The Twilight Between Knowing and Not Knowing: The United Nations and International Apathy

The UN knew its response to the warnings about Rwanda was inadequate. It was afraid of another Somalia, not about the potential for genocide in Rwanda. Its response was shaped by what it believed the five permanent members of the UNSC would support rather than an objective assessment of what the situation required. This meant UN staff began to deny their own responsibility and capacity to act. Indeed, the UN failed at all levels to understand what was taking place; this allowed it to keep up the pretence of knowing nothing, while doing even less.

The Twilight Between Knowing and Not Knowing

The Twilight Between Knowing and Not Knowing

In late 2016 the United Nations Special Adviser for the prevention of genocide warned the international community that potential existed for ethnically fueled violence being perpetrated in South Sudan ‘to spiral into genocide’. In parallel, the #Neveragain social media campaign sought to link a perceived lack of international empathy for the plight of refugees, and increasingly restrictive border controls, with post-Second World War international commitments to never again allow genocide to occur. Indeed, even here at The Strategy Bridge there has been increased interest in seeking to understand the political calculus of mass murder and how it might explain the actions of the Islamic State. Yet for all this discussion, it appears that interested observers are actually no closer to understanding how to recognise if and why genocide is, or is not, occurring. This confusion stems from the fact that the actual recognition of genocide is inherently difficult. It is this difficulty that will be examined here, through the prism of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.