Making 'Never Again' more than a cliche

By Seth Mandel

April 25, 2008

If we are to heed the lessons of history, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's genocidal aims -- and the foiling thereof -- should be taken seriously, according to one of the world's leading experts on the prevention of mass violence.

"The history of these things is: a guy who talks about genocide before he has full power, when he gets full power, there's a very high probability he'll do the genocide," Dr. David A. Hamburg told The Jewish State after a recent lecture. "And this guy would do it with nuclear weapons."

Hamburg, president emeritus of the Carnegie Corporation, founder of the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, former member of the United States Defense Policy Board, and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal, recently simultaneously chaired a United Nations committee and European Union committee on the prevention of genocide.

Hamburg spoke April 15 at the Consulate General of Hungary in N.Y., at an event organized by the Foreign Policy Association. The speech also served as a book launch for his new publication, "Preventing Genocide: Practical Steps toward Early Detection and Effective Action," to be released April 30.

At a reception following the event, Hamburg told The Jewish State that it must be impressed upon the Iranian people that if Ahmadinejad attacked Israel with weapons of mass destruction, it would be Iran that would be wiped off the map.

"The fact is, if he did that, their country would be destroyed, it wouldn't be just one little place, the retaliation would be a massive retaliation, and not just by Israel, it would be half a dozen countries," Hamburg said. "Nobody would tolerate that. So, I think the vast majority of Iranians don't want that. But I don't think the vast majority of Germans initially wanted a destructive World War II and a Holocaust, but they slid into it."

In his keynote speech, Hamburg outlined both the challenges of preventing genocide and the most effective means of prevention.

He began with the proper mindset for confronting the issue.

"There is a widely accepted belief among political leaders that genocide cannot be detected until the last minute, and then the only recourse is a large-scale military response that no country or organization is willing to undertake," Hamburg said. "That's so cockeyed that it's almost beyond imagination."

In fact, Hamburg said, there are early warning signs, as well as conditions favorable to mass violence that pave the way for genocide.

"Mass violence tends to occur in countries or in regions that are in trouble and in need of international help," he said. "The trouble usually combines political, social, cultural, psychological, and economic components -- a situation that exacerbates intergroup tensions, and can be exploited by ruthless leaders who gain and consolidate power through incitement to violence against vulnerable scapegoats."

Hamburg offered what he called "Hamburg's Nine Commandments" for prevention:

• Organize proactive help for countries in trouble
• Use ample warning time to act before blood flows
• Formulate and disseminate specific response options and contingency plans to deal with early warning signals
• Develop any tools, strategies, and practices to prevent mass violence
• Clarify what various international organizations can use those tools, strategies, and practices most effectively, with special attention to the established democracies
• Organize a comprehensive program of preventing mass violence through cooperation of organizations that share mechanisms for ongoing conflict resolution below the threshold of mass violence, with models for assisting democratic socioeconomic development that meets basic human needs
• Establish two cooperating international centers for the prevention of genocide, with links to other organizations that offer complimentary strengths and cooperative opportunities
• Expand those links in the next one or two decades to create a worldwide network of cooperating entities for preventing mass violence
• Build a constituency for prevention, especially in democratic countries, through comprehensive public education on the necessity and feasibility of prevention

Hamburg expounded on the conditions in which mass violence is bred. Genocides arise, he said, from organized state policy, and require steady and increasing cooperation from the people, as well as the "machinery of the state": the dominant political party, military, paramilitary forces, and police, as well as respected professionals.

He then went into more detail on what he called the "pillars of prevention." They are ambitious, difficult, and long-term, he said.

"But these are the things that can actually be done, and probably must be done, if we're ever going to come to the day when 'never again' will be more than a cliché or a bumper sticker, tragic as it is," Hamburg said.

International organizations involved in the peacekeeping and violence-prevention must reject wishful thinking and get their facts straight from multiple credible sources, he said, and those organizations must guard against would-be spoilers.

As fairly elected politicians are less likely to take the first steps toward genocide, he said, democracy should be established where it is not, and cultivated where its seeds have already been planted.

"With all of its limitations, and we've seen some close-up in recent years, democracy is still very important in preventing mass violence, including genocide," Hamburg said. "Aggression occurs most readily in authoritarian states."

That entails education about how democracy works, Hamburg said, not just imposing democracy, because there is a widespread notion "that democracy has something to do with opportunity and freedom, lack of torture... but how it actually works is by no means understood."

A vital partner in democratic political development, he said, is economic development. Knowledge, skills, freedom, and health all must be made available to a population in danger of supporting or experiencing mass violence.

"Worldwide socioeconomic development is humanity's best hope for producing the conditions that are unfavorable to mass violence," Hamburg said. "And it's a much more practical goal than it was only a few decades ago."

Education and the protection of human rights are also important, though they are often derided as "hot air" issues, he said.

Another pillar of prevention is stopping the spread and usage of lethal weapons. Machine guns, mortars, and rockets kill millions every year, he said, yet they're not classified as weapons of mass destruction.

Such weapons are being transferred from China to the genocidal Janjaweed militias in the Darfur region of Sudan, Hamburg said, with no consequences.

And the emergence of jihadist suicide warfare and nuclear proliferation has erased the line between those who were safe and those that could rely upon the Cold War-era theory of mutually assured destruction to protect them, he said.

"Everybody has to be scared now," Hamburg said. "There is simply no country, or no region, that is exempt from the danger of nuclear weapons, especially in the hands of terrorists, but also in the hands of some states."

The combination of nuclear weapons and martyrs looking for paradise, he said, could create "instant genocide."

Nuclear nonproliferation must be pursued as well, he said. Engineers have made valuable contributions to the efforts to contain landmines, and they could do the same with nukes. But action, he said, is what's needed.

"There's no use having exhortation about it," Hamburg said. "We've had lots of exhortation and it hasn't led anywhere. You have to face up to how difficult it is, with all the technical obstacles, with all the political obstacles, and to analyze to the best of our knowledge how it might be overcome."

Hamburg said there is reason to be serious about this, but no reason to be despondent or cynical. Just in his lifetime, he said, we have seen the end of colonialism and imperialism; unprecedented advances in health, including vast reduction in poverty; the success of the U.S. civil rights movement, and its effects on human rights movements around the world; the end of the Cold War and apartheid; the end of fascist totalitarianism; and the emergence of democracy in many corners of the world.

"You may think this is utopian; it's certainly very ambitious, it's certainly long term, it's certainly comprehensive, but I don't think it's utopian," Hamburg said. "We see in the decline of all these evils strong expressions of emerging human decency, but also a need for constant vigilance to mobilize human capacity for fully learning to live together in personal dignity and shared humanity."