Shades of Complicity: Towards a Typology of Transnational Crimes against Humanity
Peter Stoett
My title is immediately puzzling, perhaps, since this volume takes the more concise terms ‘genocide’ and ‘war crimes’ as central themes, and because of the inclusion of that rather imprecise word, ‘transnational.’ But in an effort to avoid the definitional debates so often surrounding genocide analyses, and to embrace without conceit all of the instances of violence that form the empirical basis for this volume, I opt to use the much more encompassing crimes against humanity, which I apply to mass human rights violations in or out of ‘wartime.’1 Further, since our central meeting point is Western complicity, I include the adjective transnational to suggest that we are dealing, ultimately, with the impact and guilt of actors and structures external to the immediate vicinity of atrocity, whether they be distanced by space and time, or are purposeful visitors. It would be unnecessarily limiting to discuss an interstate context only, for the inclusion of nonstate actors, and of the ‘transnational harm’ of which they are capable (Linklater, 1999: 474–5), is central to international justice.
Mass murder and/or genocide are, of course, the principal and most outrageous crimes against humanity, and there are others, such as torture and/or systemic rape campaigns, that elicit similar repugnance. Some nation-building processes, at certain times, have involved these policies – whether or not we suggest they were also intrinsic to the prevalent ideologies at the time. Separating atrocious policies for analysis is viewed as unnecessarily reductionist by some, and as integral to the legal pursuit of justice to others. Undeniably, it opens the door to an extensive discussion of what meaning we ascribe to such terminology. But I suspect this is not the space for rehashed arguments over meaning, my own exhausted patience for such debates aside. Rather, we seek here to open a much-needed discussion of complicity in crimes against humanity, a topic often under-analyzed, and a research agenda that receives comparatively little attention in literature on massive human rights violations.
This dearth reflects an unwillingness to examine critically the foreign policies of Western states, and a conscious effort to avoid accusations of engaging in conspiracy theorizing. However, it is essential to the broader effort of promoting human rights and the avoidance of crimes against humanity that it be given due attention. Beyond the extended debate between universalism and cultural relativism – a debate often framed on a false dichotomy – one of the principal complaints leveled against the formal human rights approach emanating from the West is that it is pervaded by hypocrisy. Open discussions of Western complicity can sustain a more genuine and reflective debate, even if they open terrible wounds in the process. There is, to be sure, an element of anger in the analysis of Western involvement in atrocities that have disfigured the development of many peoples and states, and reparations movements have sought material recompense for past actions. But ending the culture of impunity is a forward-looking enterprise. It is one fraught with analytic dilemmas, however; and, beyond the demand that some form of intentionality can be discovered, we lack a clear typology of complicity.
Lest I be accused of generating false expectations, I should state immediately that this chapter will not provide a clear typology, because to do so would require acrobatic feats of the imagination. Precise, mutually exclusive, categories will elude us, and I seek only to furnish several useful generalizations.
Complicity as a theme
Curiously, despite repeated cases of Western complicity, only limited formal efforts have been made to conceptualize compliance in crimes against humanity, especially in the mainstream international relations literature. I will return to this disturbing silence in my conclusion. However, it would be remiss to argue that such efforts have been absent from genocide studies, a field where, it would seem, they are a more natural fit. This results, perhaps, from efforts to ascertain the extent of public participation in the Holocaust, and related debates about the extent of civilian knowledge and the failure of the Allies to reroute part of their war effort towards halting the Final Solution. The anguished effort to understand the collective and individual mentality of the ‘bystander’ to large-scale atrocity is an older theme, but it reached new heights of academic interest with the Holocaust, owing to the links between atrocity and normality (see Horwitz, 2000; Goldhagen, 1996).
There are at least two methods by which we can arrive at a typology of complicity in crimes against humanity. One the one hand, we can struggle with the question of intentionality, mirroring the more specific debate that surfaced with regard to the Holocaust. Here we are concerned with the ongoing ontological debate concerning agents and structures: can we ascribe intention to individual actors, or are crimes against humanity the consequence of structural demands translated into psychotic behavior? In the case of the Holocaust, the intentionalists emphasize the anti-Semitic motives of Hitler himself at the apex of Nazism (see Evans, 1989, for discussion). In contrast, the functionalist school sees a largely unsystematic policy unfolding in the wake of bureaucratic competition to implement the Final Solution (see Burrin, 1994).2 An uneasy compromise can be reached with Frank Chalk’s reminder that ‘systemic variables facilitate genocide, but it is people who kill’ (1994: 56).
This debate has preoccupied international relations theorists as well, but they have yet to apply it to the question of complicity in crimes against humanity committed ‘abroad.’ Alexander Wendt has modified his social constructivist views by adopting the term ‘supervenience,’ referring to a ‘nonreductive relationship of dependency [between structure and agent], in which properties at one level are fixed or constituted by those at another, but are not reducible to them’ (1996: 49). Unless one denies this compromise, it is indeed difficult to cast a typological mold based on intentionality or structure as the central organizing theme. While it would be plausible to argue that some theories about political violence favor structure over agency, it is equally demonstrable that political theorists such as Foucault (1977) reject such dichotomies and stress the interrelationships between the two. We will return to this theme in the discussion of the globalization thesis near the end of this chapter, but we put it aside for now.
The second approach, adopted here, emphasizes distance as the central organizing concept. This can be done through both time and space, or, in more structural and constructivist explanations, as a collapse of time and space producing a historicized moment. Though the measurement of either time or space is perhaps best left to physicists, we can categorize acts of complicity with reference to the distance between the accomplice and the atrocity committed. This allows us to categorize cases where contributions to crimes against humanity are direct, indirect, in the past, and in the present. In some cases criminality may be alleged, but in others the distance involved will preclude such a charge. (However, these cases leave open the route toward reparation payments and other forms of institutional redress.)
If this sounds vague, it is. More precise attempts at defining complicity leave us with equal room for interpretation, however. For example, Israel Charny establishes a subcategory for ‘Accomplices’ in his broader effort to establish a generic definition of genocide. These are described as: ‘Persons, institutions, companies, or governments who knowingly or negligently assist individuals, organisations, or governments who are known murderers or potential murderers to gain access to mega-weapons of destruction, or otherwise to organise and execute a plan of mass murders.’ Further, if this exhaustive list is deemed insufficient, one can establish first-, second-, or third-degree complicity in genocide by evaluating the extent of premeditation, totality or singlemindedness of purpose, resoluteness to execute policy, efforts to overcome resistance, devotion to bar escape of victims, and persecutory cruelty (Charny, 1994: 89). The line between assisting and committing the act remains unclear, and the degree-of-complicity typology poses insurmountable obstacles for the kind of information-gathering necessary to operationalize formal criminal investigations, leaving aside the ethical and judicial dilemmas associated with a definition that includes both ‘potential murderers’ and ‘resoluteness to execute policy.’ Charny does, however, offer a path toward the transnational understanding that I argue is necessary, including the role of non-state actors, and his framework does take us beyond the problematic inclusion of all acts of war.
I now proceed to discuss the categories of complicity that may help to facilitate a discussion of the responsibility for, and obligations of, external actors involved in crimes against humanity. These are arranged to reflect degrees of distance from the acts themselves. Resonant complicity rises from historical abuses, distant in time but still present in implication. Indifference and selective intervention refer to ethical claims that, even when physical proximity to the acts existed, actors neglected their obligation to intervene to stop them. Another category is most useful for describing material contributions, by way of technical and financial assistance or collusion. And the shortest distance, in time and space, is of course reserved for the category of direct participation, when external actors have pulled triggers, dropped bombs, and performed other acts of murder. In conceptual terms, this category is the least interesting, and will receive short shrift here; but it is certainly well represented in other chapters in this volume.
A final category, which does not depend on a scale of distance and assumes a long-term process as well as normative proximity to structural violence, opens the debate about whether we should declare globalization as a destructive process. I argue that this is less valuable as a category than as an area for heuristic discussion. Finally, I turn the question away from complicity and toward obligations, briefly introducing the themes of intervention and reparations.
Inayatullah and Blaney, based on a prior assessment by Todorov, write of the Spanish explorer Cortés and the ‘unquestioned sense of superiority that limits his understanding of the other and permits their destruction’ (Inayatullah and Blaney, 1996: 75; Todorov, 1984; for a similar treatment of contact between the British and Indians, see Nandy, 1983). The conditions for eliminationist polices are established with an ontological basis, and such expansionist and imperialistic thinking resonates well into the contemporary era. Charny defines genocide in the course of colonization or consolidation of power as something that is ‘undertaken or even allowed in the course of or incidental to the purposes of achieving a goal of colonisation or development of a territory belonging to an indigenous people, or any other consolidation of political or economic power through mass killing of those perceived to be standing in the way’ (1994: 80). The last words are the most suggestive; their resonance is heard in the reparations debates of today.
I do not intend here to suggest that the ethnocidal destruction of indigenous peoples is not currently a problem. On the contrary, such destruction continues with alarming speed; Helen Fein refers to it as developmental genocide (1990: 30, 82–83), a theme to which I return in the section on globalization below. The case of the Yanomami of Brazil and Venezuela is especially striking. Between 1987 and 1991, roughly 12 to 13 per cent of the population was lost, due primarily to predatory mining practices on traditional lands (American Anthropological Association, 1991). But this can be related to a broader historical practice of conquering the Amazon and its people. Similarly, the contemporary plight of aboriginals in Australia and North America, Russia, and elsewhere, can be linked to colonial policies which resonate in today’s understanding of their condition.
It is of course more contentious to argue, as does Ward Churchill, that such policies are best labeled genocidal. Churchill’s work may be seen a double indictment: he takes some genocide scholars to task for promoting the refrain of so-called Holocaust uniqueness, and condemns recent policies towards North American First Nations (1997). As usual, the application of the term ‘genocide’ raises some eyebrows. As Moses writes in the case of Australia’s Aborigines:
the difficulty in applying the UN definition of genocide to colonial cases of mass death rests on the fact that most of the indigenous fatalities were not usually the direct consequence of an intended policy of extermination. Disease, malnutrition, alcohol, a decreased birth-rate, and increased intertribal warfare accounted, in the main, for the catastrophic decline in the Aboriginal population in colonial Australia. (2000: 90)
Similarly, Bartrop (1997) does not find the destruction of the Powhatans of Virginia to be a case of genocide. Chalk and Jonassohn insist on the phrase ‘intentional physical destruction’; cultural suppression may be ethnocide, but is not genocide (1990: 23).
Moses does conclude, however, that European policies and attitudes evolved in an ‘exterminatory direction’ and, in an equation similar to the Wendtian understanding of supervenience outlined above, ‘the structure of the process became consciously incarnated in its agents, and this is the moment when we can observe the development of the specific genocidal intention that satisfies the UN definition’ (2000: 92). Mark Levene describes pre-genocidal policies ‘creeping’ up to the more robust variety (1999a). Russell Thornton’s book American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History since 1492 provides a quantitative assessment of the native American population collapse following first contact, and the recent resurgence of that same population. He argues that, ‘while warfare and genocide were not very significant overall in the American Indian population decline, they were important causes of decline for particular tribes. Some American Indian peoples were even brought to the point of extinction by warfare and genocide, or perhaps it is more accurate to say, by genocide in the name of warfare’ (1987: 47). David Stannard, in his book American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World, concludes that ‘firestorms of microbial pestilence and purposeful genocide began laying waste the American natives’ almost immediately following first contact with Europeans. The two operated in an interdependent dynamic, within the overarching context of a European/Christian racist ideology, and this trend is no relic: ‘The murder and destruction continue, with the aid of and assistance of the United States…. And many of the detailed accounts from contemporary observers read much like those recorded by the conquistadors’ chroniclers nearly 500 years earlier’ (Stannard, 1992: xiii; see also Jonas, 1991).
Elsewhere, Levene (1999b) links genocide to a crisis-mode of nation-building, while Astourian (1999) connects the drive toward modern Turkish statehood with a racist nationalism, and Barta (1987) contends that Australians live in objective ‘relations of genocide’ with Aborigines: European settlement sealed the fate of those who previously occupied land taken for pastoral purposes. The last-mentioned case has, perhaps, led to the most blatant form of official denial, with the possible exception of the Armenian massacres. The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission’s 1997 Bringing Them Home report alleged that the forcible removal of 100,000 children of mixed Aboriginal and white descent between 1910 and 1970 constituted a case of genocide, according to Article II(e) of the United Nations Genocide Convention (Wilson, 1997). The Australian government flatly rejected this condemnation, though a modest compensation package was proffered (see Innes, 2001; Reynolds, 2001) In Canada, the Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Issues (Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, 1996) has acknowledged past governments’ policies of forced assimilation, producing some measure of transparency in dealing with cases still ongoing (Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, n.d.).
This category of complicity is receiving increasing attention. Mark Cocker provides one of the more comprehensive accounts in Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold: Europe’s Conflict with Tribal Peoples. He deploys several case studies, including the Spanish conquest of Mexico, the British treatment of Tasmanian Aborigines, Euro-American dispossession of the Apaches, and the German annihilation of the Herero and Nama in South West Africa (see also Gewald’s chapter in this volume). Technological superiority facilitated eliminationist policies, in both the material and ideational sense: ‘[t]echnological inferiority equaled moral inferiority and, at times, moral worthlessness’ (1998: 364). Adam Hochschild’s critically acclaimed King Leopold’s Ghost (1999) contributes further to an appreciation of the ruthless policies of colonial expansion in southern Africa. No doubt more top-quality work on this theme will emerge as more historians become engaged with the issues. The resonance of historical injustice, meanwhile, will continue to galvanize activists as well.
Indifference and selective intervention
This category follows the resonant complicity category in terms of chronological distance only, and by its very nature is the most difficult category to define. The core suggestion here is that the West is often guilty by negligence: that by maintaining indifference as a policy preference, and limiting the cases where the West intervenes to stop crimes against humanity, it becomes complicit in the acts of violence themselves. Thus such a category is generally presupposed by a counterfactual claim that, had the West intervened and sent sufficient troops or aid, it would have made a substantial and positive difference to the genocidal outcome. Surprisingly, and despite the traditional fixation on national-interest concerns, this category has emerged as a viable one due largely to analyses and rhetorical treatments of human security (see Hampson, 2001), as well as the outcome of two tragic recent events where the response of the international community was widely viewed as inadequate: Bosnia and Rwanda.3
Again, the theme of what ‘should have been done’ is an old one: the Allies neglecting to bomb railway tracks leading to Auschwitz comes to mind. But concern over lost opportunities in Rwanda struck an especially disconcerting chord, and inspired serious debate over the limitations of peacekeeping and humanitarian intervention. I return to the latter theme in the section on obligations, below, but maintain a focus here on the retrospection that the Rwanda debacle encouraged. This was clearly a case in which the Western world, with the possible and self-interested exception of France, decided to do next to nothing, despite evidence that an unparalleled African genocide was unfolding. The blame is apportioned widely here, from individuals intrinsic to the decision-making process, to the pathologies of bureaucracies in international organizations, to socially constructed understandings that can lead to dysfunctional behavior (on the latter, see Barnett and Finnemore, 1999; on constraints imposed by norms, see Jones, 1992). According to Barnett, himself involved in the decision-making process, UN Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali initially ‘emanated indecision to the point of paralysis, if not complacency … a disturbingly distant stance from the unfolding tragedy and … a troubling abdication of responsibility and leadership’ (Barnett, 1997a: 559).4 Barnett and others believe that an unspoken consensus had emerged post-Somalia: put bluntly, that ‘the UN had more to lose by taking action and being associated with another failure than it did by not taking action and allowing the genocide in Rwanda’ (1997a: 561). The Americans, meanwhile, were reluctant to send troops into a war zone, resenting the suspicion that ‘the international community seemed willing to fight down to the last US citizen’ (1997a: 562).5
As Holly Bukhalter points out, the US did become quite engaged, through non-UN channels, in what she terms the fifth phase of the Rwandan genocide (July 1994) – deploying soldiers in (the former) Zaire and even Rwanda itself to aid with relief efforts among refugee populations (1994). But its initial reluctance has led to much condemnation. As Samantha Power notes, though, the saga of US response to the genocide ‘is not a story of wilful complicity with evil. U.S. officials did not sit around and conspire to allow genocide to happen. But whatever their convictions about “never again,” many of them did sit around, and they most certainly did allow genocide to happen’ (Power, 2001: 86).
The fall of Srebrenica and other tragedies that facilitated perpetration of crimes against humanity in the former Yugoslavia have also generated a concern that, while not necessarily reflecting indifference, international commitment is weak and unacceptably selective. Dutch peacekeepers at Srebrenica, for example, have been criticized for failing to protect civilians or quickly pass on information that could have led to the suppression of the Serb drive, although it should be remembered that the peacekeepers were outnumbered twelve to one by advancing Serb troops:
Although [the peacekeepers] did not witness mass killing, they were aware of some sinister indications. It is possible that if the members of the battalion had immediately reported in detail those sinister indications to the United Nations chain of command, the international community might have been compelled to respond more robustly and more quickly, and that some lives might have been saved. This failure of intelligence-sharing was also not limited to the fall of Srebrenica, but an endemic weakness throughout the conflict, both within the peacekeeping mission, and between the mission and Member States. (United Nations General Assembly, 1999: 105–6)
It is, of course, difficult to demonstrate that the troops could have made a difference, even had they acted or reported immediately. One can expect too much of the UN and the Security Council, which is, after all, based on a unit-veto system that explicitly recognizes national interest as the guiding foreign policy theme, albeit within the overall context of collective security. In cases of selective exclusion – where the great powers avoid overt intervention – some form of great-power interest in the region in question can usually be found. These cases of neglect, therefore, may overlap with our next category of complicity.
A final, and still more controversial, inclusion in this category is the case of economic sanctions imposed through bilateral or multilateral mechanisms that have exceeded the norm of proportionality and are perceived as excessively punitive. This goes beyond the silent genocides of neglect discussed by Henry Shue (1980) and others concerned with the impact of structural adjustment programs. It could refer, as an ICJ judge once suggested, to an arms embargo that limits a persecuted people’s ability to resist crimes against humanity (in this case, the Muslims in Bosnia).6 The most publicized current case is, of course, the recent sanctions regime against Iraq, which according to some estimates resulted in over a million deaths (see Halliday’s contribution to the present volume). While I would not be prepared to label this an act of genocide, it can be plausibly argued that the policy denied the material needs of a population already struggling with postwar economic dislocation and the enduring dictatorship of a leader who, had the West demonstrated the necessary resolve during the Gulf War of 1990–91, would no longer have been in power – and therefore could not be used as a reason to justify continuation of the sanctions.
Material contributions
Many crimes against humanity are committed by governments and/or opposition forces that benefit from direct assistance from the West. Here we enter again the thorny debate over intentionality. It is clear, however, that support for genocidal regimes appears in many guises, regardless of whether we ascribe to Western actors an intention to commit such crimes. While it would be remiss to allege that Western powers were directly involved in the Rwandan genocide, analysts critical of both the aid and the foreign policy communities have contended that, prior to the large-scale massacres of 1994, ‘even though the Rwandan government was implicated in racist and genocidal violence against Tutsis, the international community, while pushing for peace and democratisation, also continued and even stepped up its military collaboration with the regime’ (Uvin, 1998: 96). Others point to American assistance to Israel and Egypt as cases in which regimes that use torture and commit other rights violations receive large chunks of the aid budget.
In the Rwandan case the figures do, perhaps, speak for themselves: Melvern cites an arms deal between Egypt and Rwanda in March 1992 for US$6 million of light weapons and arms, including 450 Kalashnikov rifles, 2,000 rocket-propelled grenades, 16,000 mortar shells and more than 3 million rounds of small-arms ammunition. The French state-owned bank Crédit Lyonnais acted as guarantor for the deal, which involved the transfer of $1 million in cash instalments in London; again, the transnational character of complicity is evident (Melvern, 2000: 66). On one level, then, we can look to trade and aid statistics for the period preceding large-scale massacres – though in the Rwandan case the claim was made that such armaments were necessary to defend the state from further invasion by rebels of the Rwandan Popular Front (RPF). It may be prudent to limit our charges here to such cases, lest this category become indistinguishable from the complaint that many governments have relations with states with dubious human rights records.
Another possible complication is that governments themselves do not always control what their nationals do in the international capitalist marketplace. Shell’s involvement with the Nigerian military in oppressing the Ogani and other Niger Delta peoples has become infamous, but it would be difficult to charge either the British or the Dutch with complicity in this case. In the case of Talisman, the Canadian firm that helped to perpetuate the government of Sudan’s genocidal policies in the south of that country, the Canadian government, though it stopped short of demanding Talisman refrain from further investment, did condemn the investment in a report. But the company refused to pull out of Sudan until their status on the New York stock exchange was challenged, which was related to American anti-terrorist initiatives and not Canadian human rights concerns.
One can argue also that, beyond governments and multinational firms, even aid agencies and other non-governmental actors can contribute indirectly to exploitative situations in which crimes against humanity are common. This can extend beyond the case of refugee camps hosting murderers after genocidal outbreaks. Here the Sudan may again prove illustrative. Mark Duffield argues that the problem in this case is not the rush to cope with emergency situations, or complicity in perpetuating the civil war in Sudan, but rather the fact that efforts to obtain peace can result in the continuation of prior relations of exploitation and, by extension, genocidal policies not directly linked to the civil war effort. As he puts it,
goal-oriented humanitarianism in the transition zone can be argued to have reinforced those everyday relations that denote ‘peace.’ In other words, aid agencies have strengthened and tacitly supported those economic and political relations of desocialisation, subordination and exploitation that constitute normal life. In the transition zone, since the Dinka are enmeshed in such relations, aid policy has been complicit in their oppression. (Duffield, 2001: 205)
Similarly, Uvin charges the development community with a greater concern for continuing with a predetermined aid process than for heeding the stormclouds brewing prior to the genocide in Rwanda.7
In a more immediate sense, it is evident that aid efforts can increase oppression and the opportunity for combatants to engage in war crimes and crimes against humanity. Aid commodities are often
stolen, diverted and manipulated to the interests of those at war. Warriors also use aid in indirect ways. By controlling the locations where they may be delivered, commanders manipulate population movements. By negotiating with aid agencies for the safe delivery of goods, commanders gain legitimacy in the eyes of those who depend on aid for survival and, sometimes, in the eyes of the international community. (Anderson, 1998: 141)
It may seem churlish to accuse Western aid agencies of complicity in crimes against humanity, and such a charge must be made with great care, since aid organizations are indispensable in many emergency situations. Nonetheless, a critical perspective might strengthen their effectiveness and reduce their potential level of complicity in the long term.
Yet another transnational actor must be taken into account, further complicating the analytical landscape. The privatization of security forces has become an increasingly pertinent theme, both in the old-style sense of mercenaries involved in local conflicts with murderous outcomes (Sierre Leone, for example), and in the sense that such forces are gradually attaining the status of state agents. There may be cases where such forces can, in fact, offer fruitful paths toward the cessation of crimes against humanity; but this is a double-edged sword. Private firms such as Executive Outcomes, the Control Risks Group, Defence Services Limited, Sandline International, and Saladin Security are expanding their markets and deepening the remarkable transition toward privatized security, with British and American firms leading the way. In Colombia, in the mid-1990s, DSL was involved in coordinating the defence of BP’s oil infrastructure and personnel with the Colombian army and police, resulting in charges of complicity in human rights abuses by Colombian authorities (see Duffield, 2001: 66; Vines, 1999). (DSL also provided security and logistics personnel to the UN mission in the former Yugoslavia in 1992.) An aggressive external expansion program has been launched by the primary American firm, Virginia-based Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI); MPRI assisted the modernization of the Croatian military in 1994 (Cilliers and Douglas, 1999: 115). Such forces will generally be only one step removed from governmental oversight, and if they are involved in crimes against humanity in the future it will be difficult to claim they have acted in the interests of ‘the West,’ or its governments.
Direct participation
The inclusion of this category is the easiest to defend. Here we confront a wide array of possible strategies of complicity, from the acts of occupying forces during wartime to the aerial bombardment campaigns conducted by NATO forces in Serbia (see MacDonald’s chapter in this volume), or American forces in Afghanistan (see Jones’s Conclusion in the Introduction to this volume). A 1993 decision by the International Court of Justice ordered Serbia and Montenegro to abstain from allowing their troops to commit genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina (see Chalk, 1994: 61). However, this was an unusual case. It is more common for the international community to accept the premiss that ‘war is war’ and that civilian casualties are part of the inevitable price of victory.
The remaining articles in this volume deal, at some length, with cases where direct participation of Western governments in crimes against humanity have been alleged. These can take the form of active participation in coups which give rise to genocidal regimes, supply of soldiers and/or military advice, supply and delivery of arms, and, at the extreme, the military application of force resulting in large-scale death and destruction. It should be clear that this category is concerned above all with war crimes.
The issue is also a controversial one, since war efforts tend (with prominent exceptions) to generate patriotic fervor and, especially in cases where such campaigns are directed against genocidal expansionism, it becomes easier to dismiss their harsher consequences (see Langenbacher’s chapter this volume, for a treatment of the Allies’ bombing of German cities). Journalist Christopher Hitchens has focused on the role of American policymakers like Henry Kissinger in decisions that may have contributed to genocidal consequences in Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh, and East Timor (Hitchens, 2001; see Jacobs’s and Aguilar’s chapters in this volume). Others, such as Daniel Goldhagen, author of the controversial bestseller Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (1996), and Samantha Power, a former International Crisis Group consultant and currently Executive Director of Harvard University’s Carr Center for Human Rights, have called for an investigation into atrocities that US Senator Bob Kerrey is alleged to have ordered while on combat operations during the Vietnam War (Goldhagen and Power, 2001; see also Jones’s introduction to this volume). It is highly unlikely that either Kissinger or Kerrey is under any real threat of investigation by the US government, of course; but such paper indictments do challenge the ‘culture of impunity’ considered in this volume.
There is room for considerable debate here concerning the actual conditions of direct intervention: whether contributions are coordinated with foreign states or are unilateral in nature; whether they precede the dispatching of an occupation force; and whether they extend beyond physical attack to policies of cultural and/or political assimilation, which would return us to the first category presented in this chapter. In ethical terms, the debate over jus ad bellum continues.
Globalization as a destructive process
Finally, a general theme linking all the above types of complicity, and yet one with the least attractive analytic rewards, is that globalization is akin to murderous imperialism (see Prontzos’s chapter in this volume). Before briefly exploring this theme, I would like to make my own position clear. I would accept the inclusion, given my limited understanding of the negative impact of imperialism, but would decline to advocate its adoption by analysts concerned with the more formal criminality aspect of complicity in crimes against humanity. Further, globalization does create conditions for enhanced communication and international organization which can contribute to the mitigation of crimes against humanity. But it can also be seen as a process of homogenization, and as a context that encourages eliminationist solutions to the ‘problem’ of difference.
More than the others, then, this category is closer to an ideological position than an analytical tool, and it requires us to move beyond immediate intentionality and engage with a more structural level of analysis. Though pockets of opposition to globalization are eliminated by a combination of proactive acts of atrocity, these occur within the context of structural violence: historical and entrenched conditions which favor Western states and corporations. An ideology that seeks to eliminate ‘inefficiency’ and opposition to a market-value system, as philosopher John McMurtry (1998) argues, is both ruthless and self-perpetuating. The process began in the industrial core, as Marx described it in his chapter in Capital on the ‘Bloody Legislation against the Expropriated from the End of the 15th Century’ (1967: 717–44). It continued with colonization, imperialism, market-induced structural adjustment programs in the wake of the Third World debt crisis, the marginalizing of protest groups, and so on.8 One can, of course, argue that the nation-building exercise has been fueled by eliminationist impulses, and the ‘mobilization of predatory identities’ (Appadurai, 2000: 132)9 toward this end. Why, then, would the global polity-building exercise, stripped of its liberal veneer, be any different?
This line of thinking has much in common with the ‘pathology of modernity’ argument in the literature on the Holocaust and the ‘totalitarian potential of modernisation’ (Welch, 1999: 2). Mass murder can thus be seen as a product, not a failure, of modern society (Bauman, 1989). This can be viewed from a materialist perspective as well, in the work of Aly and Heim (1988). The authors consider the implementation of the Final Solution in Poland to have been a rational by-product of capitalist organisation. To move from here to a blanket condemnation of globalization, however, is a big leap indeed. It can be argued that the violence accompanying the process of globalization is indicative of an inhumane approach to governance, but to make a further argument of Western complicity would be provocative at best.
To conclude this section: it is not enough merely to disentangle the many threads binding Western governments to agents of genocide and crimes against humanity elsewhere. There are common, socially constructed, and quite persistent conceptual linkages as well. These include myths based on race, nation, rationality and science (see Peukert, 1993), state security, progress, and the aggressive globalization of norms and value systems. The myths may advance human rights on the one hand, but justify the marginalization and neglect of entire populations on the other.
Obligations: ending the culture of impunity?
In each of the categories presented above we can see points of entry to the issue of transnational complicity, whether in the policy of colonial eliminationism; in the decision to do nothing or to ignore the suffering caused by policies based on national interest; in the material contribution to regimes and opposition forces committing atrocities; or in the outright application of military force (in the ‘national interest’), which can be said to constitute crimes against humanity. The chapters to follow capture case studies of each, but they go further, suggesting justice can be restored through a variety of means, including citizens’ tribunals, reparations, and truth and reconciliation commissions (on the latter, see Deegan, 2001: 136–64). A broader question is that of obligation: what responsibilities do Western states and citizens have in the battle against the culture of impunity? This question can be broken down into the twin themes of intervention and reparations.
It might seem obvious to argue that the West has an obligation not to intervene when doing so will only worsen the situation for civilians and combatants. As early as 1758, Emmerich de Vattel wrote:
To give help to a brave people who are defending their liberties against an oppressor by force of arms is only the part of justice and generosity. Hence, whenever such dissension reaches the state of civil war, foreign nations may assist that one of the two parties, which seems to have justice on its side. But to assist a detestable tyrant … would certainly be a violation of duty. (quoted in Moynihan, 1990: 175)
Beyond this, the duty to intervene is a hotly contested subject in international legal and policy circles. It is at best perceived as a diffuse duty, as described by international relations ethicist Michael Walzer, ‘which is to say, no one’s duty in particular, so in fact the brutalities and oppression of international society are more often denounced than interdicted’ (1997: 107; see also Tamir, 2000: 262). Despite the claim advanced by Wheeler (2000) that a norm of humanitarian intervention is emerging, there is considerable dissension on this subject (Vincent, 1986; see also International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, 2000).
We can suggest, however, that an obligation exists, when intervention to confront crimes against humanity is the chosen course, to pursue the project humanely and in a well-coordinated fashion, though the latter is obviously difficult given time constraints. Harold Adelman suggests a complementary second-order norm is the obligation on the part of the international community to strive for coherence in its interventionist policies: ‘it is incumbent upon all parties to make their best efforts to arrive at a coherent policy when attacking the issue. Just as in an operating room, so in international interventions: You cannot have each of the parties pursuing different goals and following different procedures’ (2001: 199). More to the point, one can argue an obligation exists to avoid duplicity – that arguing for peace in civilian conflicts and selling arms to warring parties, for example, represent not only a breach of ethics, but expensively counterproductive behavior.
Table 2.1 Sources of reparations claims
World War II |
‘Transition to democracy’ |
Colonialism |
State-sponsored mass killing, forced labor, sexual exploitation (Axis powers: Germany, Japan, Austria) Wartime incarceration of Japanese populations (Allied powers: US, Canada) Economic collaboration with Nazi crimes (‘putatively neutral’ states: Switzerland, France, Netherlands) |
State terrorism, other authoritarian practices (in Latin America, Eastern Europe, South Africa) |
Classical European colonialism (claims from formerly colonized against former colonial powers, e.g. Africa, and from indigenous groups against states “dominated by the descendants of their European conquerors”) Internal colonialism (slavery, Jim Crow, apartheid) Neo-colonialism (claims against international lending agencies – e.g. World Bank, IMF – seen as partial cause of Third World poverty, population displacement and environmental destruction – e.g. funding dam construction) |
Source: Based on Torpey, 2001: 335–6, constructed by Michael Innes.
Beyond the question of intervention lies that of institutional responses. Since these are dealt with at length in the next chapter, I will proceed quickly here, suggesting only that the issue of reparations for past atrocities poses the greatest analytical and policy challenge (see Verdeja’s and Njubi Nesbitt’s chapters in this volume). Perhaps the most enlightening treatment of the reparations issue is that offered by John Torpey. He sees reparation demands rooted in racial identity as the most promising in terms of galvanizing claimants (class-based demands, he suggests, present a much more complicated process of victimization). Torpey lists three sources of reparations demands, beginning with the relatively straightforward claims related to World War II, and continuing with the therapeutic process of sorting out claims related to regime transition and ‘clarifying the circumstances under which the victims of the regime suffered’ (Torpey, 2001: 335). Finally, there are claims related to colonialism (classical European expansionism, internal colonialism, and neocolonialism). These can be further separated into symbolic/commemorative and antisystemic/transformative claims (see Table 2.2).
Table 2.2 Types of reparations claims
Symbolic/commemorative |
Antisystemic/transformative |
1.Typically World War II-centered claims. |
1.Typically colonialism-centered claims. |
2.‘Backward looking,’ intended to cultivate awareness of the victims’ suffering, explicitly involving the mobilization of ethnocultural consciousness. |
2.‘Forward looking,’ often connected to broader programs of social progress. Intended to address injustice of past systems of domination (colonialism, apartheid, slavery, segregation) seen as contributing to ongoing economic imbalance and deprivation. |
3.Material compensation secondary. Although some of the claimants – Holocaust survivors, comfort women – bear the physical scars of their torment, the benefits accrued to symbolic/commemorative claims are more of a psychological sort. |
3.Mobilization of ethnocultural victimhood of some claimants. (Aboriginals, black Americans) indicates a symbolic/commemorative element. |
Source: Based on Torpey, 2001: 336–7, constructed by Michael Innes.
For our purposes, it is noteworthy that many of the reparations claims involve a transnational element. This is evident in the case of the slave-trader, or the economic collaborator with Nazi crimes, or the neocolonialist. A discussion of the value of such claims as socializing agents is beyond the scope of this chapter, but Torpey’s claim that, for many victimized groups, ‘the road to the future runs through the prolonged disasters of the past’ (2001: 337) suggests that this could be one means of avoiding the homogeneity fostered by the West’s globalizing strategies, and should be taken seriously as part of a violence-avoidance campaign. At the same time, admitting the legitimacy of such claims (beyond the patchwork of reparations agreements) opens a door most state leaders, including finance ministers, would rather leave firmly closed, or only slightly ajar.
In terms of other obligations, a recent decision by the International Court of Justice suggests there is an obligation to refrain from committing genocide by using nuclear weapons, and that the continuation of global warming, largely the result of Western states’ economic activities, threatens the very existence of millions of inhabitants of small island states and coastal regions.10 In both cases, however, we would have to expand the array of perpetrators beyond ‘the West,’ to include states such as Russia, India, and China.
Much has been written of the importance of political identity, generated by social constructions of difference, which create the contextual preconditions for genocidal behavior.11 Institutions do have the ability to construct and even structure knowledge (see Foucault, 1977); and this process might in itself give the green light for the perpetration of atrocities. Barnett writes of ‘an intimate connection between the discourse of acting in the best interests of the international community, the bureaucratisation of peacekeeping, and the production of indifference’ (Barnett, 1997a; see also Rieff, 1995, on Bosnia). Perhaps the more demanding obligation, then, is to avoid the reflexive turn to what Herzfeld (1993), borrowing from Weber (1963), refers to as ‘secular theodicy’: the tendency to overlook evil in some places for the greater good of a collective identity, in this case that of the international community itself. Put another way, it cautions against the acceptance of constructed images of order that mask structural violence.
At the very least, Western scholarship has an obligation to avoid over-simplifying events. As Rene Lemarchand poignantly reminds us, the ‘Manichean dichotomy simply does not does not apply’ in the Rwandan case (1998: 42). Casting foreign crimes against humanity as examples of good guys versus bad guys is more than inaccurate; it is self-rationalization, and precludes a deeper understanding of both the causes of atrocious events and the extent of our own complicity.
Conclusion
Accusations of complicity in crimes against humanity are, to some degree, contingent on the adoption of a legal approach. Events are seen largely as ‘crimes,’ rather than as historical processes. Therefore they are even further from constituting, in a material or ideational sense, a structure that prompts future generations to continue such practices. Though some would prefer this latter view, the former (that is, the assumption of criminality) enables us to be more specific with our admonitions and, perhaps, criminal prosecutions and calls for recompense. One path leads us to a greater operational understanding, while the other offers greater conceptual and historical breadth.
Arguing for the latter strategy, Ward Churchill believes that the ‘reproduction, evolution, and perfection of any hegemonic structure is inevitable, left to its own devices’ (1997: 3). Accordingly, he seeks to forge a ‘viable countergenocidal praxis’ (1997: 8), much as Foucault and others write of counter-hegemonic understandings and readings of power. In the case of crimes against humanity, such a strategy must begin with an understanding of the extent of Western complicity, since the West’s own narrative is essential to the modern project of state construction. It is as important to challenge seriously the accuracy and legitimacy of claims that Western involvement necessarily denotes intentionality, or for that matter carries with it an obligation to provide reparations. This critical examination of critical theory, as it were, can be fruitful for the fields of international and transnational studies, genocide studies, and legal approaches to conflict deterrence. But it can also lead the observer to ask some fundamental questions.
For example, if we accept Uvin’s troubling analysis that (at least in the Rwandan case) development assistance contributes to structural violence, it follows that we need to rethink the entire Westernization project, and seek studiously and systematically to avoid involvement where it can lead to complicity in mass violence. The primary agenda for social scientists working in this area may well be to identify those moments when such complicity becomes possible, and to integrate this recognition into the range of policymaking options. The alternative is simply to wish away Western involvement, which is hardly likely to succeed; or to succumb to despair, accepting the inevitability of Western collusion in crimes against humanity in the name of national interest or the pursuit of profit.
Sporadic cases of ‘spontaneous communal violence’ aside (Holsti, 2000: 169), most instances of mass killing before and since the larger inter-state wars have been cases of ‘death by government’ (Rummel, 1994). This should lead us to analyze more closely the complex links between such murderous states and their Western allies. The more entrenched historically these links are, and the less geographically and chronologically distant, the stronger is the case of Western complicity. The case-study chapters in this volume will explore these linkages in much greater detail.
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