Contents Introduction A Definition of Genocide Review of the Literature A New Definition and Typology of Genocide ‘Causes’ of Top-Down and Civil War Genocides: From Human Psychology to International Structure International Dimensions of Genocide Effects of Genocide on the International Level International Effects on Genocide: Before International Effects on Genocide: During International Effects on Genocide: After Case: Bosnia-Herzegovina Evidence of Genocide in Bosnia Circumstances Leading to Genocide International Dimensions of Genocide in Bosnia Conclusion References Bibliography

Additional Resources Maps of Bosnia (external link) Maps of the Former Yugoslavia (external link)

Internet version © 1998 by Karen V. Lawrence
Send comments to: vkarenv@gmail.com

The death of one man is a tragedy;
The death of a million is a statistic.

~ Joseph Stalin

On tue un homme, on est un assassin.
On tue des millions d’hommes, on est conquÈrant.
On les tue tous, on est un dieu.^*

~ Jean Rostand

Genocide is a distinct and particular form of mass violence and, as such, concerns not only the region where it might occur at a particular point in time, but the international community and all its constituent parts. Genocide might be committed during international war or, more likely, during civil war. Most likely of all, genocide might be committed by a recognized government against its own subjects. But like war, civil war, and massive internal violence of other types, neighboring states as well as the international system itself are affected. Similarly, outside actors and the international community as a body can attempt to affect its course. Although genocide is usually treated as a domestic humanitarian affair, the dynamics surrounding this phenomenon can and should be analyzed on the level of any other incidence of mass directed violence. It is as much and as little an aberration of human behavior as war; to limit the study of genocide to its sociological and psychological aspects is to ignore a major and repeating occurrence in international relations.

How, then, to go about analyzing this category of violence? First, this author defines genocide and indicates the different contexts in which it is perpetrated. Second, causes/patterns of genocide are discussed. Third, the international aspects of genocide are specifically explored. Finally, this model and its implications are applied to the most high-profile current example, Bosnia-Herzegovina.

A Definition of Genocide

A surprising variety of definitions have followed Raphael Lemkin’s 1944 coining of the word ‘genocide,’ consisting of the Greek ‘genos’ (race or tribe) plus the Latin ‘cide’ (killing).¹ Many of these definitions assume some level of moral baggage, attempting to widen the definition to cover as many human-made horrors as possible. The word ‘genocide’ in common usage certainly does carry with it a special moral revulsion; but the purpose of different words is to denote fundamentally different phenomena, a purpose defeated at the expense of understanding if a word represents too wide a variety of meanings. Even on the moral front, a definition limited by theory rather than anger helps to illuminate the many facets of evil in the world: after all, is genocide really necessarily more morally reprehensible than mass killing of other types? Although more people are generally killed in a genocide than in another type of massacre, numbers should not inform morality. In the spirit of elucidation, then, this author reviews previous definitional concepts before proposing her own definition and typology of genocide.

The United Nations Genocide Convention, adopted in 1948, defines genocide as any of a list of specific ‘acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such.’ These acts include outright killing and infliction on the group of ‘serious bodily or mental harm [or] conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,’ as well as the imposition of ‘measures intended to prevent births within the group’ or the forced transfer of group children to other groups.² This legalistic definition has been criticized for several reasons, mainly revolving around the fact that UN decisions and their consequent enforcement are always the result of compromise and dilution. Since its passage, however, numerous scholars have attempted to improve upon the UN code, combining theoretical understanding with practical observation.

More recent definitions vary significantly in the level of intention and extent required of perpetrators for their actions to be labeled genocidal. Israel Charny, in the most extreme example of over-generalization, classifies all mass killings of ‘essentially defenseless and helpless’ humans, as genocide.³ His definition includes even ecological damage, whether caused by carelessness or malevolence, that results in human death (often called ‘ecocide’). Charny is quite explicit with his reasons for such a broad interpretation: he repeatedly emphasizes his goal of not excluding any event of mass unnatural death from the status of ‘genocide,’ perhaps so the UN will feel compelled to intervene in more cases.

Clearly, Charny assumes ‘genocide’ to be inherently more evil than such events as ‘mass murder.’ He sees any attempt to limit ‘genocide’ to some sub-set of large-scale killing as politically motivated whitewash. This moral assignation drives him to expand his definition until all meaning is lost: under Charny’s plan, the Turkish attempt at Armenian extermination is in the same category as the results of the Chernobyl accident. Not only would most people intuitively recoil at such a massive generalization, but the purpose of having separate words for different phenomena obviously is not served. On every level, very different dynamics surround these various types of mass death. For instance, Charny distinguishes ‘genocidal massacre’ from generic genocide as the killing of a smaller number of people; yet one cannot assume that a smaller number are killed because of inherent differences in situations other than the availability of victims. His conception fails to point toward any true underlying patterns by rejecting the basic element of any meaningful definition: discrimination.

Other authors tend to treat genocide as the total (or attempted total) destruction of a specific group by another group, usually a central government. This destruction can be in the form of coercive assimilation, what Vahakn Dadrian calls ‘cultural genocide,’⁴ the violent extermination of a group’s culture without physical extermination of its members often labeled ‘ethnocide.’ The destruction might be accidental, such as in Dadrian’s ‘latent genocide,’ which includes civilian deaths in war due to bombing or the spread of disease.⁵ Unlike Charny, however, some level of malevolent intent, even if not intent to exterminate, is assumed by Dadrian, as well as a final result approximating total group annihilation.

The definitions of genocide closest to this author’s, however, limit its scope to cases of deliberate physical extermination of a specific group by anyone in the position to attempt it. Dadrian calls such ‘total obliteration’ ‘optimal genocide.’⁶ Helen Fein describes it as

sustained purposeful action by a perpetrator to physically destroy a collectivity directly...or through interdiction of the biological...and social reproduction of group members....⁷ The perpetrator may represent the state of the victim, another state, or another collectivity.⁸

Pieter Drost’s definition echoes several other authors’⁹ in emphasizing the important point that genocide involves individual victims chosen because of ‘their membership of any human collectivity as such.’¹⁰

Yet the definition of ‘human collectivity’ itself is deceptively simple. Most criticisms of the UN Convention focus on its omission of political groups from the list of potential victims, an omission explicitly required by political compromise at the time of the Convention’s adoption.¹¹ If a government decides to kill every self-declared member of an opposition political party, is this genocide, or something else? Was Stalin’s campaign against the kulaks political murder, or something in addition? Were the Allied bombings of Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki genocide? Leo Kuper defines those bombings as genocide because the intention was to physically exterminate a specific group: every person, including unarmed civilians, within those cities was targeted by virtue of their location. In contrast, the bombings of London, Coventry, and Rotterdam by the Luftwaffe did not utilize pattern bombing, and so apparently did not intend to utterly wipe out the inhabitants.¹²

But the inhabitants of a city under siege do not necessarily constitute a ‘collectivity’ in the sense of genocide. There is an intuitive difference between the Allies’ ‘those in Dresden’ and the Third Reich’s ‘Gypsies,’ for example, but intuition is not enough. It is also, as Kuper maintains, insufficient to label the Dresdeners as ‘enemies,’ and thereby subsume whatever crime might be committed against these civilians as war crimes short of genocide; after all, perpetrators of genocide usually feel threatened by their victims as ‘enemies’ and use this perception as justification. The objective observation that prevents, in this writer’s view, events such as the Dresden bombing from being labeled genocide is the fact that the ‘collectivity’ under attack has been circumstantially, rather than immutably, defined. The inhabitants may have been targeted for being in Dresden, but they were not targeted for any aspect of their inherent beings, or even behavior. Thus it was possible to stop killing them, and other Germans and Japanese, once the war ended. In addition, the end goal was winning the war, not wiping out the residents of Dresden, a fact equally important to note when analyzing the decision-making process and its likely consequences. The ‘contention that in destroying Japanese and Germans, the target was only the enemy within them,’ a position that, so stated, Kuper rightly argues is ‘a sort of mystical exorcism,’¹³ is not the reason for leaving these events out of the historical catalogue of genocidal cases. The fact that being an inhabitant of Dresden was not, even by the bombers, seen as an immutable characteristic deserving of extermination makes the character and context of the destruction (and its end!) distinctly different than those in cases of true genocide.

Lyman Legters suggests that a victim group is any group that is so defined by the perpetrators. He maintains that ‘different social orders have diverse ways of classifying their own populations,’¹⁴ and, in the context of Stalin’s call for the destruction of the kulaks, insists that ‘[i]f an allegedly socialist society, whose primary form of classification is that of class, either targets or invents a class with extermination in prospect, that program must count as genocide lest the term lose its continuing pertinence for the contemporary world in all its variety.’¹⁵ Legters’ method suggests a way between the UN’s restrictive list of possible victims and recourse to the indefinite ‘any human collectivity.’

Helen Fein, however, rejects such an expansive definition of the victim group on the grounds that it ‘makes genocide coextensive with mass terror; if the dictator labels a victim a member of an imaginary group or conspiracy, all enemies of the state become group members.’¹⁶ This objection is clarified with reference to Chalk and Jonassohn’s example (using a definition based on Legeter’s method) of the European witch burnings as genocide. There is certainly a basic difference between a situation in which a new group is invented, to which individuals are then more or less arbitrarily assigned, and one in which members of a commonly recognized pre-existing group are targeted. ‘Genos’ must retain the latter meaning.

This author here defines ‘genocide’ as coercive action(s) with the end goal of total physical extermination of a commonly recognized group immutably (usually biologically) defined by the perpetrators. Genocide, like other human conditions, can be difficult to diagnose, especially from outside the situation as it is occurring. There are indicators, or symptoms, which taken together can point strongly to the commission of genocide even in the absence of policy statements or other academically-citeable ‘proofs’: genocide as defined above is usually signaled by violent ethnocide; by the diversion of resources from more ‘rational’ tasks to the execution of genocidal policy (as in the Nazis’ detour of troops and trains needed on the Eastern Front to the death camps); and sometimes by the killing of entire families, rather than only adults (as in Hitler’s non-genocidal killing of German communists, although many political terrors include the murder of targets’ relatives as well).

Ervin Staub further clarifies this definition of genocide with his contrasting definition of ‘mass killing’:

Mass killing means killing members of a group without the intention to eliminate the whole group or killing large numbers of people without a precise definition of group membership.¹⁷

Pierre van den Berghe distinguishes between political murder, or ‘politicide’ (what Fein calls ‘terror’¹⁸) and genocide, while emphasizing that these two motives often overlap, and that political accusation is often used as a shield for the commission of genocide:

Yet it is clear that political murder directed at specific opponents in response to specific political actions, writings, or alleged intentions is qualitatively different from the massive use of terror against men, women, and children collectively accused of alleged political crimes by sheer membership in a class, occupation, religion, or ethnic or racial group.¹⁹

Religious, racial, ethnic, or even ‘class,’ ‘political,’ or ‘occupational’ collectivities might be victims of genocide, depending on how the perpetrator defines the group and how the perpetrator determines who is a member. Allied bombers in World War II did not commit genocide; Stalin’s, Hitler’s, and Pol Pot’s regimes did.

Yet even this comparatively narrow definition incorporates many types of events, suggesting that some sort of categorization is necessary. Most authors propose typologies based on the motives apparently underpinning the commission of a particular genocide. These categories might include genocide committed for political or economic expansion; genocide committed to eliminate or terrorize political or economic opposition; genocide of revenge; and genocide as the culmination of an ideology of ‘salvation or purification’ on the way to a new world order.²⁰ However, these motives overlap too much and too regularly to be useful distinguishing categories. More specifically, these aspects are not very useful as categories with the definition of genocide used here: although in most genocides one or, more likely, a combination of these motives might suggest a ‘rational’ reason why a particular group is demonized, or even how a population moves to embrace genocidal policy, the present definition indicates that once the situation has become truly genocidal, the motive is the extermination itself. This point is made more clear by the fact that most of these typologies include the aim of total annihilation as but one type among the others.

More importantly, few authors seem to note that state-sponsored genocide is not the only type of genocide, assuming instead that only established authorities commit this crime. Such an assumption is understandable, considering the possible difficulties of distinguishing between war crimes and genocide in more anarchic situations. In addition, perpetrators generally must have some level of control or overwhelming force that enables them to commit genocide. Leo Kuper, in a revised form of his previous typology, does propose that genocide be divided into ‘domestic genocides arising on the basis of internal divisions within a society, and genocides arising in the course of international warfare.’²¹ He then suggests four types of domestic genocide, the first two labeled according to the victim group, the third and fourth according to the circumstances under which the genocide occurred.²² But this un-parallel break-down of ‘domestic’ genocide conceals the unfinished character of Kuper’s typology: the dynamics surrounding state genocide differ significantly not only from those surrounding genocide aimed at another distinct state, but from those surrounding genocide perpetrated by one sub-state group against another. Therefore, in this essay, state genocide, or genocide committed by an authority against those for whom it has nominal responsibility, is called top-down genocide; genocide against a previously external group is genocidal (or genocide in) interstate war; and genocide against a group previously integrated with the perpetrator, but not now under the perpetrator’s authority, is genocidal (or genocide in) civil war. In the last two generations, at least, genocidal war seems to be least frequent (this infrequency itself suggesting possible causes of genocide in general), while most genocides in history appear to be top-down. However, genocidal civil war increasingly often poses especially difficult challenges to the international community. Therefore, this essay will refer primarily to top-down (as the more common) and civil war (as the more internationally challenging) genocides except where otherwise specified.

Staub attempts to trace the psychological triggers of genocide, on both the individual and group levels. He emphasizes the effects of ‘difficult life conditions’ on the tendency to scapegoat, and the fact that genocide, like other human behavior, is the culmination of previous acts: every choice a person (and, by extension, a group) makes helps to shape his/her self-image and future choices. Combining these psychological traits with various attributes of the society as a whole, Staub suggests a general equation: ‘certain characteristics of a culture’ + ‘the structure of a society’ + ‘great difficulties or hardships of life’ + ‘social disorganization’ = ‘the starting point for genocide.’ The victim group is increasingly mistreated as individuals within the society change their views of their own and their society’s identities and needs. Eventually genocide may be the logical culmination of these material circumstances and psychological adjustments.²³

Staub analyzes the causes of aggression in human society, and shows how natural adaptive tendencies can be twisted into the service of genocide. The positive human need for community belonging, especially when combined with social/structural changes that threaten to break down previous group identities and require a new world view, can explain the attraction of ideological groups.²⁴ The more wrenching and sudden the change, the more opportunity exists for radical redefinition of one’s own and others’ identities. So why does such redefinition so often tend to negative group aggression? In the face of hardship, and especially, history argues, in the face of relatively increasing hardship, natural adaptive mechanisms can backfire: ‘When there is no aggressor or the aggressor is too powerful...identifying a scapegoat can have "beneficial" psychological effects. A cause is found, and life problems become comprehensible.’²⁵ International war frequently induces such feelings of overwhelming threat, and often creates or exacerbates economic and social dislocation.

Beyond individual or domestic agency, however, many authors suggest that genocide is the result of larger structural forms. Van den Berghe maintains that the state, defined as ‘those individuals who, singly or collectively, manipulate to whatever ends the coercive apparatus for which they claim legitimacy,’ is in essence ‘a killing machine,’ organized for the express purpose of wielding violence in particular directions. The appeal to nationalism on which modern states are based further links the legitimization of power with the identification of a permanent Other.²⁶ In this view, then, the system of sovereign states itself tends towards (intra-state) genocide: the state’s consolidation of destructive power along with popular mobilization in the name of its legitimacy form a doomed combination.

Close to this view but broader in outlook is the Modernity theory, most well-known from Zygmunt Bauman’s Modernity and the Holocaust but shared by other authors as well. Echoing Karl Marx’s and Max Weber’s conceptual models, Modernity is associated with the rise of capitalism and its expansion to global proportions, either directly or through the influence of the capitalist powers. The Modernity thesis posits that the economic and social forms that characterize this Modern era paradoxically structure action in such a way that individual agency becomes impossible. Although the breakdown of ‘traditional’ personalized relations must be replaced by the personal liberation of the individual in a capitalist market economy, this ‘liberation’ generates feelings of alienation; the resulting void makes modern people especially susceptible to the attractions of more impersonal group identifications, such as nationalist movements. Progressive bureaucratization of all aspects of public life removes feelings of personal responsibility along with the possibility for individual efficacy. The dual identity, private and public, required of a modern individual encourages the suspension of personal conscience while fulfilling one’s defined public role. In essence,

[i]n a world...in which individuals are dominated by anonymous forces such as market mechanisms, bureaucracies, and distant decision making by committees and parliaments, the emphasis on intentionality almost appears anachronistic....[In] the modern age, the issue of intentionality on the societal level is harder to locate because of the anonymous and amorphous structural forces that dictate the character of our world.²⁷

In fact, maintain these theories, the bureaucracies of the Modern world compel rational decision-makers to regard genocide as simply another policy choice, a policy which in times of crisis — a cyclical condition inherent in the capitalist system — often seems the most effective.

These structural theories can contribute a great deal to our understanding of the characters of particular genocides, especially the highly bureaucratized (notably unusual if not unique in that respect) Holocaust. Yet they fall short in several important respects: such an agency-purged explanation does not account for the many conflicts in the modern era that have not devolved into genocide, nor for genocides in non-modern areas such as Rwanda; and, of course, not much room is left for prevention as long as the current world system obtains. While clearly genocide or any other major human occurrence does not spontaneously organize itself without antecedent or some structural context, to virtually omit the possibility of individual or group choice is to take the easy way out. More importantly, it ignores the empirical fact that genocides have been averted in situations seemingly prone to their commission.

Melson proposes a model that combines most of the salient psychological and structural points outlined above with empirical support. Illustrated with reference to the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust, Melson suggests that fundamental internal revolution followed by international war is always a prerequisite for what he labels ‘total domestic genocide,’ or top-down genocide. A purely ‘intentionalist’ approach assigns causality to ideology and a history of hatred, in other words to individual agency, while a purely ‘functionalist’ approach assigns causality to the ‘radicalization of the machinery of destruction,’ or impersonal structures; Melson, like the present author, believes in the importance of both.²⁸

Melson defines revolution in this sense as ‘a fundamental transformation, usually carried out by violence, in [a] society’s political, economic, and social structures and cultural values and beliefs, including its reigning ideology, political myth, and identity.’²⁹ Such structural trauma generally involves the rise of radical leadership and opens the door to a radical redefinition of the community, or ‘recasting of the political myth.’ Groups previously regarded as merely stigmatized can be placed completely outside the moral realm of the new ‘in’ group. The need for internal cohesion in a time of fundamental transition creates the need for ‘enemies of the revolution,’ further encouraging the exclusion of whole groups.³⁰

Yet international war is necessary, in Melson’s view, to push a new regime from discrimination and repression to genocide. A group already identified as ‘anti-people’ in terms of internal threat is often then identified with an external enemy, because of the distribution of the group’s diaspora or simply through accusations of treachery. Melson enumerates three reasons why war is the final trigger for genocide:

1. Wartime aggravates feelings of vulnerability and/or intensifies feelings of invincibility....
2. Wartime permits states to become more autonomous and independent of domestic and foreign public opinion, thereby encouraging radical solutions to social and political "problems."
3. Wartime conditions may close off other policy options [such as expulsion], leaving genocide as a strong choice for an already radicalized regime.³¹

The seeming paradox of point 1 is actually quite consistent with the uncertain nature of crisis: ‘[i]n each case a communal group or class was seen as an essential enemy of the revolution. The decision to destroy it could be taken either as a prophylactic against internal dissension, treachery, and defeat and/or as...a "solution" made possible by the projected victory.’³²

In any case, the international context certainly is relevant to the evolution of genocidal policy. Feelings of comparative economic and military disadvantage in the international arena encourage radical enforcement of homogeneity.³³ Apparently lagging international position also encourages the creation and destruction of internal ‘enemies’ to further consolidate the new order envisioned by a fundamentally new regime. While this order may be based on class, national, religious, or ethnic identifications, the definition of an idealized community worth fighting for often requires the demonization of a group near enough at hand to be destroyable.

While Melson limits his treatment to top-down genocides (or genocides in which ‘the killings were carried out after the seizure of power’³⁴), his thesis can easily be applied to non-state actors who manage to acquire the military capacity and numerical support needed to launch a campaign of genocide. The most important aspect of this model is its emphasis on multiple, but specific, causes of genocide. Individual psychology can account for scapegoating and group violence; group ideology can explain why a particular collectivity is targeted for repression; domestic and international structures provide the necessary circumstances for the commission of genocide. Only the interaction of all these layers can result in an intentional attempt at complete annihilation of a human group by other human beings.

No event on the scale of genocide occurs in a domestic vacuum. Not only do the repercussions of such a pernicious brand of violence inevitably affect immediate neighbors, but the assumptions and institutions on which the international system rests are shaken. By the same token, not only outside actors but the institutions and underpinning ideals of the international system can affect the course of genocidal or pre-genocidal policy. And as with all important and complex issues, there is cost attached to action (or inaction), cost measured in lives as well as money.

Refugees are the most obvious practical problem arising from genocide to plague those outside the conflict. While any sort of war, repression, or natural disaster can generate floods of people seeking to escape, genocide, because of its total and unceasing nature, might be expected to force even the least able or willing targets to flee for their lives. For example, the genocide in Rwanda created a refugee crisis at Goma that lead to death rates of two thousand people a day, a rate higher than ever previously experienced by aid agencies.³⁵ Beyond the immediate crisis, refugee flows often stress host states’ economies by swelling the ranks of the unemployed and needy. Social and political tension, never far behind economic strain, is exacerbated by large numbers of foreigners, often speaking different languages and of different ethnicities, flooding into a region. A typical case is the rising anti-Turkish sentiment in Germany as the Turkish-German community has grown in size. And the immediate neighbors of genocide are usually inundated far more quickly and more numerously by more desperate refugees than Germany was by immigrant Turks.

The political radicalism surrounding genocide is not usually confined within borders either. Whatever social, political, and economic instabilities allow the implementation of genocide as policy in one area are likely to link, possibly even directly, factions and groups beyond the zone of current perpetration to populations within it. The relationship between Hutu and Tutsi in Burundi, for example, has major effect on the situation in Rwanda, and vice-versa. The war in Bosnia has attracted special attention (and sometimes military aid) from Islamic powers, Russian slavophiles, and even Germany, with its historic relationship to the Croats, for reasons more specific than humanitarian concern. In addition, genocide can begin a cycle of retaliatory violence that destabilizes a region for generations: Oxfam cites the role of revenge killings in keeping refugees from returning home, creating a dangerous political situation in neighboring host states where ‘the former [Rwandese] government and its soldiers and militias appear to be planning to return to Rwanda by force,’ and where land shortage encourages a repeat of recently experienced ethnic violence against refugee Rwandans.³⁶ And as in the case of any prolonged violence, even simmering conflicts unrelated to the issues being fought over can be brought to boil in neighboring areas, a fear echoed by recent concerns of ‘spill-over’ of the wars in the former Yugoslavia. Arms flows, refugee floods, regional disruption of trade and the polarization of politics can combine to push any existing local problems into crisis; a genocidal conflict often pushes these stresses to extremes.

On a more distant, or structural, level, the commission of genocide has the potential to undermine both the ideals on which the formal international community is based, and the institutions which are founded on those ideals. The passage of a UN Convention on Genocide indicates the belief by at least the vast majority of member states that ‘genocide’ as defined in that document is not acceptable within the present international system. Whether or not the signatories truly subscribe to the spirit of that judgment, there is a consensus that at least formally and officially, such action must be considered unacceptably disruptive, morally wrong, or otherwise criminal. The fact that the UN has a mandate to intervene in cases that fall under its definition of ‘genocide’ implies a loss of credibility for the entire organization if these cases are left to run their bloody courses without interference. In practice, the UN has suffered derision and denigration for its often bumbling or absent attempts to halt or mitigate genocide. The widespread character of this disapproval does indicate a continued popular consensus as to the criminality of genocide. But the institutional apparatus for enforcement has in-built flaws that are highlighted with every incidence of its inability to ensure adherence to its own laws.

Finally, genocide has a moral impact on every human being, and therefore on every human community and institution. Every act ‘that shocks the conscience of mankind’ left unchecked weighs to some extent on that conscience. While valid cultural and circumstantial relativism often complicates international moral judgment and action, genocide, on this point at least, is constant: there is no situation in which any stable political culture would accept genocide as a rational policy option, as implied by the euphemisms and fantastical paranoid myths that radicalized, transitional, insecurely founded pseudo-cultures feel the need to employ when they do engage in genocide. Various degrees of internal coercion can be difficult to distinguish from the civil control that even the most tolerant governments exercise to maintain cohesion; genocide, committed by government or not, crosses the line by targeting an entire population for their identities rather than for their actions or words. The difficulty lies more in determining that it is genocide that is occurring than in weighing any extenuating circumstances, since none can exist, or cultural prerogatives, since no human community seriously claims a prerogative of genocide as such. In this spirit, cosmopolitan authors such as Charles Beitz argue that individual justice, rather than respect for state autonomy, should be the most basic principle of international behavior. Genocide presents individual outside agents as well as the institutions of the international system with a moral challenge: neglecting basic individual rights in favor of a consistent hands-off policy is not neutrality but a moral choice.³⁷ Such choice colors the international community and its aspirations and, as in Staub’s model, sets precedent for future choices.

The above considerations assume, of course, that the ‘international community’ is capable of changing the course of genocide. Does the structure of the international system exacerbate the escalation to genocide, or can outsiders prevent this escalation? Once genocide is occurring, can and should outsiders intervene? After the fact, does the international community have any role to play? Top-down genocide lends itself better to pre-emptive action than genocidal war, whether civil or interstate, as genocide is often less predictable when obscured by the group violence and anarchy of war in general. But considerations of both structure and agency are relevant at all three stages of possible outside influence on genocide.

Structuralist authors such as those cited above blame the state system and the nationalism on which it is based for the prevalence of genocide. But, as already discussed, many governments do not resort to genocide and many nationalist conflicts do not descend into policies of group annihilation, whatever other horrors these regimes or factions might commit. Yet the structure of a particular regime is certainly relevant: a ‘repressive and dictatorial’ government increases the chances of genocide, since interpretation of reality is filtered through a single coercive medium; not only is opposition to pre-genocidal policy not heard, but events themselves can be more easily fabricated in the absence of government accountability.³⁸ The establishment of more democratic regimes abroad is often seen (most famously by Immanuel Kant) as a preventative measure against war, since democracies supposedly do not fight each other; in the same vein, the establishment of more democratic regimes abroad is an indirect preventative measure against genocide there. But manipulation of the structure, or character, of another government is a long, if not impossible, endeavor. While sanctions, aid, and public humiliation might alter the behavior of a foreign power, not much short of invasion will induce a government to fundamentally alter its structure, in essence to self-destruct. In terms of pre-emption, structural theories help to clarify the warning signs; examples of agency within these structures help provide guidance to action.

Sanctions, aid, and public humiliation can be used in the service of changing policies both before and during the commission of genocide. Katharine Bigelow details how, after noting the signs of imminent genocide, the international Bah·’Ì community successfully deterred its occurrence in Iran. A pre-revolution history of persecution of the Bah·’Ìs, a new revolutionary government that left followers of the Bah·’Ì religion — the largest religious minority — out of a constitution that specifically recognized and protected Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians, and the failure of a campaign to terrorize the Bah·’Ìs into conversion (thereby eradicating the community) by killing the community’s elected leadership, was clearly leading to the government’s decision to physically wipe out the group, despite the fact that there was no evidence of Bah·’Ì sedition against the state. By organized use of publicity and information supply by Bah·’hÌs outside Iran, world public and government condemnation of this behavior evidently changed Iranian policy, and, according to Bigelow, ‘helped save thousands of lives and limit the number of executions to 210.’³⁹

Unfortunately, the Iranian example is a rare case. This is no doubt in part because it is unusual for such organized and focused effort to be put into informing the vast numbers of individuals and governments necessary to provoke unified condemnation. In addition, most cases involve some level of partisan debate, which when combined with the natural human tendency to deny the horrific, dilutes efforts at mass action. These obstacles plus the ambiguity of prediction are even more difficult to overcome in cases demanding attention before full-scale genocide has actually been embarked upon. And, of course, in situations where a perpetrating government has no interest in being recognized as a member of the international community or where war is already in progress, public exposure is not likely to be effectual.

Once genocide is occurring, and those outside are able — whether or not they choose to publicly do so — to recognize rather than have to predict it, physical action becomes a more politically viable option. Presuming that the perpetrators are, by this point at least, fairly immune to public outcry alone, the next step an outsider can take is to impose sanctions in the form of suspended trade or even blockade. Yet even if the requisite international agreement is reached and enforcement maintained (hurtles not often jumped successfully), economic sanctions often do not positively affect a target group’s behavior. In fact, in numerous cases sanctions have exacerbated the situation:

These assumptions of political collapse following hard upon economic disaster have proved to be unfounded. Indeed economic sanctions have generally had the opposite effect of creating a sense of community and solidarity in the target state....a psychological climate which is similar to a war-time spirit of resistance.⁴⁰

This ‘war-time spirit’ can easily reinforce genocide aimed at those already defined as subverters of the new order. More to the point, ‘[e]ven when [economic sanctions do inflict economic pain on the target], these costs usually do not exceed the benefits the target leadership derives from the disputed policy,’ a problem also observed with attempts to use sanctions as a deterrent.⁴¹ Beyond sanctions on regular goods, arms embargoes are rarely if ever tight enough to halt the flow of arms into a region desiring them, and in any case vast amounts of hardware are not needed to commit genocide: witness the use of machetes in Rwanda. Despite limited direct utility, however, they can have effect on third parties/accessories to genocide, as discussed below.

The only way an outside power can halt the culmination of fear and violence that is genocide is to militarily intervene and force a cessation. Yet, obviously, such an undertaking has obstacles on many levels. First, such massive intervention generally entails the end of the current regime (whether state or sub-state), the regime that has invested its identity in a policy of genocide. Therefore, the interventionist forces are sure to encounter significant resistance, and then be required to engage in some amount of ‘nation-building’ to fill the power vacuum left by the fall of the genocidal regime. On the structural level, the use of military force outside a state’s own borders, whether within another intact state or within a ‘state’ torn by civil war, is always a challenge to the international standard of sovereignty. Armed outside interference must be weighed carefully on moral as well as practical grounds.

Assuming for the moment that the intervening power (or consortium of powers) has accepted the practical burden of military action and nation-building, and has primarily constructive, rather than exploitative, intentions, the question remains: is it ever right to physically violate a state’s autonomy to force domestic change? The international system is built on the common acceptance that each state has equal rights to order their internal affairs however it likes. This acceptance cannot be conditional, including only ‘democratic’ or ‘egalitarian’ or any particular brand of state, for who would determine which states fell under which categories and were therefore entitled to be states? Despite the reality of interdependence, a ‘state’ that is not recognized to have ultimate decision-making and enforcement powers over its own interior ceases to be a state in the international system as it now exists. Does authorization of intervention always undermine the international system, threatening the sovereignty of the interveners as well as of the invaded?

Beitz maintains that this modern ideal of state autonomy developed from the classic liberal concept of the autonomy of the individual, requiring that ‘a person’s [or state’s] choice and pursuit of ends...cannot be overridden simply by considerations of the social good.’⁴² Thus, autonomy is the guarantee of equality and so justice for all. But he then challenges this logic, insisting that an individual’s right to autonomy is based on his/her existence as a Kantian end, a sentient being, whereas a ‘state’ is a construct without any such independent moral worth. Individual justice, according to Beitz, must be the priority of international policy, and states must earn the right to be left autonomous.⁴³ This argument dodges the question, however. In the real world, the variety of human culture and the need for consistent, if imperfect, ground rules for defining agents as well as the relations between them require more acceptance of arbitrary states’ ‘rights’ than Beitz in his idealism is willing to allow.

Michael Walzer proposes a more compelling defense of state sovereignty as well as a more useful theoretical support for violations of it. Relying heavily on Mill, Walzer maintains that a state is a political community that other states must treat as self-determining regardless of how ‘free’ or representative the current government might be. Since ‘[i]t is during an arduous struggle to become free by their own efforts that these virtues [needful for maintaining freedom] have the best chance for springing up,’⁴⁴ intervention can never lead to an increase in a population’s self-determination. Yet this logic carries within it the rationalization for intervention in selected situations. In cases where ‘the violation of human rights within a set of boundaries is so terrible that it makes talk of community or self-determination or "arduous struggle" seem cynical and irrelevant,’ Walzer calls for intervention.⁴⁵ If a regime is engaged in physically destroying its own political community, the Millian concept of self-help becomes meaningless, and the only hope for the establishment or survival of such a community ‘comes from outside.’⁴⁶ Walzer explicitly states that ‘acts "that shock the moral conscience of mankind"’ give states a legal right to intervene, a right not recognized in the orthodox legalist paradigm. Walzer, unlike Beitz, incorporates a reasonable and (relatively) practicable theory of intervention into his model of the state system. Walzer’s method recognizes the fact that there are cases when not intervening, in misguided adherence to an abstract axiom of state sovereignty, can actually undermine the true foundations of that sovereignty.

But even Walzer’s conceptualization leaves many issues open to debate, and the sovereignty dilemma contributes a great deal to the UN’s marked inability to enforce the Convention. Because the UN is made up of states, it is loath to violate state sovereignty. And because the UN was originally designed primarily to avert inter-state war, it is organizationally ill-equipped to analyze or act with regard to intra-state situations. Yet the UN has been somewhat successful at isolated missions of civilian protection and brokering cease-fires and elections in areas of sub-state mass violence. Organizations such as NATO, whose history, structure, mandate, and source of support as an alliance is more appropriate to execution of policy than is the UN’s forum-style collective security framework, have also been used in situations requiring more enforcement than policing. Obviously, even states feel that they put themselves and the international system at some risk by allowing genocide to go completely unchallenged.

Direct physical intervention by outsiders has affected genocide in the past. Despite the probability of having to fight one faction in the civil war, the French unilaterally sent troops into western Rwanda to set up a ‘safe area,’ rescuing thousands of civilian survivors there and averting a ‘mass exodus into Zaire’ by convincing over one million displaced people there that it was safe to stay.⁴⁷ But a Rwanda-wide UN mission scaled back its commitment when violence was directed at its troops, removing personnel and limiting action to the protection of foreigners rather than of all civilians.⁴⁸ Intervention success comes down to the results of a cost-benefit analysis: the outsider must weigh the immediate political costs of the loss of its own citizens against the political damage done by standing by impotently; then, in a context of limited resources, the outsider must consider the long-term political and economic costs of deepening material and human commitment to a foreign land whose troubles might soon slip out of the public spotlight. If these issues are not directly addressed by the prospective interventionist, then half-measures and quagmires result: intervening soldiers die, the credibility of international institutions and individual states is undermined, while genocide continues. If an outside power (or collaboration of outside powers) materially capable of launching and sustaining such a large-scale and complex military/nation-building operation considers the costs and determines that halting genocide is, for whatever reason, in its interest, then, presumably, enough physical pressure can be brought to bear to force a halt. However, such commitment of blood and gold to a particularly vicious, volatile, and open-ended conflict can hardly be expected often.

Civil war, an increasingly prevalent phenomenon as the Cold War blocs break up, poses particularly difficult problems, not only in the prediction of genocide, but after genocide has wound down. The radicalized environment in which genocide occurs cannot persist forever, and civil war is particularly devastating. Internal fatigue combined with sporadic international interference and condemnation is a more likely scenario for cessation of genocide in civil war than is massive foreign military intervention. Once the genocidal crisis is past, the international community has a final opportunity to iterate its values and attempt to deter future genocides: prosecution of individual policy-makers and executioners under the terms of the Convention. But unlike in top-down genocide (or even genocide in interstate war), where the perpetrating regime has such overwhelming local force and institutional structures at hand that only overthrow or near success of its genocidal policy is likely to halt it, perpetrators of genocide in civil war might well compromise before total defeat. In view of this more even distribution of power, external action during genocidal civil war is usually focused on mediation between the parties, in order to avoid the costs mentioned above. Such mediation obviously involves recognizing and dealing with all factions in order to come to a meaningful agreement. In this role, once ‘peace’ is reached the international community is likely to find itself ironically dependent on the perpetrators that it legitimized, seriously crippling any practical ability to prosecute those perpetrators.

The international community and its members are injured on many levels by the commission of genocide, beyond the injury that often accompanies other domestic human rights abuses or war alone. In the case of genocide in civil war especially, outsiders have limited ability to foresee or to halt the escalation to genocide, while being confronted with a conflict between ‘peace’ and the prosecution of criminals after it. This conclusion is not meant to suggest that outside actors should cease their attempts to monitor and act upon at-risk situations before they reach the level of genocide, since pre-emptive publicity and/or action sometimes reduces the carnage. Nor does it suggest that the prosecution of perpetrators be any less aggressively pursued after ‘peace’ has been established, especially since internationally organized punishment of criminals might have some positive effect on the victims’ ability to abide by the ‘peace’ and refrain from engaging in a cycle of vigilante violence. But outside actors have the most opportunity to affect genocide while it is occurring, by direct military intervention aimed at making the continuation of genocide too costly relative to military pressure, or physically impossible. Unfortunately, such intervention will always entail human loss on the part of those intervening, to say nothing of financial cost, in addition to a long-term commitment to stabilize the area. Like most important decisions in life, the greatest possibility for positive change involves the greatest risk.

An analysis of the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Bosnia) in terms of genocide must first, reflecting the definition section above, determine that genocide is in fact occurring there. Because this genocide occurred extremely recently and the perpetrating powers are still at least partially in place, direct evidence of overall policy intention and consistency of execution is very difficult to establish at this point in time. However, patterns of individual events provide evidence of the ‘symptoms’ often accompanying genocide, while an analysis of the structural, material, and psychological situation preceding the escalation shows a close fit with the above comprehensive theory of causality. External attempts to affect the course of the genocide must be understood in terms of the reasons why outsiders felt the need to become involved. Likewise, the character and scale of their involvement significantly affected the war situation, and therefore the genocide, in both positive and negative respects, culminating but not ending with the externally-sponsored Dayton Accords. And despite the international community’s attempts to prosecute the offenders now that there is a tenuous ‘peace’ in place, the fact that one side’s goal in the war was genocide bodes ill for the longevity of those Accords.

‘Ethnic cleansing,’ a policy commonly accepted by the Bosnian Serb (B-Serb) authorities who themselves coined the phrase referring to the forced relocation of people from their homes based on their ethnicity alone, is not equivalent to genocide. It is, however, a strong indication that genocide will soon follow. The adoption of such a policy, including the virulent propaganda that accompanies it, demonstrates that the groundwork for genocide has already been laid: the dehumanization of another group, the depiction of members of this group as, by their very existence, threatening the ideal new order, the re-definition of the moral community as minus the members of this group. The enforcement of such a policy helps to establish the ‘machinery for destruction’ necessary for the perpetration of genocide: the legal and physical institutions for identification, segregation, and mistreatment of the victims, the increasing acceptance by perpetrators and bystanders of the escalating abuse of this Other. In fact, ‘ethnic cleansing’ has included mass killings of non-Serbs;⁴⁹ mass, organized, and systematic rape especially of Muslim women;⁵⁰ the deportation of civilian and POW non-Serbs, primarily Muslims, in sealed freight trains to camps where starvation, regular beatings, lack of shelter, torture, and occasional mass shootings made life expectancy short.⁵¹ This anecdotal evidence of genocide is supplemented by evidence of consistent ethnocide, including the regular and intentional destruction of mosques and Bosnian National libraries by occupying B-Serb forces,⁵² and regular special targeting of Muslim community and religious leaders and professional and intellectual elites for execution.⁵³ ‘[N]ew legal restrictions which differentiated amongst citizens on ethnic lines,’ and which resulted in the jailing of hundreds of Muslims, hints at a bureaucratic paper trail which will never be nearly as complete as the Third Reich’s.⁵⁴ ‘Ethnic cleansing,’ whatever its original intent, has slipped into genocide. Several observers have noted that ‘[e]thnic cleansing does not appear to be the consequence of the war, but rather its goal.’⁵⁵ Clearly, within the policy of ‘ethnic cleansing’ physical extermination is being pursued as a goal often superseding mass relocation.

The political and ideological vacuum following the fall of communism in Yugoslavia provided fertile ground for the extreme nationalism that politicians such as Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic encouraged and exploited.⁵⁶ Ethnic demography contributed to Serb territorial claims: an uncommonly large number of ethnic Serbs, relative to the other major ethnicities, lived outside Serbia, mainly in Croatia and Bosnia, Bosnia being the most geographically inter-mixed and ethnically heterogeneous of the former Yugoslav republics. Only 33% of the Bosnian population was ethnically Serb (versus 40% Muslim and 18% Croat), making the prospect of Bosnian succession from a new Serbia-run Yugoslav Republic both likely and particularly unwanted from the Greater Serbia viewpoint.⁵⁷ By early 1992, B-Serbs found themselves in a situation remarkably reminiscent of Melson’s war-time invincibility/vulnerability paradox: B-Serb leader Radovan Karadzic had good reason to believe that B-Serbs ‘had the backing, and indeed the encouragement, of the Yugoslav Federal Army [by this point largely S-Serb nationalist-dominated] if and when they resorted to arms,’ giving him the confidence to ‘discount a political solution’ to the succession crisis in Bosnia; at the same time, a very large majority of Croats and Muslims voted for independence in a Bosnia-wide referendum (which the B-Serbs boycotted), adding to the perception of threat and reducing the possibilities — if there ever were any real possibilities — of a federalized compromise.⁵⁸ Muslims especially were increasingly viewed simultaneously as un-integratable foreign obstacles to Serb culture and as traitors, descendants of Slavs who abandoned the Church for Islam under the domination of the Ottomans.⁵⁹ Escalating abuse of a group historically singled out as representative of both an internal and an external threat culminated in genocide.

The international community faced numerous problems as a result of the wars in the former Yugoslavia, but the genocide in Bosnia amplified these concerns. Refugees from Bosnia, now more than ever facing death if they remained near enemy-occupied land, flooded the surrounding recently war-torn republics, threatening to further destabilize those areas. Fears of ‘spill-over’ to neighboring areas of ethnic contention like Kosovo and Macedonia intensified as long as the war raged, and genocidal policy no doubt contributed at least in the short term to lengthening rather than resolving the conflict. The growing public awareness of the atrocities in Bosnia, abuses more systematic and organized than the atrocities committed during the war in Croatia, further pressured governments to act.

But even before genocidal war erupted in Bosnia, the international community influenced its course. After a declaration of independence by Croatia sparked off a vicious war between Croats and Croatian Serbs, the international community recognized Croatia as an independent state in the hopes of bringing about a cease-fire by eliminating the possibility of forced federation with Serbia. Although some analysts concede that recognition did help to facilitate a cease-fire there, most also maintain that this settlement allowed Serbian attention, and Serb-Croat rivalry, to focus on the tinderbox of Bosnia.⁶⁰ The EC placed the final straw by declaring a general deadline for application for recognition, forcing Bosnian authorities to declare this intention without time to adjust for B-Serb fear and exclusionary nationalism.⁶¹ Even before genocide had come fully into view, outsiders helped effect the circumstances under which it occurred.

Once genocide was under way, outsiders acted slowly and in piecemeal fashion. In response to a refugee problem serious enough to force UNPROFOR units to block entry into Croatia of even military-age fleeing Muslims due to hospital and refugee center overcrowding,⁶² the UN decided to establish ‘safe areas’ within Bosnia. However, apparently ignoring the recommendations regarding force levels made by the UN Secretariat in consultation with UN commanders in the field, the Security Council members would allocate neither the number of their own troops nor money to fund enough of other states’ troops to adequately defend these areas.⁶³ In consequence, several ‘safe areas’ fell to B-Serb forces despite UN guarantees. In a separate and earlier attempt to stem especially the violence in Bosnia, an international arms embargo was imposed against all parties in the territory of the former Yugoslavia. This effort failed as well, as the embargo did ‘not prevent significant quantities of equipment from reaching either Croatian or Bosnian forces’ (including the Croatian Air Force’s procurement of 18 MiG-21s during the embargo) and the B-Serb forces remained as well-equipped from Serbia as ever.⁶⁴ The sides were balanced enough by 1994 that one analysis bluntly declared, ‘[w]ithout a considerable increase in the amount of outside assistance no military "victory" can be achieved by either party.’⁶⁵

The international community perhaps had slightly more success with economic sanctions. While the war in Bosnia is here categorized as a civil war in reference to the typology of genocide above, the reality of active partisan intervention by both Croatia and Serbia has had great effect on all aspects of the conflict.⁶⁶ As discussed above, and borne out by the ensuing territorial shifts as the war continued, Serbian support of the B-Serb effort in particular enabled the B-Serbs to wage a largely successful war against Bosnian government forces. But such B-Serb dependence also meant that the international community, which unsurprisingly found it difficult to directly pressure the B-Serbs short of using significant military force locally, could pressure Serbia for results in Bosnia: Milosevic, desperate to maintain power over his constituency, required a certain level of international recognition and economic contact with outsiders to shore up Serbia’s transitional economy. Sources indicate that sanctions did have some, if not decisive, effect on Serb decision-making. For example, B-Serb intransigence regarding attempts at a brokered peace in 1994 encouraged the international community to threaten Serbia proper with ‘further and tighter sanctions’ in an effort to exacerbate the growing split between Milosevic and Karadzic. Milosevic reacted as hoped, denouncing the B-Serb refusal to accept the proposed plan and closing the Serbia-Bosnia border. This partial border-closing threatened the B-Serb Army supply of fuel,⁶⁷ indicating that pressure on Serbia might translate to real pressure on B-Serbian forces. The pressure of publicity directly on the B-Serbs was also used to some positive effect: days after a Western paper reported atrocities in one of the largest B-Serb-run concentration camps the camp was shut down and the facility opened to media and Red Cross observers.⁶⁸ Although other camps remained in operation, such reaction to scrutiny indicates some vulnerability to world opinion. Foreshadowing compromise to come, however, the US and Germany seriously downplayed atrocities by Croatians against Serbs in Krajina in order to facilitate a peace settlement there, and Milosevic was rewarded for his tardy action against the B-Serbs by the lifting of several UN sanctions.⁶⁹

In the end, only when the non-existent UN enforcement ability was replaced by NATO military intervention did the war in Bosnia begin to grind to a pause. More accurately perhaps, a combination of war-weariness, Serbian desire for closer ties with the West, and a NATO-assisted change in the tide of battle against the B-Serbs⁷⁰ combined with charismatic personal pressure on the part of Western negotiators to push all the belligerent parties into accepting the Dayton Accords in November 1995. This cessation of war, and with it the halt of B-Serbian ability to continue their genocide, certainly would not have occurred at this time nor in the near future without the forceful military intervention of NATO under a mandate from the UN. This ‘peace,’ however, is tenuous at best, and in many ways unjust. The B-Serb ‘Republika Sprska’ has been somewhat legitimized by this Accord, and the B-Serbs were granted significant territorial concessions over previous proposed treaties. Despite human-rights abuses and expulsion of the local Serb population, Croatia was accorded control over nearly all territory previously lost.⁷¹ Bosnia, the internationally-recognized state that the international community allowed to be ruptured from within and invaded from without, was effectively partitioned by the terms of the Accord. And the scars of genocide contribute to the difficulty of any attempt at a permanent peace, as Hans Koschnick, an EU administrator in Mostar for almost two years, explains:

There was one mistake in our common thinking...: that what the leadership of the Croats, Bosnians and Serbs agreed to will be accepted by the people on the ground....I’m sure that the Dayton agreement is an excellent agreement for a ceasefire. It has stopped the war and the murdering, but it is not peace.⁷²

A lasting peace will require at least military commitment much longer than a year, plus major restructuring (or at least re-casting) of regional governments, such as Serbia’s, built on hyper-nationalist aspirations to Greater versions of itself at the terminal expense of entire populations.

Despite these predictive misgivings, the international community must proceed with its efforts to bring the perpetrators of genocide and other atrocities to justice. Properly conducted trials would help to revalidate the community’s ideals and the institutions that have, through declarations and Conventions, declared their commitment to pursuing such justice. Yet the strains of practical expediency are already prominent. The failure of NATO peacekeeping forces to accept a mandate to actively seek out indicted war criminals has degenerated further into apparently intentional laxness regarding the lesser duty of collecting indicted individuals who happen to cross their path. Repeated incidents of wanted people smoothly passed through NATO checkpoints might be partially explained by the difficulty of identifying individuals from photos in relatively chaotic circumstances, but NATO’s vociferous and repeated insistence that it is there to ensure compliance with the Accord and not to police the area for war criminals contributes to the impression that the international community cannot afford to be too concerned with justice. After all, the Dayton Accords no doubt provided some measure of immunity from prosecution for the major policy-makers. In the short run, the easiest path is that of least resistance, working with the powers that be in an attempt to stabilize the situation. In the long run, the powers that be are unlikely to truly accept the current status quo. The aim of B-Serb and Serb policy was eradication of non-Serbs, especially Muslims, from territory that their ideological foundation maintains must be theirs; efforts towards this goal have been halted by external interference, but the same dynamics are still in place. Residents of Bosnia who aspire to live in the multi-ethnic state Bosnia was intended to be, and who were inflicted with the horrors of its rending, no doubt feel cheated by the radical ethno-nationalist inroads now legitimized by the Accords.

Although the international community did have significant effect on the commission of genocide in Bosnia, much of it was not positive. Insufficient recognition of the warning signs of ethnic war and genocide led to diplomatic action that quite possibly exacerbated the situation. Totally inadequate provisions for enforcement, or ‘peacemaking,’ left UN attempts to halt the genocide and pressure the belligerents into a lasting peace settlement depressingly ineffectual. This refusal on the part of the international community to effectively honor the explicit duty of all UN members to enforce the integrity of recognized states’ borders in case of violation by invasion (which the operation of the YNA and Croatian armed forces within Bosnia certainly constituted) most blatantly undermined the practical basis of the UN and the conceptual basis of the international system. The compromises necessitated by engineering a halt to civil war have made achievement of a stable peace all the more challenging. Yet eventually, relatively decisive military intervention did help to bring about the peace that has been holding now for six months. Now, continued military presence will be necessary if peace is to have any chance to grow roots in post-genocide Bosnia.

Bosnia’s example clearly illustrates the value of a clear definition of ‘genocide’ and of recognition of the vitally important international aspects of this form of mass violence. The fact that not only war but genocide was occurring there significantly altered the refugee flow, the possibilities for negotiation, the region’s future stability, and the position of outsiders ostensibly trying to stem the flow of blood. The fact that genocide was occurring must be taken into account if a permanent end is ever envisioned: desire for total annihilation of a population leads to different behavior than desire only for territorial gain. More abstractly, genocide calls into question the extent to which outside powers are willing to enforce a particular world ideal: war as a general category might be acceptable, as it might often be justifiable, even necessary; genocide is never acceptable by current international legal or moral standards. Although but one incarnation of the many varieties of human destruction, genocide is a specific phenomenon with complex international dimensions.

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