Coalition for Darfur: Genocide and Statistics
Cross-posted from Coalition for Darfur
Genocide and Statistics
Last week, International Studies Quarterly published a study
by Matthew
Krain, an Associate Professor of Political Science at the College
of Wooster, examining “the effectiveness of military action on the
severity of ongoing instances of genocide and polititcide.”
According to the press
release
The study reveals that only overt military
interventions that explicitly challenge the perpetrator appear to be
effective in reducing the severity of the brutal policies. Military
support for targets, or in opposition to the perpetrators, alters the
almost complete vulnerability of unarmed civilian targets. And these
interventions that directly target the perpetrators were not, on the
whole, found to make matters worse for those being attacked … He
finds that even military intervention against the perpetrator by a
single country or international organization has a measurable effect
in the “typical” case.When a single international actor challenges the aggressor, the
probability that the killings will escalate drops while the
probability that the killings will decrease jumps. Each additional
intervention by another international actor raises the chance of
saving lives.
In the introduction to the study, Krain
notes
Policy makers faced with situations like those in
Rwanda or Bosnia, Kosovo or Darfur, are forced to rely on past
experience with interventions in other types of internal conflicts,
often with disastrous results. This study is a step toward a better
understanding of the effectiveness of potential responses by the
international community to genocides and politicides.
Krain goes on to examine various intervention methods of dealing with
on-going genocides and politicides (the “impartial intervention
model,” the “witness model,” the “bystander model,” etc…) and notes
that not one of them is capable of reducing the severity of such
situations.
After conducting a statistical analysis of the various models, Krain
concludes
Policy maker concerns that intervention on the
behalf of target populations will escalate the killing appear to be
unfounded.The only overt military interventions that appear to be effective in
reducing the severity of genocides or politicides are those that
explicitly challenge the perpetrator
He then discusses
his finding as they relate to Darfur, writing
Intervention against the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed within
the first year of the genocide would likely have had a measurable
effect on the severity [2003] of state-sponsored mass murder in the
following year.
Kraine does not claim that military
intervention is the “only” option. In fact, he notes that “policy
makers have a range of options available to them in the face of an
ongoing genocide or politicide” and that his study “only examines one
of those options.”
Keeping that in mind, it is hard to argue with Kraine’s basic
conclusion
If actors wish to slow or stop the killing in
an ongoing instance of state-sponsored mass murder, they are more
likely to be effective if they oppose the perpetrators of the
brutal policy.
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John Bambenek is the Assistant Politics Editor for Blogcritics and is an academic professional for the University of Illinois. He is a freelance columnist who blogs at Part-Time Pundit and the executive director of The Tumaini Foundation which helps AIDS orphans and other children in Tanzania to get an education. He is the current owner of BlogSoldiers, a blog-only traffic exchange. | More from John Bambenek
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