Peace Making Fails!

Following is a review of Prelude to Genocide - Arusha, Rwanda, and the Failure of Diplomacy by David Rawson, Ohio University Press, Athens, 2018.

        

 Prelude to Genocide is the most detailed and best documented account of a diplomatic negotiation that I know of.  Its authoritativeness and accuracy cannot be questioned.  The effort that went into culling through the files and then affixing the proper citations is astounding.  The story unfolds in a chronological fashion although it jumps backward at times to repeat some common background for a new thread.  The book flows fairly well. Its best features are the comprehensiveness of the study and its worst the fact that it is an academic treatise that is not likely to entertain folks who are not deeply interested in either the Rwandan crisis or the process of negotiations.

This is the definitive work on the 1992 Arusha talks designed to end conflict in Rwanda, essentially through power-sharing arrangements. Nowhere else has the topic been covered so thoroughly and with so much insight as to the motives of the participants. At best the talks themselves and the posturing around them have been treated in articles or as short chapters in other books.  Without doubt this book is an addition to the professional literature, especially important is the discussion of what happened after the accords were signed in August 1993, i.e. the jockeying that took place in Kigali that delayed the implementation of the agreements.  No one else has studied those events with such care.

This book is not going to reach a popular audience, but for those focused on Rwanda or on what constitutes a negotiation and how that occurs, the book is illustrative.  In that regard, anyone who wonders what diplomats actually do will not help but be impressed with the enormous amount of to and fro and give and take that ensues as foreign policy is pushed along. The book has definite text possibilities for classes on diplomacy, negotiation or conflict resolution.  The latter because the author notes throughout what was not working and what the ultimate result of such failures would be.

Rawson puts the bottom line up front. Arusha failed because the parties to the talks were seeking power, not peace.  The Tanzanian/OAU conveners wanted an agreement, any agreement.  The western powers pursued their individual national approaches - the U.S. for example wanted the OAU in the forefront of peacekeeping despite the reality that it was incapable of performing. Collectively the troika of US/France/Belgium pushed western ideas of democracy, inclusiveness and accountability.  They did not recognize until late in the game that it was all a house of cards. and by then it was to late to deviate. The book shows in ways never before detailed how this all came about.

 

Some readers are going to try to mine this book for smoking guns, i.e. proof that the U.S. knew genocide was coming, or complicity in that regard by the failure to act. Rawson is up front on what the U.S. knew about deteriorating security and when, as well as Rwanda’s historical predilection towards ethnic violence.  He is similarly candid when talking about the policy frameworks that governed U.S. actions.  Certainly diplomats were hamstrung from not having all possible options available, but given the parameters within which they had to work, this book provides an accurate record of what transpired.

Since none of the Rwandans involved in the talks has or will write about their motives and expectations, this book must stand as definitive.  Kigali side players are dead and RPF players that remain are too cautious to be frank and too blinded by hindsight to be accurate. Internal records on the part of participants - whatever might have existed - are probably long gone. 

In sum this is an excellent book that belongs in every university library.