Director of the Mass Atrocity Response Operations Project, Michael C. Pryce, spoke in Blaustein last Wednesday about America’s failure to prevent genocide.
Pryce, a former professor of Conflict Resolution at the US Army War College spoke of his time overseas as a marine and the profound effect this had on his worldview.
“I got to know a lot about war crimes in Kosovo and Bosnia,” he said.
Though Pryce comes from a military background, he believes that America has failed to prevent violence in other nations because of our inability to anticipate the future as we are constantly, “looking backwards.”
Pryce believes that the root of the problem is the classic planning design that the military continues to fall into when taking on foreign conflict.
“We tend to plan in a military paradigm,” he said, “friend vs. enemy.”
At the bottom of Pryce’s design is a basic reconstitution of these military standards to a more comprehensive understanding of the complexities inherent to bringing an outside force into a native conflict.
“A given genocide will be comprised of perpetrators, victims, interveners and others,” he said.
The friend vs. enemy paradigm falls apart in these situations, a phenomenon that must be addressed according to Pryce in order to affectively create a plan that will have any positive effect.
“One of the most important things to consider is that improvisation is dead,” he said.
Pryce has a direct plan of attack concerning genocide, though not in the typical militaristic sense.
“We have to shift the planning paradigm,” he said. “We have to rely on predominantly non-military actions to prevent mass atrocities.”
If it becomes necessary to bring in military force, which Pryce seeks to avoid at all costs, plans for the aftermath of this decision must be understood beforehand.
“If we do it from a military perspective we promise immediate security to everyone,” he explained. “You have to be able to move into that transition period from providing protection immediately or you will become part of the problem.”
By their very nature, genocides are not spontaneous occurrences and therefore may be recognized in their beginning stages.
“Genocides don’t just pop up out of the ground,” Pryce said. “You have to ask, why would you do this? I suspect you’re going to do it for a reason that makes sense to you.”
Pryce views genocide as a brutal, soulless but tactical approach by those who have the means to get rid of their problems.
“They are a distinctly logical means to an end if understood in their own light,” he said.
Pryce proposes a solution based around pre-emptive, diplomatic strikes at anything moving in the direction of genocide.
“If you can predict the next step you can develop ways to stop genocide,” he said.
Integral to his plans are the presence of early warning networks in sensitive areas throughout Africa. He noted the use of cell phones in remote villages to spread the word of attacks in ways that were never available before.
Additionally, the presence of Regional Security Organizations whose job it is to understand the local culture and by these means not appear as an entirely foreign presence will become critical to improving relations between US forces and native populations in genocide-sensitive areas.
Though he is attacking a problem that is admittedly impossible to get a full handle on, Pryce thinks that the US cannot be doing a worse job in preventing genocide, so the only direction to go is towards improvement.
“I want to start a conversation,” he said, “it’s time to restructure the security systems we live under and start looking forward.”
