"Armed Against Genocide":
A new column by Glenn Reynolds, in the Guardian (U.K.), of all places. A British newspaper's Web site entertaining the notion that "the right of people to be armed to resist genocide should perhaps be regarded as the next international human right" -- shocking.
That's right. It's much more practical to let them die, as long as they have the good manners of doing so quietly.
Justin, if these people won't be defended by anyone else (the UN, US, their own governments, etc.), maybe they should be encouraged to defend themselves.
Part of that encouragement would have to be ensuring that they can defend themselves if necessary.
I'm interested to know what your solution would be.
The thing is, if we won't stand up for their right to live today (and looking the other way and much jawboning in the UN has, so far, done nothing to save their lives), why would we think that anyone would stand up for their right to bear arms to prevent same death on their own?
One, arming African populations with guns will be useless, because
1) there's not enough money to do it
2) even if there was, there's not enough money to provide sustainable bullets
3) by definition, they're the weaker group in the area, presumably the stronger group in the area will want/have guns, and will massacre them anyway. In fact, since they now have an incentive to own guns, they'll be more likely to do so, and be better at it. And there will be higher casualties on both sides for it, which doesn't make me shed that many tears, but is technically at least a larger loss of life.
4) In Eastern Europe and Asia, arming these communities will be useless, as military technology has advanced in this area as to make guns a fairly uselss endeavor. Militarizing them without training will be even more useless. Arming them and providing or encouraging proper training will just increase fear and loathing of such minorities (see Israel in the Middle East) and will make them larger targets for genocide.
The only way arming a political minority insulates them from genocide is by arming them in a way that gives them equal military power (increasing the likelihood of armed conflict in the process) or superior military power (which makes the other side the potential victims of genocide).
But all of this seems common sense, and I assume common sense gets the rebuttable presumption of correctness.
Justin, you are presumably saying that by deregulating arms to an extent, we run the risk of subverting our aim and arming those that would carry out genocide, not fall victim to it.
History does not bear this argument. By definition, potential victims of genocide comprise some kind of minority, and relative minorities have never to my knowledge carried out genocide, except under the auspices of government protection (see Sunnis in Saddam's Iraq), but in that case, they clearly don't need the protection.
From my cursory look at the Kopel study, I believe that he argues against imposing criminal penalties agaisnt those who smuggle weapons to the victims of the genocide. He also argues against weapon embargoes imposed against the genocide-perpetrating countries, since embargoes only reinforce the status quo - namely lack of weapons in the hands of the victims, and their abundance in the hands of the aggressors.
I see two problems in the substantive paper, and thereby in the argument that Reynolds makes:
1) If the embargoes are lifted, the ethnic group committing the genocide will be able to acquire weapons at a significantly higher rate, than its victims, since at the commission of the genocide, it enjoys comparative advantage of being in cotrol of the economic and political resources. Its ability to acquire weaponry at the increased rate, will negate any advantages obtained by the victims as a result of the lift of the weapon embargoe. The result will most likely be status quo.
2) I also would like to see some empirical data concerning the viability of a minority population armed with small-arms and lacking any outside support, providing meaningful resistance against an aggressor intent on destorying them. The Warsaw Ghetto example is the obvious one to make, however, I believe that more sufficient research needs to be done, before conclusive argument could be made.
=======================
Niether the nerve gas nor the size of his army was what created the vast Stalinist machinery that kept the population in check. It IS the point. The arming of individuals does not advance the cause of democracy. The educating of individuals does.
If you're telling countries with instability and generally effective gun bans to allow guns into their country, my guess is it its the political MINORITY that will object. The tool de force in Rwanda was a machete not because the minority was unarmed and machetes will do, but because the majority was unarmed and a machete had to do. Allow guns, and well, its easier to massacre people with guns, esp when bullets are expensive and the majority controls the economic resources (see my primary point).
Justin is ignoring the disproportionate increase in the minority group's power. By definition, the majority group has the arms that it wants. If the minority group is disarmed, killing them is fairly risk free and almost guaranteed to succeed. However, killing an armed minority group is both risky and costly. They may still lose, but the more expensive it is to kill them, the less likely the majority is to go to the trouble and the more likely it is that the minority will be able to successfully resist.
> But all of this seems common sense, and I assume common sense gets the rebuttable presumption of correctness.
Ignoring changes in costs and a relative change in capability may be common, but it certainly isn't sensible/correct.
By definition, the majority group has the arms that it wants. If the minority group is disarmed, killing them is fairly risk free and almost guaranteed to succeed. However, killing an armed minority group is both risky and costly. They may still lose, but the more expensive it is to kill them, the less likely the majority is to go to the trouble and the more likely it is that the minority will be able to successfully resist.
End Quote
Andy,
That assumes that perpetrators of genocide are rational actors, who will stop committing genocide if the costs to continue it will be higher than the the costs to desist.
Such theories worked well in explaining civil conflict. However, genocide can also be a self-containing occurence, outside of the context of civil war. You have to present empirical studies that deal with the matter, before you can carry over research from one social science subdivision to the next.
Seems like in all these crappy failed countries, the only thing they DO have cheap and in great quantities is guns. An AK-47 costs somewhere from $5 to $30 in most parts of Africa - hardly unaffordable.
In countries with active (if diminished) economies, the guns are nerf toys compared to what the enemy has gotten.
Insurgencies armed with nothing but small arms are HARD to put down, even for ruthless dictatorships with heavy weapons.
Insurgencies armed with nothing but small arms are HARD to put down, even for ruthless dictatorships with heavy weapons.
"
Consider the Soviet effort against Lithuanian nationalists in the 40's and 50's. Militia bands equipped, in many cases, with bolt action rifles and breach-load shotguns evaded the Soviet military that was not just numerically superior, but equipped with AK's, (the height of small arm innovation at the time), T-34's, and rocket artillery.
It requires rationality only to the degree of understanding that (1) genocide in this context may get the perpetrator killed and (2) getting killed is not a good idea. I believe that is a level of rationality which most genocidal types experience. Hitler, after all, killed himself only when cornered, and most of his henchmen were taken alive.
If you think "guns are nerf toys" compared to anything the majority might have, I suggest you haven't noticed, you know, Vietnam, or Afghanistan under the Soviets, or Iraq. Guns bridge the gap, at least somewhat. Moreover, if you've been paying attention in Darfur, you'll have seen that the government uses groups like the Janjaweed to provide deniability; they can't bring the full weight of their armed forces -- which aren't exactly NATO caliber in any case -- to bear on the situation.
And as for "affording" the guns, what's missing in places like Darfur isn't so much money as it is countries willing to put bodies on the ground. But there are bodies right there — the victims. Let them defend themselves.
In any case, you don't identify any other practical approach which has any chance of succeeding. We already know that, in Darfur, the African Union doesn't have the resources to do anything, and that Europe doesn't have the will. What's left?
1) If the embargoes are lifted, the ethnic group committing the genocide will be able to acquire weapons at a significantly higher rate, than its victims, since at the commission of the genocide, it enjoys comparative advantage of being in cotrol of the economic and political resources.
Counterconsideration: genocide seems to flourish only where the perpetrators have appreciably more than a comparative advantage in arms. No one can be certain of the outcome of their actions (is this house one of the 10% that have an AK inside?) and while suicide bombers are known, the example of a suicide genocidal type is harder to call up. Like most of us, they seem to prefer 0% odds of being killed on the job in the next year to, oh, 10, 20, or 50%.
The explanation was wrong. The majority can't have more than the 100% odds of success and or less than the 0 cost that it has facing an unarmed majority. Any decrease in the odds of success is a win for the minority. Any increase in the cost of committing genocide (the ability to kill attackers that they wouldn't have been able to kill without guns) is also a win for the minority.
I find arguments that rely on the good will of a genocidal majority ("we're not going to try to kill you unless you have the ability to fight back") somewhat strange. In other news, someone who says "your money or your life" doesn't value your life very highly.
This is a chicken-or-the-egg question that merits some serious study. Does liberal democracy spring from advancements in thought (which I personally suspect), or the other way around? And what's the role of economics in the two? Does, shall we say, Enlightenment require a certain amount of disposable cash in the average person's pocketbook?
If someone wants to do a case study, they can try 17th century England. As Joyce Malcolm pointed out to me, under Charles I people were still being executed for witchcraft. Under his son Charles II, claiming to predict the future was made punishable -- as a fraud. What one generation had regarded as unquestionable the next regarded as false as a matter of law.
(But when Charles II was told of a fellow who said he could predict the future he responded... by taking him to the horse races as a test!)
The cost argument does, but the odds of success argument doesn't. If I'm facing an irrational genocidal majority, the more I can push up the odds of killing them, the better off I am. Dead folks don't kill all that well. I may fail, but the irrational genocidal majority was going to kill me anyway, so what have I lost by taking the best shot I could get?
It would be helpful, if Reynolds had in fact made substantive arguments. But that's a lot to ask of Reynolds. So far as I can tell he simply says that the targets of a genocidal campaign would benefit by being armed. There's an insight.
About how he would define, implement, enforce, his proposed right, about the risks involved, about alternative policies, he says nothing. In other words, this is nothing more than another version of "gun rights are wonderful." It's not a serious article.
Genocide on the other hand, is not explained in sufficient detail, to claim that "the perpetrator will stop if there is a sufficient chance that he will get killed". For the most part genocides are not driven by economic, or even political motives that can be quanitified in a numerical value. There is no economic rationale for the genocide in Darfur, so what makes anyone sure that a chance that the victim will defend, will stop the assailant, when he is not driven by something that is quantifiable in the first place?
Few people, faced with the question of how significant are the odds of getting killed while doing something, will demand numerical quantification before assessing their conduct, at least so long as the odds are nontrivial.
If the issue is receiving a gutshot from a three round burst, I suspect most folks are content with a very crude approximation of the odds, even into a simple zilch vs. might just happen dichotomy.
I speculate that the chance of them stopping, are very low, you are welcome to disagree with me. Until studies are done quantifying the relevant factors - both positions: give them guns, don't give them guns - are equally wrong
If the argument is that the victims can't afford weapons, I'm pretty sure someone will supply guns on the cuff; damn few of those 'wars of national liberation' in the last century were cash-and-carry operations.
Of course, if it turned out badly we'd be responsible; but not doing it may turn out worse, and a sin of omission is still a sin -- a point Liberals are notoriously weak on.
It is certainly significant that genocide is usually preceded by a determined effort to disarm the victims.
Until studies are done quantifying the relevant factors - both positions: give them guns, don't give them guns - are equally wrong
Not doing anything is not a morally neutral act, since it permits genocide to continue. It is hard to see how arming the victims in Darfur could be "just as wrong" as watching the atrocities continue.
What a lesson that would be.
In times of upheaval only gold and pornography seem to hold their value; I declare it to be a basic human right that everyone be given gold and porno so that they can trade them for guns or buy off those who would kill them, in order to prevent genocide.
That's what the victims of genocide do ... die in earnest ... while everyone in this thread has fun playing a fatal kind of one upmanship with one another, and meanwhile the rocks keep pelting the frogs.
Don't ask the UN, they don't even believe in a thing called "genocide", much less doing anything practical - like distributing guns - to prevent it.
Moreover, the violence in Iraq creates another problem. The fact that Iraq has massive amounts of arms has obviously created no stability in that society.
=====================
Small arms are responsible for most of the deaths in current conflicts, the most common being the automatic assault rifle. The majority of actors in these conflicts are sub-state groupings. All the violent conflict under way in the world involves violence between internal groups, often ethnically defined, rather than states. According to one estimate, ‘only 4 of the 82 armed conflicts recorded in 1989-92 were of a classic inter-state character, while all of the remainder entailed some degree of internal warfare, usually along ethnic and religious lines’ (Klare, 1994:38). Instead of the ‘cats paw’ wars of the Cold War era fought by the superpowers using proxy forces, there are civil wars taking place within failed states, in what have been termed ‘teacup wars’ (Gelb, 1994:36).
States are losing their monopoly of legitimate violence. ‘The key narrative of the new world order is the disintegration of states’ and the ‘key language of that dissolution is ethnic nationalism’ (Ignatieff, 1994:5). This implies the reversal of another historic trend: the disarmament of civilians in the process of Western state formation. ‘Well-armed groups of citizens are forming all over the world’ (Tilly, 1991: 7) and this process threatens to subvert democracy
.http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-68073-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html
It did not continue "unabated". It took the Iraqis a long time, and heavy, heavy casualties to suppress various outbreaks of Kurdish insurgency in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1990s. No, the Kurds did not stop the Iraqi efforts at genocide, but they undoubtedly slowed the process. If they had been unarmed, not only would the Iraqis have slaughtered them faster, but the Kurds wouldn't have had the opportunity to make the Iraqis pay a significant price for their crimes.
I'm not sure what you mean by "genocide in Iraq." Genocide of whom carried out by whom? Are you talking about Saddam's killing of Kurds? There is no ongoing genocide happening in Iraq so I assume you're talking about the Kurds. If so, you are wrong about the effect of the Kurds being armed. It obviously did abate Saddam's attempt to exterminate them, as evidenced by the fact that they still exist as a large percentage of the country's population. In order to pursue his aims, Saddam was forced to pursue extreme measures, such as his poisoning of Halabja in 1988, and even these measures were unsuccessful at exterminating the Kurds.
=========================
I don't know the score...the HRW report on the anfal campaign estimates the slaughter at around two hundred thousand people...how many Iraqi soldiers died? "undoubtedly"? HOw did you conclude that?
=====================
YOur confusing the two terms "genocide" and "extermination" but in any case, there are hundreds of thousands of dead people who were quite well armed. The article, which was on a different topic, indicated how the presence of arms destabilizes political situations.
See Kenneth Pollack, Arabs at War, pp. 156-182. In the first Kurdish revolt (1961-70), the Kurds actually managed to inflict major defeats on the Iraqi Army, stopping Iraqi offensives cold in 1963, 1965, 1966, and 1968, and inflicting many thousands of casualties - all this despite the Iraqi advantage in heavy weapons and airpower.
The campaign, which began in 1986 and lasted until 1989, is said to have cost the lives of 182,000 civilian Kurds, according to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
-Wikipedia
-----------------------------------
So your reference to success against the Iraq army predated the genocide against the Kurds by several decades, and you can only point to "several thousand casualties" as your proof. Insignificant numbers and incorrect dates. The kurds, who all had their pop-guns, were massacred. Thus Iraq stands as one example of how the presence of armed civilians did little, if anything, to stop genocide.
You need to inform yourself on the Iraqi campaign against the Kurds from 1961-70, which may or may not be called an "official genocide", but certainly featured large-scale and well-nigh indiscriminate use of government firepower against Kurdish civilians (so it's a genocide in my book). Indeed, the "systematic destruction of Kurdish villages by Iraqi air and ground forces" (Pollack 159) and a scorched-earth strategy against Kurdish-controlled areas was the basis of Iraq's military strategy during this period. To the extent that the Kurds armed themselves and stopped the Iraqi Army from implementing this strategy - and the Kurds were quite successful in doing so - the acquisition of small arms by civilians prevented genocide in this case.
If you actually knew anything about the military history of the Kurdish resistance, you wouldn't even make absurd statements like "the presence of armed civilians did little, if anything, to stop genocide". Go back to your idiotic wiki article and post an update to that effect.