Eyal Mayroz: Preventing Genocide In The United States

Should the USA use its resources to help prevent genocide in other countries? In this paper I am going to tell you why I think we should use our military and other resources to help prevent mass genocide. I have read many passages to help with this this paper and will be quoting Eyal Mayroz “The legal duty to ‘prevent’: after the onset of ‘genocide’” by Eyal Mayroz as well “The Only Way to Prevent Genocide” by Tod Lindberg, “Intervention to Stop Genocide and Mass Atrocities” by Matthew C. Waxman and “After the Genocide” by Philip Gourevitch. Reading these articles has let me gain knowledge on many aspects of genocide from first hand accounts to legalities of the United Nations. So let’s look at why and how the US and help prevent mass

I think the first thing that we as a country could do is just let it be known that we will not allow this to happen and will step in if it does. When it does happen i think that US should should step in and kill the leader that ordered the extinction of the race. My main reason for thinking this is because the soldier or followers have been taught to fear this leader and forced to follow the leader and the only way to remove that fear is by proving the leader is only human. According to Gourevitch the soldiers were forced to to kill during the Rwanda Genocide, if leaders noticed that they were not killing they would take the person and forcefully make them kill. (Gourevitch 757) According to Waxman the United Nations has set guidelines for when to step in on things like this “But the Security Council system is often slow or unwilling to take or threaten sufficiently robust actions to deal with mass atrocity crises.” (Waxman 19) I agree with Waxman that the US should work with allies and try to improve the responsiveness of the UN. (Waxman

Their Genocide Convention focuses a lot on preventing genocide but doesn’t really take steps to prevent it. They talk more about punishments if it does happen but according to Mayroz, with how it is written there is no legal obligation to intervene once genocide is happening. (Mayroz 86). Just like many other UN laws they left it open so they can pick and choose when they intervene. It is stuff like this that makes me think the the US should just act on their own or with their allies to stop genocide as soon as it happens. Just like Waxman says it is important to coordinate international law for effectiveness but in my opinion it sometimes takes too long. (Waxman 19) I think the US could go in right away to prevent more people from dying and coordinate with everyone else after we are in there. Waxman states “Channeling decisions on the use of force through the UN Security Council, for example, has among its advantages bringing military actions within the same decision-making structure—and with the same crucial parties—as many decisions on the other instruments,” but i think would be just as effective if one country rushed in right away then had the other countries come in to back them up. (Waxman