Study shows military intervention can stop genocide
I need a new category along the lines of “You seriously spent money on this?”
According to a study published in the September issue of International Studies Quarterly, military intervention can slow or stop genocide. I’m just going to quote most of the article because it’s brief.
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. “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,” author Matthew Krain states. 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. Krain’s study examines factors affecting all ongoing instances of state-sponsored mass murder from 1955 to 1997 and simulates the effects of interventions on two cases, including the current case of mass murder in Darfur, Sudan. His results also confirm that attempts to intervene as impartial parties seem ineffective. “By finding that increasing the number of interventions against perpetrators of genocide or politicide reduces severity this study confirms that international interventions against perpetrators do save lives,” Krain concludes.
So it goes to show that one must (essentially) have an organized militia force of some sort struggling against an oppressive regime that is committing mass slaughter. Underground movements won’t work. I would venture to say that this is due to having a real target that can be identified and fought by the oppressor not only brings world scrutiny to that particular stage, but also distracts from the killings being conducted because those conducting the killing are needed to fight a real enemy.
Honestly, though, “Study shows some types of military interventions can slow or stop genocide” — I mean it’s like “No kidding, really? I wouldn’t have thought.”
No Comments »
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post.
| TrackBack URI
You can also bookmark
this on del.icio.us or check the cosmos