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Book Reviews the .SU Naval War College Naval War College Review Volume 59 Article 8 Number 1 Winter 2006 Book Reviews The .SU Naval War College Follow this and additional works at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review Recommended Citation War College, The .SU Naval (2006) "Book Reviews," Naval War College Review: Vol. 59 : No. 1 , Article 8. Available at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol59/iss1/8 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Naval War College Review by an authorized editor of U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. War College: Book Reviews BOOK REVIEWS SINS OF OMISSION Dallaire, Roméo. Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda. New York: Carroll and Graf, 2004. 562pp. $16.95 Interventions by the United Nations for experience in the peacekeeping field, the purpose of establishing and main- offered to provide a commander, some taining peace have a mixed record. of the staff, and logistic support. Some have been reasonably successful, Dallaire, who had recently been pro- such as in East Timor, while others, moted to the rank of general and whose such as Rwanda, have not. Roméo tour in Canada had come to an end, Dallaire, the author, a retired lieutenant leaped at the opportunity to go to general in the Canadian army, suggests Rwanda when the command was of- that efforts by the United Nations Secu- fered. Upon reporting to UN headquar- rity Council largely depend upon the ters in New York, Dallaire was told that location of the problem area. East his resources were limited and that the Timor, just to the north of Australia mission had to be small. He was or- and on the flank of major shipping dered to design the mission to fit those routes, met the requirements. Rwanda, parameters and not the demands of the in his opinion, did not. actual situation. A devout Catholic, he Under the Charter of the United Na- was particularly interested in protecting tions, interventions may be governed by human life. Such commitment, not un- Chapter 6, which stipulates that the common among military personnel, can peacekeeping contingent is not to use turn conventional wisdom on its head. force but to separate the warring sides, Belgium had acquired Rwanda from all the while maintaining a neutral Germany in the 1920 League of Nations stance. However, under Chapter 7, UN Mandate and in 1925 united it adminis- troops are authorized to use force to tratively with the Belgian Congo, which keep the antagonists apart. Dallaire lay to the west. Like most European speaks of a Chapter 6½, a hybrid of powers with colonial dependencies, Bel- the two without official UN sanction. gium staffed much of its governing ap- When the decision was made to send a paratus with native civil servants—the Chapter 6 mission to Rwanda, the Cana- Tutsis—who for the most part were dians, whose army had had considerable better educated than other Rwandans Published by U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons, 2006 1 Naval War College Review, Vol. 59 [2006], No. 1, Art. 8 142 NAVAL WAR COLLEGE REVIEW and in many ways resembled Euro- “perks” of the office, Booh-Booh was to peans. The Tutsis also captured the top prove useless. Further, the forces pro- jobs in commercial enterprises. The vided for the mission (known as other principal tribe, the Hutus, were UNAMIR, for United Nations Assis- not happy with this development. tance Mission to Rwanda) were grossly When Rwanda achieved its indepen- inadequate. Its troops, Ghanaian and dence from Belgium in 1962 and Tunisian, were brave, well trained, and promptly installed a Hutu-dominated professionally led, but they arrived government, they were in a position to without equipment. Pleas by Dallaire to exact revenge on the formerly elite UN headquarters for equipment and lo- Tutsi population. gistic support from the major powers Many Tutsis fled to neighboring fell on deaf ears. The United States, Uganda, Burundi, and Zaire. The Tutsis Britain, and France had no interest in slowly gathered strength in those ha- the mission, although France did send vens and developed (by African stan- aircraft to evacuate Europeans caught dards) a first-class army. By the early in Rwanda by the hostilities; requests by 1990s the Tutsi army was prepared to Africans for rescue were denied. invade Rwanda and install a Tutsi gov- Not long after Dallaire arrived, an in- ernment. Threatened by the imminent formant in the Rwandan government return of their enemies, the Hutus qui- told him of weapon caches hidden by etly encouraged the formation of vigi- the extremist militias. The general im- lante groups to drive out or murder mediately requested permission to find remaining Tutsis, as well as moderate and destroy them but was refused on Hutus. Matters had reached this stage the grounds that such action would vio- when Dallaire arrived in the Rwandan late the neutrality of the mission under capital, Kigali, in August 1993. Chapter 6; nor was Dallaire permitted In addition to being the military repre- to engage in intelligence operations. In- sentative of the UN, Dallaire was also stead, he was directed to identify the temporarily assigned the position of informer to the Rwandan government. political representative. When no one Dallaire honored the order not to de- was immediately assigned to replace stroy the arms, but he refused to betray him in the latter post, the Canadians the informant. In any event, the should have sensed the general lack of source’s information soon dried up interest on the part of UN authorities. when the futility of the situation be- Naive in the ways of the UN bureau- came unmistakable. cracy, however, Dallaire was optimistic The corruption of the extremist govern- that he could perform his mission to ment authorities, the elimination of the the fullest extent. Eventually, in late Oc- moderates, and the subsequent mass tober 1993, the United Nations sent a murder, amounting to genocide, is too political representative with the some- involved to discuss adequately in this what improbable name Jacques-Roger review. Suffice it to say that approxi- Booh-Booh, former Cameroonian for- mately eight hundred thousand Afri- eign minister and a friend of the UN cans—men, women, and children, secretary-general, Boutros Boutros- nearly all of them innocent civilians— Ghali. Interested primarily in the were killed, some after severe torture. https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol59/iss1/8 2 War College: Book Reviews BOOK REVIEWS 143 Dallaire is especially hard on France, which arguably prevented Dallaire from Britain, and the United States for their taking measures to block the genocide. refusal to provide assistance or autho- In the book’s preface, Dallaire recounts rize the UN to take timely measures to how a retired army chaplain asked him block the massacre. He attributes their if he still believed in God after his Afri- inaction in part to France’s other inter- can experience. His reply was “yes, be- ests in the region (the president’s son is cause he had shaken hands with the said to have had business interests in Devil.” The work has had wide success Rwanda) and to fear in the Clinton ad- in Canada but not as yet in the United ministration of another Somalia debacle. States. (The American reader should (Although Dallaire does not mention it, note that morning or evening “prayers” the Clinton administration’s lack of re- refers to staff consultations, not reli- sponse was to have severe consequences gious observances.) Shake Hands with for the United States when Osama Bin the Devil is an important book and Laden interpreted its unwillingness to should be read by every military officer act as American weakness.) Dallaire is and senior noncommissioned officer. not easy on Canada either. He refuses in his book to place blame on anyone ROBERT C. WHITTEN Commander, USNR (Retired) within the UN leadership; however, in a Cupertino, Calif. later interview with a San Francisco ra- dio talk-show host, Dallaire thoroughly castigated Boutros-Ghali as having been more responsible than anyone else for the genocide. Record, Jeffrey. Dark Victory: America’s Second Command of UNAMIR had profound ef- War against Iraq. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute fects on the Canadian general, among Press, 2005. 205pp. $49.90 them post-traumatic stress disorder. Jeffrey Record is one of the nation’s When he was relieved and returned to most experienced and respected defense Canada, he was offered, and he accepted, analysts. His latest critique of the 2003 the number-two post in the Canadian Iraq war, Dark Victory, provides many army. Haunted by his experience in important insights into the reasons for Rwanda, he retired before his term ended. the war and for its successes and fail- This is an excellent example of a good ures. More generally, this work is a case and highly competent man deeply dis- study of the challenges of transforming turbed by international failures and the military victory into a victory with Machiavellian tactics of world powers. meaningful and lasting strategic impact. His experience with the United Nations In many ways this book focuses on the raises the question of how far a military critical difference between “war fighter” commander should go in honoring or- and “war winner,” and on the fact that ders from civilian authority. The prece- conflict termination and its aftermath dent of the Nuremburg trials provides are at least as critical as any phase of military officers with sanction to refuse battle proper.
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