The Foreign Service Journal, September 2019

34 SEPTEMBER 2019 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL I n the immediate wake of regime changes in Sudan and Alge- ria last April, The Economist magazine published a feature on coups, charting factors that might make them predictabl e and possibly preventable. The questions asked about regime change can also be asked about intrastate violence, insur- rection and genocide. Are these generators of mass atrocities predictable and preventable? My own views on the subject are based on having been on the scene in sub-Saharan Africa during seven major insur- rections, coups and genocides. These include a coup in Burundi (1966), an insurrection and genocide in Burundi (1972), a coup Predicting and Preventing Intrastate Violence Lessons fromRwanda David Rawson was a Foreign Service officer with the Department of State from 1971 to 1999. In 1992, he was appointed the first U.S. observer to the political negotiations in Arusha, Tanzania, between the Rwandese Patriotic Front and the govern- ment of Rwanda. He served as U.S. ambassador to that country from 1993 through 1995 and capped his diplomatic career as ambassador to Mali (1996-1999). Currently a scholar-in-residence at George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon, Ambassador Rawson has written a documentary study of the Arusha political negotiations, Prelude to Genocide: Arusha, Kigali and the Failure of Diplomacy (Ohio University Press, 2018). Background documents from that study are housed in George Fox University’s archives. An FSO and former ambassador to Rwanda reflects on the ability to predict and prevent intrastate violence. FOCUS ON PREVENTIVE DIPLOMACY BY DAV I D RAWSON in Rwanda (1973), an attempted coup in Mali (1978), brutal street violence in Madagascar (1986) and a regional rebellion in Somalia (1988), and civil war and genocide in Rwanda (1994). Keeping in mind Hannah Arendt’s observation that partici- pant-observers are not the best assessors of the historical events in which they have been involved, I nonetheless hazard that: • By virtue of their cultural roots, outbreaks of political vio- lence (including coups and genocide) are sui generis and each has a unique dynamic. • Predictions often fail to come true, and there is no discern- ible pattern as to why analysts miss the mark.