No One Will Do It But the Smallest Country In Africa

Note: this podcast contains explicit content.

Hosted by Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove

Guest

Simon Adams

Simon Adams has fought for justice for hundreds of thousands of victims and refugees in Myanmar.

Episode Summary

Simon Adams needed one thing, to fight for justice for hundreds of thousands of victims and refugees in Myanmar.  It was simple. 
But no one—no country in the entire world—would dare do it.  Except, one day…

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Transcript

COLD OPEN

Archival: Coming up on One Decision.

Adams: Because it's about political will. The Gambia was incredibly brave. They had everything to lose and nothing to gain. It's only really ever happened once before in history. But I remember sitting there thinking, well, if we do this, we'll make history and we'll make a difference.

INTRODUCTION

Kosinski: Welcome back to One Decision. I'm Michelle Kosinski. You know, all of us make the life changing decision. What do we pursue with the time that we have? Some pursue money straight up. Others flat out service to other people. Simon Adams is one of those human beings. He's actually Doctor Simon Adams but doesn't bother to want to be called that. And true to form, he made a decision to convince a nation to make a big decision to not just stand up for human rights but do something. He tells it best. We met up with Simon in New York where he heads the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect. Simon, that is a serious name.

INTERVIEW

Adams: Yeah. So the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect was established in 2008 by Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general. You know, it's based around this idea, or international norm, of the responsibility to protect, which is an idea that all people, regardless of where they are in the world or regardless of their identity, should be protected from war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. It's an idea that really kind of developed in the aftermath of the genocide in Rwanda and Srebrenica in the 1990s, and the failure of the international community to do anything in response to those atrocities.

Kosinski: So what motivated you personally to get involved with this?

Adams: Well, I have a family background in Northern Ireland. So, you know, I kind of grew up being acutely aware of the impact that that conflict had had on my life, that my aunt was killed by undercover British Army soldiers. I had relatives who had gone to prison for their political and other activities. And that the place where my family came from was a place of conflict and sectarianism and poverty. And so my father leaving and getting on an immigration boat meant that I had a very different kind of life as a result. And so, yeah, I became very involved in ideas around peace and conflict. And I eventually moved to South Africa and was part of the anti apartheid movement in South Africa building a kind of post apartheid democratic South Africa.

Kosinski: Now Simon is a very unassuming, self deprecating guy. He's 53 but easily seems ten years younger. He's wearing casual clothes and is serious but with this easy and dark sense of humor. It's maybe the only hint to the kind of work he does. The same kind of humor journalists have who've seen a lot of the worst of humanity. We got along. He tells us that back then in the mid-1990s, while this new South Africa was emerging, only a short flight away, Rwanda was just staggering out of genocide. Simon got involved, helping victims tell their stories. He also worked in East Timor. It all impacted him, prepared him for his work and his decision.

Adams: If you're involved in human rights advocacy, it's very much a story generally of defeats punctuated by the occasional victory. Definitely. We've done a lot of advocacy work, high level work with the UN Security Council, Human Rights Council, with states and governments, with society. And in 2017, there was a genocide perpetrated against the Rohingya population in Northern Rakhine State in Myanmar.

Kosinski: And that genocide happened without the international community doing anything to lift a finger to protect people. Yes. I remember being at the state department, and every single day, I would raise my hand and ask the administration, why. Right. Is there no more pressure? What can you do? Why is no one doing anything? Like, we're literally watching genocide happen. Yeah. And they would get very uncomfortable. And behind the scenes, they would say, well, we're really worried that if we push too hard,

Adams: then the whole thing is gonna fall apart, and we're gonna lose democracy there. And that is what happened. Just down the road. I think The US was probably a little bit better than a number of other states. But what they did by ignoring that genocide or not responding to it was they basically gave a license to kill to the military, who eventually reached the conclusion of why are we working through this other person? And we can just dispense with democracy entirely and return to military rule. And I remember, for example, we did a briefing with the UN Security Council, an off the record briefing where we were able to use satellite evidence that our friends at Human Rights Watch were about to release to the public. We were able to use eyewitness testimony. And every single kind of ambassador in the room agreed with us that what we were saying was real and was happening, and not one of them gave any indication that they thought that they could do anything to stop it. The consensus view was the Chinese will protect Myanmar, and so we really can't do anything.

Kosinski: This must be incredibly just, like, head poundingly frustrating for you. Yeah. It was. It was

Adams: deeply demoralizing, frustrating, and made me very angry. And the inaction and the kind of surrender to what I would call lowest common denominator diplomacy,

Kosinski: even though a genocide is underway and you know it's underway. Yeah. But we just surrender. Every time something like that happens in the world, which is shockingly often, everybody gets together and says, we will never let this happen again. And the same kinds of speeches are made, and I just see this. And I always think this is absolute bullshit. Like, it's happening right now somewhere, and we're just ignoring it. Like, we never don't let it happen again.

Adams: Right. Even though we made that promise of never again at the end of the second World War, it's actually a history of again and again. Being on the sidelines of watching this genocide happen and being very frustrated in the aftermath of that, there was this kind of sense of, well, what do we do? Do we just accept the failure of the international community and of the UN Security Council,

Kosinski: or do we do something else? And when you see the evidence, you present the evidence, everybody's like, oh, yeah. Okay. We agree with you. Sorry. Nothing we can do. How do you internalize that? Do you go home and you're in a panic because you feel like somebody needs to do something? What Well, I mean, it affects you.

Adams: And I think that, you know, I don't wanna be too melodramatic about it, but, you know, Syria would be another good example where a number of people who I worked with in 2011 and onwards are now dead. They're gone. They were either killed in airstrikes or disappeared into detention and were, in some cases, tortured to death by the regime, disappeared in other sorts of ways. So you don't forget it, you carry it with you. That sense of failure is something that you definitely internalize and you carry with you. But I think that's the kind of where the one decision thing is as well, because in the context of Myanmar, I remember us having conversations

Kosinski: internally and, well, what are we gonna do? Watching genocide happen sits well with not many. But that still doesn't mean anyone's willing to intervene and stop it. Choices are often few. But a group called the Global Justice Center, Legal Experts, came to Simon with a possibility. If they could persuade a country to bring a case against Myanmar in the International Court of Justice, that would be one way to hold its military accountable before the world. And

Adams: it's only really ever happened once before in history. But I remember sitting there thinking, well, if we do this, we'll make history and we'll make a difference. And so that was the one decision. When has it happened before? When Serbia was taken to the International Court of Justice for atrocities that happened, genocide that happened during the 1990s war. But this was a very different case. And then we had to figure out how do we find a state and convince a state to do this.

Kosinski: Alright. Two questions. For those of us who don't know how this works. Mhmm. Of which I'm sure there are many. Of us, including me. Okay. Why would you need a state to take them to court? Why can't you just craft your own court? And No. Because

Adams: the International Court of Justice is all about states. It's only about states. Whereas, say, the International Criminal Court is about individuals and individual responsibility.

Kosinski: State versus state. Okay.

Adams: And so what we figured out is that Myanmar was a signatory to the Genocide Convention, and so they had breached that convention. And so under international law, any other state that is a party to that convention could bring them to the International Court of Justice for breaching of the convention. So they had to find a state. Why did you have to find a state? Why wasn't every state that was a part of that? Very good question. Why weren't they just falling over themselves? Lying outside the ICJ that went for a block and a half of states waiting to get in there. Why the hell not? And, you know, it's really interesting you say that because we made a list of okay, let's, and I remember this. We made a list of every single state that was a party to the genocide convention. How many were there? It was, like, a 140 something, and we started going through them. Well, they're not gonna take it because they've got a dodgy history, and they don't want people looking in their direction. They're not gonna bring it because of another legal technicality or whatever. They're just not gonna bring it because they don't wanna bring it. You know? But we had a very big group of states. I think we narrowed it down to about 60, and it was a demoralizing period because we chose states who had pro human rights policies, strong advocates of international justice and opposition to atrocities in the world. And we went to them. We went to them at the highest levels we could reach, and we could reach pretty high. And one after another, you know, I don't wanna name names, but one after another, these big powerful states said no. They weren't interested.

Kosinski: But why? Wouldn't doing something like that just make them look like a hero?

Adams: Well, I think what we would hear is variations on a theme. Right? Sometimes it was, this would be very expensive. We've got a lot of other things going on. We don't think we're the right state to take this because we're not in the region. We're outside of the region or whatever. Although we did ask states in the region as well. And then sometimes it would boil down to kind of an admission of, well, if we do this, we feel that the Chinese are behind Myanmar,

Kosinski: and we will Oh my god. We will suffer consequences. So the real reason for many, if not all of these, was to not piss off China once again. That would be one interpretation.

Adams: Yeah.

Kosinski: It's so disturbing. The US was out there publicly, I mean, not really doing much, but, you know, they would say, okay, sanctioning, calling it a genocide, why wouldn't The US be there?

Adams: We didn't approach The US, and I will say that. Mhmm. We didn't think that they were the right state just because of power relations internationally and how it would look and all those things.

Kosinski: Simon needed one thing, one country to file a case. And then one day, one of his colleagues comes rushing into his office. She had just seen a random news report that in Bangladesh, at a huge refugee camp for Rohingyas forced over the border from Myanmar, the justice minister of The Gambia had paid a visit, and he was outraged.

Adams: He came out very emotional, and he gave a speech where he said there needs to be international justice for what's happened to these people. My gosh. It's perfect. It's like it dropped out of the sky for you. And then the next words were, if they won't do it, then we will.

Kosinski: And, you know, we kind of went, what? Well, did he already know what you were trying to find? Was he No. Okay. No. He was completely independent of us. Completely.

Adams: And so we immediately reached out to the Gambians. It's almost like it's fate. Yeah. It was extraordinary. So we sat down with him. His name's Abubacarr Tambadou. He was the minister of justice. He's regrettably no longer the minister of justice. He spoke about his experience. We found out that he had actually been a prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, including prosecuting cases around sexual violence against women, which played a huge part in the genocide against the Rohingya. What was that conversation like with the justice minister? It was fantastic. Things kind of progressed. I don't want to take credit for what they did. The Gambia was incredibly brave. They had everything to lose and nothing to gain from doing this case. But for them, it was a moral issue. It was an issue about political leadership. And he's often been asked subsequently, why did you guys do it? You know, there's all these other big states. And he said, we would gladly have let them do it. But not one of them did. So it was us. Gosh. It must have felt like a window was opening, that you finally found somebody who was brave enough. Yeah. Because it's about political will. And I think that, you know, we'd been in all these frustrating conversations where people would talk about the tiny footnotes of international law and could we do this and how would we do this? And here was a man who very clearly just said, I was moved. It's the right thing to do. It's not gonna be easy, but we'll find a way to do it. Soon, the announcement was made. Myanmar would be brought before the International Court of Justice for genocide. I remember that. Well, what's interesting is the media didn't really pay attention at that. Yeah. No shit. So the case was lodged, and Gambia immediately applied for provisional measures, which I guess the easiest way of explaining is it's kind of the equivalent under international law of a court injunction, saying a genocide has happened, it's ongoing, and Myanmar needs to do these things immediately, stop doing these particular acts, including bulldozing the remains of Rohingya villages. What did your evidence show was truly going on in Myanmar? We saw a widespread and systematic attempt to not only attack Rohingya people, villages, but to essentially erase them and to break them as a people, to bulldoze the remains of those villages so that there ceased to be almost any evidence that they had ever lived there. So they won't even use the r word to describe them. They would simply describe them, the prejudicial view of them is that they're just illegal immigrants, which is historically inaccurate. You know, we could see the satellite evidence of more than 400 villages that had been burned down and destroyed. And whether you looked at it at the eyewitness level, we have hundreds and hundreds of reports from people, including video evidence taken off cell phones, of widespread killings, of sexual violence, of attacks on people, even of the killing and throwing of children into the fires of these burning villages in order to wipe them out as a people. So that's why we say it was absolutely a genocide. Okay. So how many Rohingya did we start out with in Rakhine State? Well, this is part of the problem because they had been made stateless by the government of Myanmar who refused to recognize them as citizens and refused to count them in the census, but somewhere in the vicinity of about 1,200,000

Kosinski: people. And around a million have fled. Yeah. So are there still some 200,000

Adams: Roughly. Living there? Yeah. Mainly, by the way, in so called displacement camps, which essentially operate as concentration camps, just a dumping ground for them to be kept. How many do you think were killed during that time? Somewhere around the vicinity of at least 50,000 people were killed, and about 800,000 people were forced to flee for their lives.

Kosinski: The case moves forward, producing that surreal moment of then leader of Myanmar, the once Nobel Prize winning beacon of democracy Aung San Suu Kyi, having to testify at The Hague. Regrettably, The Gambia has placed before the court an incomplete and misleading factual picture of the situation in Rakhine State in Myanmar.

Adams: To face off against our friend, Bar Tambadou, the minister of justice for The Gambia, and to defend Myanmar's military, irony of ironies, in a court of law against the charge of genocide. It was huge. It was huge. But the even bigger day, I think, came when the judges agreed with the case that The Gambia had made and said, you have to stop doing these things. I think we ended up getting up at three in the morning or four in the morning here in New York and then watching, of course, live when the judgment eventually came down. What did that day feel like? It was, I mean, first of all, I'm not an early riser. So getting up at 03:15 in the morning or something for a 4AM start was not great. Little bit cranky, maybe. Little bit cranky. Few cups of tea. There was way too much blood in my caffeine stream at that time of the morning, you know? But certainly, you know, it was very exciting, and kind of we were all texting each other, the four of us who had been most involved. And what did that mean? Because we were listening to it as it was happening and realizing that they were going to support all the four provisional measures. And then the rest of the day, to tell the truth, it's just a whirlwind because my phone just blew up.

Kosinski: Is it the vindication that this really happened? And there are people who could say, well, you know, the genocide already happened. What does it matter?

Adams: So I thought about all those people from Myanmar that I had spoken to, all those people who had shared their stories. Thought about what it meant to them, and it was very, very clear that this was very meaningful to them, very, very meaningful to them. And then on a personal level, it was gratifying to be able to see evidence of the fact that what we believe, that a little bit of intestinal fortitude and upholding your moral and political principles can make all the difference in the world. And that this murderous military who had committed a genocide and subsequently went on to commit a military coup a couple of years later, that they had been exposed in front of the whole world for what they were and that they were going to be held accountable.

Kosinski: Did Gambia have some things to risk in doing this? Like, what did they put on the line to do this with you guys? I mean, they're a small country. They're the smallest country on the African Continent.

Adams: They had just come out of military dictatorship themselves. You know, they had just had this rocky transition to democracy. And so they certainly had problems at home. And there were certainly a lot of people, including some people in The Gambia, who were saying, why are we worried about Myanmar? It's very far away. What's it got to do with us here? And I think people around the world kind of sneeringly asking them that. And I think they had the perfect answer, which is that they said, our Rohingya brothers and sisters are our brothers and sisters. They're part of humanity, and what happens to them happens to all of us. We go past those solemn monuments and bow our heads and are asked to make silent prayers, but Never Again was never meant as a silent prayer. It was meant as a call to action. It's extremely touching. Yeah. He was a great man, and I think that the other irony here was that in the aftermath of that case, we saw all these states, including states that I had personally spoken to, who had said no. Come out and applaud the decision and celebrate the decision. And that was the harder part to take, was staying silent about that and just going, okay. Well, but you have to think maybe that's

Kosinski: when they see The Gambia step up and do this. Maybe that's an example or a second thought that, okay, we could have done this, and maybe in the future, we will.

Adams: Precisely. Because, you know, we always say that when you have impunity for atrocities, it's kind of contagious. Sure. Other perpetrators get courage. Absolutely. Like, oh, that guy got away with it? We will get away with it. Does that happen all the time? See it all the time. But the reverse is also true, which is international justice can be contagious. And so what we saw after the case was lodged and then the provisional measures were handed down, two more states, Canada and The Netherlands, immediately approached The Gambia and said, we'd like to make interventions in support of the case in the court case. Very positive thing. Totally applaud that. And then subsequently, The Netherlands has decided to take Syria to the International Court of Justice over breaches of the Convention Against Torture. I absolutely, 100%, without any fear of contradiction, know that that would not have happened except for the fact that the justice minister of the smallest country on the African Continent visited a refugee camp and made it his personal goal to hold the perpetrators of a genocide accountable.

Kosinski: Myanmar hasn't really done much in response to what the international court ordered. Now there's a question of who will even represent the country as the case continues since the military has seized power. Its one time defender Aung San Suu Kyi now imprisoned. What this could ultimately lead to would be, would it be a verdict of genocide, a verdict? And then what's the outcome of that? Sanctions potentially, international?

Adams: There's many things that could come out of that. And at the very least, the very least that could come out of it if it was successful would be a verdict that the government of Myanmar has been responsible for genocide.

Kosinski: These things take time. It could be five more years while Myanmar teeters on the brink of another civil war.

Adams: Don't get me wrong. I don't think this court case is everything that should happen in Myanmar. It's just a tiny piece of it, but it's an important piece of it. But I think doing something is always better than just kind of submitting to, as I said, the politics of lowest common denominator diplomacy, the politics of indifference and inaction and impunity when it comes to literally the worst crimes that any human being can do to any other group of human beings.

Kosinski: How did this decision shape your view or change you?

Adams: Well, it certainly gave me hope because I think we're living in a time when 82,400,000 people around the world are currently displaced by persecution, conflict, and atrocities. And we've just lived through a decade of Syria, of Yemen, of all too many countries that seem to be going in the wrong direction, where atrocities are happening in the two cases I just mentioned, but also a kind of a rise of authoritarianism and xenophobia in so many countries. And so it has felt like human rights, sometimes it's felt like human rights have been under attack almost everywhere. And you see such a lack of courage and an absence of kind of political leadership sometimes on the global stage of people who are willing to actually fight for the things that we say that we believe in, universal human rights. And so it was just such a fantastic example of how just one person showing a little bit of political courage

Kosinski: can make a difference. I think this is beautiful. It's great work that you're doing, and you must feel that at these times.

Adams: That was a good day at work. I mean, I've had bad days at work. You know, I've had really bad days at work. So on the day that Aleppo fell, I picked up my phone to start texting people and suddenly realized, of course, that literally every person I knew in Aleppo was either dead or was missing. Oh my god. Okay. We win a lot. We lose a lot more than we win, but the battle is worth fighting. And one way or another, to steal from Doctor Martin Luther King Jr, one way or another, we are slowly bending the arc of history towards justice.

Kosinski: I hope so.

Adams: I hope so. Well, it's great that there are people like you on the planet. So Well, thank you. It's great that there are people like you on the planet and the people here in the room with us as well.

Kosinski: Simon, it turns out, just made another big decision, a new challenge.

Adams: I'm going to run an organization called Center for Victims of Torture because I can't get too far away from all of this.

Kosinski: It seems like you're just getting, like, more and more real. Like, it's just getting real. Like, now it's like, you know, let's not sugarcoat this anymore. We

Adams: have a responsibility to protect. Now I'm, this sounds like something that my mother would say. She's just like, why? Like, every time, why? Why does it have to be that area or this thing? But the Center for Victims of Torture is, like, the largest organization in the world that actually treats torture survivors.

Kosinski: That's great. And are there any people's stories that really stuck with you through this? Because you're the one fighting for them, and you're fighting to find somebody to fight for them. Yeah. There's many. And I think the thing is that you

Adams: you kind of package them up in a little box that you put inside yourself.

Kosinski: You use those as motivation to keep pushing. Well, states have become so good at, first of all, lying and making up evidence that everything's a lie. They're really good at shutting down the Internet, disputing everything as fake or the opposition politically. But I feel like what you keep seeing is there's really no way to hide the truth. Like No. There's, you still feel confident even in all the

Adams: terrible things you've seen that the truth does get out somehow. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. If something happens in Syria this afternoon, if something happens in Myanmar tomorrow morning, if something happens anywhere else in the world, it will be on my computer. It'll be on my iPhone within minutes.

Kosinski: Expose the perpetrators and hold them accountable. Yeah. For people who want to work in human rights and people who are listening who think, I would like to do this kind of work. What's the best way for them to start?

Adams: Yeah. It's funny you ask that because I was asked that recently by a university student. Something very Oprah Winfrey like, like, just follow your passions, you know? And I don't want to be that guy either. But I do think that it's true that if you are motivated by this work, it requires a certain amount of emotional resilience.

Kosinski: For sure. It requires

Adams: a certain amount of stubborn determination. There are so many good civil society organizations everywhere. Get involved.

Kosinski: What do you want to do for these victims of torture?

Adams: Being able to be part in a small way of their recovery journey. And so it's 2021. How is it that we still allow torturers to exist in this world? How is it that we still allow states that participate in torture of their citizens to promenade on the world stage and pretend that they're legitimate authorities because they shouldn't be. There's another version of that question I get asked all the time. It's kind of adjacent to that question, which is like, how do you keep doing what you do? Like, why don't you just give up? Isn't it just depressing or whatever? And I just never feel that. I never ever, ever feel that. Always just feel that, you know, because my experiences, even in the darkest corners of this world where horrible things are happening, you know, in a torture chamber or in atrocities happening in Syria or what we've just discussed regarding Myanmar, there are always ordinary people who are joining together, who are protecting one another, who are struggling, trying to find and to build a better. That's actually, that's what gets me up and out of bed in the morning. I like to think most people do care about human rights. It's just that I've never had somebody say, well, actually, I don't think I have anything in common with a person from Myanmar or a person from Syria, or I just don't care about what's happening on the Southern border of The United States. Wait. It's the reverse. You live in The United States. You've never heard anybody say these things? Even here. I've never heard that. There's exceptions, but people's empathy generally goes out to their fellow human beings. I think that's the magic of

Kosinski: humanity. Well, we're happy that you have that view. And you have, despite all that you've seen, you still have great optimism. And that is so great. It's wonderful to hear, really. So thank you for doing this. No. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Let's check-in with someone else who has dealt with what goes on in the shadows. Britain's former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove. Sir Richard, what do you think of these kinds of international cases against something like genocide?

ANALYSIS WITH SIR RICHARD DEARLOVE

Dearlove: Do they have an impact? Do they matter? Yeah, they do matter, and they have some impact. But, you know, all these international organizations are constrained by the politics which involve any of these cases. But you know, the ICJ has some clear achievements, you know, in relation, for example, to the Balkans, and there's no other real means for doing that.

Kosinski: So, yeah, very worthwhile. But you could also say, well, it's already happened. And the thing is, genocides keep happening. We keep watching them over and over again. And there's very little willingness on the part of any country to really stop it and save those innocent people.

Dearlove: Well, I think that, you know, interventions politically are often so complex and there's a reluctance, you know, you can say post Iraq, post Afghanistan anyway in the international community to involve themselves in other countries' problems. You know, the shock, the horror, the expression of distaste, the condemnation, you know, there are many words, but actually doing something is very difficult. I mean, it's very often the consequences of these events that are dealt with, I mean, like the resettling of refugees, but they're not actually preventing the crisis in the first place. Exactly.

Kosinski: I think it's good that nobody wants to touch off World War three. But when you see a genocide happen, isn't that just the one chance where you have to say, we're gonna put a stop to this militarily. If military intervention is the only way, shouldn't that be like the time to do it?

Dearlove: Well, to an extent, that's what happened in the Balkans. The US eventually, together with the Europeans, did intervene, but it still didn't, as it were, prevent some of the worst events that still took place. Do you think the world is too hands off? In the cases of genocide, probably yes. But having lived professionally through some of these crises, the complexities of intervention are often such that you have to make broader calculations and

Kosinski: you come to the conclusion that you can't do very much about it. You know, I sometimes think about what it must be like on the ground in a place like this. You see members of your own family, little children murdered right in front of you, and you're just lost. You're having to run away from other human beings. You must just be thinking, how is something so unspeakably violent, so unjust even happening? Why is nothing stopping this?

Dearlove: Yeah. And a feeling of complete helplessness because there's no one there. And catastrophic. I mean, yes, absolutely catastrophic.

Kosinski: Do you think anyone will ever be held accountable in Myanmar?

Dearlove: That's a possibility, yes. What it will mean, I think, probably is that, you know, the leadership of Myanmar will not be able to leave the country for fear of arrest. We do sometimes see accountability in the international courts, but sometimes decades later. The reach of the ICJ is limited because it's so vulnerable to local politics, but at least it is an effort on the part of the international community to apply justice. I mean, I wasn't aware of this case being brought by the Gambians against Myanmar, but it is the most extraordinary story. And I mean, read it with absolute fascination and interest. It completely escaped my attention.

Kosinski: I just love it. And I love how it's about the human element. It was because this one official went to this refugee camp and he personally said, we have to do something about this.

Dearlove: Yeah, and there's a lesson there for the rest of the international community that if you've got passion, you've got the commitment and you've got the guts, you can use these institutions in a very positive way and Myanmar must be quite surprised to find themselves in this situation now.

Kosinski: So when the world knows atrocities are happening, the absolute worst humanity can do, what should the international community be doing to make a real impact?

Dearlove: Well, the answer to that, you know, is I fear the obvious one which is so difficult, the peacekeeping force, maybe more than a peacekeeping force, can stabilize the situation. The trouble is then, you know, you're left with the aftermath and finding a political solution. But I mean I think there are many problems in the world that don't need solutions, they need to be managed and you can point to places in the world where the international community has intervened and there is still a standoff. I mean the obvious one being Cyprus between the North and the South Of Cyprus. I mean that's a managed problem to which there is no long term apparent solution. In an ideal world we would have some sort of interventionist capability. I mean for example NATO could do that. But then, you know, how would the Chinese respond when the NATO Secretary General has just said, you know, part of the NATO alliance now needs to cope with the threat of China to the global community?

Kosinski: I know. It's like nobody does enough and everyone knows that nobody does enough, but then the alternative could be just constant battles, constant war. But I guess you could say people would get tired of that then, and then people would realize, you know, maybe that's the way to move away from it.

Dearlove: You remember the crisis in Sierra Leone and, you know, Tony Blair did send in a small British military force. Actually that was a successful military intervention which prevented a genocide where you had this organization called the RUF I think who, you know, were trying to take over parts of the country and it was about tribal relations and that was a very effective intervention. People at the time were amazed that Blair took that decision, but you know he had been a serious influence on intervention in the Balkans, but you know, it was a small scale problem. So a small British military intervention did make a big difference.

Kosinski: So like five or 10 guys? No, no, it was more than that. No, no, a couple of thousand with it. It is so extraordinary that you have this, like, the whole world watches the genocide. Like, nobody does anything while it's happening. And then in the aftermath, see the smallest country in Africa be willing, the only one to be willing to take them on. I just, I find that it kind of lays bare the cynicism too that everybody might care about the problem, but even the simple act of taking someone to court, it involves all of these political concerns, so nobody would do it. I mean, that's pretty sad.

Dearlove: Well, you know, all of these issues become so politicized, particularly, you know, when we're moving into another period of global confrontation, is that the right phrase? And then you have to start seeing all these crises through the optic of, let's say, US Chinese relations, however tragic they are, however much the human costs get pushed to one side.

Kosinski: All right, Richard. Great talking to you as always. And thank you for joining us on One Decision. Follow us wherever you find your podcast and check out our website and social media. We'd love to hear your ideas and stories as well. I'm Michelle Kosinski here at One Decision.