Dennis Sandole

Institute of Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University

Interviewed by Julian Portilla, 2003

This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).

I am also concerned with once we figure out what causes people to be brutal toward each other how we can then respond to those causes and conditions. One response is the use of force earlier on, or not to do what we are doing in Iraq or Afghanistan, but to do what should have been done in Rwanda in April of 1994 when it was clear that a genocidal blood bath was about to begin. According to Major General Roméo Dallaire, the French Canadian general in charge of the lightly armed UN peacekeeping force that was already there to implement another accord, the Arusha Accords from a year earlier, told us all that this was coming. At that point it would have been appropriate to have an international robust peacemaking force go in. So my sense of how we might respond to violent conflict would include force to take the attacker off the victim, but once that is done to bring in other less lethal interventions.