Luncheon Speech: Let.-Gen. Roméo Dallaire Discours du déjeuner : Lgén Roméo Dallaire

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1 Let.-Gen. Roméo Dallaire (Luncheon Speech) 1 Luncheon Speech: Let.-Gen. Roméo Dallaire Discours du déjeuner : Lgén Roméo Dallaire September 20 Septembre 2004 (U-M = Unidentified Male; U-F = Unidentified Female) Modérateur: Il a quitté Val Cartier le 1 juillet 1993 pour assumer le commandement de la mission d observation des nations unies Ouganda, Rwanda et de la mission des nations unies pour l assistance au Rwanda. Upon his return from serving as force commander of the United Mission to Rwanda, for which he was awarded the Meritorious Service Award, he served as commander of the First Canadian Division and deputy commander of the Canadian Army. Promoted to three star general, he was appointed to various senior positions within the Department of National Defence, including assistant deputy minister of Human Resources military. Il participe toujours au projet de la promotion de la santé mentale au sein des Forces Armées Canadiennes et il est membre du Conseil consultatif sur les forces canadiennes d anciens combattants Canada. Il présente des allocutions dans différentes universités canadiennes et américaines et il a écrit plusieurs articles sur la résolution des conflits, l aide humanitaire et des droits humains. He is now special advisor to the Canadian International Development Agency, and to the minister of International Cooperation on war-affected children, and advisor to the Department of Foreign Affairs in international trade on the prohibition of small arms distribution. Let.-Gen. Dallaire has been invested in the Order of Canada, one of Canada s highest honours, and has also been awarded the United States Legend of Merit. He was also honoured as the first recipient of the Aegis Award on genocide prevention from the United Kingdom. His best selling book Shake Hands with the Devil is an account of his experience as a Force Commander of the United Nations Mission to Rwanda, and exposes the failure of the community to stop the genocide despite timely warnings. General Dallaire s Shake Hands with the Devil won the 2004 Canadian Booksellers Association s author of the year award, as well as the award for the best non-fiction book. Please join me in giving a warm welcome to General Dallaire. (Applause) Speaker Roméo Dallaire: I am not an academic; I am a soldier a soldier who has been in the field a lot, having commanded pretty well every level in the army, both in peace and in war. So when I have an opportunity of speaking to ladies and gentlemen like yourself, I like to use pictures because in the military we re very pictorial, we like to see things, and usually a general is always walking around with a map so if I don t have a map I need something else to look at so. (Laughter) It s also a reference for me. I am not here at this lunch hour to make your digestion any better. I m here to give you a perspective of what s around. And it s focussed on security, but it s also focussed on the nature of humanity. The reason why you want to at least ponder humanity is because in globalization that s what we re talking about. We re not talking anymore about the borders and about one group or Proceedings of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries, Seminar for the Appointed Actuary, Vol. 15, September 2004

2 Lgén Roméo Dallaire (Discours du déjeuner) 2 another group, we re in fact talking about the whole of humanity, the whole of the planet and in that context with systems of communications that exist today, you can actually influence the world. You can actually have attitudes change. You can actually move into new directions as no time ever in history. Alors pour vous amener dans ce contexte, j ai décidé de faire un peu de recul et utiliser le 11 septembre 2001 comme un des points de repère dans cette période dont nous nous trouvons, une période qui évolue exceptionnellement rapidement qui est quasiment révolutionnaire et un peu de projection dans le futur parce que vous êtes des gens qui gérez le risque et si moi j avais affaire à gérer le risque et tenter d anticiper le futur, j aimerais bien savoir quels sont les grands enjeux qui pourraient influencer notre pays. Canada, in many of the policies that we ve developed over the years considers itself a very low priority target for anyone. In fact, although the whole infrastructure of this nation is built under the context that no one will ever attack us, we have in recent times started to become potentially a much higher risk target. Now post World War II, the mobilization lasted for about four or five years, and then we had NATO, we had the Warsaw Pact, we had the Cold War, and we expanded the forces to about 150,000, and we even had nuclear missile devices. And all of a sudden in the early 60s it was decided by government that, we ve got such a powerful neighbour to the south, and we re such a low-priority country, there s nobody that wants to attack the north. And at the time the resource requirement was not raised, nor was global warming raised as opening that great channel to the north that potentially can be used, and will be used more and more. So our infrastructure was built totally with no security in mind. So, if some idiot decided that he wanted to wipe out the hydro electricity coming from the north of Québec, the province, the main, main lines there are five major main lines of all that electricity coming down and they re within 50 kilometres, and they re parallel like that for hundreds of kilometres. You could wipe out the electricity capability not only for most of the province of Québec, but you could also do a big amount of damage in New England states. It got to the point that in 1964, in the White Paper on defence, it was said, why don t we take more risk, pay less on defence, and count on the Americans, who are our big neighbours, to help us. So we did have American forces and radar stations, and with the nuclear weapons and so on across Canada. Since 1964 it s been a policy of continuously increasing our level of risk acceptance in our security, in our sovereignty, by depending more and more, and interoperability with the Americans. So we got defence on the real cheap, until all of a sudden that day, because within hours on our military side, but within days as different elements of society started to realize that North America is a target and it can be achieved, the Americans started to put significant pressure on Canada to react rapidly to it s national security because Canada s national security is a very significant part of the American national security for thousands of kilometres. And they were even speaking of the potential of moving American forces or capabilities into Canada to boost what we had. The Canadian population rose in an uproar, and said, wait a minute here. We re a sovereign state. Who in the hell do these Americans think they are? What? Are they going to come and defend us? Defence of your nation, your nationalism, your sovereignty that is a fundamental component of nationhood. Ladies and gentlemen, since 1964 we ve been saying if there s ever any problem the Americans will come and help us out. So you can t have it both ways. All of a sudden we re in an era that this nation is starting to realize its vulnerability, starting to realize that maybe this dependence on the Americans is not a good thing for us to remain. Thirdly, that it is probably essential that we re-look at ourselves as a potential target. Canada is part of the G8; Canada is a leading nation in advancing human rights. It is a keen proponent of the UN, that s why we didn t go into Iraq, because it was not sanctioned by the Americans, and we were by the UN, and we were absolutely right in not going in. It was stupid and foolish. Well the Americans, once they did their fight in Baghdad, that they didn t bring us in with the far more flexible skills that we have, and no imperialistic sort of baggage to help stabilize the government of Baghdad, and as such not be a threat. But on the contrary we would be a far more effective instrument of stability. Well that s a lost opportunity. Délibérations de l Institut canadien des actuaires du Colloque pour l actuaire désigné, Vol. 15, septembre 2004

3 Let.-Gen. Roméo Dallaire (Luncheon Speech) 3 So, supporting enormously the UN, a country that s totally dependent on foreign sales, a country that has demonstrated its interest in helping and assisting third world and developing world scenarios to advance, it would be an ideal target to chop at the knees in the words the do-gooders of the world. Attacking Canada would wipe out a whole group of nations in regard to how they would react into the future on intervention on participation, and turn us into a fortress of North America as one of the options the Americans are proposing. So we are, by being the leading middle power a very, very strong potential country to be hit, a possible nation that could bring solutions to the moderates in many of those nations. So they don t have to wipe out the peace tower, or we were talking about towers in Toronto, or Hydro Electric plants. All they have to do is go into an Inuit village in Northern Québec, and line up the population and kill most of them. Our ability to react to that, and the impact of that on us, would be enormous, and that would be enough. So ladies and gentlemen, I m not here to ruin your lunch, I m here only to say that complacency that has been the norm in regard to our sovereignty, in regard to our willingness to eliminate risk to our security in permitting us to be able to continue to evolve, has made us vulnerable. How come we re in a vulnerable state? I mean why is everything going in that fashion? First we test the machine it works. L attaque qui a eu lieu aux États-Unis a été pour eux comme une deuxième attaque de Pearl Harbour par les Japonais le 7 décembre en Le traumatisme chez les Américains est inégalé. Les gens les plus intelligents et les plus compétents dans leur objectivité se sentent vulnérables et se sentent attaqués et par la nature des politiques de ces moments et vont même à supporter une politique d extrême droite et vont jusqu à supporter un gouvernement qui créé des problématiques entre elles et ses alliés. Les Russes pendant toute la guère froide ont tenté de nous diviser à l Alliance de l Otan. Ils n ont jamais réussi. Bin Laden dans l espace de moins d un an a créé des froids entre les Américains, les Allemands, les Français, a créé des alliances entre les Britanniques puis les Américains qui déstabilisent les pays de l Ouest et il y a une crotte sur le cœur entre plusieurs d entre eux en ce qui a regard au futur et comment gérer le futur. Donc, cet acte nous a entré dans une autre ère, une autre période, un autre scénario de notre vie pas seulement canadienne mais notre vie comme faisant partie de l humanité. It was complicated during the Cold War, but it was nothing compared to the ambiguity and the complexity of this era, and how we moved into this era. Before the end of the Cold War we had classic warfare, classic peacekeeping, and diplomacy and stability were being done by a very sophisticated group of people. I don t know how many of you read John LeCarre, and Smiley s People, and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor, and the Cold War espionage. People knew who was on the other side and we knew what capabilities they had. We knew what their orders were, we knew who had the finger on the button of a nuclear disaster, and there was an equilibrium between great armies in the West, and diplomacy of the West, and the philosophy of liberal democracies of the West, and communism in great armies, humongous amounts of people in tanks on the East. And it was a balance game, a bluffing game that continued and continued. That seemed to be the reference point for everything else we did. We felt in relative security which permitted us to do a whole variety of advances in our societies, and their society was kept under wraps. However, much of our society was able to advance post World War II. Now, in order to keep the control and not end up in World War III, we also went into all the old colonial power nations, all those countries which were colonies up into the late 50s and early 60s. And Africa and Asia, and even in South America, what we did was we replaced the colonial powers by putting in dictators and autocrats in order to keep control on these countries. We didn t want strife in Tanzania, we didn t want strife in Algeria, and so we had to sort it out. We didn t want problems in South America, we didn t want problems in South East Asia, so both sides paid to keep dictators and autocrats in power to keep control of their people. Then in 1989, when the Cold War ended, we simply said, One let s build the economies and the future in Europe, but two we told all these countries for example, Africa that we had paid these dictators, and we simply told them, the money is no more, we don t need you anymore; we don t have to worry about going to World War III over Tanzania or Zimbabwe it s over. So sort yourselves out. Proceedings of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries, Seminar for the Appointed Actuary, Vol. 15, September 2004

4 Lgén Roméo Dallaire (Discours du déjeuner) 4 So, we entered post Cold War, an era of intra-state war or conflict inside the countries. So the opportunities of moving from, in fact, a peace dividend that we all sought after and conducted, we moved into a new era; an era where all those nations and all those humans with all the communications and so on, are all of a sudden exploding left, right and centre. Moderates want to have the ability to advance in democracies, dictators don t want to lose the control or the cash, and you have these conflicts, and many of the conflicts are power sharing conflicts. They ve got nothing to do with tribes, just like Rwanda, Oh Rwanda has only African tribes and they re just killing each other, and we ll wait until it ends and then we ll pick up the pieces and throw some cash at it. It was not that. It was fundamental power, releasing of power, and using the ethnicity as an instrument to maintain power and money and control. We entered an era of insecurity in so many of those nations that lead to catastrophic failures like Rwanda, or we had nations that were in catastrophe humanitarian situations like Somalia where they were dying by the hundreds of thousands, that lead into a security problem Mogadishu, Black Hawk Down, and ultimately the Americans pulling out. Imagine 18 elite soldiers are killed, and one point six million people in uniform the United States turned tail and abandoned the UN, Canada, Italy, and Pakistan. There were still hundreds of thousands of Somalis that were dying of lack of food, but the Americans had lost 18 soldiers. This leads us into this era to start pondering whether all humans were human. Are all humans the same? Do they all count the same? Or do some actually count more than others? Through the 90s, we found ourselves all over the world with enormous amounts of diplomatic and military personnel. With police and nation-building the, cash involved to permit moderates to build their nations, rebuild them, help them solve their problems, and in fact, ultimately, make them potential clients into the future, and make them productive, make them part of the very evolving element of humanity. That was going on until the 9/11 event. Until this time, the creation of something was beyond all the rules, methods, and all the references that we had. And what s it going to lead us to? Well as we saw from the ineptness in Darfour, because fear of intervention and that we might be heading straight on against the whole world of Islam, and the Americans had made such a mess in Iraq that we were fearful of going in to let them die. We have a state of no rules where they re slaughtering kids as if it s just another target. It s not a telephone pole, it s just a child. So what s this new millennium really going to look like? It ended with a massive genocide, it started with 9/11, it s moving into more catastrophic failure how is it going to be into the future? Well let me not be so pessimistic to you as we move down this. It is my firm belief that over the next two or three or four centuries, we will stop having conflict because of our differences. We will stop it because the movement of human rights and the respective humanity, and the power in the NGO community Non-Government Organizations whose basis, its creed, is human rights, will become so powerful, and with the globalization instruments that are going to be continued to advance we will ultimately stop slaughtering ourselves because we re different financially, ethnically, and religiously. So that s a guarantee. Yogi Bear is a great American philosopher as you all know, (laughter) just like Richard Nixon he has Watergate and 20 years later he s treated as the greatest American statesmen of his era. A very flexible nation. (Laughter) Cela il n y en aura pas beaucoup de ça, des grosses guerres, des grosses armées, des gros chars d assaut puis tout cela, il va y avoir des évènements, il y a eu la guerre du Gulf, il y a eu la guerre aérienne de Kosovo, il y a eu l exercice récent de Baghdad, mais c est l exception, ça été l exception depuis les derniers 12 ans. Ce n est pas ça qui se passe. Ce sont des pays qui se révoltent, qui tentent de se reconstituer et donc ce n est pas du High Tech mais c est sauvage, c est brutal, c est une catastrophe humaine, c est la capacité de détruire et d éliminer ce désir de prendre et de maintenir le contrôle, d empêcher les modérés de stabiliser ces pays là par ceux qui sont au pouvoir. Ils n ont pas de bornes, et donc il a fallu créer des instruments pour tenter dans le contexte humanitaire d aller aider à résoudre ces scénarios là. I m wondering if anybody can make out what OOTW means. In the military we live in acronyms. You probably have a zillion of them too. (Laughter) That s why I won t attend your lectures over the next two days. OOTW If we re not in war, we re not classic war, and we re in classic peace, we re in a vacuum that used to be a vacuum that has been filled up by conflict. So, of course, we had to find something, and so we call it Operations Other Than War...(Laughter) You re not going to catch us out if they re finding an enemy, I ll tell ya. And so this is becoming the reality. Délibérations de l Institut canadien des actuaires du Colloque pour l actuaire désigné, Vol. 15, septembre 2004

5 Let.-Gen. Roméo Dallaire (Luncheon Speech) 5 C est pas la guerre dans cette méthode simpliste quasiment, on est entré dans une période de conflits et les années 90 ont vu toutes sortes de conflits de toutes sortes de natures qu elles soient sécurité, humanitaire, qu elles soient tribus, religieux, ethniques toutes sortes de conflits, puis bien qu à l intérieur de ces pays là, c était la guerre mais dans le contexte c était à l intérieur d un pays et non pas entre les pays, généralement parlant et donc on n a pas ce scénario là. On a découvert d autres dimensions «l enfant soldat». A new weapons platform late 80s, most of the armies with the ebbing of the Cold War were getting rid of the light, simple to clean and operate machine guns. A nine year-old could use that and be very effective. Not only is the weapon, the machine gun light, but the bullets are very light. You don t need huge bullets anymore. So these nine, ten, 12, 15 year-olds have now entered into war, and have become a weapon system child soldiers boys, girls, no difference. And there are hundreds of thousands of them in a variety of countries from where I was in Sierra Leone, through Liberia, to Northern Uganda, to Sri Lanka, to Columbia they re even used as warriors in the villas in the slums of Rio to keep moving the drug trade 12 yearsold. They kill over 3,000 kids below the age of 13 in Rio every year, either between themselves or even the police and others; A new weapon system. Un système qui a été créé parce que l arme était légère, ça ne coûte pas chers les petits monstres, on va dans le village, on va les chercher, on en tue une couple pour maintenir la discipline on leur en fait tuer peut-être un père ou deux des parents pour qu ils puissent pas retourner, et là on leur dit que s ils essayent de se sauver, on les mets deux par deux, puis s il y en a un qui se sauve l autre va être tué. Puis on a les drogue, on les utilise pour faire les massacres et les destructions. Une arme comment est-ce qu on va éliminer ça? Comment est-ce qu on peut contrer ça? Comment est-ce qu on peut les démobiliser, les réintégrer dans leur société, les jeunes chefs depuis quatre ou cinq ans, ils ont 15 ans et s en vont sur 28 qui ont mené une centaine d autres jeunes, comment est-ce qu on va réintégrer celui là, pour pas que dans cinq ans il devient à son tour le chef rebelle puis définitivement le chef de l opposition. Et ce sont toutes des leçons qu on est en train d apprendre, il n y a pas de solution de l identifier encore. There is no alternative. How do you neutralize child soldiers? How do you reintegrate these child leaders into useful leaders of the society? We re still fiddling with this, and we ve been fiddling with that as we moved to 9/11, grasping how to handle this new era. And it s not high tech, this is not high tech, this is human eyeball-to-eyeball, this is high risk, this is not 10,000 feet in the air dropping a bomb that s going to hit something. This is soldier blog-ins facing a kid, or many of them who can with any small reaction blow his head off, as you re trying to move humanitarian aid or save some people caught in these scenarios. And the kids are drugged-up, they re not even humans anymore in many cases. So this era created all of this, and some successes, like landmines. So in my work that I am doing, in some of the research, I m trying to research how to eliminate the child soldier weapons platform as an example. One of the options is to do what we did with the landmines. When we convinced people not to use landmines anymore, the Warsaw Pact countries refused. Their General said, No, we need landmines to protect us. So what we did is we took Canadian generals and we sent them to those countries because we had met them over the years in different conferences or meetings or great discussions. And we convinced those generals that there are other instruments that can give you a better capability than the landmines, so get rid of the landmines and there will be help to assist you acquire these systems. So you can now turn to your government and say you don t need landmines anymore and the government will sign. And that s what happened. Now can I do the same thing with child soldiers? If I don t want child soldiers in war, and I meet with these rebel leaders like I did in Sierra Leone and Northern Uganda, and I m talking with them, the first question they ll ask is, If you take this weapon system away from me, what do you replace it with? Now we all want the war to end, but I want the kids out of fighting. What do I replace it with? And the ethical question is: Am I allowed to replace it with another weapon? Is it ethical to replace it with another weapon? Or do we just try to solve the war and let these hundreds of thousands of kids continue to fight them? And so from complex ethical problems to huge disasters the Os are internally displaced people in 94 there were two and a half million the Xs are refugees, or one point seven million. How do you feed two and a half million people twice a day? Have you got the logistics? Have the humanitarian structures been built? How do you provide the security so that they can eat? How do you guarantee security that they don t try to kill each other because one group is getting more than the other? And how do you Proceedings of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries, Seminar for the Appointed Actuary, Vol. 15, September 2004

6 Lgén Roméo Dallaire (Discours du déjeuner) 6 move them from being so dependent back to their countries? Those are realities of human beings that are just as human as we are. Global communications, no matter how many channels you change, ultimately, one of them will show the horror story. And so you can t run away as in the past we were able to do, and evolve our Western World as we saw the priorities, and wait for World War III, we cannot escape it. And this nation all the more cannot. Why, because this nation has an incredible work ethic. This nation masters technology. This nation has no colonial past, except the continued destruction of the First Nations, and learning no lessons from that, that we could apply. But we ve not invaded, nor are we an imperial power we seek stability. And lastly, we fundamentally in our hearts and what s being taught to our children in the schools, and in our communities is we believe in human rights, we do believe in fair play, we believe that someone who is being abused has the right to be defended and to be considered totally for who they are. So this nation, part of the G8 middle power, has now developed an unseen role for itself a role in fact of leading other middle powers into conflict resolution, into advancing human rights. And diplomats and NGOs, and your soldiers and sailors and air personnel have for the last 12 years done exactly that taking casualties dead, injured, families broken up. They re advancing not war, they re advancing resolution of conflict, they re advancing the beliefs in the values that we have, and moving them through human rights to assist people to be able to ultimately be treated human. And you re saying, really, should we be so worried about it it s far away. This is not affecting our economic structure; this is not even affecting our security. It s not affecting our security. With 20% of humanity launching off to Mars, and the only reason the Americans want to go to Mars is because the Chinese in ten years are going to be on the moon. As we re doing that, and pursuing the sophistication, intellectual in all its dimensions, that 80% is still grovelling in inhuman conditions, who do not want to be like us they just want to be human, they just want to have the opportunity for their children to study and to slowly make their way through. Well what has happened? After the 90s, in that era of conflict intra-state and with 9/11, the whole ball game changed. Eighty percent is enraged at the differences. It s enraged at seeing nations; great nations expound human rights and democracy, and so on, yet treat these nations as residual. We ve handled all our problems; do we have a couple of quarters left? Okay, we ll throw it at them and we ll see how it works out. And that rage, be it religious based, be it ethically based, be it economically based, is being expressed violently, has started to be expressed violently through terrorism. There are no rules on terrorism, no rules. The Blue Beret, who is trying to help, is a target. And so how will we now enter, not an era of conflict in far off lands where nations are trying to constitute themselves to become future partners, but what of this era where terrorism has moved globally, where 80% of humanity and its rage are now expressing itself? These are simplistic problems of the 90s, which we didn t even solve as we bumbled and tripped over ourselves in trying in an ad hoc fashion to resolve those conflicts and assist these people, never fully grasping the complexities of these missions. We couldn t even in the 90s figure out what orders to give. The diplomats couldn t articulate the mandates. These are very classic military action verbs. We work with action verbs. The diplomats work with verbs. (Laughter) I m not exactly too sure what the action one is, but anyway. And so we have a lexicon of action verbs. So, in a mission statement for us there s only one action verb. I see organizations (inaudible) where a mission statement is a whole paragraph. A mission statement is one phrase with one action verb. All the rest of it is objectives and so on. That s a mission statement, nothing else. You can t lead people into the future when they ve got five or six primary principle action verbs. You need one phrase, one action verb. So we all knew what this meant. Except in 1993 when I went into Rwanda, the UN gave me as a mandate from which I extracted the mission statement, and the mission statement ended up being, Establish an atmosphere of security. What does establish mean? What is an atmosphere of security? Do I defend the nation as I m demobilizing the ex-belligerents? Do I watch them? What does it mean? What is the extent? If I, the General, cannot understand the full breadth of what my mission statement is, how does the corporal know when to shoot or not shoot on the barrier? We haven t even grasped that in our lexicon, and that adhockery has continued. With 9/11 and the reactions of the Americans both in Afghanistan and Iraq, with their buddies who have joined them in doing that, we have exacerbated the situation because we ve just been bullies. The guy came, punched me in the nose in my yard, I m going to bring my friends and we re going to sort him out for good. Délibérations de l Institut canadien des actuaires du Colloque pour l actuaire désigné, Vol. 15, septembre 2004

7 Let.-Gen. Roméo Dallaire (Luncheon Speech) 7 No one went to Afghanistan with the concept of, we re going to go there, we re going to find these guys, and we re going to bring them to the international tribunal International Criminal Tribunal built on eliminating impunity. We re going to bring them there and we re going to take 23 years to prosecute this bastard. And during that timeframe, we will learn the jurisprudence of international law. We will capture all these nuances of the different legal systems in order to establish an international criminal court and jurisprudence. And the ones who are going to try to fiddle with impunity will be made aware that sooner or later we re going to get you. That was not the aim of Afghanistan. You know what Afghanistan is, we re going in, come with me or not, and I m going to blow every one of them apart. And so the bully produces a bully response. And the bully response has put us all in a state of insecurity that some say is nearly equivalent to the insecurity we had in the early 50s when we started to play with nuclear weapons, and we used to hide under our desks in school to protect ourselves, if you remember. This is a complex time. Do we want to pay the price of our people dying in those places, with such complexities, and do we want to continue to participate overseas, or is there another solution? Do we in fact want to continue to follow these legal dimensions in order to combat terrorism? Or do we go beyond them? Are you allowed to use torture with a terrorist in order to extract the information you need to get? Are you allowed to let your civil liberties be trampled upon in order to establish the atmosphere s security that you think will keep the terrorist out? Thank God we have the Charter of Rights. They re chomping at the bit, the security forces, to try to impose all kinds. I once heard in a conversation with a person from a police organization that said every child when born should be DNA tested right off the bat. That s not particularly what we are, and what we think the world should be, running around with ID cards with our ethnicity on them like the Rwandans did imposed by the Belgics, and that guaranteed them being killed if it said the wrong ethnic group. And so this is where I m getting towards my conclusion. Stress in the Cold War was something like this through the life of a family. They start off young and then the middle you get the kids and they don t want to move and this and that and it s more complex, but in the ebbing years it s good. It s reasonable, you ve lived the experiences, it s been difficult, but we live through it, and we gained and we re still there together, and we re in this sort of umbrella of security. Well this is where we re going. From one complex, conflict scenario, we re moving towards the clash of civilizations in great religions, unless we make the development of the Third World, that 80% of humanity, a primary action of our nation, our governments and our finances. That is to say on par with other elements, be it health and so forth. Not a residual. For the residual work we re doing now is only making them in most cases not better off, but more dependent. And the youth of those nations are acting with more ruthlessness and more terrorism, and so mainstreaming the development of the 80% of humanity is in fact a guarantee of our security. Not building a wall around North America and hoping that they can t get through, as others are trying to do in the Middle East, but in fact going to the source, go overseas, go into the entrails of where that frustration and that rage is, and assist in solving it there. And that is why this nation, in conclusion, is now mature and no more the little kid on the block as in the 60s under the Brits and the Americans. It s a mature nation. This nation has the leading middle power, has the role and the responsibility of leadership of advancing human rights, of providing options to the big boys in the UN, so that they don t make catastrophic failures in diplomacy like they did for Iraq. Yes, of even bleeding overseas. So that not only our security is responded to, but we hold firm to our premise that all humans are human, and one is not more human than another. Thank you very much. (Applause) U-F: Before I formally thank our speaker, I was wondering if I think we ve got a few minutes maybe for questions if there are some questions from the audience. Speaker Dallaire: They re all suffering from indigestion. (Laughter) Yes, please. U-M: A couple of questions. Speaker Dallaire: Can you stand up please? I m an artillery officer so. (Laughter) U-M: Last week at the Toronto Film Festival I had the chance to see Hotel Rwanda, and you re played by Nick Nolte, I m wondering if you saw that yet? Proceedings of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries, Seminar for the Appointed Actuary, Vol. 15, September 2004

8 Lgén Roméo Dallaire (Discours du déjeuner) 8 Speaker Dallaire: No. Ask me the next question do I want to see it? (Laughter) Do I want to see it? No. No, because one, Nick Nolte is 150 years old. (Laughter) But, it s based on a semi-factual scenario of the hotel where many of the Tutsis were held and we were able to evacuate on the hotel manager, and in fact the essence of the saving of these hundreds of Tutsis was done by eight UN peacekeepers unarmed, and the hotel manager was complicit in that, once he wasn t worried anymore about the windows being busted and all that kind of stuff. So that s my short comment. U-M: The second question you had some harsh words for the Americans in the aftermath of invading Iraq and you said that Canada should have been invited. Do you think (inaudible)? Speaker Dallaire: In fact this is where we should stand, and I don t know whether Mr. Chrétien had a brilliant strategic decision there, or a real street fighter gut feel that this situation wasn t good, but we must never go outside of the UN. The UN is the only transparent and impartial game in town. It s not perfect, but there s no other world body, and you do not want to trust a single nation-led coalition going up inside a country without the UN to beat it up. And we ve seen enough of that. That being said, there is absolutely no way we can function without the Americans. So, American bashing not simply raising facts but American bashing is going to guarantee the divisions in the Western world, and we re going to go nowhere. So countries like ours are countries that can attract that imperialistic dimension, offer them other options, work with them, and bring them ideas, and be patient and persevering. That s what we should be doing. So in Iraq, George Bush had an opportunity, which although he wasn t going to get the support of the UN to go and invade Iraq, there was a strong movement against the dictator, and the country being under a dictatorship. So he could have said, UN, you come in when I hit the doors of Baghdad, and bring in all these other capabilities. And so be far more sensitive as we can be then his soldiers, and his diplomats coming from that big baggage of imperial background, because we re not threatening in the sense of trying to destroy or overtake, we want to assist. And so he could have done that, but he turned around and went into Baghdad with big tanks and now he s now getting the crap beat out of him. And he has made it near impossible for us who believe that in Darfour you need an intervention to be able to move countries to intervention because they re scared of facing Islam smack in the face, because the Sudan is essentially an Islamic country. And those are the grand strategic exercises, and I ll be quite candid if I may, Canada has failed. It did a right decision in not intervening, but it failed in offering options. We sat on out when we could have been a great intermediary in helping these guys the French and the Germans and the Americans and the Brits to come to solutions. We used to have that capability. Our diplomatic corps was powerful, it was enlightened, it was dynamic, it had initiative, and our forces were able to respond to various levels. But the 90s and the great crash of our national debt to solve it, orders were simply given in the government, chop everything 25 to 33%. And it was implemented with such milestones that inside, as an example at DND, everything was chopped 33%, not prioritized. And the government didn t prioritize. They didn t say that the diplomatic corps is crucial to what our vision of the nation is, the future will protect it, and somebody else will cut 40%. No sir. So we gutted our capabilities, and now hopefully we are trying to reconstitute it. And that, Sir, is my short answer. (Laughter) One more if we can if someone I saw a hand up there. Je me suis laissé emporté encore mais je n ai pas parlé autant en français que j avais anticipé mais j espère que vous allez me pardonner! Si vous ne me pardonnez pas, en tous les cas, ne crier pas» (rires). Yes, please. U-M: I never thought that I would stand up and consider Roméo Dallaire an optimist. (Laughter) But do you really think that even if we had all our diplomatic capabilities, even if we had our peacekeeping, would it be possible to influence in that way, the regime that is in the White House today? Speaker Dallaire: No. (Laughter) However, my optimism came from a realization about four and a half years ago, that I had two options either end it or look into the future. And when I looked into the future, I couldn t look at the near future because millions are still going to die. And suffering, there will still be wars, there will still be the pressures of economics and the divisions of the world as we see them, and the ethnicities and so on, but if the human rights movement can continue to Délibérations de l Institut canadien des actuaires du Colloque pour l actuaire désigné, Vol. 15, septembre 2004

9 Let.-Gen. Roméo Dallaire (Luncheon Speech) 9 build like a nuclear reaction exponentially, as Kofi Annan said, It s the millennium of humanity that we will be able ultimately to override those differences by the fundamentals of humanity, and by the instruments of things like globalization and beyond. So millions will die, and I ll die whenever I did and probably if we didn t advance, we would probably regress. I mean its ten years after Rwanda and look at Darfour, look at Sierra Leone, they were slaughtering them for months and months before anybody intervened. But the optimism comes from the realization that this is a movement, this is a philosophy of life, of humanity, not of countries, and so that is what I build it on, and certainly hope for into the future. And so yeah, I m an optimist, and it ll work. U-M: Am I correct in assuming that you seem to be saying that we do need some kind of significant military force to achieve the humanitarian goal? Speaker Dallaire: Yes. U-M: Then, what do you think the government should be doing? What priorities, I mean my sense is that you re starting in the military, what where do we have to go? Speaker Dallaire: The bottom line in which you ladies and gentlemen work on always is cash. It is for this nation, at this time, in this era that s evolving. It s revolutionary, I mean just look where we were in years ago with the Cold War and the machination has been since, and with 9/11 and what s being projected into it. We re into a revolutionary time, not a change, not an evolution, a revolutionary time. And so it is to assess the capabilities and what this nation wants to do. I ve spoken for three years across the country on war affected children child soldiers to senior high schools and under-grads, and my whole aim was to make them activists. My dream is that they act like we did in 1968, 69, and raise hell, to not trust anybody over 30. And what I believe is that they can be activists in advancing certain fundamental causes. And the feedback I got from three years of talking to tens and tens of thousands of Canadian youth is: where is this outfit going? Is the future of Canada to continue to be as we are and improve it? Or is there a vision of this nation? Is there a reason why we are what we are in this world? And many of them believe that there is something out there that we can focus on. Build, but also to focus our energies. And until we articulate that focus, which to me is a leading middle power in advancing human rights and leading others in-so-doing, if we believe there s a focus to this nation into the future, and that 50 years from now some historian will just say, Well the Canadians, they re in the 97th percentile of a quality of life place to live, where 80% of the humanity is down in the fifth percentile, and it kept going. Instead of the historian saying that, say that the nation grasped itself, and maybe a statesman appeared and articulated for this nation that role, and in-so-doing diplomacy, CIDA, International Development Defence, will move from the historic waiting for World War III and get rid of the conservative generals, and move to an era where defence is part of the value added of this nation to advance human rights. Ultimately this would be for the best of the nation too, and if you want to be really egotistical about it, the more we move human rights and solve it, the less we risk getting blown apart here. So you invest in defence in order to advance human rights. So your soldiers must know how to fight, and have a warrior ethic, because when push comes to shove, if they can t even defend themselves, then they have absolutely no credibility. But what you do is you inculcate, and this is a new school of which a few of us generals believe in. We inculcate the softer skills of handling ambiguity in conflict resolution. So you teach your officer corps. anthropology and sociology and philosophy, and so you don t just produce engineers and technocrats, but you produce people of humanity who on the street corner or alleyway can be value added to solving problems because they have the intellectual rigor to articulate and not just stand there and say, Can I or can I not use my rifle? That s the sophistication of this nation. That s the potential for the future. And so you don t look at defence as how many more tanks you re going to buy, you look at how it is going to advance that overall vision of this nation in the world. If it takes 40,000 troops, or 70,000 troops, then it is prioritized with that vision, and not simply giving them four or five more this year and we ll cut them again next year, and we ll let them buy this this year and so on. And you don t have a diplomatic corps that s searching for itself in continuing to advance, what in ourselves our soldiers believe is human rights. You go to a Canadian soldier who s been overseas and there are not many who haven t, at least once, and ask them what they think of Canada. They hug the ground, they believe in the enormity of this nation, of its people, of its country, because they ve seen the Proceedings of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries, Seminar for the Appointed Actuary, Vol. 15, September 2004

10 Lgén Roméo Dallaire (Discours du déjeuner) 10 depravity, they ve seen where nothing exists, they ve seen slaughter and destruction and children being abused, and they say we don t have any of that. And a number of them will say, we re not paying a high enough price for what we have. We re working hard, but there s more to it then just keeping us going. And that ladies and gentlemen, is what I think of Canada in the future. Thank you very much. (Applause) U-F: Merci beaucoup pour cette présentation. It s hard to follow. You ve brought us from our day-to-day work which is really assessment of risk, and you ve used that into the context to bring us to listen to how much our world is in a humanity crisis. And into your search for solutions, and into seeing how Canada, as a nation, is well positioned to play a leading role in that search for solutions and in advancing human rights. U.F : Merci aussi pour votre rôle à essayer de faire avancer notre nation dans cette direction. Speaker Dallaire: Merci. A very fast last word. When you give a microphone to a General, don t expect him to give it up that easy. (Laughter) The members of the Canadian Forces who serve overseas, some of them come back in body bags, many of them injured mostly injured by the traumas of the differences and the complexities and the ambiguities that they face and the horrors come back injured in the mind. And their families who live with this injured person, or the loss, they ask only two things of Canada. One, that once they re deployed in those areas, that Canadians individually support them in their deployment and their families, and encourages them. And two, when they come home either in the body bag, or injured, that they and their families be treated with dignity and fairly, so that they don t have to fight another war to be able to live decently. Merci énormément, au revoir. Délibérations de l Institut canadien des actuaires du Colloque pour l actuaire désigné, Vol. 15, septembre 2004