War in Rwanda Discussion Response Paper

War in Rwanda Discussion Response Paper

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War in Rwanda Discussion Response Paper

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Claim: Anything other than absolute government is prone to dissolution into civil war.  Debate this claim using as much data as you can from Glover about the wars of the 1990s in Yugoslavia and about Hobbes’ political philosophy.

What are Glover’s major conclusions about Rwanda? What happened in Rwanda and why according to Glover?  Analyze Glover’s account of the war in Rwanda.

STUDENT 1– “Events like those in Rwanda are caused partly by a tribal psychology locally stirred up.” (J. Glover, pg. 122) Rwanda is one of the smallest countries on the African mainland and is the site of the Rwandan Genocide in 1994. Spring of 1994 in Rwanda was a time when two tribes were at war.

In Humanity (2012), Jonathan Glover confronts this cruel event in the history of the twentieth century through ethics and psychology to determine how ones’ moral law allowed such an atrocity to occur.

Glover does not believe what happened in Rwanda was a war, but rather a genocide. “The human responses were overwhelmed in the killers by tribal hatred, but this emotion was itself a product of conscious political manipulation.”(J. Glover, pg. 122) War is when it becomes a political and armed conflict between two or more nations, whereas a genocide is when there are mass killings between different ethnic/ racial or religious groups.

In this case, the Rwandan genocide was between two different social groups, the Tutsis and the Hutus. The Tutsis were seen as a higher social class in contrast to the Hutus because while the Hutus attended to the crops, the Tutsis dealt with livestock. Attending cattle was seen as a bigger role due to the “support by German and then Belgian colonial rule.”(J. Glover, pg. 120)

Glover claims the Rwandan Genocide happened because of “tribal psychology locally stirred up.” (J. Glover, pg. 122) As hate amongst different social classes accumulated, it led to a mass killing initiated by one of the groups. However, “a fuller account of the genocide also has to ask why the United Nations and the world did not prevent it.” (J. Glover, pg. 122)

War in Rwanda Discussion Response Paper

A reason why the genocide happened in the first place is because of societal influence and because “the rest of the world has not created the means to prevent them.” (J. Glover, pg. 122) The other nations did not get involved and let this atrocity occur and last three months.

STUDENT 2– I chose to answer Prompt 1.

The claim about an absolute government being prone to dissolution into civil war is valid when it comes to the wars of Yugoslavia. Due to the severe division between the republics and the differences and beliefs, the territories were divided, allowing Serbia and Croatia to kill thousands of each other’s armies.

It created a spiral of hatred and a war that seemed to last too long. According to Hobbes’ political philosophy, “fear of the power of others as a prime cause of conflict” (Glover, p. 359) meaning fear creates conflict and this philosophy can be connected to the wars in Yugoslavia.

This meant republics of Yugoslavia had wanted an absolute government, but in pursuit of this, they caused a never-ending conflict that turned into a civil war. As a result of the fear of not reuniting tribes of Yugoslavia, republics all fought for their own absolute government in order to dominate over each other. Then, war broke out and Yugoslavia became a place for civil war, destroying the lives of many innocent people.

However, there are others who may say an aim for an absolute government was not the only contribution to a civil war, that there was an inevitable rise in the conflict between the republics that was bound to erupt. Glover says, “In the former Yugoslavia most people cannot have wanted ethnic conflict.

About 40 per cent of all families were ethically mixed” (Glover, p. 361). While ethnic conflict may have been an issue not many knew about between pluralist and tribal states, it is the Hobbesian fear that has created the idea of absolute government in leaders thus, leading to a civil war. The mutual fear and violence that were in leaders prevented a solution from being found on the conflict in Yugoslavia, causing many civilians and soldiers to fight against their own people.

Since no one wanted to surrender to put an end to this civil war, fear continued to reign, forcing the United Nations to interfere. Nonetheless, the powers of the UN were limited and the choice to end the civil war revolved on the decision of the republic leaders.

War in Rwanda Discussion Response Paper

This fragment of history demonstrates how dangerous the pursuit of absolute government was, as fear and conflict were in the minds of republic leaders. As stated by the author, “The Serb leaders could have been shifted by credible threats of really strong action (Glover, p. 382). The Yugoslavia conflict could have easily from war to genocide in the snap of a finger had these threats became an actual attack, causing the fear to rise even more.

Thucydides believed that the fear of being attacked and from an actual attack can result in war, demonstrating how tense things were in regards to the civil war. This meant one wrong move would cause more deaths through a prolonged war. Fortunately, due to negotiations with a third party, the Hobbesian fear subsided and further disaster was finally averted. In conclusion, the idea of an absolute government was needed due to the fear of the power of other republics and in addition to the escalation of ethnic conflict, a civil war broke out.

War in Rwanda Discussion Response Paper

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