Roméo Dallaire is a retired general and senator. His books include Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda and Waiting for First Light: My Ongoing Battle with PTSD.
In my years as a military officer, as a Senator and in my continuing humanitarian work, my focus has always been preparing for, and trying to shape, the future.
In the short term, this often means preparing for worst-case scenarios; like in 1970, when I was a young lieutenant responding to the October Crisis in Quebec, and the horrible potential of using lethal force against our own citizens. Luckily, the best-case scenario prevailed and implementation was not required.
Other times, the worst-case scenario becomes reality. During my time as United Nations Force Commander in Rwanda, I attempted to alert authorities to signs pointing to a planned genocide, and the need to update our mission so that I had enough troops, weapons and capacity to intervene. The failure to prepare strategically in that case was a failure of humanity of the worst kind.
Of course, not all planning for the future needs to address emergencies; in fact, proper long-term strategic planning is the best tool to prevent emergencies. As far back as the 1990s, I was drafting “Officer 2020” doctrine, reshaping the officer corps for the next generations. And throughout my time in the Senate, I continually raised the potential opportunities that Canada’s sesquicentennial could bring. (Unfortunately, I did so in vain, and I feel that opportunity was squandered.)
Political and social buy-in for strategic future planning is often difficult to secure, especially when we so easily become distracted by current tactical exigencies or self-created political emergencies. It requires imagination, vision and, most of all, leadership to anticipate and shape the future, and not merely try to survive it.
Recently, I have turned my thinking to global conflict prevention, an expansion of my decade-long effort to stop the use of children as weapons of war and to eradicate the very thought of using child soldiers.
In my research, I’ve been considering some of the most influential and innovative tools for anticipating, planning for, and preventing conflicts before they happen. One of these was peacekeeping. Another, the Responsibility to Protect doctrine. Another, the Vancouver Principles on preventing the recruitment and use of child soldiers.
All of these are extraordinary ideas that originated in Canada.
This led me to thinking about what we, as citizens of Canada, owe each other and the world.
Our country enjoys a positive global reputation. We were integral to critical battles in both world wars, and to the formation of the United Nations, and we are still seen as an honest broker by developing countries. With our stable democracy, our plentiful natural resources, our successes in education, health and technology and our supportive belief system that celebrates diversity and respect for humanity, and human rights for all, Canada has emerged as a leading middle power.
This gives us both power and responsibility in our international role, if we choose to look forward, to look outward and to understand ourselves as truly global. Unfortunately, it seems that many of us still do not recognize in ourselves the enormity of our potential, and continue to define ourselves by what we are not, instead of what we are or even what we strive to be.
I am horrified to witness right-wing, isolationist movements gaining popularity, preying on fear of the “other” and threatening basic human rights in the process. They proclaim superiority while wantonly disregarding international conventions, civil liberties, human rights, the protection of children and women in conflicts where rape and child soldiers abound as daily weapons of war, and slamming shut borders to those fleeing their own countries owing to ethnic, religious and economic frictions.
We in Canada went through a decade of our own isolationist, myopic perspective, but we survived it. And I am confident that the world will survive, too. In fact, it is possible that Canada may end up leading the global reversal, shepherding the globe back to globalization.
Step 1 to that goal: We need to regain our seat on the UN Security Council.
Step 2: We must engage the youth of our progressive country – whom I call the Generation without Borders – to broaden their horizons, and turn them into global players.
Step 3: We must shape the future, not merely respond to it day to day, so that humanity can thrive, not merely survive.
This week, on my 73rd birthday, the Government of Canada in partnership with the Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative, announced the launch of the Dallaire Centre of Excellence for Peace and Security. This forward-looking institution, based at the Canadian Forces College in Toronto, will bring together expertise, research, lessons learned and political will to address pressing global security issues such as the prevention of the recruitment and use of child soldiers.
This is a critical and most welcome initiative, bringing us ever closer to a future of conflict prevention.
And that is a future which we owe to each other and to the world.