NATO leaders meet for their summit in Warsaw today buffeted by crises and conflicts on all sides. Many of them could have been averted.
From the global refugee crisis to conflicts across the world, much of the current instability stems from world leaders’ failure to adequately respond to human rights violations, especially if other political or economic interests are at stake. Instead, when a crisis breaks out, when the bodies start piling up, and when refugees flee by the thousands, leaders say they didn’t see it coming, and start yet another discussion about the necessity of new, more advanced early warning systems.
Having covered most of the major crises during the past 15 years, I am convinced that the challenge to preventing conflict is not in our ability to detect and analyze the signs, but in the unwillingness of the key international players to even accept the possibility or reality of looming disasters, let alone act to stop them. It is not the lack of knowledge or tools; it is the shortsighted willingness to look the other way when human rights abuses occur.