“A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous
and then dismissed as trivial, until finally,
it becomes what everybody knows.”
                          –William James, 1879

General James N. Mattis, Commander of the US Joint Forces Command, included the above quote in his May 2009 “Vision for Joint Concept Development,” which lays out his views on the steps required for any new concept to become US military doctrine. At the outset of this Handbook, we asserted that MARO was not yet part of official doctrine—but that it should be. The MARO Project aims to prompt the US military to develop this unofficial MARO concept into an official concept, and eventually into doctrine. The Project’s future goals, in addition to advancing the concept within US Department of Defense channels, include deeper consideration of MARO at policy levels and among potential international audiences. The process of socializing the MARO Project among various military, government, and non-governmental communities over the past two and a half years has helped the Project adapt and refine the MARO concept and planning tools, and has also confirmed our view that it merits formalization. This was again highlighted by a fruitful MARO tabletop exercise conducted with a group of crisis action and deliberate planners at US European Command in early 2010. The exercise confirmed that the MARO mission—to stop widespread, systematic violence committed by armed groups against non-combatant civilians—is distinct, and that there is currently no overarching framework within current US concepts and doctrine to address this problem. It requires continued ongoing exercising, testing, discussion, and refinement.

The MARO endeavor started as an exercise in military planning for the hardest cases because the military needed ideas and tools to use immediately if a mass atrocity situation arose in their areas of responsibility. Doctrine development is a lengthy process; the planning considerations presented in this Handbook are practical and useable immediately.

This Handbook, however, is both a first step and a work in progress. We have identified areas of further MARO-related research, opportunities for engagement outside the military, training and education needs in war colleges and elsewhere, and additional products that would be useful for the planning community. These include planners’ desires for specified and implied tasks lists, lists of capacities of other agencies, and other types of “checklists.” There is more research and writing to be done on the potential for ISR and airpower in witnessing and deterring. Policymakers and planners require more research on context-specific and general mass atrocity early-warning indicators.

Beyond the military, an important next step is harmonizing interagency roles, vision, training, preparation, planning, and labor division for a MARO, to include addressing issues within policy circles. This could include adapting the tabletop exercises and planning documents for civilians, both in government and in NGOs. MARO scenarios can be used as vehicles to exercise and refine interagency planning processes and relationships, in addition to addressing the practical requirement to formulate governmental contingency plans for potential mass atrocity crises. Planning and scenario testing can help civilian agencies identify their equities and responsibilities in a MARO, develop planning expertise and build relationships that will benefit all parties, and alert actors to different opportunities for action across the spectrum of mass atrocity prevention and response.

Finally, for a variety of reasons, the MARO Project’s efforts have been initially US-centric. As the Project continues to expand awareness within the US—the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review’s guidance to be prepared to prevent the human suffering caused by mass atrocities is one sign of this—one of the MARO Project’s next steps will be to extend the dialogue internationally through committed national governments, but also through regional and international institutions, such as the AU and the UN, which have critical roles to play. Another critical and ongoing part of the MARO Project is working with the growing international community of practice and interest, particularly as the global norms of “responsibility to protect” and “protection of civilians” are taking shape. We hope that efforts to develop a common lexicon, vocabulary, and understanding will help ensure that the world is better prepared to intervene to stop the next mass atrocity.