TORONTO - In a spectacle held before a sellout crowd and simulcast live in select theatres across Canada on Monday night, an award-winning actress and humanitarian engaged a revered, outspoken general in battle.
Mia Farrow and retired Gen. Rick Hillier faced off at the Royal Ontario Museum in a highly unlikely and occasionally testy two-hour debate over whether the international community should intervene in man-made humanitarian crises in countries like Sudan, Zimbabwe and Burma.
"It was a great debate," said Hillier. "It points out the need to get things right."
Hillier was joined in speaking against such interventions by former U.S. ambassador to the UN John Bolton.
Farrow and Gareth Evans, CEO of the International Crisis Group and a former Australian foreign minister, argued in favour.
Hillier and Bolton made the case that there is a lack of resources, military capability and political fortitude to plan and carry out such operations successfully.
"The international community and the countries that make it up ... simply do not have the will ... to go into an intervention and conduct an enduring operation," Hillier said.
But Farrow said political will can be summoned.
"I do think we must if we are to have a world that's worth giving to our children," she said.
Farrow and Evans maintained interventions don't have to be military in nature except where there are mass atrocities, and that there's a moral obligation to help fellow human beings in need.
"I'm not talking about overthrowing a government and shooting every kid on a camel, I'm talking about defending defenceless civilian populations," Farrow said.
Hillier quickly countered that argument.
"You would fail because you're coming at it from the heart," Hillier said.
While the debate did occasionally stray into various conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan, much of the conversation centred on the situation in Darfur.
Hillier argued a resolution to the conflict in Darfur can't come without a strategy to deal with the "failed continent of Africa," a characterization Farrow with which took exception.
"We're looking at very separate nations with very separate goals and cultures and languages that have to be respected," said Farrow, who has travelled to Africa to advocate on behalf of Darfuri refugees.
"A collapsed state in Africa serves no one," she said.
Hillier then attempted to clarify his comments, adding "that's the wrong way to put it."
All the debaters agreed the United Nations has failed to prevent mass atrocities - a fact that seemed to bolster Hillier and Bolton's case.
As a result, audience support for humanitarian intervention dropped nine per cent from a poll taken before the debate - but still remained high at 68 per cent.
That figure was just slightly below the level of support found in a telephone survey of more than 1,000 Canadians commissioned last month by debate organizers to coincide with the event.
This was the second so-called Munk Debate, the brainchild of the charitable Aurea Foundation.
It was founded two years ago by philanthropists Peter and Melanie Munk to support Canadian institutions which study and develop public policy.
Getting Farrow and Hillier on the same stage was the idea of debate organizer Rudyard Griffiths.
"We felt it was just too good a combination," said Griffiths.
Farrow, 63, is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world this year.
Hillier was Canada's chief of defence staff for more than three years, up until he left the post in July of this year.
A crowd of 750 attended the debate moderated by the CBC's Brian Stewart.
