In the late 1800s, Russian playwright Anton Chekhov famously introduced a principle that would later come to be known as “Chekhov’s gun”: “if in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there.” Chekhov thereby succinctly illustrated the principle of “foreshadowing”: inclusion of a pistol on stage orients the audience’s expectations throughout the performance. It is not a matter of firing or not firing the weapon; its very presence organizes a framework for understanding how events are perceived and what actions might therefore follow. His principle goes further, instructing his fellow playwrights on the art of focusing only on what is necessary and irreplaceable. Although the artistry of rhetoric is undeniably reduced in the texts of international institutional discourse, in the realm of policy on atrocity prevention and response, “Chekhov’s gun” applies. There has been significant discussion about the inclusion of coercive military intervention into the so-called toolbox for responding to atrocities. Advocates argue that even noncoercive response or prevention measures require a threat of military action in order to succeed. Critics have countered that coercive military action in the name of halting atrocities suffers from fatal flaws: it is of limited practical effect because it is too reliant on consensus to be a realistic deterrent. represents a neo-imperial invitation to intervene wherever great powers select to do so, it underestimates the problem of distinguishing Realpolitik and humanitarian interventions, or it lowers the bar for intervention by attempting to legislate the exception. Furthermore, as Michael Newman argued in 2009, debate and discussion on the place of coercive armed intervention consumes attention to the detriment of focus on the relationship between atrocities, on one side, and development and human security issues, on the other. But there has been less discussion of the ways that coercive military intervention - regardless of whether it is deployed - organizes the framework for mass atrocities prevention. This point is even more salient in light of the fact that, for many, there is no clear division between practices of prevention and response, as explored more in the next section.