U.S. Policy Choices During the Rwandan Genocide
Abstract
On April 6, 1994 the Mystere Falcon carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi was shot down by a surface to air missile, igniting a long planned and well coordinated holocaust that ended in the deaths of up to 800,000 Rwandans. Over the next six weeks, Hutu extremists, led by the Rwandan Army and radical Hutu militias, mobilized the majority Hutu population against the Tutsi minority to execute a bloodbath unequalled since the Cambodian killing fields of the 1970s. Alone among the great powers, the United States possessed the political and military power to organize and lead a rapid military intervention to stop the slaughter yet America took no action. The details of the tragedy are by now well known. What is less well known is the process by which the Clinton Administration arrived at a decision not to act a startling decision in retrospect given the expressed principles of the administration and the almost unbelievable scale of the unfolding tragedy. In the months and years that followed the Rwandan genocide, President Clinton at first excused American inaction by claiming that the true scope and scale of the killing was not known, and that the speed of the genocide precluded an effective response. Subsequent reporting revealed conclusively, however, that the killings continued for more than three months, and that the administration knew in detail that a systematic program of mass murder was not only in progress, but in fact had been planned in advance. U.S. inaction did not result from bad information or inadequate resources. Rather it was a conscious act of policy. How that policy came to be will engage national security practitioners for years to come.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2003
- Accession Number
- ADA442115
Entities
People
- Richard D. Hooker Jr.
Organizations
- National War College