Ever since the time of the 15th century, the area of Africa currently known as Rwanda has been strictly divided along ethnic lines. At the beginning of this century, Tutsi cattle breeders began arriving in Rwanda and gradually subjugated the existing Hutu inhabitants. The Tutsi monarchy established a contract with the Hutu farmers known as ubuhake, in which the Hutu farmers pledged their services to a regional Tutsi lord in return for the use of pastures and arable land (History of Rwanda 1). The Tutsi dominated monarchy remained in power all the way up until the conclusion of the First World War. In 1915, the League of Nations designated Rwanda to serve as a mandate of Belgium (History of Rwanda 2). In 1959 (three years prior to Rwanda receiving complete independence from Belgium), the increasingly resentful Hutu population organized a massive revolt against the longstanding tradition of Tutsi rule. As a result of the revolt, over 160,000 Tutsis fled Rwanda, thus leaving the Hutu faction as the new majority (History of Rwanda 4). While over the next two decades the region remained relatively peaceful, violence between the two groups once again began to escalate during the 1980s. In 1993, the Tutsis and Hutus attempted to come to a compromise by signing the Arusha Accords, which provided for a power-sharing government in order to ensure at least a subsistence level of political representation for the Tutsi minority (Power 3). For a few months after the passage of the Arusha Accords, it appeared as though the turmoil between the two factions may have finally been alleviated. However, even one little spark could serve to jeopardize the tentative peace agreement and plunge the County into a state of perpetual chaos.
On the evening of April 6, 1994, the plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana was struck by a missile in mid-air. The Hutu majority used the death of Habyarimana as a pretext to begin a system of mass genocide. “Using firearms, machetes, and a variety of garden implements, Hutu militiamen, soldiers, and ordinary citizens murdered some 800,000 Tutsi and politically moderate Hutu” (Power 1). Over the course of a 100 day period during the summer of 1994, the Hutu-controlled government of Rwanda almost successfully exterminated the country’s entire Tutsi minority during an ethnic cleansing effort. Despite the fact that this conflict was among the most heinous genocides in modern history, the United States government refused to actively involve itself in the conflict. The Clinton administration viewed the Rwandan conflict as a type of natural disaster: the periodic turbulence which inevitably occurs within and between developing African Nations. The two primary reasons why the Clinton administration chose not to intervene in the Rwandan genocide were the recent memory of the United States’ failed humanitarian aid mission in Somalia, and the perception that the United States did not possess any tangible national interest in the region. Furthermore, as a result of its inaction, the U.S. government effectively violated the UN Genocide Convention. The Clinton administration severely overlooked a crucial component of the national interest: the United States’ credibility in the eyes of the international community as a forerunner of universal human rights. Even though President Clinton was reluctant to use force in the aftermath of Somalia, he possessed a plethora of alternative options which if pursued could have expedited an end to the genocide. Thus, the Clinton administration committed an error of epic proportions by making a calculated effort to refrain from sending reinforcements to Rwanda.
On October 3, 1993 the U.S. Army landed in Somalia in an attempt to seize several top advisors to the warlord Mohammed Farah Aideed. President Clinton had few reservations about using force to complete this mission, due to the fact that his advisors informed him that this would be a low-risk humanitarian aid mission. However, during the commission of the military effort, Aideed’s fighters killed 18 American troops and wounded another 73 (Power 7). The American public was horrified by images of a U.S. Black Hawk Pilot being dragged through the Mogadishu streets during a bloody procession. It was precisely these images coupled with the American public’s distaste of leading troops on what they perceived as a suicide mission, which drove the Clinton administration’s future foreign policy initiates.
As a direct result of the Somalia catastrophe, President Clinton and his inner core of advisors began the process of reforming the United States’ formal peacekeeping doctrine. Clinton assigned his National Security Advisor, Richard Clarke, to formulate guidelines in order to guide future U.S. participation in multilateral peacekeeping operations (Ausink 65). Together with President Clinton, Clarke produced a document known as Presidential Decision Directive 25, which created rigorous standards of review for U.S. participation in humanitarian interventions. “The directive prescribes a number of specific steps; to improve U.S. and UN management of UN peace operations in order to ensure that use of such operations is selective and more effective” (Scheffer 2). While the entire text of PDD-25 has not to date been released to the public, President Clinton’s press secretary did briefly discuss the directive’s substance during a 1994 press conference. This new doctrine consisted of three key principles: the U.S. will only support future peacekeeping operations if there is a clearly identifiable national interest at stake in the area, clearly defined mission objectives, and an identifiable exit strategy when armed force is used (United States Department of State). Therefore, PDD-25 actually explicitly stated that there must be a tangible U.S. interest in the area in order to support peacekeeping operations in any capacity. As a result of Somalia, the United States would now be substantially more reluctant to provide aid to civilians in need in developing countries. The recent memory of the 18 soldiers killed in Somalia played a substantial role in dissuading the U.S. from sending troops to Rwanda.
“In this context, peacekeeping can be one useful tool to help prevent and resolve such conflicts before they pose direct threats to our national security. Peacekeeping can also serve U.S. interests by promoting democracy, regional security, and economic growth” (United States Department of State). The Executive Summary of PDD-25 released to the public articulated that the administration would define the term national interest very narrowly in the aftermath of Somalia. In fact, the Executive Summary identified only three examples of the national interest: promoting democracy abroad, providing for regional security, and increasing domestic economic output. By stringently applying this misguided conception of the national interest to the Rwandan genocide, President Clinton immediately dismissed the option of using force in Rwanda. In effect, the memory of Somalia blinded Clinton from the fact that Rwanda was an entirely different situation. Unlike in Somalia, systematic mass killings were being conducted with the intent to wipe out the membership of an entire ethnic group. While it is likely that President Clinton knew this to be true, he refused to acknowledge that the conflict in Rwanda constituted an actual genocide in public. “We cannot solve every such outburst of civil strife or militant nationalism simply by sending in our forces” (Ausink 66). As exemplified by his speech at the U.S. Naval Academy, Clinton went out of his way to carefully consider his word choice in order to avoid labeling the conflict as genocide. Clinton’s calculated effort to refrain from saying the “g-word” in public can be explained by a simple reason: the United States has been a party to the UN Genocide Convention since its ratification in 1948.
President Clinton refrained from using this terminology in order to prevent the U.S. from being held to its obligations under the UN Genocide Convention. The Convention defines genocide as acts committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group through violent or harmful means (Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide 1). Therefore, due to the fact that the ultimate goal of the Hutus was the complete extermination of an entire minority group, this situation clearly constitutes an act of genocide under the Convention. “States that are party to the Genocide Convention have agreed that ‘genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and punish’” (The American Journal of International Law 693). While the Convention does not explicitly require member countries to send force in order to combat genocidal acts, it does mandate them to send some form of aid in order to facilitate an end to the mass slaughter. In other words, all countries who signed the treaty pledged not to stand idly by in the case of future genocides. “There are obligations that arise in connection with the use of the term” (Gourevitch 153). As effectively acknowledged by State Department spokeswomen Christine Shelley, the Clinton administration avoided the use of the term genocide precisely so the U.S. could remain a bystander during the conflict. By failing to identify the protection of foreign civilian lives as a component of the national interest, PDD-25 was effectively at odds with the UN Genocide Convention. PDD-25 ruled out any serious peace enforcement effort by the U.S. in the foreseeable future, regardless of whether or not innocent civilians were being targeted for annihilation.
As shown by Clinton’s circumvention of the UN Genocide Convention, the primary problem was not that the U.S. was completely ignorant about Rwanda, but rather that the U.S. did not possess any tangible interests in the area. Unlike in the current Iraqi military occupation, the State of Rwanda did not contain any natural resource which would prove valuable to U.S. economic interests, such as oil. With the exception of promoting democracy abroad, the other two examples of the national interest articulated by PDD-25 were primarily short-term concerns. By not becoming actively involved in Rwanda, the Clinton administration failed to differentiate between immediate and long-term interests in the region. Despite the reservations of the Clinton administration, the U.S. did possess substantial long-term interests in the resolution of the Rwandan genocide. For example, the U.S. undoubtedly has a national interest in enforcing treaties to which the U.S. is a party. However, this interest was undermined by the Clinton administration’s decision to disregard the UN Genocide Convention. The substance of this treaty has now effectively been nullified: why would any other country still adhere to the terms of the treaty if the world superpower decides to ignore it completely in the midst of the worst genocide since the Holocaust?
Furthermore, another forgotten component of the national interest was the promotion of international human rights. The 5th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution embraces the notion that that each person possesses the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and property (Dworkin 2). These three rights, at least theoretically, should be universally applicable. In other words, all people obtain certain fundamental rights directly from nature itself, simply because they are human (Dworkin 4). Clearly, the most basic of these rights is the right to life. Through its policies during the Rwandan genocide, the U.S. effectively articulated to the rest of the world that the right to life of African civilians is not equivalent to that possessed by U.S. citizens. This assertion is evinced by the fact that President Clinton ordered the evacuation of the 255 American diplomats in the Rwandan area prior to the escalation of violence (Ausink 61). The only perceived national interest in the mind of President Clinton was evacuating American diplomats from the region. The precedent set by the administration’s policy of abruptly evacuating foreign nationals was that the lives of 255 Americans were more important than those of the 800,000 Rwandans who perished partly as a result of the United States’ inaction. For every one American live saved during the evacuation, approximately 3,200 Rwandans were killed during the course of the genocide (Ausink 62). Thus, the U.S. government devalued the lives of the Rwandan people due to the fact that it considered the conflict to be far removed from the promotion of U.S. national interests. By distancing itself from the Rwandan conflict, the U.S. missed out on a significant opportunity to prove to the world that it is not only a proponent of human rights, but international human rights as well. Therefore, U.S. credibility in the eyes of the international community was an overlooked component of the national interest in Rwanda.
Once the Clinton administration decided to take the military option off the table, the U.S. still had several nonmilitary options available, any of which could have been used to alleviate suffering in Rwanda. The first option was that the U.S. could have pressured the Belgian peacekeepers not to leave the region. Shortly after the assassination of President Habyarimana, Hutu forces captured and brutally murdered ten Belgian peacekeepers. In response to these killings, the Belgian leadership cried out to the international community for help: they would only agree to keep their remaining peacekeepers within the region if several hundred reinforcements were sent to provide support (Power 7). While Belgian officials called for the creation of an all-African force in order to at least safeguard the Rwandan refugees in neighboring Burundi, the Clinton administration actively opposed the creation of such a force. “The United States, in its role as superpower, cannot be caught in the position of being a policing officer in a conflict” (Ausink 61). In justifying his opposition to the Belgian Prime Minister’s request, President Clinton articulated that it was simply not the United States’ job to take actions in order to solve every international crisis. As a result of the Clinton administration’s inaction, Belgium was left with no other choice except to withdraw its remaining peacekeepers in order to preclude them from being slaughtered.
Furthermore, the U.S. could have supported the employment of a UN peacekeeping force. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR), led by Canadian General Romeo Dallaire, was initially authorized by the UN to provide protection for the Tutsis through the use of a 2,500 person peacekeeping force (Ausink 59). After witnessing first-hand the chaos that erupted at the beginning of April 1994, Dallaire petitioned the UN Security Council to increase the number of UNAMIR peacekeepers to 5,000 strong. “If UNAMIR had received the modest increase of troops and capabilities we requested in the first week, could we have stopped the killings? Yes, absolutely” (Dallaire 514). According to Romeo Dallaire, if the world superpowers (most notably the U.S.) had pledged a minimal amount of support to UNAMIR, the most egregious aspects of the Rwandan genocide could have been averted. While Dallaire’s view may in fact be naïve, it is difficult to dispute that notion that the doubling of UNAMIR’s forces would have saved at least thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of lives. To make matters worse, not only did the U.S. refuse to support UNAMIR, but it even went so far as to actively work against the establishment of an effective UN peacekeeping force. Immediately after evacuating all of its diplomats from Rwanda, the U.S. urged the UN to withdraw all remaining peacekeepers from the region in order to shield them from the escalating violence. While UN Ambassador Madeline Albright eventually convinced the Clinton administration to support a force of 270 Ghanian peacekeepers to remain in Kigali, the administration refused to approve any additional troop surges from this point forward (Ausink 61). Once the idea of enlarging UNAMIR was formulated by Dallaire and Secretary General Boutros-Ghali, the U.S. spent considerable time and effort to ensure its defeat. “We will oppose any effort at this time to preserve a UNAMIR presence in Rwanda. Our opposition to retaining a UNAMIR presence in Rwanda is firm” (Power 17). As exemplified in a report prepared by U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, the U.S. made a calculated effort not only to prevent itself from being obligated to send reinforcements to Rwanda, but also to prohibit the international community from doing so as well. This policy of active opposition used by the Clinton administration ultimately forced the Rwandan citizens to fend for themselves.
Another path that the U.S. could have pursued would have been to neutralize Radio Mille Collines. “During the genocide, RTLM called for the killing of Tutsi and branded as a traitor any Hutu who did not join those hunting and killing the enemy” (Kamatali 9). Radio Mille Collines served to incite the Hutus by glorifying the use of vigilante violence against the Tutsis. It even went so far as to provide the names and exact locations of Tutsi “deserving to die” (Kamatali 11). Due to the fact that Radio Millie Collines was considered to be very popular with the general public even prior to the commencement of the Hutu-endorsed slaughter, this medium was successfully able to quickly reach millions of Hutu listeners throughout the Nation. After he realized that the U.S. would never agree to support a military effort in the region, Dallaire urged the Clinton administration to undertake the low-risk mission of jamming the radio station’s broadcasts. The U.S. could have easily accomplished this without any loss of life by transmitting counter-broadcasts from a distant airborne platform (Power 19). Despite the relative simplicity of this mission, the Clinton administration provided two reasons for refusing to undertake it. The first reason was that it would cost $8,500 every hour in order to use the jamming platform (Power 21). Once again, the U.S. government knowingly decided to place a price on human lives. By failing to neutralize the station, the U.S. effectively articulated that saving $8,500 each hour was more important than the lives of the approximately 400 Rwandans who perished every hour.
Furthermore, the State Department Legal Advisor’s Office issued a finding against jamming the radio on the grounds that the U.S. government was unequivocally committed to freedom of speech (Power 19). In other words, the U.S. argued that although the radio may have incited violence, its broadcasts did not kill people: the Rwandan people were the ones responsible for killing people. The view presented in this instance by the State Department, that freedom of speech within the U.S. is absolute, is undoubtedly a misconception. On numerous occasions, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that freedom of speech can necessarily be restricted under extraordinary circumstances. “The constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action” (Brandenburg vs. Ohio). One of these special circumstances is speech which is inciteful or presents a danger to members of the general population (Dale 4). Thus, the Supreme Court has articulated that in certain cases an individual’s (or organization’s) right to freedom of speech must be balanced against the government’s duty to provide for the safety and welfare of its citizens. The invalid legal argument put forth by the State Department was simply another excuse to justify the United States’ reluctance to involve itself in the Rwandan conflict. While Radio Mille Collines may not have directly led to the slaughter of 800,000 Rwandans, it certainly played a substantial role in promoting the killings. We will never know just how many lives would have been saved had the U.S. intervened.
“We come here today party in recognition of the fact that we in the United States and the world community did not do as much as we could have and should have done to try to limit what occurred in Rwanda” (Power 2). In March 1998, President Clinton issued an apology to the people of Rwanda for failing to take sufficient measures in order to expedite an end to the systematic killings. Clinton expressed his personal regret for permitting the worst genocide since the Holocaust to occur under his watch. In hindsight, the U.S. inaction during the Rwanda debacle should convince many developing African Nations that from now on they will have to take matters of protection into their own hands. No longer will these developing Nations be able rely on the U.S. to intervene during crisis situations. Many of these African Nations have already started taking measures in order to liberate themselves from their historical dependence on Western support. These measures include greatly expanded military forces, import substitution policies, and diversifying their exports (Mkandawire and Soludo 12). These measures are designed to both decrease economic dissatisfaction, which has historically led to civil instability, and to increase the government’s power to retain order and legitimacy. Furthermore, the member States of the African Union undertook collective action in order to achieve a sustainable peace throughout the area, by creating The Peace and Security Council in 2003 (InterAfrica Group 2). However, these measures have yet to hinder the perpetual violence occurring in the Rwandan area. According to one estimate, approximately 4 million additional people have been killed in the region since the perceived conclusion of the Rwandan genocide (Human Rights Watch). While not nearly as pervasive as in 1994, slaughter in the region continues today partially due to American apathy. It is difficult for the average American citizen to consider protecting the lives of innocent Africans to constitute a vital component of the national interest, when most Americans would be unable to even locate Rwanda on a map. While the American people felt far removed from the conflict and were occupied with their daily routines of shopping, working, and eating dinner with their families in April 1994, 8,000 Rwandans were murdered each day simply because of their ethnic background. Due in part to the misuse of history by President Clinton, this ethnic cleansing effort was allowed to continue unabated for 100 consecutive days. Thus, the U.S. foreign policy during the Rwandan genocide exemplifies the danger of using direct historical analogies: no two events occur under exactly the same circumstances. Hopefully both the U.S. government and the rest of the world will remember this important lesson when they are confronted with humanitarian intervention decisions in the future.
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