Quote Originally Posted by MattC86 View Post
But I did read Dallaire's.

Would western militaries be anymore willing or able to take on such a task today than they were in 1994?

Matt
Matt,

There are of course an infinite number of answers to that question; all are in fact irrelevant because the militaries do the mission the politicians hand them. We get to shape that process and we may influence the mission design. But ultimately they make the critical decision.

The driving issue in the Clinton Adminstration was the idea that all things African in April 1994 were the same as all things in Somalia in October 1993. The Nat Security Directive that came out of the Somalia episode stated the US would not commit forces in areas that did not concern our national interests. Chief advocate for that position was Richard Clark and he was the one who pushed the do nothing, don't say genocide, and push for a full UN withdrawal. I am not a fan of Madelaine Albright but in the case of Rwanda she was the person who as US Ambassador to the UN stood up and refused to push the UNAMIR withdrawal any further.

My issue with General Dallaire has always been that he did not understand how a UN peacekeepibng mission was at its very core a political animal, not a unified military force that he could actually command to do the things he wanted to do. I do not think the Belgian government would have allowed a preemptive operation as Dallaire proposed and as the UN Peacekeeping Office refused.

That said, a single brigade combat team with a mission to use force to stop the slaughter could have halted the genocide in its tracks in April 1994 on into May. Afterwards I am not so sure as the war was fully raging by then and the genocide much more widespread. Our own JTF came in Opn Support Hope with a clear get in and get out mandate; the chain of command wanted no mission creep and the opening Disney-like plans to get all the refugees back into Rwanda soon met reality.

For the next 18 months I watched and warned that a new, worse war was in the cards unless someone moved to checkmate what was happening in the camps. My fears and predictions came true a few months after I left.

Are we better today? Yes. No. Maybe.

Yes we are better at interagency, combined irregular warfare.

No because we still have a fundamental imbalance between our departments in the application of power, soft or hard, kinetic or non-kinetic, military, economic, or diplomatic.

Maybe because it all goes back to that fundamental: the decision to act comes from the politician, so whether we act or how we act is fundamentally changed every time we go through the decision process. Look at us right now in regards to Afghanistan.

In the end, I hope fervently that when we face another Rwanda we are allowed to act.

Tom