INTRODUCTION:

During the 1994 Rwanda genocide, killers with machetes moved more rapidly and with greater unity of effort than did the U.S. national security system. Despite successive regional crises and ample warning that acts of genocide were likely in the country, Washington was unprepared. Once the genocide began on April 6, 1994, the United States and the United Nations stood by as the highly organized Interahamwe militias and the Hutu Power movement killed an estimated 800,000 people in 100 days. Meanwhile, the divided U.S. interagency sputtered along, not approving even a minimally proactive course of action and taking two months to authorize the use of the word “genocide” to describe what was occurring in Rwanda. Within days of the start of the killing, the U.S. embassy was closed and all Americans were evacuated from the country. Within a few weeks, with the United States in the lead, the Security Council voted to pull out most U.N. forces in the country. Eventually, an army of exiled Tutsis ended the genocide with little aid from a second U.N. force, which arrived after most of the killing had occurred. The most appropriate American response would come four years later when President Bill Clinton apologized to Rwanda for Washington’s failure.

STRATEGY:

This study reveals that Washington failed to develop a national security strategy in the early 1990s that explicitly, or even implicitly, provided guidance on how the United States should respond to genocide. Instead, the relevant governing strategy, Presidential Decision Directive (PDD) 25, created and codified through a flawed process, hindered the development of an effective course of action and stymied even small, ad hoc responses. No aspect of American power—diplomatic, military, economic, informational, or moral—was leveraged to stem the genocide and the National Security Council principals never met to discuss the genocide and the proper U.S. role. Over the course of April and May 1994, the U.S. government ineptly attempted to make decisions to jam hate radio broadcasts, authorize a new U.N. force, and, once approved on May 17, equip that force. In the absence of interagency agreement, the U.S. de facto policy was inaction. In fact, avoiding action became a goal in itself, an objective that was easily supported by the consensus driven national security process that predominated in the 1990s. 

INTEGRATED ELEMENTS OF NATIONAL POWER:

The Departments of State and Defense, the White House, and the National Security Council did not work together to craft a response to the crisis and with no tangible strategy to execute, coordinated strategy implementation was hardly an issue. Given the lack of high-level interest in forming a Rwanda policy (as military intervention was ruled out), mid- and low-level officials were left to form and implement a strategy, something which they lacked the authority to accomplish. Thus, even small activities that might have reduced the killing were unable to be agreed or acted upon. The one measure that was approved mid-way through the genocide, the provision of 50 armored personal carriers to support a peacekeeping force, was implemented so inefficiently that the killing was complete by the time the vehicles arrived in Rwanda. 

EVALUATION:

The weakness of the U.S. response to the genocide can be summarized simply: The mechanistic nature of U.S. national security structures and processes enabled a small group to control the pace of decision making through bureaucratic, legal and semantic manipulations. This was not entirely malicious; officials were justifiably anxious about any U.S. intervention and the political climate was averse to peacekeeping. In many ways, these individuals were just doing their jobs, attending meetings and filing reports. Organizational preferences also played an important role in preventing the U.S. government from agreeing on a strategy. PDD 25 facilitated this lethargic response but was not solely responsible for U.S. inaction. For those fearful of the Somalia syndrome, wary of the slippery slope, insistent on diplomatic solutions, or otherwise opposed to intervention in Rwanda, the national security system proved an effective tool to ensure inaction because it relied heavily on a slow interagency process which favored consensus over clear, quick action. 

RESULTS:

The cost of the failure to prevent, halt, or stem the genocide in Rwanda can be debated. There is no doubt that in terms of traditional interests, the genocide posed little direct risk to U.S. economic or security concerns. However, the disruptions caused by the tragedy spilled over into neighboring countries, the Democratic Republic of the Congo in particular, where a war from 1998-2003 involved six nations and killed more than 3 million. This instability, which continues at present, is clearly not in the interests of a world power, such as the United States. It can be argued that an even greater cost of U.S. inaction was a loss of American moral authority. In addition, the genocide encouraged a global culture of impunity that allows crimes against humanity to occur. This case study illustrates that genocidal events cannot simply be ignored. Inhumanity and volatility, no matter where they occur, can pour over borders, damage international markets, sow violence, and metastasize. 

CONCLUSION:

Given the continuing possibility of genocidal violence not only in the Great Lakes region of Africa but globally, a discussion of genocide prevention’s place within the national security architecture of the United States is essential. Without a pre-determined decision on whether intervention to halt egregious human rights violations is within the national interests of the United States, the national security apparatus floundered when faced with the Rwanda genocide. No strategy was created. Instead, interagency discussions were drawn out until a U.S. response became a nonissue. The U.S. government interagency system was and remains incapable of quickly creating an agreed-upon, effective strategy in the face of such immense and near-unimaginable events.