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It took them this long to finger France for this?

I know this 20 years ago when I was a kid, I had family in the CAF who had friends under the command of the UN Peace keeping force which was Canadian led. This mission is one of the reasons why Canada was still respected after what happened in Somalia, because our commander disobeyed direct orders and stood his ground with avaible resources to save as many as possible.

The French? Stood by idly while people were being butchered, General Dallaire asked the French for help and they stood by and watched the events happen.

Also the UN has a lot of blame in this, they held back resources that could have stopped the genocide within 12 hours. General Dallaire asked for battalion of Marines because he knew Canada didn't have forces in the region that could be immediately transferred to Rwanda within 24 hours. He was told there was no one available because of the Balkans which was complete horse crap since the US basically had units in the ME doing security in Saudi Arabia, and the Saudi army at that point was well armed enough to fend off a crippled Iraq.

Also the French knew about the coup that was occurring which kicked off the Genocide, which means the UN/NATO knew about it as well, and before you guys go "Oh they wouldn't have known" the US literally has eyes in every government in the world that has access to high level intel, look at the Canadian ambassador to Iran during the revolution, he was a CIA operative, one of the highest level ones too. This means that the UN and NATO are complicit the only ones that aren't were the boots on the ground trying to stop it.

E: This means by this report that France is now also directly responsible for the First Congo war since it kicked off due to Rwanda invading to find and destroy the Génocidaires

E2:

Sorry I get highly emotional about this, I had friends who survived through this genocide and came to the US when I lived there, they were kids who lost family in the most horrific ways you could think of. I also know folks who were on the mission as engineers and the stuff they saw was unrepeatable by me.

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Lol they're not

French did intervene but on the guilty side

They don't have those "damned you do or don't" mentality when the rebel regroups and launched a fanatical counter offensive (or to be exact, a counter genocide) to avenge all the previous atrocities

They went straight to action, deploy by the thousands, and help the government evacuate. This was after they deployed tens of advisors helping the govt army

Oh and this is after they refused to evacuate the Tutsis that's gonna be killed en mass, they only let foreigners in. Not even Tutsi spouses were welcome

but when the genocidal Hutus came running? Lo and behold their attitude changed

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Lol they're not

French did intervene but on the guilty side

They don't have those "damned you do or don't" mentality when the rebel regroups and launched a fanatical counter offensive (or to be exact, a counter genocide) to avenge all the previous atrocities

They went straight to action, deploy by the thousands, and help the government evacuate. This was after they deployed tens of advisors helping the govt army

Oh and this is after they refused to evacuate the Tutsis that's gonna be killed en mass, they only let foreigners in. Not even Tutsi spouses were welcome

but when the genocidal Hutus came running? Lo and behold their attitude changed

> Uranium and oil in Mali

There are neither uranium nor oil in Mali.

Find and watch the film Shooting Dogs and you'll understand why. There's another one called Sometimes In April that explores the same events.

Fair points in your last paragraph.

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Point.

I am no politician and have, like, zero knowledge of the delicacies of international politics, so I can't authoritatively say what the correct action for the French government would have been. And I am not a soldier either, so I can't really fault the soldiers in the story too much - they did have orders of some kind. I have no idea what I would do when faced with such a scenario, so I'm not going to sit here in my armchair with 20/20 hindsight and say "Oh they all should have done X or Y".

But I can say that refusing to condemn the acts, lying to their own troops, not asking their allies what the hell they were doing, and even stymieing efforts to bring the perpetrators of the genocide to justice, were almost certainly not the right actions to take.

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Right, it's clearly a contested idea, but this article details what it might look like. It doesn't advocate a complete democratization, but one in which a veto is tied to atleast one other country, so not unilateral (among other things). Don't get me wrong, I highly doubt this will ever happen in my lifetime, but it's not an unreasonable notion in and of itself.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/17/decolonizing-united-nations-means-abolish-permanent-five-security-council/

You can't democratize the security council, that's the whole point. Why would any of the countries on it listen to weaker ones, if they were appointed? They'd just quit or ignore anything "binding."

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In the genocide museum in Kigali it says that France financed the weapons that were used in the genocide. It doesn't say if it was government or private but says all it took was $7 million USD

I wrote a paper about this, Rwanda directly led to the United Nations "Responsibility to Protect" doctrine which has been invoked more than 80 times since its introduction.

I argued that intervention to stop atrocity is needed, but we also need a democratization of the security council if allegations (and instances) of neo-imperialism are to ever be effectively resolved. Unfortunately that seems very unlikely, especially with the resumption of great power politics on the world stage.

That's my picture as well.

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While I understand your point I think we also need to think in a very pragmatic way. Those soldiers in the story had orders and can't act on their own gut feelings. Taking a stance here would have had so many implications.

I don't see a way where France would not be blamed. If the French army had taken a strong stance and toppled the Rwandan power, I don't know if it could have prevented anything in terms of civil war and massacres, but it would have been sure to create a power vacuum in the middle of a bloody civil war from a western former colonial power.

I guess the best option was to leave completely, impose fast sanctions, and not get involved further. Still a massacre with a loss of influence as well for the aftermath.

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I think you should rather reverse the statement: it is rarely
driven by anything else than self interest. If you take a closer look
at any of your examples, you ll get a different picture.
The UK intervention was primarly meant to evacuate british
and other foreign citizens from Freetown, where they were eventually
attacked by the rebel forces. The biggest diamond mining corporation happens also to be british (Sierra Leone´s President used to sell-out
the diamond mines for military support, it was only after the long
civil war that a ban on "blood diamonds" was installed).
Uranium and oil in Mali as well as in Niger are big part of France´s
strategical interest in Westafrica so their intervention is not surprising
and can be clearly considered as a means to save "their" resources. And speaking about the Balkans, you might want to read what Taylor
Branch had to say about the leaders of the "west".
I understand the desire to see the west, especially the US, as some kind
of a "good" world police force, at least to some extend, but it simply doesnt
hold true, except in Hollywood movies.

They are largely being criticized here for inaction. Might wanna read next time