Ten years on, the impact of the inaction of the international community during the Rwandan crisis is still being felt. This article considers normative, legal, and realpolitik constraints operating upon decision- makers, contending that the first two should have enabled decision- makers to authorize intervention if not actually requiring them so to do, and that the international community's non-intervention in genocide was, therefore, due to considerations of national interest. However, international law played a significant role in framing excuses for inaction, and the end of the crisis saw international decision-makers having their hands forced by pressure &om their internal and external communities, promising that non-state-centric humanitarian considerations could play a greater role in future conflicts such as Kosovo and Sudan. Thus this article demonstrates not only that liberal claims of a new world order at the end of the Cold War were premature, but also that post-Rwanda power-political considerations no longer fully explain normative war-fighting decision-making.
More than meets the eye – and less: Comments on The Internationalists