A Humanitarian United States

Now, of course this would not result in a happy-go-lucky, hunky dory, lets all hold hands by the campfire and sing Kumbaya together world. In fact this might result in a less peaceful world, however I would actually like to know if the United States of America began massive interventions similar to the Gulf War in the '90s humanitarian hotspots.

Think about in 1994, by April 20th the USA calls the Rwanda situation a genocide and sends in troops and tries to organize a coalition of the forces of the world's developed nations to go into there and try to make peace.

I would like to be realistic. There will be ripples if the USA stays in Somalia, goes into Rwanda, puts more troops into the former Yugoslavia, and expands the operations in Haiti, I just want to know what they are to live in a realistic world.
 
I'm not likely to organize this well, and I'm not going to research it beyond my own recollection, but I'll throw out a few thoughts:
  • Assume that some unspecified PoD inspires President Clinton to push for more intervention in these four countries. To handle that many spots at one time, while maintaining existing worldwide defense committments, probably requires more troops than are available. Any PoD which is going to accomplish this may have to include an overt attack on the US which can be identified with a national government. That might encourage more military.
  • Yugoslavia resembles a civil war, with the central government at Belgarde trying to keep the various peripheral states in the union. The conflicts, as I recall, were more along ethnic than territorial lines. So, the problem was not only intervening in the war but preventing neighbors within a state from kicking off old ethnic rivalries. I assume you're looking for an ATL in which the intervention goes way beyond the original intent and turns into the complete destruction of the central government.
  • Somalia and Rwanda were poor situations for the military - armed civil anarchy, ethnic violence, no central "enemy" to defeat, no "pre-war boundaries" to enforce, massive humanitarian aid requirements, and no good goal for intervention - literally a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario in each case.
  • I had to hit Wikipedia for a quick refresher- we were intervening in Haiti anyway earlier in the decade? Perhaps in the ATL we end up invading the country, but then what? I suppose the US could impose a government, and keep troops around to support it, but I don't see any fundamental change coming from it.
But, hey - maybe you'll get lucky and somebody will start bashing my comments! :D
 
Okay now. Yeah Haiti was a dumb idea. I would just probably have maybe some foreign troops, like the post-Soviet states that would want to be art of NATO.

Now when I was talking about Yugoslavia I know about how the USA was doing a lot of aerial campaigns and I was just wondering if we could replace those with more boots on the ground.

As for Somalia and Rwanda that is where it would get interesting. I would actually want for things to go bad. Not bad as they happened IRL but the intervention might be politically bad for the United States or would send ripples that would lead to future instability in the world.
 
Oh, yeah..."humanitarian"...just open us up to even more critizism abroad AND at home! We get crap whether we do something like that or not. Massive protests both foreign and domestic over our actions in all those places. It's just one of those "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situations; you just have to decide the cost/benefit trade-off for your self.
 
Oh, yeah..."humanitarian"...just open us up to even more critizism abroad AND at home! We get crap whether we do something like that or not. Massive protests both foreign and domestic over our actions in all those places. It's just one of those "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situations; you just have to decide the cost/benefit trade-off for your self.

Dude, huh?
 
Oh, yeah..."humanitarian"...just open us up to even more critizism abroad AND at home! We get crap whether we do something like that or not. Massive protests both foreign and domestic over our actions in all those places. It's just one of those "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situations; you just have to decide the cost/benefit trade-off for your self.

Maybe it would be neutral domestically, but it would help our image internationally, and certainly wouldn't be as unpopular as the Iraq/Afghanistan Wars, depending on the spin.
 
Now, of course this would not result in a happy-go-lucky, hunky dory, lets all hold hands by the campfire and sing Kumbaya together world. In fact this might result in a less peaceful world, however I would actually like to know if the United States of America began massive interventions similar to the Gulf War in the '90s humanitarian hotspots.

Think about in 1994, by April 20th the USA calls the Rwanda situation a genocide and sends in troops and tries to organize a coalition of the forces of the world's developed nations to go into there and try to make peace.

I would like to be realistic. There will be ripples if the USA stays in Somalia, goes into Rwanda, puts more troops into the former Yugoslavia, and expands the operations in Haiti, I just want to know what they are to live in a realistic world.

Why would they? What's their motivation?
 
oh God. The US gets even more into the "hey, let's bring democracy to even more people who don't want it"? I don't think the world would have tolerated much more of that. It won't be long before a majority of the world is screaming at us to stay the hell home...
 
If the US intervenes in Rwanda we see a ceasefire imposed and the leaders of the genocide stay in power for at least the time being meaning US troops must remain until the question of the Genocidaires is settled.
 

CalBear

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Now, of course this would not result in a happy-go-lucky, hunky dory, lets all hold hands by the campfire and sing Kumbaya together world. In fact this might result in a less peaceful world, however I would actually like to know if the United States of America began massive interventions similar to the Gulf War in the '90s humanitarian hotspots.

Think about in 1994, by April 20th the USA calls the Rwanda situation a genocide and sends in troops and tries to organize a coalition of the forces of the world's developed nations to go into there and try to make peace.

I would like to be realistic. There will be ripples if the USA stays in Somalia, goes into Rwanda, puts more troops into the former Yugoslavia, and expands the operations in Haiti, I just want to know what they are to live in a realistic world.

How do you get sufficient forces, with decent support into Rhwanda? The country itself is landlocked, meaning the normal naval flotilla is of little use. You will have to fly in every bit of transport, every bit of supply, everything. You get to do that to a country with ONE runway capable of handling C-141 & C-5 cargo aircraft. There MAY be worse places to get to with substantial numbers of troops, but not very many.

Solmalia? What would the point be in staying? To ensure that the country was peaceful and safe the U.S. would have been forced to kill at least 10,000 people, maybe more depending on how hot the population got over the effort.

Yugoslavia was a train wreck. How do you keep people from killing each other over something that happened a century before?

Just these three train wrecks, which are far from the only ones going at the time, would soak up 300,000 troops, if not more, and would put U.S. troops into situations where everyone was shooting that them. To end all the crisis, just in sub-Sarahan Africa, would take at least a million men and would cost more lives every year than the last six years in the Sandbox.

You can NOT make people love their neighbors at gunpoint. You either stay forever and are called either occuppier or imperialist (with more than some truth) while you keep the two sides apart, or you stay until you can justify the losses. The minute you leave the bloodletting begins just like you were never there.

To actually change things, especially in Africa, which is the current area of greatest conflict, you would have to totally redraw the map based on tribes or clans. Even then you will have massive issues with creating a viable political division. For whatever reason (blame European occupation, or communitation difficulties or terrain, or $%#^ happens) most of Africa doesn't fall nicely into "states" that make any sort of logical sense.

Expect the U.S. to deploy a million men, for, at the least, decades just to keep the lid on long enough for some of the political divisions to take root?

Good luck.
 
CalBear,

Don't waste your time here.

There have been three Rwanda threads in the last two weeks alone and the Interventionists still can't quite grasp the logistical issues involved. In their minds the US can simply have Scotty beam over whatever they need wherever they need in whatever quantity they need.

I also find it perplexing that the same people who squealed with laughter over Bush's idiotic statements about nation building in Iraq make similar idiotic statements about nation building in Yugolsavia, Somalia, Rwanda, etc., etc., etc. Perhaps nation building is a snap when you're not doing it for "evil" purposes?


Bill
 
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