Key
points:
“Former
Ambassador Prudence Bushnell's notebooks provide a never-before-seen
view into the inner workings of US diplomacy during one of the
international community's darkest hours in recent decades. Her
personal notebooks, published here for the first time by the National
Security Archive, shed light on the Ambassador's own personal ethical
struggles, not only with US foreign policy regarding
non-intervention during the humanitarian crisis, but also the moral
dilemmas that the international community faced from its
unwillingness to intervene while genocide ravaged Rwanda.”
“In an
interview from 2013, Ambassador Bushnell describes the failed US
policy as merely 'keeping busy with tasks that lacked impact so we
could say that we were doing something,' even though she knew the
official policy of pushing for a cease fire was futile, stating 'If
you don't want to make a decision, then you keep everybody busy. You
keep the pot boiling, but you don't have to make a decision. And that
is what we were doing.'”
“Around
April 13th, Bushnell wrote in her personal notebook that 'NSC
[National Security Council] requested IO [Office of International
Organizations] to draft resolution to pull UNAMIR' [Bushnell Notebook
No. 3, page 52]. At that time, Richard Clarke and Susan Rice, the
key officials in the NSC working on the US response to the Rwanda
crisis, had directed Albright to support a withdrawal of UNAMIR at
the UN.”
“An
April 13, 1994 memorandum from Douglas Bennett to Secretary of State
Warren Christopher (via Peter Tarnoff) regarding an upcoming
telephone call to Secretary General Butros-Ghali, indicates that the
US supports terminating the UNAMIR peacekeeping operation, and that
'…this is not just a Belgian idea.' The document states, 'Given the
chaotic conditions in Rwanda, it is impossible for UNAMIR to fulfill
its mandate. It is our view, therefore, that the force should
withdraw from the country now. At an appropriate time, the force's
mandate should be terminated' [Document 15].”
“While
we can start to piece together an idea of where the decision to pull
out originated, thanks to recently released correspondence between UN
representatives from the UK, New Zealand, and Czech Republic and
their home governments, we are still missing key documents about
how the decision was made within the US government. Crucial documents
that would help us understand this decision to call for the
withdrawal of UNAMIR troops are in the collections of the Clinton
Presidential Library but have been held up by bureaucratic red tape
for over a year, and remain unavailable to the public.”
“Bushnell
later describes the US policy as a decision not to decide, stating
that 'We are trying to do things right, not do the right thing' and
points to a lack of leadership at the senior levels: [...] Bushnell
also expresses her personal difficulties with the options that were
available to her, ...”
In
details:
These
materials are reproduced from www.nsarchive.org with the permission
of the National Security Archive.
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