"The 1994 genocide in Rwanda claimed the lives of at least 500,000 Tutsi. At the time, United Nations peacekeepers were withdrawn and the rest of the world stood aside. In the years since that unspeakable nightmare, it has been argued in many quarters that a military intervention of only 5,000 troops could have prevented most of those deaths. In The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention, Alan J. Kuperman exposes such conventional wisdom as myth.".

"Serving as a cautionary message about the limits of humanitarian intervention, the book presents lessons for the future. Policymakers, military leaders, and citizens must be realistic about the goals of such intervention, and they need to know how best to tackle the challenge. Kuperman makes clear that launching humanitarian interventions after the outbreak of massive ethnic violence often will fail to save most of the victims, because such violence can be perpetrated so rapidly.

He concludes by offering innovative prescriptions to prevent the outbreak of such violence in the first place."--BOOK JACKET.