Genocide Intervention: Global Responsibility or Financial Drain?

The biggest war the world has ever seen was World War II. What was one factor that led to such a quick escalation? Genocide. Over 45 million people were murdered during this tragic time. The question is: was it the allies responsibility to intervene? The answer: No. The Global Community has no responsibility to intervene in states committing genocide.

Christian:

Intervening in countries facing genocide costs hundreds of millions of dollars. History clearly shows the cost to intervene, take WWII for example or the Rwanda genocide, or the Somali genocide. All of these genocides costs interventionists $400 million or more, “ Each of the more than 220 Tomahawk missiles fired by the U.S. military into Libya, for example, cost around $1.4 million… Spent between $280,000 and $700,000 for each Somali saved” (Valentino). $280,000 is a ton of money to save one person, and given these high costs, it could cost up to $7 million dollars to save ten people. They are not saving that many lives by deciding to intervene either, “Scholars have estimated that the military mission there probably saved between 10,000 and 25,000 lives,”(Valentino). 10,000-25,000 lives and the U.S. spent $7 billion to intervene

In some cases this intervention in other countries could cause the situation to become far worse. In Darfur two rebel movements took up arms against the Sudanese government over a lack of protection from invading nomads and the marginalization of the area. “Saddam responded to the domestic uprisings with extreme brutality, killing perhaps 20,000 Kurds and 30,000-60,000 Shiites, many of them civilians” (Valentino). An intervention of Saddam’s brutality was attempted and after 100 hours the US withdrew forces. The intervention was entirely unsuccessful, even with foreign aid. And in retribution Saddam brutally killed tens of thousands of people, many of which were