When is America or the UN justified in sending peacekeeping troops?
Should they have been used differently in Somalia or Rwanda? and if so, could it honestly prevent future Rwanda and Somalia conflicts?
The way I see it, the UN could have used our peacekeeping troops much more effectively in Rwanda and could have saved many many lives.
There are actually three kinds of operation: peacekeeping, safe haven defence and ‘full contact’ armed intervention.
As this Q&A says, in the first instance there has to be a peace to keep, and the host government involved must agree. This was not the case in eg. Rwanda or Somalia.
Those instances required the second (or perhaps third) kinds of operation. There is no doubt that safe havens in Rwanda would have saved the lives of many civilians. As for Somalia, well, even outright strongarmed intervention is sometimes little help in a brutal urban civil war. Again, the better option is usually simply to set up defendable regions to shield the population from the worst ravages of war and seek a truce.