I see alot of people on here and in the film saying the Europeans and Americans should've intervened but most soldier's join their country's military to protect THEIR country not the world.
Atleast with a UN military the people have chosen to be 'world police'. Language differences wouldn't be that big a problem the french foreign legion do ok.
Basically UN is a peacekeeper nor maker. It's a huge difference. They are not allowed to wage war but they can embargo a country. But, I think everything depend on politics. The UN formed by 4 main countries (Soviet Union, the UK, the US and China). In order to prevent war, 4 of them have to agree to one term. Well, the easy example is like Israel and Palestine... they can embargo both of countries to stop wars, but they didn't do that. Why is that? It's politic.
shareI was attached to the UN for awhile. It's not there to build a nation up, but to be more of an observer, so that dignitaries can have unbiased reports for negotiations between countries. I'm surprised the UN was even there. Haven't researched it, but it must have been because of something between Rwanda and another country. Civil war in one country? The UN would be protecting themselves on their way out of the country.
The US is the world's largest arms dealer, and there's not much profit in machetes. Rwanda doesn't have much in the way of natural resources to use as collateral, so nobody is going to send a war machine there. Now, if they were close to the border of another superpower? The US will be there, just for the chance of picking up a little real estate at a future date.