Military Intervention Is Tricky — Here’s How Not to Do It

By PETER DÖRRIE

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A wave of terrible conflicts ripped through the African continent in the 1990s — the Rwandan genocide, the Congo wars and many smaller civil conflicts. They caused immense human suffering, millions of deaths.

And they laid bare the complete inability of the prevailing international institutions, such as the Organisation of African Unity, to put a stop to wars and atrocities on the continent.

For that reason, in 2001 African governments decided to shut down the OAU and found a successor organization — the African Union.

But it’s an open question whether the African Union is really much better. The pan-African body’s military rapid-reaction forces have proved unable to prevent a new wave of crises from escalating into grinding, entrenched wars.