| Since the end of the Cold War, millions have been killed in a series of genocides. The dismantlement of the Soviet Union left the United States with new decisions to make regarding human rights violations. The United States government no longer had hard interests to intervene in cases of human rights violations. I show through a comparative study of the genocides in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur that it takes political pressure for the United States to intervene: it takes multiple calls for action from members of Congress and the American people for the United States to step in and end the violence. I used congressional meeting minutes and hearings to show the political pressure and calls for U.S. intervention. In addition to the media that congressional representatives use in their calls for action, I looked at New York Times and Washington Post articles to show the media attention given to the acts of genocide.;To study the response to the genocides, I examined the patterns that emerged in the US response to them. To emphasize the comparisons between the three cases I show how they all follow the same pattern of U.S. intervention, consisting of four phases. The pattern is distinct in all three acts of genocide. |
