Scenario 4

The United States is preparing to fight a limited war in Belovenia – a very limited war. The motivation for entering the conflict is noble enough, with pure, generous humanitarianism at its core. Over the past year, Americans have been shocked and outraged as the Belovenian government has undertaken a particularly rapacious program of repression against its own ethnic minority. The government has stripped members of the minority of many of their fundamental human rights, depriving them of civil and political freedoms and degrading their social and cultural identity. Most recently, the government has undertaken an even more vigorous program of “ethnic cleansing,” expelling minority families from their homes in the southern province of the country, revoking their citizenship, firing them from their jobs, expelling their children from schools, and generating a flood of vagabond refugees. Their property has been confiscated, their personal effects and official papers have been destroyed, and their cultural icons obliterated. At length, horrifying violence has erupted, arousing the conscience of the world to the specter of genocide: there are widespread reports of government-orchestrated mass killings and rapes targeted at the minority populations.

Many members of the United Nations have expressed their alarm and demanded immediate, forceful action, but Belovenia still enjoys the stalwart support of one of the permanent members of the Security Council. The threat of a veto has therefore blocked any meaningful Resolution authorizing international military action under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter. Diplomatic pressure and economic sanctions have proven unavailing; while the world searches in vain for some means to gain traction on the problem, the government of Belovenia continues its daily carnage.