No easy answers? Decision-makers from Kissinger to Rice revisit how the US responded to conflicts from Rwanda to Iraq. Faced with human suffering - who has responsibility to act?
Episode 1
Exploring the US's complicated relationship with Iraq, first supporting the country during the Iran-Iraq war but then turning against it after Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait.
Episode 2
As the Balkans deteriorate into a series of bloody wars, President Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright must decide whether to use force to save innocent civilians from genocide.
Episode 3
Why did the world stand by in 1994 as nearly one million people were murdered over one hundred days of terror in Rwanda? American diplomats describe events on the ground.
Episode 4
Muslim separatists in the Kosovo region rekindle old conflicts, leading Clinton’s White House to consider Serbian President Milošević’s regime a threat to their own civilians.
Episode 5
In 2003, hundreds of thousands of Americans protested about ethnic cleansing in Sudan. Following Obama’s 2008 election success, could some of those people, now in office, make a difference?
Episode 6
When Gaddafi declared his intention to 'disinfect' Benghazi, Obama faced a dilemma, have previously told the younger Arab generation 'you, more than anyone, have the ability to remake this world.
Episode 7
Obama did not want to be dragged into another war in the Middle East, but when the Syrian regime began to consider the use of chemical weapons, he warned them they would be crossing a red line.
Episode 8
America’s unwillingness to act after a chemical attack, causes Syrian rebels to despair. Obama concludes that there is no scenario where intervention in Syria would give a desired outcome.
