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A review by regferk
A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power
5.0
Genocide did not even exist as a term until Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish Polish lawyer and survivor of the Holocaust, invented the term after the close of World War II. Before that time, Churchill described it as a "crime with no name". The best that was offered was "barbarities" and "vandalisms" which lacked moral authority. It wasn't until 1948 that the UN was finally able to come up with a working definition of "genocide". Genocide was not entered into force as a UN Convention until 1951 and it would be 40 more years before it would be ratified ("with reservations") by the United States.
The twentieth century saw many genocides stack up before there was ever a single person brought to account: Pol-Pot's Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, Hussein's use of chemical weapon's against the Kurds, Bosnia, Rwanda, Srebrenica, and Kosovo. The notion that the US could not intervene due to an inability to effect change, the possible risks, or the lack of political will are shown to be grossly inaccurate. Not only is there a moral imperative to face genocide up front but the facts tend to show that appeasing genocidal leaders only leads to more genocide. One genocide leads to another. The victimized populations lead to revenge and greater use of violence and become havens for terrorist organizations.
I wish I could have read an updated version. Written over a decade ago, A Problem From Hell is still incredibly instructive and holds many lessons for future foreign policy in regards to genocide. Since the book was written, there has been the first warrant for a sitting Head-of-State, Omar al-Bashir in Darfur.
The twentieth century saw many genocides stack up before there was ever a single person brought to account: Pol-Pot's Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, Hussein's use of chemical weapon's against the Kurds, Bosnia, Rwanda, Srebrenica, and Kosovo. The notion that the US could not intervene due to an inability to effect change, the possible risks, or the lack of political will are shown to be grossly inaccurate. Not only is there a moral imperative to face genocide up front but the facts tend to show that appeasing genocidal leaders only leads to more genocide. One genocide leads to another. The victimized populations lead to revenge and greater use of violence and become havens for terrorist organizations.
I wish I could have read an updated version. Written over a decade ago, A Problem From Hell is still incredibly instructive and holds many lessons for future foreign policy in regards to genocide. Since the book was written, there has been the first warrant for a sitting Head-of-State, Omar al-Bashir in Darfur.