On Justifying Intervention (Page 3)

As Power explains, the architects of the genocide convention made the explicit decision to exclude political groups--a move actively supported by Lemkin. They did so in order to insure the support of many countries, largely those of the Soviet bloc and some from Latin America as well, that feared the inclusion of political groups would inhibit the ability of states to suppress armed rebellions within their boundaries. It appears that Lemkin was sympathetic to neither the underlying assumptions nor the implications of such an argument but supported it for pragmatic reasons--a position that Power seems to share. This might explain why she has no problem including the horrors inflicted by the Khmer Rouge under the general rubric of genocide. But given this more flexible notion of what constitutes genocide, it begs the question of why Power chose the cases she did in laying out her argument and ignored other possible instances.

This question also relates to the second criterion for her choices, namely that the United States had a variety of options available for meaningful intervention. Here, Power is treading on even weaker ground in some instances.

On Rwanda and Bosnia, Power makes her most convincing case that there were concrete steps the United States could have taken that would have had significant effects in lessening the bloodletting. In other instances she examines, however, such as those of the Nazi and Khmer Rouge holocausts, she is less convincing. Regarding Cambodia, for example, she contends that the Khmer Rouge were less immune to outside criticism than was claimed by American authorities. In this regard, she argues that "bilateral denunciations by the United States may well have had little effect on the Khmer Rouge's internal practices. Unfortunately, because so few US officials spoke out publicly against the genocide, we cannot know." In terms of the Nazis, Power appeals to conventional wisdom and suggests that Washington could have done things to prevent Hitler's crimes, but makes no serious effort to persuade the reader or to engage the literature that has called such arguments into question. As Peter Novick argues in his much-acclaimed The Holocaust in American Life, the various ex post facto proposals for rescuing Jews from Nazi clutches ignore what were very real constraints at the time and often would have been of little practical use. Substantial rescue efforts, Novick contends, would have had a marginal effect at best. (Nevertheless, he asserts, it would have been worthwhile to carry out the proposed actions; but they would have saved 1, or perhaps 2 percent at most, of those who died.)

Power applauds US action loudly in the case of Kosovo. Indeed, she argues that hundreds of thousands of lives would have been lost had the United States and its NATO allies not engaged in the bombing campaign against the Serbs. She offers no substantiation for this claim. And, of course, how could she? Perhaps the greatest weakness of the Kosovo chapter, however, is that she does not engage any of the critiques put forth by the likes of Noam Chomsky and other commentators--many writing in this magazine--that there were alternatives to the NATO action, ones that would have been consistent with international law and might have actually lessened the killings and expulsions that increased dramatically after the start of the bombing, to say nothing about its effects on Serb civilians. At the very least, Power should have presented and grappled with such arguments. Hardly anyone contends that Milosevic & Co. were not capable and guilty of enormous brutality. Indeed, Power graphically shows how Serb forces put this capacity to horrific and massive use in Bosnia and the fatal consequences of the failure of the West to acknowledge the bloodshed and respond appropriately. In this regard, mass killings in Kosovo were arguably a distinct possibility. But the question remains, Were there courses of action other than that taken up by Washington and its NATO allies?

Power understandably feels outrage at international and, more specifically, American inaction in the face of mass killing. With an American audience in mind, she challenges the reader to do something--whatever is in her power--to suppress and/or bring to justice those responsible for the slaughter of innocents. She makes a compelling case for a collective moral, as well as an international legal, obligation for the US government to do so. But this also raises what is perhaps the biggest problem with "A Problem From Hell": Even though she acknowledges that the United States sometimes directly and indirectly aids genocidal regimes, the overall effect of her examples and the manner in which she frames the book is to situate Washington as an outsider to such horrors. In the book's final pages, for example, she asks, "Why does the United States stand so idly by?" In this sense, Power's choice of cases is quite safe. Had she looked beyond the parameters of the conventional and examined instances in which the American role in mass slaughter has been less that of a bystander and more that of a partner-in-crime perpetrator, her call for greater levels of US intervention would seem at best unpersuasive and at worst hypocritical and potentially dangerous. Three cases--those of Indonesia, East Timor and Guatemala--illustrate this point.

Led by General Suharto, the Indonesian military and the civilian militia that it armed and directed engaged in one of the worst bloodlettings of the postwar era. Over the course of several months in 1965-66, they slaughtered members of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) along with members of loosely affiliated organizations (women's groups, labor unions, etc.). While Indonesia's holocaust does not meet the strict guidelines of the genocide convention, the scale and nature of the killing spree were undoubtedly genocide-like, similar to the bulk of the Khmer Rouge's crimes in Cambodia. Amnesty International estimated "many more than 1 million killed." The head of the Indonesian state security system approximated the toll at half a million, with another 750,000 jailed or sent to concentration camps. The American political establishment welcomed the slaughter and the emergence of Suharto's New Order, with Time hailing it as "the West's best news for years in Asia."

The United States had effectively helped to lay the groundwork for the military's seizure of power through its interference in Indonesian affairs and support for the military over the years. Washington had also long urged the military to move against the PKI. Accordingly, it supplied weaponry and telecommunications equipment, as well as food and other forms of aid, to the Indonesian Army in the early weeks of the slaughter. The American embassy also provided the military with the names of thousands of PKI cadres who were subsequently killed.

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