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This book is a frank and hopeful meditation on the recurring tragedy of genocide that should be read by anybody who cares about its prevention. Hirsch argues if we are to successfully confront, prevent, or control the most egregious aspects of genocidal violence, we must create containing political institutions and social mechanisms. But ultimately human nature must change to temper the worst excesses of genocidal violence, given its long and intractable historical presence. Hirsch looks hard at complex realities and proposes how to build a politics of prevention. Focusing on the United States, a political movement must be built that supports the politics of prevention in the international realm. Long-term prevention depends on changing how humans view each other, though. Creating a new ethic of life-enhancing behavior based on the ideology of universal human rights that is passed on from generation to generation via the process of political socialization ultimately is our best hope of preventing future genocides.
This book begins with the fact that there is apparently nothing historically unique about human beings killing one another in relatively large numbers. Genocide appears to be a phenomenon that has been a part of human history since we began to record our worst excesses. Certainly it has been in the forefront of human consciousness as the last century came to its bloody conclusion. It is not an intractable problem. A mass movement to prevent genocide can be built, and once created it should pressure the federal government to focus its foreign policy on the prevention of genocide.
List of contents
Preface
Introduction: Genocide, Politics, and Human Behavior
Genocide and Political MovementsBuilding a Movement to Stop Genocide
Genocide and Public Opinion: A Comparison of the Policy Making Elite and the General Public
Putting Pressure on the United States Political Institutions
Guilty Secrets: Genocide and the Failure of American Foreign Policy During the Clinton and Bush AdministrationsThe Failure of Prevention: Bosnia
A Second Failure of Prevention: The Rwandan Genocide
Lessons from the Late 20th Century and Early 21st Centuries: Kosovo, Clinton, and Bush
Genocide and the Politics of PreventionA Foreign Policy to Prevent Genocide: The Practicality of Morality
United States Policy in the New Century
Reflections on "Ethics," "Morality," and "Responsibility"
Inculcating an Ethic to Prevent Genocide
Conclusion: A Politics to Prevent Genocide
About the author
HERBERT HIRSCH is Professor of Political Science at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond. He is the author of
Genocide and the Politics of Memory: Studying Death to Preserve Life (1995), and
Persisitent Prejudice: Perspectives on Anti-Semitism, with Jack Shapiro (1988), among other titles.
