Product Description
In her award-winning interrogation of the last century of American history, Samantha Power—a former Balkan war correspondent and founding executive director of Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy—asks the haunting question: Why do American leaders who vow "never again" repeatedly fail to stop genocide? Drawing upon exclusive interviews with Washington's top policy makers, access to newly declassified documents, and her own reporting from the modern killing fields, Power provides the answer in "A Problem from Hell," a groundbreaking work that tells the stories of the courageous Americans who risked their careers and lives in an effort to get the United States to act.

Amazon.com Review
During the three years (1993-1996) Samantha Power spent covering the grisly events in Bosnia and Srebrenica, she became increasingly frustrated with how little the United States was willing to do to counteract the genocide occurring there. After much research, she discovered a pattern: "The United States had never in its history intervened to stop genocide and had in fact rarely even made a point of condemning it as it occurred," she writes in this impressive book. Debunking the notion that U.S. leaders were unaware of the horrors as they were occurring against Armenians, Jews, Cambodians, Iraqi Kurds, Rwandan Tutsis, and Bosnians during the past century, Power discusses how much was known and when, and argues that much human suffering could have been alleviated through a greater effort by the U.S. She does not claim that the U.S. alone could have prevented such horrors, but does make a convincing case that even a modest effort would have had significant impact. Based on declassified information, private papers, and interviews with more than 300 American policymakers, Power makes it clear that a lack of political will was the most significant factor for this failure to intervene. Some courageous U.S. leaders did work to combat and call attention to ethnic cleansing as it occurred, but the vast majority of politicians and diplomats ignored the issue, as did the American public, leading Power to note that "no U.S. president has ever suffered politically for his indifference to its occurrence. It is thus no coincidence that genocide rages on." This powerful book is a call to make such indifference a thing of the past. --Shawn Carkonen

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 193 reviews)

An extremely important book... by M. Torsekar (USA)

5 Stars
July 22, 2009
Time and again, politicians vow "never again" will they allow genocide to occur. Yet, despite ample opportunities to back up these claims with action, the global community has done precious little. Beginning with the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Turks to Pol Pot's reign of terror in Cambodia to Hussein's gassing of Iraq's Kurds (the first incidence of a leader using chemical weapons to suppress his OWN people) to Milosovic's slaughter of Bosnian Muslims (and Croatians) to the horrific abuses against the Tutsi by Hutu aggressors in Rwanda, Power highlights the frustrating and--oftentimes incomprehensible--responses that the United States, the EU, and UN have pursued. For instance, even as Saddam was wiping out the Kurds in Northern Iraq and using chemical weapons against Iran in the Iran-Iraq war, the United States continued to supply Saddam with intelligence, trade credits that allowed him to import U.S. agricultural goods, and weapons. Our decisions were rooted in "national interests" which dictated that the United States could not allow Iran to enlarge its presence in the Middle East. (It should also be noted that the U.S. was not alone in supporting Saddam in this war as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Kuwait, all provided succor to the tyrant). Indeed, our entrenched commercial interests--the United States was the largest importer of Iraqi oil and Iraq was one of the largest consumers of U.S. agricultural products like Arkansas rice-- prevented us from adequately responding to Iraq's genocide. Eventually we established safe zone in Northern Iraq but that, Power argues, was mostly due to complaints from U.S. ally Turkey about a refugee crisis as Iraq's exiled Kurds fled to their Northern neighbor. National interests also governed our response to the Khmer Rouge atrocities. After nearly three years of genocide, we supported the regime in an attempt to curry favor with China--an ally of Cambodia at the time--and drive a wedge between China and the Soviet Union. Our narrow interpretation of national interests also played a role in our inaction over Rwanda and Bosnia. Bosnia was especially disturbing given that the United States refused to lift an arms embargo against Muslims, which prevented them from defending themselves against Serbian attacks. This led the Bosnian Muslims to seek the help of Muslim extremists in the region including Al-Queda. Perhaps this didn't register as a national security issue because the United States could not appreciate the threats posed by non-state actors, choosing instead to focus on nation states. This is still no excuse for inaction or inadequate action. Although Power is critical of the United States, she is equally concerned with the ineptitude of the UN and apathy of the EU, who seemed to do very little in response to genocide happening in its own "backyard". Power is also very careful in casting U.S. policy responses in the proper context before she draws her conclusions. For instance, during the Cambodian genocide, Power discusses how the U.S. was reeling in the wake of the Vietnam war as public sentiment had sharply turned away from politicians whom they no longer trusted. Nevertheless, Power believes that President Ford and later Jimmy Carter, should have at least denounced the Khmer Rouge publicly. Perhaps the U.S. Presidents could have initiated a vote on the UN to strip the Khmer Rouge of any representation in the delegation. Myopic interpretations of national interests aside, politicians are loathe to respond to genocide for two other reasons. One is the belief that U.S. voters would never support U.S. involvement in international conflicts. Yet, as Bob Dole demonstrated in his aggressive lobbying for the U.S. Congress to respond to the Bosnian conflict, public support can be cultivated once politicians inform them. The second impediment to acting is the false choice between committing U.S. troops and doing nothing (or doing little). Indeed, very few policies seem to exist along this continuum for U.S. policymakers and because voters are sensitive to U.S. casualties, the country is reluctant to deploy troops. The result is that the U.S. invariably sides with the latter policy, choosing to view dictators as rational actors who can be wooed by incentives. This has played to disastrous results, and is tantamount to doing nothing. Yet, as Power demonstrates, small actions can go a long way. For instance, in Rwanda, Hutu militias spared the lives of Tutsi refugees who had fled to a hotel simply because a U.S. diplomat made repeated calls to the hotel manager requesting updates on the status of the refugees. Conversely, dictators such as Milosovic and Saddam were emboldened by the tepid response to their atrocities and redoubled their efforts to exterminate Muslims and Kurds. This book is anything but a polemic. Instead, Power has provided a balanced, well reasoned book that will force readers to question the way our politicians perceive our country's "national interest."

very informative, easy to read by E. Standley (Dallas, TX)

5 Stars
July 16, 2009
This is a great book for anyone who is interested in genocides that have taken place around the world. With the in-depth knowledge of these events that Samantha Power portrays it is surely a book worth reading by anyone and everyone. Highly Recommended for those who want to be more informed about the capabilities of people and history itself.

Great book by Min Jeong Lee

5 Stars
June 17, 2009
Power tells the story of America's involvement in the genocides of the twentieth century, starting with the Armenian one in 1915 and ending with the ones in the former Yugoslavia. Great reading if you want to find out why America talks a good game but doesn't really act on it; if you want to understand how the UN Genocide Convention came to be; if you want to know how easy it would be to have an impact on some of those genocides, if we could just convince the politicians to care (just convince them we care enough to affect their re-election chances).

Impressive and poignant by N. Anderberg (the Netherlands)

5 Stars
April 08, 2009
Originally published in 2002, "A Problem from Hell" is an impressive survey of U.S. policy in response to genocide in the 20th century. Samantha Power tells the gripping story of Raphael Lemkin, the Polish Jew who coined the word. His life was simultaneously heroic and tragic. In his tireless struggle to establish an international law making genocide a punishable crime, Lemkin had neither time for women or proper meals. As his suit was getting more and more untidy, people started avoiding him, growing ever more annoyed at his persistent lobbying. When he collapsed of a heart attack aged fifty-nine, "his blazer (was) leaking papers at the seams." He died destitute and only seven people turned up at his funeral. Nevertheless, just a few years later nearly seventy countries had ratified the 1948 Geneva Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide - Lemkin's Law. A few other diehards passed on Lemkin's torch. Power tells a captivating story of a long and frustrating, but ultimately successful struggle. She sometimes describes the driving force behind these people as were it a disease; they have been smitten and cannot sleep at night. They do something against better judgment, often cutting right through party-lines. Without them, nothing much would be gained. With the big political machinery lagging behind, change seems to be dependent on individuals and their tireless efforts. In another book they might have been called heroes, but when senator Proxmire decided to mention genocide every time he spoke in the Senate between 1967 and 1986, one might also describe him as being a nuisance. Power neatly illustrates this in a table of all his 3.211 speeches. Definitions are always tricky, and "genocide" is certainly no exception. Lemkin sought a word that would "chill listeners and invite immediate condemnation," as Power puts it. It should be a short word that conveys instant revulsion and indignation. Lemkin called it an "index of civilization." In a legal matter there's always room for dispute: what exactly constitutes a case of genocide? And then it's often bound to be after the fact, like for example in Rwanda. But despite critics, today the UN war crimes tribunal at The Hague has a staff of over 1.000 and the budget has risen from $11 million in 1994 to $ 96 million in 2000. In 2001 it held forty-eight inmates and general Krstic, co-responsible for the massacre at Srbrenica, has been sentenced to forty-six years in prison. Power defines seven cases of genocide: the Armenian, the Holocaust, the gassing of Kurds by Saddam Hussein, the Pol Pot reign of terror, Srebrenica, Rwanda and Kosovo. It's terrible reading, but I still could not put the book down. It's every bit as poignant and judicious as both Tony Judt's "Reappraisals" and Jonathan Glover's "Humanity". Her most important conclusion is, somewhat unexpectedly, that the slow acting of the U.S. should not be considered a failure. Rather, its acting, or lack thereof, reflects official U.S. policy. Power argues that it has by and large been successful; there has been little threat to American interests and there have been no significant political costs. "Troubling though it is to acknowledge, U.S. officials worked the system and the system worked." As Tzvetan Todorov also argues in his short book "The New World Disorder", the most important American priorities are to defend its security and national interests. "This is not in the slightest dishonorable," says Todorov. True, but confronted with genocide, a moral obligation must also play a key role. Genocide transcends "mere" politics and makes an appeal to all of humanity. Samantha Power makes this point with verve and conviction.

Good to have read, not really good to read. by Stephen R. Laniel (Cambridge, MA USA)

4 Stars
March 27, 2009
This is a good book to *have read*, but I submit that it is not an enjoyable book *to read*. It's the sort of book that will certainly come up in conversation -- not least when someone tells me that two groups have "thousand-year-old hatreds" and "won't stop killing each other until everyone is dead." It's a systematic study of U.S.-government reaction to genocide, from the Turkish massacre of Armenians after World War I until the Serbs' genocide in Kosovo. Every time, U.S. reaction is distressingly identical; Samantha Power's map of that reaction follows a schema from The Rhetoric of Reaction. There's the "perversity" argument, namely that if we try to intervene we'll certainly cause other problems that we couldn't anticipate; the futility argument, namely that we can't help anyway (those pesky Balkan countries with their "ancient hatreds"; those pesky Tutsi and Hutu with their "ancient hatreds"; etc.); and the jeopardy argument, which refuses to put us in danger in the first place. Before World War II, we could add to these the belief that what a nation does within its own borders is its own business. If the Turks wanted to massacre the Armenians, we had no right to stop them from doing so. It took the Holocaust to guilt Western nations into opening up their borders and admitting that a every human being has a right to prosecute crimes against humanity. It took Raphael Lemkin, in particular -- a man whose family had all gone to the gas chamber -- to give us the word "genocide." He was one of those cranks who irritate everyone around him and die penniless, but make life better for the whole world after his death. Or perhaps not. The distressing story throughout Power's book is that, despite Western governments' solemn pledge to "never forget," they always do forget. Intervening to prevent genocide is not good politics, or so the leaders say. But we've all watched how America fights wars: voters might initially resist, but they rally around the flag just as soon as guns start firing. The White House is a bully pulpit; if our leaders actually cared to end genocide, they could make it happen. Most just don't have the will. Samantha Power is particularly bitter in her portrait of Bill Clinton -- a weak, famously "triangulating" leader who only intervened in Bosnia after taking endless beatings on the subject from, among other people, Bob Dole. Dole is one of the heroes in "A Problem From Hell"; Power makes me wonder whether I had the man all wrong. Her book is a sequence of tributes to her heroes, like Dole and Lemkin. There were enough genocides in the 20th century (Turkey, Germany, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo) that she has enough heroes to go around. Generally they all fail, in the face of an immobile U.S. government. But try her heroes must. Among them is William Proxmire, who gave more than 3,000 speeches in support of the Genocide Convention before the Senate passed it (gelded) in 1986. Each of the six genocide chapters, corresponding to the six 20th-century massacres, follows exactly the same structure. One part of each chapter explains how futility, perversity, and jeopardy apply to that particular case; another part introduces the people who foresaw the coming slaughter; and another patiently dismantles the government's reasons for not intervening. Structurally, it's more of a compendium than a gripping novel. But there's room for that. There will certainly be room for it on your shelf the next time the U.S. government refuses to protect the innocent.

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