Customer Reviews

Freedom on Fire: Human Rights Wars and America's Response

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John Shattuck was the top human rights official at the State Department in the 1990s when genocides occurred in Rwanda and Bosnia and the U.S. did nothing to stop them. This fascinating book explains how that happened. It discusses four human rights crises that occurred on Shattuck's watch in Rwanda, Bosnia, Haiti, and China. In each case, a robust U.S. response was blocked or watered down by weak White House leadership, partisan sniping from Republicans, opposition from the business community, or the military's aversion to getting sucked into "another Somalia." Shattuck doesn't engage in petty recriminations and admits that he was sometimes overwhelmed and ineffective. His book is thoughtful, well-written, and depressing. (I'm a foreign service officer who served under Shattuck in the mid-1990s. Although Shattuck was marginalized by the State Department's bureaucracy, he was regarded as an honorable and honest official. There's no reason to disbelieve anything he reports in this book.)

This book makes a significant contribution in offering real criteria for U.S. intervention on behalf of innocent victims in an ongoing human rights crisis. It shows many tools that can be used short of a military invasion, and sets forth rational arguments for when a military invasion is the appropriate response. It is unusual in that it is not a biased ideological (liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican) book, but rather a dispassionate study based on real experience in the government. A must-read for anyone interested in effective promotion of human rights.