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Samantha Power

A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide Paperback – November 14, 2014

by Samantha Power (Author)

4.6 868 ratings

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Discusses America's political stance during the holocausts of the past fifty years, presenting moral arguments for why the United States should change its non-engagement policies to become involved in conflicts involving genocide. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize & the National Book Critics Circle Award. Reissue. 30,000 first printing.

Print length

690 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Harper Perennial
Publication date

November 14, 2014
Dimensions

5.24 x 1.71 x 7.99 inches
ISBN-10

0061120146
ISBN-13

978-0061120145
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper Perennial; Reissue edition (November 14, 2014)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 690 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0061120146
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0061120145
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.2 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.24 x 1.71 x 7.99 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,094,618 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,739 in Violence in Society (Books)
- #3,719 in Jewish Holocaust History
- #17,781 in International & World Politics (Books)

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Samantha Power

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Samantha Power is a leading global voice on human rights and international affairs. She served for four years as President Barack Obama’s human rights adviser and then, from 2013 to 2017, in his Cabinet and as US Ambassador to the United Nations. Power is the author of several books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘A Problem From Hell’: America and the Age of Genocide, and has been named one of TIME’s ‘100 Most Influential People’ and one of Forbes’ ‘100 Most Powerful Women’. Currently a professor of practice at Harvard Law School and Harvard Kennedy School, she lives in Massachusetts with her husband, Cass Sunstein, and their two children. Power immigrated to the United States from Ireland at the age of nine.

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kosma

Deprssing

Reviewed in the United States on July 27, 2023

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The saddest book I have ever read. It is a horror story to the full degree. But is it really any business of the US government about these horrors in the world? Seems like the horrors of slavery and indigenous genocide in the US still need more to focus and repair.

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D. Cloyce Smith

The costs of "doing nothing" in an era of genocide

Reviewed in the United States on November 28, 2004

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Power's award-winning, critically acclaimed doorstop of a book is a must-read for anyone concerned about the rise of international authoritarianism, ethnic retribution, and genocidal atrocities and about the world's apparent inability to stop such occurrences. It's not a comprehensive history of twentieth-century genocide; instead, Power includes a series of case studies, focusing on Cambodia, Iraq, Rwanda, and the former Yugoslavia, along with brief capsule summaries of the 1917 Armenian genocide and the Holocaust.

She opens the book with a history of the word "genocide" and its recognition as an international crime. The hero of this part of her story is Raphael Lemkin, who coined the word, formulated its legal definition, and badgered the United Nations to adopt the 1948 Genocide Convention (which, sadly, the United States refused to ratify until 1986--and then only to save face after Reagan's embarrassment at Bitburg).

She then moves to her gut-wrenching examples, showing how (except in the case of Kosovo) each followed a nearly predictable trajectory, with a complacent and cowardly world community standing by in denial. Still, she spotlights heroic actions by a few, including William Proxmire, whose 3,211 Senate speeches over 19 years failed to shame his colleagues into passing the Genocide Convention; Peter Galbraith, a Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff member who struggled to publicize Hussein's gassing of the Kurds; and Robert Dole and Madeleine Albright, whose combined fury forced the Clinton administration to confront the nightmares in Bosnia and Kosovo. Her accounts of the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia are especially lucid for those of us whose heads spin with confusion whenever we hear mention of the Serbo-Croatian-Bosnian-Herzegovinian-Slovenian-Macedonian conflicts.

Because Power's stories are so distressing and her goal is so laudable, the sympathetic reader is all the more frustrated by the book's faults, of which there are several. While emotionalism and outrage can be commendable (and understandable, given the inconceivable number of innocent victims whenever the world fails to respond to genocidal atrocities), her pronunciations sometimes betray her zeal. The resulting indignation can often result in Monday-morning quarterbacking and moral condescension, either of which might simply alienate those readers who aren't convinced that the United States has the wherewithal to be the world's policeman. Granted, Power is right to condemn U.S. officials for doing nearly nothing, especially in the case of Rwanda, but she often assumes that what, in retrospect, we should have done is what, at the time, we could have done. (Surely we must do something, but it doesn't follow that anything will do.)

Likewise, she claims that the United States has "done nothing, practically or politically, to prepare itself to respond to genocide," and she bases this statement--and several like it--mostly on the assumption that, before Kosovo, this country has never prevented genocide. Such statements are easy to assert (since genocide has certainly occurred) but impossible to rebut (since it's difficult to claim genocide was prevented in those situations when it didn't happen at all).

Second, she maintains that, given the world's dysfunctional international and regional organizations, the United States must assume the role of white knight. She bridles at suggestions by opponents of unilateral intervention that our status as a superpower will always make our motives suspect or that American ground troops are not as capable of both imposing regional order and handling multiple crises as she seems to believe. (Perhaps our adventures in Iraq have made her reconsider this pollyannaish militarism.) She is unimpeachably correct that our country must act when signs portending genocide are detected, but certainly we must hesitate before we ever do it alone.

A model of successful non-military intervention, for example, is East Timor. Although Power gives a two-sentence mention to the 1975 genocide, she doesn't point out that the United States took the lead in preventing a repeat occurrence in 1999--without committing a single American troop. After an initial hesitation, the U.S. coordinated a multilateral response against Indonesia with members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, support from China, and troops from Australia. (See Michael Hirsch's "At War With Ourselves" for an excellent summary of this unheralded diplomatic coup.) Such a regionally concocted solution might work as well in other--but certainly not all--situations.

Finally, and most seriously, Power is quick to condemn governments and government officials, but (except for an anecdote in the Introduction), she neglects entirely to chastise her colleagues and employers in the media. She repeatedly asserts that political leaders can convince the public to disregard any initial qualms about humanitarian intervention, but she never acknowledges that it is difficult to do so in an environment where journalists and editors entirely ignore (for example) the current horror in Sudan and prefer instead to plaster the Scott Peterson trial across the front page and cover sports-team brawls during every news-hour.

If these criticisms sound disproportionately harsh, it is simply because I am holding Power (and her colleagues in the media) to the same high standards she posits for our elected leaders. My caveats should in no way minimize the importance of her work; instead, "A Problem from Hell" is so successful in large part because it motivates readers to face such unforgivable horrors and to consider how best to prevent them.

37 people found this helpful

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Izaak VanGaalen

Never Again?

Reviewed in the United States on September 19, 2005

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Samantha Power tells the story of a Polish-Jewish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin who coined the word "genocide" in 1946. Lemkin, who had lost all but four of his relatives in the Holocaust, had come to the United Nations to force the idea of genocide on the UN's agenda, and to persuade the world body the establish an international law that would lead to its prevention and punishment. The law was passed in 1948, but was not ratified by the United States until 40 years later. The reason for this delay is that the word "genocide" would commit the US to action, whereas if mass killings were described in a more circumspect way, the US could always find reasons to avoid action.

Power chronicles some of the major acts of genocide that were committed in the 20th century. Starting with the Turkish slaughter of Armenians in Turkey during World War I, then going on to Cambodia, Iraq, the Balkans, and finally Rwanda where Hutu militias slaughtered about 800,000 Tutsis in 100 days. Power also chronicles the failure of Western powers, especially the United States, to intervene.

Power's study was motivated by the belated response of the Clinton Administration to the killings in Bosnia. She was a freelance journalist at the time and recounts some of the cynical and lame remarks made by officials while 200,000 Bosnians were being killied. It was Warren Christopher who called genocide "a problem from hell," providing her with a title for her study. Western powers did nothing between 1992 and 1995 during which time museums to memorialize the Holocaust were opened with Clinton using the solemn phrase "never again." Well, it did happen again, and under his watch.

During this period, genocide was being committed in Rwanda, which Power described as "the fastest, most efficient killing spree of the 20th century." This would have been easier to stop than the one in Bosnia, yet no US troops were sent nor were UN reinforcements authorized. There were no high-level meetings in the US nor were there public condemnations. The safest response was to look the other way.

Power argues that although the public and elected officials express moral outrage at genocide, the failure to respond is a systemic failure of the American political system. It is not just the Clinton Administration that failed in Bosnia and Rwanda, it has always been the case as far back as the Turkish genocide of Armenians. For the US to intervene militarily for humanitarian purposes the elected officials must have public support. If there is no public support, and there almost never is, the military is reluctant to act. If the military is reluctant, the political classes are reluctant to push for action for fear that it will cost them the next election. Similarly, foreign policy and national security officials are timid in advocating humanitarian intervention for fear of being branded as profligate public spenders. The Clinton Administration was evasive on Rwanda because it was still smarting from its disastrous episode in Somalia. In the end, it is always safer for the public official to err on the side of caution and thrift.

Many Americans believe that it is not our responsiblity to stop the murder of foreigners. "We don't have a dog in that fight," as James Baker characterized it. Power argues that the ideals on which this country is founded requires us to act against genocide. Public support for action, while important, should not be the determining factor. It is more effective if a prominent politician puts his or her reputation on the line and takes up the cause. In 1995, two weeks before the Srebrenica massacre, Bob Dole called for a lifting of the arms embargo on the Bosnian Muslims. Dole's leadership forced Clinton into action, unfortunately it was a case of too little, too late. Bob Dole, however, did not have a dog in the fight in Rwanda and remained silent. Again, it was safer to do nothing.

This book was written before America's intervention in Iraq, but it has surprisingly not been invoked, to my knowledge, by the Bush Administration as a rationale for American unilateralism, which Power in fact is advocating. If the US, for example, had intervened militarily in the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, it would have been the correct action, and I believe the world would have seen it as such. The intervention in Iraq was done for a number of evolving reasons (prevention of genocide was not one of them), and as a result we are still the subject of the world's opprobrium.

Power is right to advocate unilateral American action in the face of genocide, but at the same time, America must not abandon international institutions, despite their inadequacies, and not promote itself as guardian of the international order. As this book has shown, America has not been a very reliable guardian in the past.

12 people found this helpful

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wazbud

Well researched but unconvincing

Reviewed in Australia on June 17, 2014

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Genocide is as old as humanity. Americans are no more guilty than the Romans. I found the analysis repetitive and unconvincing.

Mr Humbug

Extremely thorough

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 28, 2019

Verified Purchase

Honestly, I very nearly gave up on this book: something I never do. The first half, which gave the background to the Genocide Convention and the efforts of Lemkin, basically, how genocide got its name, was too drawn out and dry. The case studies, although containing harrowing details, were much more absorbing to read. The focus on Cambodia, Iraq, the Balkans and Rwanda and the activity, or inactivity, of the USA, and its allies was thought provoking and, at times, highly frustrating.
Glad I kept going but, of course, this is not for the casual reader.

4 people found this helpful

AngD

Well-documented and well-argued.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 27, 2018

Verified Purchase

In this forcefully argued book, Power urges the United States to place humanitarian objectives at the centre of its foreign policy, and warns against narrowly defined conceptions of the US "national interest". Particularly impressive is the willingness to confront the strongest arguments against her position.

D.Papas

Very well researched

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 18, 2019

Verified Purchase

Very well researched,fluid writing,as impartial as possible given the nature of the subject and the unforgiving denial and/or indifference of the mainly Western powers.
A must read for anyone who's interested in political history as a whole and the concept/history of genocide.

DJC

A real eye opener

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 24, 2018

Verified Purchase

Ooh US politicians have a lot to answer for.. disturbing book of facts intertwined with some very determined individuals to make the world a better place

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