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"A Problem From Hell" Paperback – December 24, 2013
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In her prizewinning examination of the last century of American history, Samantha Power asks the haunting question: Why do American leaders who vow "never again" repeatedly fail to stop genocide?
Power, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and the former US Ambassador to the United Nations, draws upon exclusive interviews with Washington's top policymakers, thousands of declassified documents, and her own reporting from modern killing fields to provide the answer. "A Problem from Hell" shows how decent Americans inside and outside government refused to get involved despite chilling warnings, and tells the stories of the courageous Americans who risked their careers and lives in an effort to get the United States to act.
A modern classic and "an angry, brilliant, fiercely useful, absolutely essential book" (New Republic), "A Problem from Hell" has forever reshaped debates about American foreign policy.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award
Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize
Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award
Winner of the Raphael Lemkin Award
- Print length656 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateDecember 24, 2013
- Reading age18 years and up
- Dimensions6 x 1.64 x 9.25 inches
- ISBN-100465061516
- ISBN-13978-0465061518
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"An angry, brilliant, fiercely useful, absolutely essential book."―The New Republic
"Disturbing...engaging and well written...will likely become the standard text on genocide prevention."―Foreign Affairs
"Forceful.... Power tells this long, sorry history with great clarity and vividness."―Washington Post
"Amazingly persuasive."―New York Review of Books
"Bracing.... Power [is] the new conscience of the U.S. foreign-policy establishment."―Time
About the Author
She was the founding executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and is also the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir The Education of an Idealist and Sergio: One Man's Fight to Save the World and the co-editor of The Unquiet American: Richard Holbrooke in the World.
Power is a former Balkan war correspondent and a recipient of the National Magazine Award and the Pulitzer Prize, among numerous other honors. She has been named by Time as one of the world's 100 Most Influential People and by Forbes as one of the World's 100 Most Powerful Women.
Product details
- Publisher : Basic Books; Reprint edition (December 24, 2013)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 656 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0465061516
- ISBN-13 : 978-0465061518
- Reading age : 18 years and up
- Item Weight : 1.49 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 1.64 x 9.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #205,015 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #109 in Human Rights Law (Books)
- #147 in Human Rights (Books)
- #268 in Violence in Society (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

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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Power, a highly regarded scholar in this field, has compiled a stellar detailing of the genocides of the 20th century. This book is remarkably in-depth as to its scope, and is a perfect introduction into the grisly field of genocide studies. Power details the battles of Raphael Lemkin to get the word "genocide" introduced into common parlance. She then moves to detail the ratification of the genocide convention by the United Nations and the subsequent refusal of the United States to sign it, despite previous genocides (also discussed) in Turkey during WWI and, of course, Nazi Germany during WWII.
Let me be clear. This is NOT a book about the Holocaust. We have all heard the chilling tales and the despicable actions committed during this period. Power does detail the Holocaust in some respects, but she does so more to explain its place historically as a basis for future genocide considerations. Essentially, then, this book does the following: Power details the establishment of the word "genocide" and the historical context for the term. Then, she details the first case of modern genocide during Pol Pot's regime in Cambodia, followed by the genocide of Saddam Hussein against his own people in Iraq. The plight of the Kurds and Cambodians is discussed as relating to this historical context. In this respect, it is crucial to note that the subsequent assertion that Hussein committed genocide set the standard that one did not need to move beyond one's own country's boundaries to commit the atrocity. Following, Power engages in discussion of the genocides in the Balkans (Yugoslavia, Kosovo, etc.) and, of course, Rwanda.
What is chilling is that the international community continues to determine whether intervening in a genocide is worth the political capital expended in the effort. Power seeks to remedy this question, asserting not only that genocide should be stopped because it is the morally right thing to do, but also because it provides clear political capital benefits. This book is a chilling introduction to a grisly subject written by a master.
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.
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Am 14. März 1921 tötete ein vierundzwanzigjähriger Armenier namens Soghomon Tehlirian in Berlin Charlottenburg den ehemaligen türkischen Innenminister Talaat Pasha, welcher in 1915 für den Tod von fast einer Million Armeniern verantwortlich war. Der damalige amerikanische Botschafter am Bosporus Henry Morgenthau Sr. versuchte vergeblich seinen Einfluss in Washington geltend zu machen, um das Massaker zu unterbinden. Als die Vereinigten Staaten im April 1917 Deutschland den Krieg erklärten, verweigerte Präsident Wilson eine ähnliche Kriegserklärung gegenüber dem Osmanischen Reich. Ja, er wollte noch nicht einmal die Beziehungen abbrechen. Wir gehen dorthin wohin uns die Notwendigkeiten tragen - so sprach Wilson zum Kongress (S. 13 gebundene Ausgabe). Das amerikanische Nicht-Handeln gegenüber dem stattfindenden Horror sollte sich wiederholen. Immer wieder zögerten die USA wenn es darum ging einzugreifen, auch wenn die Fakten bekannt waren.
Diese Buch wurde auf Basis zahlreicher Interviews erstellt. Quellen und Bibliografie sind am Ende abgedruckt. Sie belegen wieviel Politiker und Verantwortliche wirklich wussten. Sie belegen menschenverachtende Aussagen, Leid, welches durch Nicht-Eingreifen entstand. Nicht nur zu den Geschehnissen des 1. und 2. Weltkrieges, sondern bis in unsere Zeit hinein: Bosnien, Srebenica, Kosovo - um nur einige zu nennen. Samantha Power zeigt wie US-Bürger innerhalb und außerhalb der Regierung zur Seite sahen, als sie mit dem Leid der Flüchtlinge konfrontiert wurde. Wie sie versuchten sich einzureden, dass ein Eingreifen sinnlos sei. Die Dokumentation ist ergreifend. Samantha Power zitiert nicht nur die Verantwortlichen, sondern lässt auch die Opfer zu Wort kommen. Akribisch hat sie recherchiert. Vorurteilslos und sachlich reiht sie Fakten aneinander. Jeder muss selber daraus seine eigenen Schlüsse ziehen.
Während Tehlirian auf seinen Prozess wartete, studierte Raphael Lemkin - polnisch-jüdischer Herkunft - in Lemberg (Lwow) Sprachen. Als er von dem Tehlirian-Fall hörte, fragte er einen seiner Professoren: Es ist ein Verbrechen für Tehlirian einen Mann zu töten, aber es ist kein Verbrechen für seinen Unterdrücker mehr als eine Million Menschen zu töten? Dies ist inkonsequent (S. 17). Später sollte Lemkin noch in Heidelberg und nach Lwow zurückgekehrt dort Jura studieren, um Staatsanwalt in Polen zu werden. Bereits in 1929 begann er nebenbei an einem internationalen Gesetz zu arbeiten, welches die gezielte Zerstörung von ethnischen, nationalen und religiösen Gruppen verhindern sollte. Er präsentierte es seinen europäischen Kollegen 1933 in Madrid.
Sechs Tage nach dem Einmarsch der Wehrmacht in Polen verließ er Warschau, um seine Eltern und den Bruder aufzusuchen. Diese wollten aber nicht fliehen und so zog er alleine zunächst nach Schweden und dann weiter in die USA. Sein Leben aber widmete er nur dem einen Ziel, seine Botschaft zu verkünden, und zögerte auch nicht Präsident Roosevelt direkt anzusprechen. Jener versicherte Lemkin, er würde die Nazis verwarnen, ansonsten sei aber Geduld notwendig.
Im Jahr 1944 war es Lemkin, der den Begriff GENOZID erstmals prägte. Er beklagte aber weiterhin, dass seine Ansprechpartner in Behörden und Regierung nur höflich wären, und dass deren Aufmerksamkeit von anderen Dingen aufgesogen wurde. Dennoch gelang es ihm - nach der Teilnahme an den Nürnberger Prozessen - dass die Vereinten Nationen endlich am 9. Dezember 1948 die Konvention für die Verhinderung und die Bestrafung von Genoziden umsetzten (Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genozid). Bis zur Ratifizierung in den USA sollte aber noch eine lange Zeit vergehen. Als Randbemerkung sei erwähnt, dass einen Tag später am 10.12.1948 die Menschenrechtserklärung festgestellt wurde - Lemkin sorgte sich darum, ob diese nicht seine Genozid-Konvention überschatten würde.
Lemkin selber wurde in 1950, 1951, 1952, 1955, 1956, 1958 und 1959 erfolglos für den Nobelpreis vorgeschlagen. Er starb verarmt am 28. August 1959 an einem Herzinfarkt. Zwei Tage später veröffentlichte die New York Times eine kurze Meldung zu seinem Tode, wonach Diplomaten dieser und anderer Organisationen sich Ausreden wegen dem andauernden Fehlschlag der Ratifizierung nicht mehr ausdenken müssten.
Ein anderer nahm sich des Themas an: William Proxmire. Als er - nach drei vergeblichen Versuchen Gouverneur von Wisconsin zu werden - endlich die Wahl in den amerikanischen Senat gewann, hielt er am 11. Januar 1967 seine erste Genozid-Rede und versprach von nun an täglich sich zu diesem Thema zu Wort zu melden bis zur Ratifizierung. Seine beste Quelle für die täglichen Ansprachen war die Tageszeitung: 1968 das nigerianische Vorgehen gegen den christlichen Ibo-Widerstand, 1971 der Tod von 1-2 Millionen Bengalen in Pakistan ... nie griff die US-Regierung ein.
Nach 19 Jahren und 3.211 Reden (S. 166) sowie schließlich auch der Unterstützung von Ronald Reagan war es in 1986 soweit: der amerikanische Senat stimmte zu. Aber erst in 1988 beendete der Kongress die Arbeiten am sogenannten Proxmire-Act (Genocide Convention Implementation Act). Der Durchbruch veränderte aber nichts an den politischen Realtitäten: US-Bürokraten wurden nur vorsichtiger in der Verwendung des Begriffes.
Für all die folgenden Genozide, die aufgeführt und ausführlich beschrieben werden, will ich nur einen Auszug im Zusammenhang mit Bosnien zitieren:
Senator Joseph Biden hatte zusammen mit Dole noch unter Präsident Bush Sr. ein Paket verabschiedet, um den belagerten Muslimen in Bosnien zu helfen. Nach einem Besuch im April in Sarajevo warf er der Clinton Regierung vor, Friedenswächter an einen Ort zu senden, wo sie nichts zu suchen hatten, und dies als Entschuldigung für Untätigkeit heranzuziehen. Im Mai 1993 entwarf daraufhin Clinton seine Lift-and-strike Politik und Außenminister Christopher wurde auf Europareise geschickt, um dies zu verkaufen: das Waffenembargo gegen die bosnischen Muslime sollte beendet werden, die Serben sollten bombardiert werden. Christopher betonte aber in Gesprächen mit NATO Generalsekretär Manfred Wörner (nach dessen Erinnerung) die Nachteile. Wörner erkannte, dass er dieses Vorgehen ablehnen sollte. Die lift-and-strike Politik wurde nach Rückkehr Christophers in die USA abgelehnt, stattdessen wurde eine Politik der safe-areas vereinbart. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, der UN-Generalsekretär verlangte 30.000 Mann zum Schutz dieser Zonen. Er bekam einen Bruchteil. Clinton nannte diese safe areas selber "shooting galleries". Das Problem war nicht gelöst. Es folgen Beschreibungen der Haltung von General Colin Powell, damals Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, weitere Reaktionen Clintons, etc. Von Aussenminister Christopher stammt der Satz "The hatred between all three groups ... is almost unbelievable. It's almost terrifying, and it's centuries old. That is really a problem from hell. And I think the United States is doing all we can to try to deal with that problem." (S. 306).
Im Vorwort beschreibt Power ein Spielplatz-Massaker der Serben in einer dieser safe areas. Insbesondere der Tod eines kleinen Mädchens, welches nach langer Zeit erstmals draussen spielen durfte wird erzählt. Schrecklich.
Das Ende des Buches ist den Bemühungen in Den Haag gewidmet, die Verantwortlichen gerichtlich zur Rechenschaft zu ziehen. Es wird beschrieben unter welchen Umständen Verhaftungen möglich waren und wie es zur Anklage kam.
Schlussbemerkung: In den USA war dieses Buch ein Erfolg. Der Rezensent bedauert, dass es nie übersetzt wurde. Es hätte auch in Deutschland ein größeres Publikum verdient.













