The lesson of the first 100 days of Guantanamo is not one of how truth and justice triumphed, but of how efficiently a bureaucratic machine on a war footing circumvented ethical norms and suppressed dissent, writes reviewer Petra Bartosiewicz.
This new book from Larry May is not a study of genocide, but rather an attempt to draw attention to the conceptual and practical difficulties and ''puzzles'' of conceptualizing and prosecuting genocide under international law. May also argues for expanding the list of groups that are protected under international law against genocide to include gender, culture, and language in addition to race, ethnicity, religion, and national origin. The book's central thesis, however, is that genocide is not ''the crime of crimes,'' and that it differs little from various crimes against humanity. May reminds us that under international law genocide does not necessarily even involve killing, and he goes on to ask why it should be regarded as worse than other crimes committed systematically against civilians. Since genocide is about the destruction of groups, not individuals, what is special about groups, and what is the ''unique harm'' that genocide involves as a result of the destruction of a group?
Since 1989 we have witnessed a proliferation of efforts to develop international norms of the rights of ethnocultural minorities, such as the UN's 1992 Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, the Council of Europe's 1995 Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, and the Organization of American States' 1997 draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This activity at the level of international law is reflected in a comparable explosion of interest in minority rights among normative political theorists. In the same twenty-year period we have seen a proliferation of attempts at formulating a normative theory of minority rights and examining how minority rights relate to broader political values (such as freedom, equality, democracy, and citizenship) and broader normative frameworks (such as liberalism, communitarianism, and republicanism). Key works here include those by Charles Taylor, Jim Tully, Iris Young, Jeff Spinner-Halev, Bhikhu Parekh, Yael Tamir, Joseph Carens, Susan Okin, and Anne Phillips—a rich literature that has informed and inspired my own work in the field.
This edited collection is an excellent addition to the literature on the torture policy of the Bush administration during its war on terror. The contributors explore the history and practice of torture beyond the U.S. and what these non-American examples say about the U.S role in this area.
Drawing on his own UN experience and studying it from outside, Weiss clears away a lot of the debris of superficial critiques to uncover the deeper explanations for why the more world problems become interconnected and global in scope the less the UN seems able to cope with them.
The current state of Russian-American relations in the area of missile defense—specifically the proposed placement of U.S. missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic—cannot be evaluated without taking a retrospective look at the problem. The past has an appreciable impact on the present and future.
Topic:
Nuclear Weapons
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, America, Europe, and Poland
Peter Beinart's new book offers the Democratic Party a "new liberalism," a vision he bases on the party's history of moral leadership and success in combating totalitarianism in the post–World War II era. Opposing those who demonize the "liberal" label, Beinart holds up liberalism as the theme by which America achieved national greatness in the past and the means by which it might do so once again—if only the Democratic Party would embrace it fully once more.
Despite North Korea's antipathy to outside religious influence, it is primarily American NGOs with financial backing from religious organizations that have maintained development and exchange programs with the regime.