Genocide is not only a problem of mass death, but also of how, as a relatively new idea and law, it organizes and distorts thinking about civilian destruction. Taking the normative perspective of civilian immunity from military attack, A. Dirk Moses argues that the implicit hierarchy of international criminal law, atop which sits genocide as the 'crime of crimes', blinds us to other types of humanly caused civilian death, like bombing cities, and the 'collateral damage' of missile and drone strikes. Talk of genocide, then, can function ideologically to detract from systematic violence against civilians perpetrated by governments of all types. The Problems of Genocide contends that this violence is the consequence of 'permanent security' imperatives: the striving of states, and armed groups seeking to found states, to make themselves invulnerable to threats.
Author(s): A. Dirk Moses
Series: Human Rights In History
Edition: 1
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2021
Language: English
Commentary: TruePDF 6x9 Format | Cover | Full TOC
Pages: 611
Tags: Genocide: Prevention; Atrocities: Prevention; Genocide Intervention; Genocide: Law And Legislation; Human Rights
Cover
Half title
Series title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Preface
Introduction
Part I | The Language of Transgression
1 | The Language of Transgression, 1500s to 1890s
Introduction
Empire and Critique
Empire, Commerce, Corruption
Humanitarianism and Slavery
The Protection of Small Nations and "Native" Peoples
KIng Leopold II's Congo
2 | The Language of Transgression, 1890s to 1930s
Warfare and Civilization
The League of Nations and the Language of Transgression
International Conscience and the Public Mind
Free and Unfree Labor
Depoliticizing the Language of Transgression:
The Question of Violence and Refugees
The Language of Transgression
3 | Raphael Lemkin and the Protection of Small Nations
From Zionism to the Protection of “ Small Nations”
Barbarism, Vandalism, and the Political
Terrorism and Political Crimes
Vandalism and Barbarism
Conclusion: Blindspots
4 | The Many Types of Destruction
Extending the Limits of International Law
Mitigated Knowledge
The Many Types of Destruction
The Institute of Jewish Affairs and the Defi nition of War Crimes
Conclusion
5 | Inventing Genocide in the 1940s
Before “ Genocide”
Lemkin’ s Invention
The Nuremberg Disappointment
Excluding Permanent Security from the Genocide Convention
Excluding Population Expulsion and Cultural Genocide
A Nonpolitical Crime
Otto Ohlendorf, Aerial Bombing, and the Rescue
of Military Necessity
Conclusion
Part II | Permanent Security
6 | Permanent Security in History
Illiberal Permanent Security I: Imperial Conquest and Exploitation
Illiberal Permanent Security II: Subaltern Genocide
Liberal Permanent Security: Settler Colonialism
The Soviet Union
Elements of Permanent Security
7 | The Nazi Empire as Illiberal Permanent Security
Introduction
Imperial Imaginary
Hitler’ s Imperial History of Permanent Security
Redemptive Imperialism
Why the Jewish Enemy?
“International Jewry”
Jews in Germany
“Judeo-Bolshevism” and Political Paranoia
Nazi Empire and Illiberal Permanent Security
Conclusion
8 | Human Rights, Population “Transfer,” and the Foundation of the Postwar Order
Partitions, Minorities, Expulsions as Liberal Permanent Security
Human Rights, Partition, and “ Transfer”
The Interwar Debate on the “ Humanity” of Transfer
Human Rights and Transfer
Conclusion
9 | Imagining Nation-Security in South Asia and Palestine
India and Interwar Europe
Minorities: Hostages or Transfer?
Muslim Zion?
Palestine, Israel, and Minorities
Part III | The Language of Transgression, Permanent Security, and Holocaust Memory
10 | Lemkin, Arendt, Vietnam, and Liberal Permanent Security
Raphael Lemkin: Affi xing the Holocaust Archetype
Hannah Arendt: Depoliticizing the Holocaust and Defending
the West
The Uniqueness of the Holocaust
Vietnam, Genocide, and the Critique of Liberal Permanent Security
Genocide in Vietnam?
The Nuremberg Legacy and Liberal Permanent Security
Liberal Permanent Security Fights Back
11 | Genocide Studies and the Repression of the Political
Biafra
Founding Genocide Studies
Excluding Permanent Security
Civil War or Genocide?
Armenian Rebellion or Armenian Genocide?
Darfur
Holocaust Analogies
After Genocide
12 | Holocaust Memory, Exemplary Victims, and Permanent Security Today
The Holocaust as Hate Crime
After the Holocaust: A Single Archetype, an Ideal Victim
Scapegoating as Depoliticization
A New Civilizing Mission
Holocaust Education as Liberal Permanent Security
Empire and Civilization
The “ Supreme” (Humanitarian) Emergency
Endless Occupation
Index
