Confronting Evil: Engaging Our Responsibility to Prevent Genocide by James Waller (review)

James Waller’s central argument in Confronting Genocide: Engaging Our Responsibility to Prevent Genocide is that “the world as it is now is not the world as it has to be” (p. xxvii). From that profoundly optimistic starting point, his goal is to “present an analysis of genocide in the modern world that draws out the lessons to be learned in preventing genocide from ever taking place, preventing further atrocities once genocide has begun, and preventing future atrocities once a society has begun to rebuild after genocide” (p. xxvii). The philosophy underpinning this book is that “although they do not always share common interests or utilize the tools for common purposes, the many actors—academics, lawyers, policymakers, and global civil society—can be mobilized to create the political will necessary to prevent genocide and mass atrocity” (p. 364).

The work is organized conceptually in three sections. Part I: “Naming and Defining Genocide,” is a comprehensive synthesis of the details of the drafting of the United Nations Genocide Convention. It highlights an examination of the life and work of Raphael Lemkin and his influential role in the process. Part II: “A Continuum of Prevention Strategies” explores the range of policies and strategies that can: (1) be used to prevent genocide from happening; (2) halt violence when genocide is occurring; and (3) inform steps that might be put into practice to prevent future slayings in a post-genocidal society. Professor Waller contends that genocide prevention is possible when leaders are motivated and have the right tools at their disposal. He explores three prevention strategies, each centered on a temporal stage of genocide: upstream (before), midstream (during), and downstream (after). In Part III: “Never Again?” Waller challenges leaders to commit to collective action in the service of preventing genocide; he issues a call to interrupt genocide while it is happening and to exercise vigilance when societies are recovering from genocide.

In his instructive first chapter, “A Crime without a Name,” Waller examines the ways in which Lemkin’s personal experiences and passionate legal activism contributed to the eventual creation of the concept of genocide as a distinct and punishable crime. The author also explains how nationalism and conceptions of state sovereignty informed the drafting of the convention, and clarifies how compromises led to the exclusion of crimes against political groups as an actionable category in the treaty.

The second chapter, “By Their Rightful Name,” considers how semantics impact enforcement of the convention. Analyzing the factors that led to United States government’s unwillingness to recognize the 1994 events in Rwanda as genocide, Waller shows that the idealistic principles of the convention acted as a restraint on intervention. His analysis of the murderous conflicts and mass collective violence in Rwanda brings the issue of intervention sharply into focus. He notes that, over time, the definition of genocide has been marked by “definitional controversy as a political, legal, empirical, moral and analytical concept” (p. 44). Although the exacting framework of the Genocide Convention can be a major impediment to its use in effective prevention and enforcement, Waller suggests that a valuable way to overcome these linguistic difficulties is to view the definition of genocide “as dynamic and evolving, rather than static and inflexible” (p. 47).

In the last chapter of the opening section, “By Our Words and Actions,” Waller questions where genocide falls within the universe of mass atrocities, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. He highlights the difficulties central to the problem of establishing which categories of violent action warrant prosecution by international courts. He asserts that holding a strict definition of genocide as the ultimate measure in a hierarchy of suffering is unfair, as it marginalizes other forms of mass violence. Looking beyond definitions, he outlines the rationale for the establishment, after the international community failed to respond to the genocides in Rwanda and Srebrenica, of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS). The ICISS report...