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102 SHOFAR Fall 1992 Vol. 11, No. 1 GENOCIDE: POLITICS AND, PSYCHOLOGY A REVIEW ESSAY by Louis Rene Beres Department of Political Science Purdue University ( The Genocidal Mentality: Nazi Holocaust and Nuclear Threat, by Robert Jay tifton and Eric Markusen. New York: Basic Books, 1990. 346 pp. $22.95. The United States and the Genocide Convention, by Lawrence J. LeBlanc. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991. 290 pp. n.p.l. Even in a century that can best be described as the Age of Atrocity" few people have suffered so terribly as the victims of genocide. Enduring all that murders and torments, these victims have been identified by their fellow humans as dark phantoms of subhumanity, suited only for degradation and slaughter. What is more, those who are not directly involved in the killing and dying witness the daily operations of automated extermination with indifference. Not surprisingly, the appalling silence of good people is absolutely vital to those who carry out crimes against humanity. Why? How has an entire species, miscarried from the start, scandalized its own creation? Are we all the potential murderers of those who live beside us? For as long as we can recall, the corpse has been in fashion. Today, at the close of the twentieth century, whole nations of corpses are the rage. And this is true despite the codification of antigenocide rules under international law. Why? The answer has several levels, several layers of meaning. At one level-the one examined by Lawrence J. LeBlanc in The United States and tbe Genocide Convention-the problem lies in the domestic political determinants of international human rights legislation. Examining the nearly forty-year struggle over ratification of the Genocide Convention by the United States, LeBlanc does not attach undue importance to the act of ratification per se (indeed, he correctly acknowledges reasons for pessi- Genocide: Politics and Psychology 103 mism about what the formality of ratification can achieve), but he does recognize that United States efforts to combat genocide have been undermined by the extraordinary American delay. This very lucid and carefully constructed book will be of particular interest to students of international law, especially those concerned with the identification and prosecution of genocide and other crimes against humanity, and to students of American political processes, especially to those interested in a fascinating case study of the treaty-making power. According to Article II, section 2, of the U.S. Constitution, presidents have the power "by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur." Extending from June 1949, when President Harry S Truman requested the Senate's advice and consent, to February 1986, when the Senate finally adopted a resolution ofratification, this power's application to the Genocide Convention was notably problematic. And even after the overwhelming Senate vote in favor ofthe resolution ofratification, the ratification was conditional -subject, as leBlanc points out, to two "reservations," five "understandings ," and a "declaration." This book represents a first-class work of important scholarship. Although readers ~who seek fundamental explanations of genocidal behavior will have to look elsewhere, The United States and the Genocide Convention looks closely at the jurisprudential scope and meaning of the crime as well as pertinent measures of implementation. These measures include domestic implementing legislation, an international criminal court, the international court of justice, and domestic courts. Finally, the book contains numerous useful tables ofvaluable information as well as key documents relating to genocide, including the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the Genocide Convention Implementation Act of 1988. Our second book under review, Lifton and Markusen's The Genocidal Mentality, does seek explanations of destructive behavior and finds them in a "cast of mind"-a mentality evident in both Nazi crimes and in stillpossible nuclear wars. Drawing upon "lessons of the Holocaust," the book considers the past and future operation of psychological mechanisms underlying all large-scale atrocity behavior. In this connection, as the reader might expect from Lifton's earlier work, special attention is focused upon the dissociative processes "psychic numbing" and "doubling," processes enabling genociders to remain "sane" while in the service of mass...

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