The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention: Genocide in Rwanda by Alan J. KupermanReview by: Eliot A. CohenForeign Affairs, Vol. 80, No. 6 (Nov. - Dec., 2001), pp. 179-180Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20050357 .

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Recent Books

thought-provoking, and the responses of the simulation participants provide

helpful insights into the institutional pro clivities of key U.S. government players.

Nonetheless, readers with a sophisticated

grasp of the interplay between interna

tional finance and foreign policy may want to look elsewhere for broad historical

lessons and policy recommendations on

crisis prevention and response. LAEL BRAINARD

Military, Scientific, and Technological

ELIOT A. COHEN

The Churchill War Papers: The Ever

Widening War, Volume III, 1941. edited

BY MARTIN GILBERT. NewYork:

W. W. Norton, 2001,1,821 pp. $85.00. Some scholars simply cannot get enough of Winston Churchill. This extraordinary volume?nothing less than a window on

the activity of genius in wartime decision

making?helps explain why. For the

United Kingdom, 1940 was a year of

illusion and catastrophe, and 1941 was the

year of endurance, when the foundations

of ultimate recovery were laid. It was a

time of acute menace from the U-boats, success and disaster in the Middle East, and of course the entrances of the Soviet

Union, the United States, and Japan into

what became a global war. Gilbert has

assembled documents that give the full

range of Churchill's wartime activities. To

browse through them is to peer over the

shoulders of leaders and generals locked

in the greatest struggle of all time. For

the historian, the political scientist, and the

Student of statecraft more generally, there

is no bound collection of primary sources

more rewarding, instructive, or fascinating.

Web Sources for Military History.

http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/

military.html. Not all useful sites on the Web originate

in organizations. Here is a handy directory

compiled by Richard Jensen, a professor emeritus of history at the University of

Illinois, Chicago, that offers remarkably

complete coverage. No fancy graphics,

just a well-constructed listing of sites. Go

here to get a sense, at least, of some of

the riches of the Web in this field.

The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention:

Genocide in Rwanda, by alan j. kuperman.

Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2001,162 pp. $38.95

(paper, $16.95). A succinct, pessimistic analysis of a

horrifying episode in recent international

politics. Kuperman starts by admitting

frankly that he ended up in a different

place than he began, concluding that

even a massive Western intervention

could have saved only a quarter (around

125,000) of the Tutsi lives lost in the

massacres that swept Rwanda in 1994. His case is lucidly and powerfully pre sented, blending political and military analysis, and it is unrelentingly dark.

Prevention is infinitely better than inter

vention?which may in fact accelerate

mass murder?but it requires an almost

impossible degree of foresight and acu

men. Intervention may be better late than

never, but it requires military effort on a

scale and for a length of time that will make most developed countries' military staffs and politicians blanch. Essential if

FOREIGN AFFAIRS- November / December 2001 [ 1J 9 ]

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Recent Books

dispiriting reading for the tender-hearted

and tough-minded alike.

Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War. by stuart j. kaufman.

Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001,

262 pp. $45.00 (paper, $19.95). This author, like Kuperman, is part of a

welcome trend among younger scholars

probing the nature of modern war. Looking

back, it is remarkable how much of the national security literature of the late

Cold War drew on the conflicts of the

first half of the twentieth century. In this book, Kaufman explores the ways in

which ethnicity leads to war. Although rejecting the facile (but widely used) notion of deep, ineradicable, and ancient

animosities, he nonetheless takes ethnicity

seriously. He builds his theory around

the idea of "symbolic politics"?i.e., the

stories and in particular the archetypes and caricatures that shape

one group's

view of another. He does not dismiss the

role of manipulative leaders in inflaming hatreds and resentments, but neither does

he assign them sole blame. A shrewd and

balanced blend of theory and case analysis,

primarily drawn from the Balkans and the

Caucasus, that helps explain modern war.

War and Nature: Fighting Humans and

Insects with Chemicals from World War I

to Silent Spring, by edmund russell.

New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001,315 pp. $54.95 (paper, $19.95).

An interesting and highly unusual com

parison of the parallel?but sometimes

intersecting?chemical wars waged against

humans and bugs. This study is American

centered, although it includes references

to work by other governments; much of

the book is taken up with such tales as

the military's love affair with ddt, which

played an important role in beating back

one of the soldier's oldest enemies, the

louse. Such a menace is not trivial, as an

earlier-generation infantry soldier would

have noted. But its defeat came with

considerable environmental costs that, the author notes, were understood at the

time. For students of both war and

ecology, this is a remarkable and fascinating

study that draws heavily on

primary sources; it is particularly timely as

awareness grows of what war does to

the environment, as well as to people.

At War at Sea: Sailors and Naval Combat

in the Twentieth Century, by ronald

h. spector. New York: Viking, 2001,

463 pp. $29.95. There has been an enormous amount of

writing?scholarly, official, fictional, and

autobiographical?about the experience of combat on land. But until now, its

counterpart at sea was confined largely to

the memoir and the novel. This work fills

that gap. An experienced and prolific

historian, Spector fought with the U.S.

Marine Corps in Vietnam and headed

the U.S. Navy's history program; both

experiences show in a work that is (as he

puts it) "an interpretive history" rather

than a chronological depiction or an

analytical summary. He touches on a

multitude of questions: How did com

manders view orders? What were the

relationships between enlisted sailors and

officers during combat? Who invented

new tactics for aerial combat at sea, and

how were they disseminated? No work

of this kind can be definitive, but this volume both satisfies in its own right and

provokes more questions than any histo

rian could hope to answer in one lifetime.

[l8o] FOREIGN AFFAIRS - Volume80No. 6

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