Power Criticizes U.S. Response to Genocide

Genocide "doesn't seem to matter much" in American foreign policy, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy executive director Samantha Power charged at an Institute of Politics talk Tuesday afternoon.

"The U.S. has never intervened in a genocide," she said. "The odds are against meaningful actions when there are any costs to any perceived interest. Ultimately, the political risk of going in exceeds the political cost of staying out."

Power is writing a book called The Quiet Americans chronicling America's responses to genocide since the Holocaust.

Describing her book as "cynical as much as idealistic," Power said that she hoped to demonstrate what could have been done had the American public and government responded and intervened in genocides.

Power decried what she said was a move away from value-based judgements regarding intervention in favor of decisions based on national security. She pointed to four cases of genocide in the modern world--Cambodia, Iraq, Bosnia and Rwanda--in which a vocal minority opposed to U.S. intervention won out against a passive majority.

Talking about the Rwanda tragedy, Power castigated the U.S. government for not even holding a cabinet-level meeting about the slaughter and also criticized the U.N.'s handling of the crisis.

"The U.N., inexcusably but understandably, insisted that they not reinforce the [U.N. peacekeepers] on the ground, and indeed withdraw them," Power said.

Power also said that the U.N. rejected a request to jam the hate-radio transmissions that were inciting the violence.

"It was too expensive," she said.

She also said that media coverage of crises, while important, does not always spur the public to action.

"Images don't tell viewers what to do," Power said. "The image is so, so horrible, but politicians can use it both ways," she said, to either galvanize the public to respond to the crisis or to convince them that America had better stay out.

Power said that media must be careful to be objective, while not necessarily treating both sides even-handedly when genocide is being committed.

"There's a reason that we want even-handed accounts--so we feel a lot better about doing nothing," Power said.

Power said that in her book she plans to detail the efforts of several Americans who were dedicated to preventing genocide.

The first and most extensive story she told was that of Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew who mounted a campaign before World War II to outlaw genocide--a term he invented.

His efforts paid few dividends, Power said, and his family was decimated in the Holocaust.

"Forty-nine members of [Lemkin's] family were exterminated in the Holocaust," she said. Lemkin eventually migrated to the U.S., where, according to Power, he worked tirelessly to convince the U.N. to ratify the Genocide Convention.

Even when the U.N. approved the convention in 1948 it was a bittersweet victory for Lemkin, according to Power. The U.S. Senate refused to ratify the convention, and Lemkin died a year later.

The cause passed to William Proxmire, a Democratic senator from Wisconsin, Power said. Proxmire made a speech every day for 19 years in the Senate until the convention was finally ratified in 1988.