Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War

Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War
by Jean Bricmont

Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War
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Book Summary Information

Author: Jean Bricmont
Edition: Paperback
Published: 2007-02-01
ISBN: 1583671471
Number of pages: 176
Publisher: Monthly Review Press

Book Reviews of Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War

Book Review: A hard contradictory but unique read
Summary: 3 Stars

This original book argues that the neo-colonialist west uses human rights as an excuse to dominate the planet. If it were to stop there and present a reasonable discussion about the way in which wars were `sold' regarding human rights violations that may have no existed or if it had debated whether or not it is logical to wage war in order to have `peace' in a sense waging war to prevent human rights violations, then this would have been an important read. However the downside is the constant ranting against the United States and blaming the U.S for all the ills of the world.

This book argues that every single evil in the world is somehow the fault of the U.S. Stalin's terror resulted from the American intervention in the Soviet East in 1918. Hitler's terror resulted from the treaty of Versallies. All Islamist terror is because of American involvement with Israel. The author argues that in the West the ideals of Human Rights have replaced the `white mans burden' and are used to carve up the third world and play the third world against itself. The author argues that every single human rights violation the west finds in fact results from the original meddling of the west. Were any of this line of reasoning true, that all evil in the world results from a chan of events that began with the U.S, then the book is hard pressed to answer why genocides and human rights violations existed before 1780, before the U.S was created. If every human rights violation and genocide, such as that in Rwanda and Cambodia, is the fault of the West then how does the book explain why genocides existed long before the birth of the west, before say 400 B.C? Tribes were exterminated in 1,000 B.C, and there was no west.

The great failure of this book is that it has so many hypocrisies and contradictions. It blames the U.S for bankrolling subversive elements, for instance in Afghanistan in 1979 and thus provoking the Soviet invasion. But this excuse doesn't work when it involved Soviet bankrolling of subversive elements in Latin America. That bankrolling is not allowed to `provoke' U.S involvement and when it did the author condemns that involvement. Thus there is a double-standard and that is unacceptable. It always says there is a chain reaction, thus the U.S support of Saudi and Israel leads to 9/11 but the book doesn't allow for the fact that the U.S may also respond as part of a chain, where Pearl Harbor or 9/11 leads the U.S to react.

The only important contribution of this book is arguing against the Reporters Without Borders ideology of Bernard Kuchner and arguing against Human Rights as a litmus test for intervention. But if the author truly believed this why does he condemn Israel for Human Rights violations and condemn American support for Israel? The U.S was involved in Bosnia and Kosovo under false pretenses and the violations were lies. True. The rest of the read is false.

Seth J. Frantzman

Summary of Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War

Since the end of the Cold War, the idea of human rights has been made into a justification for intervention by the world's leading economic and military powers—above all, the United States—in countries that are vulnerable to their attacks. The criteria for such intervention have become more arbitrary and self-serving, and their form more destructive, from Yugoslavia to Afghanistan to Iraq. Until the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the large parts of the left was often complicit in this ideology of intervention—discovering new "Hitlers" as the need arose, and denouncing antiwar arguments as appeasement on the model of Munich in 1938.

Jean Bricmont's Humanitarian Imperialism is both a historical account of this development and a powerful political and moral critique. It seeks to restore the critique of imperialism to its rightful place in the defense of human rights. It describes the leading role of the United States in initiating military and other interventions, but also on the obvious support given to it by European powers and NATO. It outlines an alternative approach to the question of human rights, based on the genuine recognition of the equal rights of people in poor and wealthy countries.

Timely, topical, and rigorously argued, Jean Bricmont's book establishes a firm basis for resistance to global war with no end in sight.

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