First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia

by David N. Gibbs

Overview

In First Do No Harm, David Gibbs raises basic questions about the humanitarian interventions that have played a key role in U.S. foreign policy for the past twenty years. Using a wide range of sources, including government documents, transcripts of international war crimes trials, and memoirs, Gibbs shows how these interventions often heightened violence and increased human suffering.

The book focuses on the 1991-99 breakup of Yugoslavia, which helped forge the idea that the United States and its allies could stage humanitarian interventions that would end ethnic strife. It is widely believed that NATO bombing campaigns in Bosnia and Kosovo played a vital role in stopping Serb-directed aggression, and thus resolving the conflict.

Gibbs challenges this view, offering an extended critique of Samantha Power's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide. He shows that intervention contributed to the initial breakup of Yugoslavia, and then helped spread the violence and destruction. Gibbs also explains how the motives for U.S. intervention were rooted in its struggle for continued hegemony in Europe.

First Do No Harm argues for a new, noninterventionist model for U.S. foreign policy, one that deploys nonmilitary methods for addressing ethnic violence.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826516435
Publisher:	Vanderbilt University Press
Publication date:	06/29/2009
Pages:	327
Product dimensions:	7.10(w) x 10.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

David N. Gibbs, Associate Professor of History and Political Science at the University of Arizona, is the author of The Political Economy of Third World Intervention. His articles have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, and Le Monde Diplomatique.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

1 The Rise of Humanitarian Intervention 1

2 US Predominance and the Logic of Interventionism 16

3 Origins of the Yugoslav Conflict 45

4 Germany Drops a Match 76

5 The War Spreads to Bosnia-Herzegovina 106

6 Only the Weak Rely on Diplomacy: The Clinton Administration Faces Bosnia 141

7 Kosovo and the Reaffirmation of American Power 171

8 Conclusion 205

Notes 223

Bibliography 309

Index 335

Editorial Reviews

"Gibbs offers a powerful new interpretation of the Balkan wars of the 1990s."
—Chalmers Johnson, author of The Blowback Trilogy (2000-2006)

"This is an important work which anyone with an interest in how diplomacy is actually conducted should read."
—Science and Society

"Invaluable."
—Washington Times

From the Publisher