United Nations Books - Page 3

Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda

Michael Barnett

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Why was the UN a bystander during the Rwandan genocide? Do its sins of omission leave it morally responsible for the hundreds of thousands of dead? Michael Barnett, who worked at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations from 1993 to 1994, covered Rwanda for much of the genocide. Based on his first-hand experiences, archival work, and interviews with many key participants, he reconstructs the history of the UN’s involvement in Rwanda. In the weeks leading up to the genocide, the author documents, the UN was increasingly aware or had good reason to suspect that Rwanda was a site of crimes against humanity. Yet it failed to act. Barnett argues that its indifference was driven not by incompetence or cynicism but rather by reasoned choices cradled by moral considerations. Employing a novel approach to ethics in practice and in relationship to international organizations, Barnett offers an unsettling possibility: the UN culture recast the ethical commitments of well-intentioned individuals, arresting any duty to aid at the outset of the genocide. Barnett argues that the UN bears some moral responsibility for the genocide. Particularly disturbing is his observation that not only did the UN violate its moral responsibilities, but also that many in New York believed that they were "doing the right thing" as they did so. Barnett addresses the ways in which the Rwandan genocide raises a warning about this age of humanitarianism and concludes by asking whether it is possible to build moral institutions.

United Nations: The First Fifty Years

Stanley Meisler

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Good for "UN 101", but a little thin 4 out of 5 stars.
7 of 9 people found this review helpful.

Meisler has done an excellent job in introducing the UN to the general public with a format and language that makes it an entertaining and easy read. The most intense crises that the UN faced since its creation after WWII are all here, as are some of the greater personalities like Ralph Bunche and Dag Hammarskjold.

However, the book only briefly discusses the creation of the outlying organizations of the UN family - like UNESCO, UNICEF, and FAO. I find this to be a flaw due to the fact that these are the organizations that the UN is mostly associated with today - and not the major crises of the Cold War and beyond.

But all in all Meisler has done a magnificent job that will deepen your understanding of the UN's origins, mission, potentials, and short-comings.

Editorial Review:

On the eve of the 50th anniversary of the United Nations, Meisler has written a compelling popular history, exploring the U.N.'s culture, its adventures in war, and its evolution into a key international player. From Roosevelt, Stalin, and Truman, who set the stage at the birth of the U.N., to Daniel Moynihan, who walked out of the General Assembly over the Third World's anti-Zion resolution, this is a story filled with action and heartbreak. Photos.

Twenty-first-century Peace Operations

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Editorial Review:

In this new century, a rising proportion of the world's societal wars are ending not in victory for one side but in stalemate and negotiated peace, outside military intervention, or both, as events in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, East Timor, and Sierra Leone have borne witness. Additionally, a rising number of soldiers, police officers, and other personnel from the international community have helped war-damaged lands regain their footing through peace operations run by the United Nations, NATO, and other organizations. After ten years of sustained effort, what has been accomplished and what lessons have been learned?

This volume, the third in a sequence on peacekeeping and post-conflict security edited by William J. Durch, addresses these questions through focused, structured case studies of operations in the above four countries, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Kosovo. The common structure walks the reader into and through the problems that have driven each conflict and the solutions derived to deal with them. The focus is on how peace operations work and why they succeed, fail, drift, or recover. The editor and case authors provide constructive and practical guidance for future operations, anticipating how international peace support, its objectives, and its participants may change in the years ahead.

This accessible, insightful, and superbly edited volume is sure to be widely read by scholars, analysts, and practitioners alike--and will no doubt be regarded as the single most important source for data on and analysis of these important missions.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins, Drafting, and Intent (Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights)

Johannes Morsink

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Editorial Review:

"Revealing and useful." --Michael Ignatieff, New York Review of Books "Definitive. Essential reading for everyone interested in human rights." --David P. Forsythe, Choice "Morsink merges history and philosophy in a way that simultaneously roots the Universal Declaration in a particular time and place and reveals its enduring contemporary significance and value." --Jack Donnelly, Human Rights Quarterly "No other books takes the reader behind the scenes into the drafting details...[Morsink's] seminal account merits reading by all invested in the Declaration--activist, academic, official, or victim." --Jerome E. Shestack, American Journal of International Law

International Law and the Use of Force (Foundations of Public International Law)

Christine Gray

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Editorial Review:

Since the publication of the first edition of International Law and the Use of Force, events have led to a major reappraisal of international law on the use of force. The terrorist attacks of September 11th and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan have raised fundamental questions about the right to use force in self-defense against terrorism, and the scope of the 'war on terror'. The question of whether there is now a new doctrine of pre-emptive self-defense has divided States. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 has prompted serious questions about the role of the United Nations and the legal basis of Operation Iraqi Freedom: had the UN Security Council authorized the use of force against Iraq? Was the US entitled to act without such authorization?

This volume covers the whole of the large and controversial subject of the use of force in international law; it examines not only the use of force by States, but also the role of the UN and regional organizations in the maintenance of international peace and security.

Global Tyranny...Step by Step: The United Nations and the Emerging New World Order

William F. Jasper

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Should be mandatory reading for all Americans 5 out of 5 stars.
26 of 27 people found this review helpful.

This book will surprise you with its revelations, such as - what do the current and all previous UN Secretary-Generals have in common? All are/were socialists or Marxists (without exception). Here's the straight scoop folks: the UN Charter and the US Constitution are incompatible with each other. Something is going to give. The main difference, as the book points out, is the source of 'rights'. Our Constitution recognizes and protects 'God given' rights. With the UN, rights are not absolute, and subject to any number of provisos. Get this book, read it (it's not too long), and encourage your friends/family to read it too. We needed to get out of the UN 'yesterday'.

Editorial Review:

This book is the most all-encompassing study available about the United Nations and its ultimate goal: total world government. William F. Jasper documents the organization's calculated encroachment into virtually every aspect of our lives, including the economy, politics, the military, the environment, the family, and even religion.

"Complicity with Evil": The United Nations in the Age of Modern Genocide

Adam LeBor

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Editorial Review:

From the killing fields of Rwanda and Srebrenica a decade ago to those of Darfur today, the United Nations has repeatedly failed to confront genocide. This is evinced, author and journalist Adam LeBor maintains, in a May 1995 document from Yasushi Akashi, the most senior UN official in the field during the Yugoslav wars, in which he refused to authorize air strikes against the Serbs for fear they would “weaken” Milosevic.  More recently, in 2003, urgent reports from UN officials in the Sudan detailing atrocities from Darfur were ignored for a year because they were politically inconvenient.
This book is the first to examine in detail the crucial role of the Secretariat, its relationship with the Security Council, and the failure of UN officials themselves to confront genocide. LeBor argues the UN must return to its founding principles, take a moral stand and set the agenda of the Security Council instead of merely following the lead of the great powers. LeBor draws on dozens of firsthand interviews with UN officials, current and former, and such international diplomats as Madeleine Albright, Richard Holbrooke, Douglas Hurd, and David Owen.

This book will set the terms for discussion when UN Secretary General Kofi Annan steps down to make room for a new head of the world body, and political observers assess Annan’s legacy and look to the future of the world organization.

The Handbook of Humanitarian Law in Armed Conflicts

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Editorial Review:

This book offers the most up-to-date authoritative commentary and analysis of international humanitarian law applicable in armed conflict. While the past few decades have seen consistent development of the laws culminating in a series of International Covenants and Protocols, world events in recent years have made reassessment of the law both a timely and topical concern. In this new book, acknowledged experts restate the international humanitarian law applicable in armed conflict. The key statements were promulgated as the Joint Service Regulation for the German Armed forces in August 1992 and this book will serve as a work of reference for practicing lawyers and academics and as a work of legal instruction to armed forces.

The United Nations Exposed

William F. Jasper

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Beware of the UN 5 out of 5 stars.
26 of 42 people found this review helpful.

This book, by William F. Jasper, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt the fact that the UN is more than a harmless "debate society." It shows how, since it's founding in 1945, the UN is in fact the foundation of a one world goverment intent to destroy our sovereignty.
In this book Mr. Jasper goes into great detail about how our borders are being erased as our nation is slowly, quietly merged with Mexico and Canada; How our military is being used in an unconstitutional manner to enforce the dictates of the UN; why Supreme Court Justices like Sandra day O'Conner quote from international court decisions rather than base her arguments on the US constitution; how the UN, rather than stop genocide in places like Rawanda and the Congo actually contributed to it and encouraged it!
Whether or not you are conservative, every American should read this book and educate themselves about the UN and what it is doing.

Editorial Review:

Below the surface of public attention, internationalists have been working for decades to build the United Nations into an all-powerful world government. In this carefully documented study, William F. Jasper shows that, with the United Nations, the American people are being offered what amounts to poison disguised as candy.

Eyes off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944-1955

Carol Anderson

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Editorial Review:

As World War II drew to a close and the world awakened to the horrors wrought by white supremacists in Nazi Germany, the NAACP and African-American leaders sensed an opportunity to launch an offensive against the conditions of segregation and inequality in the United States. The "prize" they sought was not civil rights, but human rights. Only the human rights lexicon, shaped by the Holocaust and articulated by the United Nations, contained the language and the moral power to address not only the political and legal inequality but also the education, health care, housing, and employment needs that haunted the black community. The NAACP understood this and wielded its influence and resources to take its human rights agenda before the United Nations. But the onset of the Cold War and rising anti-communism allowed powerful southerners to cast those rights as Soviet-inspired and a threat to the American "ways of life." Enemies and friends excoriated the movement, and the NAACP retreated to a narrow civil rights agenda that was easier to maintain politically. Thus the Civil Rights Movement was launched with neither the language nor the mission it needed to truly achieve black equality. Carol Anderson is the recipient of major grants from the Ford Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies, and numerous awards for excellence in teaching. Her scholarly interests are 20th century American, African-American, and diplomatic history, and the impact of the Cold War and U.S. foreign policy on the struggle for black equality in particular. Her publications include "From Hope to Disillusion published in Diplomatic History and reprinted in The African-American Voice in U.S. Foreign Policy.