Bibliomaníaco: uma vida através dos livros, 1950 - Paulo Roberto de Almeida

 Bibliomaníaco: uma vida através dos livros, 1950 

 

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Diplomata, professor

(www.pralmeida.org; diplomatizzando.blogspot.com)

  

Nota prévia: 1949, neste link: Bibliomaníaco: uma vida através dos livros, 1949 - Paulo Roberto de Almeida

1950: 

Não faz muito sentido, estrito senso, falar de livros que foram publicados no primeiro ano de minha existência, quando eu os fui conhecer muitos anos depois, sendo que alguns, publicados em 1950, ainda estão carentes de leitura. Mas, como esta série é dedicada a seguir o relato cronológico dos livros publicados a cada ano, vale registrar esse movimento editorial, por um motivo simplório: segundo alguns, ideias governam o mundo, e como muitas dessas ideias estão condensadas em obras de autores que se tornaram clássicas, por assim dizer, elas merecem, portanto, ao menos um comentário de minha parte, na medida em que muitos desses livros, e suas ideias, interagiram com a minha formação intelectual e com meu próprio pensamento nos anos seguintes, por vezes muito tempo à frente do ano aqui relatado.

Não tenho lembrança, nem fotos, ou relatos familiares, do que possam ter sido meus primeiros três anos de vida, mas tenho vagas lembranças do cenário familiar e do ambiente doméstico no qual vivíamos meu irmão Luiz Flávio (um ano e meio mais velho do que eu), eu mesmo e nossos país, “Seu João”, um modesto operário, depois motorista, depois algumas outras coisas na existência de muito trabalho, e minha mãe, “Dona Laura”, que segundo recordo, se dedicava a lavar roupa “para fora”, para complementar a pouquíssima renda familiar. As imagens que guardo de nossa primeira residência, aliás a única que conheci antes de partir para a Europa muitos anos depois, em 1970, era a de uma casinha modesta, em construção ainda, num terreno que havia sido adquirido quase dois anos antes numa pequena travessa sem saída da então chamada Avenida Imperial – muito depois rebatizada de Avenida Horácio Lafer –, toda ela de terra, no bairro que respondia pelo nome de Chácara Itaim Bibi, quase às margens do rio Pinheiros, um afluente meridional do rio Tietê, o “rio dos bandeirantes”.

Que a “casa” ainda estivesse em construção disso tenho perfeita lembrança, ainda que apenas dois ou três anos depois, pois que havia tijolos aparentes, várias partes carecendo de reboco, um único quarto, o que poderia ser uma sala e a cozinha ao lado, tudo isso ao fundo de um terreno de 30 metros, dando as costas para uma fábrica de peças de baquelite. Na frente da cozinha, depois de um tanque coberto, havia um único banheiro, que suspeito não dispunha, num primeiro momento, de chuveiro elétrico, pois tenho lembranças de nossa mãe dando banho, a mim e ao meu irmão, numa grande bacia de metal colocada no centro da cozinha, despejando sobre nós canecas de água morna. Não tínhamos geladeira, mas apenas uma espécie de armário bem fechado, no qual se podia colocar uma espécie de paralelepípedo de gelo – que era entregue envolto em serragem no portão de casa, por uma carrocinha puxada a cavalo – sobre a qual se podia colocar a carne, a manteiga e alguns outros produtos necessitados de algum tipo de “refrigeração”. Uso da eletricidade estritamente regulamentado, obviamente. 

Nos anos seguintes, o grande terreno à frente dessa casinha foi sendo aos poucos completado: primeiro, um horta, que se estendia ao logo da cerva viva com a casa do lado direito – à esquerda era um terreno de esquina ainda inabitado, no qual jogávamos bola, os garotos com mais idade –; depois uma espécie de marcenaria a céu aberto (depois tapada com folha de zinco, mas sem qualquer parede), na qual meu pai tinha feito uma bancada com uma pequena morsa, para trabalhar suas peças utilitárias de madeira: foi ali que aprendi meu “primeiro ofício”, o de marceneiro, que quase se converte em profissão de verdade, na decisão sobre o que fazer depois de terminar o primeiro ciclo, chamado então de primário. Pouco depois, ao lado da marcenaria, foi colocado um tanque, em pleno sol, para que minha mãe pudesse lavar as roupas que lhe eram entregues pelos vizinhos sem máquina de lavar (e deviam ser muitos, pois todas as casas da pequena travessa eram muito modestas). Assim foram meus primeiros anos, de brincadeiras no grande terreno vazio, depois ocupado por um pequeno cão que me seguiu fielmente durante muitos anos, Lulu, ou então na própria rua, que, ao não ter saída, oferecia garantia de que não seríamos atropelados por algum carro afoito. O final da travessa era bloqueado por uma pinguela sobre um riacho, onde eram descarregados todos os esgotos da redondeza, que cruzávamos regularmente para evitar uma volta no quarteirão, nas idas à “Padaria Mondego”, no ângulo oposto, buscando a bengala, o pão francês e algumas outras coisas. A isto se resumiu meus primeiros anos de vida.

Quanto aos livros, vários que eu li depois foram publicados em 1950, vários retirados na Biblioteca Infantil Municipal Anne Frank, um quarteirão mais à frente, logo acima do Parque Infantil, que foi minha primeira experiência de socialização com crianças de minha idade. Um desses livros, que devo ter lido no final dos anos 1950, foi a aventura de Thor Heyerdahl no Pacífico, Kon-Tiki, em busca de provar sua tese de que os habitantes da ilha da Páscoa vieram da costa da América do Sul, na altura do Peru, numa jangada rudimentar que ele próprio construiu, de acordo com o que supunha fossem os meios técnicos disponíveis milhares de anos atrás: sem qualquer peça de ferro ou material que não fosse extraído da própria natureza. A história me fascinou e durante muito tempo procurei saber mais sobre o mistério das gigantescas estátuas da ilha e sobre a transmigrações de povos pré-históricos. 

Outro livro publicado em sua edição original em 1950 foi um dos volumes da História da Civilização, de Will Durant, mas numa edição brasileira, provavelmente publicada em meados da década. Não me recordo, agora, se li a versão unificada dessa obra, cujo original havia sido publicado em 1931, ou se foi algum dos volumes que ele publicou sobre as diferentes eras da história, da antiguidade à época contemporânea. Qualquer que seja o caso, Will Durant acentuou meu enorme gosto pela história, que já tinha sido despertado desde meus oito anos aproximadamente pela versão feita por Monteiro Lobato da História do Mundo para as Crianças, uma releitura de Dona Benta de uma obra publicada muitos anos antes nos Estados Unidos. 

 Ao falar dos livros que li, ainda que anos depois de 1950, não me eximo de falar de dois outros livros publicados no mesmo ano, que nunca “enfrentei”, mas sobre os quais li muitas resenhas e referências, todas elogiosas. O mais interessante, que ainda está na minha lista de “livros para ler”, é o de Octavio Paz, El Labirinto de la Soledad, que é uma visão antropológica-histórica-filosófica sobre a identidade nacional mexicana, ou mais exatamente sobre as insuficiências e frustrações do que se poderia chamar de não desenvolvimento mexicano, algo aliás comum a muitos outros países latino-americanos, mesmo sem possuir a herança étnica e social do grande país asteca. O outro, talvez ainda mais famoso, é o de Isaac Asimov, I Robot, o escritor russo que inventou o termo e definiu toda uma literatura de ficção dentro do gênero futurismo cibernético. Interessante é saber que Asimov concebeu seus romances antes mesmo do desenvolvimento dos computadores, justamente a partir dos anos 1950 (mas apenas como mainframes, não miniaturizados para serem integrados a robôs). Esse romance tem as famosas leis que todo robô deveria, teoricamente seguir: 1) nunca fazer mal a um ser humano; 2) sempre seguir as ordens de um ser humano, a não ser que uma ordem seja contrária à primeira regra; 3) um robô precisa proteger sua própria existência, desde que isso não conflite com a primeira e a segunda lei. 

O ano de 1950, no Brasil, foi o da fragorosa derrota do Brasil na final da Copa do Mundo, contra o Uruguai, país no qual vivi 40 anos depois, e onde ainda se falava, nos jornais e na TV, dos “heroes del 50”, vários ainda sobreviventes em 1991-1992, quando lá morei. Dessa primeira grande tragédia nacional eu não guardo nenhuma recordação obviamente, assim como tampouco do retorno de Getúlio Vargas ao poder, no ano seguinte. Mas tenho vagas lembranças do tremor que sucedeu ao seu suicídio, em 1954, pois foi o que mais abalou não apenas o meu pai, como outras pessoas que marcaram a minha infância. Do governo de JK, eu me lembro, especialmente, da fabulosa vitória na Copa do Mundo de 1958, e da efusão de alegria que se seguiu, com os gols do garoto Pelé. Também me lembro de ter acompanhado meu pai na cabine de votação quando das eleições de 1960, fervoroso apoiador que ele era do homem que “varreria” a corrupção: tínhamos um broche com a vassourinha, depois relegada ao esquecimento quando da tremenda decepção em agosto de 1961. Mas, esses são episódios que voltarão ao registro quando eu abordar os livros desses anos. Por enquanto fico nisto.

 

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Brasília, 26 de setembro de 2021.

 

 

Bibliomaníaco: uma vida através dos livros, 1949 - Paulo Roberto de Almeida

 Bibliomaníaco: uma vida através dos livros, 1949

  

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Diplomata, professor

(www.pralmeida.org; diplomatizzando.blogspot.com)

 

 

 1949: 

Eu nasci no final do ano de 1949, mais exatamente no dia da Bandeira, em 19 de novembro. Não daria, assim, para falar dos livros que foram publicados no decorrer do ano, pois que eles não me “alcançariam” sequer na maternidade. Ainda assim, fica difícil não falar de dois que apareceram nesse ano, na quase exata metade do século XX. Desde quando me conheço por gente, pelo menos depois que aprendi a ler, na tardia idade de 7 anos, comecei a prestar atenção nos livros, primeiro os infantis, depois os de adolescente, mais tarde os de adulto, já precocemente. Mas nada me impede de falar de livros que “acompanharam”, se ouso dizer, minha primeira infância, pois este é o sentido de registro “livresco” de minha vida, como pretendo fazer nestas notas, ano a ano.

O mais importante deles, 1984, de George Orwell, veio a público nesse ano, mas tinha sido terminado no ano anterior, 1948 (daí a inversão futurista dos dois dígitos finais), ano do nascimento de meu irmão Luiz Flávio, em agosto. O romance, vindo pouco depois do Animal Farm (A Revolução dos Bichos), foi logo identificado pela direita, especialmente pelos americanos engajados na chamada Guerra Fria contra a União Soviética, como sendo um manifesto anticomunista, mais exatamente uma condenação do totalitarismo brutal do regime stalinista na pátria do socialismo. Orwell não concebia que essa obra distópica reproduzisse os gulags – praticamente campos de escravidão, pura e simples – da União Soviética, pois o enredo se situa mais no plano de um totalitarismo tecnocrático, estilo Aldous Huxley, do que no ambiente sombrio dos campos de trabalho forçado, como ressaltado na produção de um dos primeiros dissidentes do universo stalinista, Arthur Koestler. Mas isso eu só vim a descobrir muito mais tarde, quando passei a ler a literatura socialista, e a anticomunista também, e um dos primeiros nessa vertente foi o de Alexander Soljenitsin: Um dia na vida de Ivan Denisovitch, no ínicio dos anos 1960, livro rapidamente traduzido com a ajuda da CIA e distribuído no resto do mundo, como tinha sido feito com o Animal Farm, do próprio Orwell nos anos 1950.

O outro, não exatamente um livro, apenas um ensaio, “Why Socialism?”, publicado no número inaugural da Monthly Review (maio 1949), uma revista de esquerda, era de ninguém menos do que Albert Einstein, no auge da sua glória. Também só vim a tomar conhecimento dessa obra, que achei um pouco ingênua, muito tempo depois, já na idade adulta, quando tinha realizado minha conversão completa, da crença inicial nas virtudes do socialismo, e aderido a uma visão liberal do mundo. Em todo caso, Einstein refletia as reações mais comuns às desigualdades inerentes ao capitalismo, suas motivações egoístas, falta de cooperação, concorrência acirrada e propensão a crises e ao desemprego. O grande físico nuclear era naturalmente inclinado a um sistema de planejamento que pudesse evitar esse lado menos brilhante dos sistemas capitalistas, mas também temia o lado burocrático e o cerceamento das liberdades, que sabia existir nos socialismos de tipo soviético. 

Outros livros que foram publicados no ano de meu nascimento, e que vim a ler muitos anos depois, foram o clássico de Victor Nunes Leal, Coronelismo, Enxada e Voto, sobre o chamado voto de cabresto do coronelismo do interior, e aquele que se converteu num dos meus preferidos, da primeira adolescência: C. W. Ceram: Deuses, túmulos e sábios: a história da arqueologia; essa obra me converteu em “arqueólogo amador”, pois foi por ele que eu comecei a decorar as dinastias do antigo Egito e a alimentar o desejo de aprofundar o conhecimento das escrituras dos povos do Oriente Médio. Em 1949, o historiador José Honório Rodrigues, publicava o seu Teoria da História do Brasil, que junto com os demais livros de historiografia brasileira, foi essencial no meu aperfeiçoamento na disciplina histórica, ao lado de minha formação em ciências sociais, ao longo da graduação e dos estudos especializados. 

Ao sair da maternidade poucos dias depois do nascimento, não imagino como devem ter sido as primeiras semanas e meses numa família muito pobre, praticamente sem livros ou outros materiais de leitura. As primeiras lembranças que tenho de minha primeira infância se referem ao quarto centenário da cidade de São Paulo, quando fui visitar o recém-inaugurado Parque Ibirapuera, levado pelas mãos do meu pai. Nessa altura, 1954, eu já devia estar frequentando o Parque Infantil, nas proximidades de minha casa, no modesto bairro do Itaim Bibi, ao sul da cidade, perto do rio Pinheiros. 

Relatei um pouco dessa fase inicial num pequeno texto que deve entrar ao início desta série que estou planejando para seguir, ano a ano, as publicações anuais, de livros que eu fui lendo gradualmente já na fase adulta. Chamo a atenção para estes dois primeiros, que apresentam alguma coincidência com partes de alguns parágrafos acima: 

3913. “De um século a outro: dos livros para o mundo (uma trajetória intelectual)”, Brasília, 14 maio 2021, 4 p. Introdução, ou prefácio, preliminar a livro que pretendo escrever gradualmente enfocando cada novo capítulo como se fosse um ano completo de aprendizado, experiências e leituras ao longo da vida; escrito em algum momento entre 2020 e 2021, divulgado no blog Diplomatizzando (link: https://diplomatizzando.blogspot.com/2021/05/uma-vida-atraves-dos-livros-1.html).

 

3914. “Uma Vida Através dos Livros: 1949”, Brasília, 15 maio 2021, 2 p. Primeiro capítulo do projeto de livro, focando, de maneira preliminar sobre o ano de meu nascimento. Divulgado no blog Diplomatizzando (link: https://diplomatizzando.blogspot.com/2021/05/uma-vida-atraves-dos-livros-1949-paulo.html).

 

Darei continuidade a esta série nos anos seguintes, sempre entremeando pequenos relatos de meu itinerário pessoal, com as edições anuais que marcaram minha trajetória intelectual, ainda que de modo bastante defasado no tempo.

 

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Brasília, 3897: 25 setembro 2021, 3 p.

Tit for Tat at the Human Rights Council: China Policy - Jamil Chade (The Geneva Observer)

Tit for Tat at the Human Rights Council

By Jamil Chade

The Geneva Observer Website, 24/09/2021 

http://www.thegenevaobserver.com

China is increasing its pressure on the Human Rights Council while trying to fend off the growing criticism it faces from the Western group about its human rights record in Xinjiang and elsewhere. Beijing’s main target is the U.S., following Washington’s increasingly assertive stance towards China after it entered in a new security alliance with Australia and the UK (AUKUS).

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The Chinese offensive is mostly conducted by pushing resolutions before the Council, the latest of which denounces colonialism. In a draft proposal seen by The G|O, the Chinese want the Council to take action on “the negative impact of legacies of colonialism on the enjoyment of human rights.”

The sweeping move is interpreted by Western delegations as an effort by China to convince African nations that Beijing is on their side on the issue. It also takes an indirect swipe at U.S. behaviour in Afganistan. (China just called for a lifting of sanctions on Afghanisan, to allow the Taliban access to billions of dollars in frozen assets which the West meant to use as leverage on the new regime.)

However, the initiative was also seen as part of a response to a growing understanding amongst Western allies that China’s human rights record—including the situation with Muslim minorities—needs to be dealt with by the Council.

U.S. human rights record on trial

China, on its side, has stepped up its response, with statements questioning the U.S. and Europe. During the special session on Afghanistan, in August, Chinese Ambassador Chen Xu supported the idea that “the US, UK, Australia, and other countries must be held accountable for the violation of human rights committed by their military in Afghanistan, and the evolution of this current session should cover this issue. […] Under the banner of democracy and human rights, the U.S. and other countries carry out military interventions in other sovereign states and impose their own model on countries with vastly different histories and culture,” Chen said.

On September 14th, at the Human Rights Council, China once again made the US the center of its opening intervention: “We are deeply concerned about chronic human rights issues in the United States,” it claimed, citing “disregarding the right to life, systemic racism, racial discrimination, genocide against native Indians, human trafficking and forced labor.”

Three days later, again at the Council in Geneva, Beijing made it clear it had placed the U.S. as a target of its criticism—first, by delivering a statement accusing the U.S. of having “practiced history abhorrent slavery and slave trade (sic),” and saying it “remains plagued with human trafficking and forced labor to this date.” It also claims that “Under the dominance of White Supremacy, discrimination against migrants, women, children and racial minorities prevails in the U.S.”


China blasts US military interventions


On the 21st of September, in an interview with state agencies, the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, Zhao Lijian, claimed the U.S. has committed “grave human rights crimes overseas.”

“During its over 240 years of history, there were only 16 years when the U.S. was not at war. From the end of WWII to 2001, the U.S. has initiated 201 of the 248 armed conflicts in 153 places, accounting for over 80%,” he claims. “It is preposterous that the U.S. claims to be ‘protecting human rights’ at every turn. Is it protecting human rights when staging wars of invasion?”

The next day, in Geneva, the Chinese mission took the floor to “urge the countries concerned to immediately stop illegal military intervention,” and for the UN and individual countries to “carry out comprehensive and impartial investigation into cases of unlawful killing and torture of civilians and other gross human rights violations committed by their military personnel, and hold perpetrators accountable.”

Changing the focus of the debate

Another way to counterpressure the West is to table resolutions that change the focus of the debate, and put the focus on Western powers—hence its recent proposal.

In the draft document, Beijing reaffirms that, “the existence of colonialism in any form or manifestation is incompatible with the Charter of the United Nations, the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” It also “regrets” that measures to eliminate colonialism by 2010—as called for in the General Assembly resolution 55/146 of 8 December 2000—have not been successful.

In fact, the UN has established that the period 2021-2030 is the Fourth International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism. However, Western sources tell The G|O that the move by China goes beyond that single issue. China, they say, wishes that “legacies of colonialism, in all their manifestations, inter alia, economic exploitation, inequality within and among states, systemic racism, violations of indigenous peoples’ rights, contemporary forms of slavery, damage to cultural heritage” be recognized as having a “negative impact on the effective enjoyment of all human rights.”

The proposed resolution also invites United Nations human rights mechanisms and procedures “to pay attention to the negative impact of legacies of colonialism on the enjoyment of human rights,” and calls on the “United Nations bodies, agencies, and other relevant stakeholders to take concrete steps to address [those negative impacts].”

China also requests the UN convene a panel discussion on the question, with the aim to “identify challenges in addressing the negative impact of legacies of colonialism on human rights, and discuss ways forward.”


According to diplomatic sources, Beijing also wants the issue kept on the agenda of the Council in order to maintain political constraint on those governments that may be challenging China on human rights issues. Beijing is using procedure as a mechanism to press its case: it has requested that Office of High Commissioner prepare and submit a summary report on the panel discussion to the Council at its 54th session and to provide “all necessary resources for the services and facilities.”

The resolution will be voted on in the second week of October.

“I Have Eliminated 'the West’ from My Vocabulary” - Christoph Heusgen, Merkel's Foreign Policy Advisor (Der Spiegel)

 French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Merkel and foreign policy adviser Christoph Heusgen in 2017 during a flight from Triest to Paris.

Foto: Energistyrelsen / Bundesregierung / Guido Bergmann / action press

Interview with Merkel’s Former Foreign Policy Adviser “I Have Eliminated 'the West’ from My Vocabulary”

Christoph Heusgen served for 12 years as Angela Merkel’s top foreign policy adviser. In an interview, he speaks about the chancellor’s successes, mistakes, the amateurish nature of Donald Trump’s government and the right approach to an ascendant China.

Interview Conducted by Christiane Hoffmann und Christoph Schult

Der Spiegel, 23.09.2021, 12.45 Uhr

https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/interview-with-merkel-s-former-foreign-policy-adviser-i-have-eliminated-the-west-from-my-vocabulary-a-e3ab1e9d-998f-4d56-9b17-ab950cef5334?sara_ecid=nl_upd_1jtzCCtmxpVo9GAZr2b4X8GquyeAc9&nlid=bfjpqhxz

About Christoph Heusgen

Foto: Luiz Rampelotto / dpa

Christoph Heusgen, 66, served as foreign policy adviser to German Chancellor Angela Merkel from 2005 to 2017. After studying economics in St. Gallen and at the Sorbonne, he joined the foreign service in 1980. From 1999 to 2006, he headed the staff of EU High Representative for Foreign Policy Javier Solana in Brussels. After leaving the Chancellery, he represented Germany as its permanent representative to the United Nations in New York until summer 2021. Heusgen comes from the city of Neuss, Germany, and is a member of the center-right Christian Democratic Union party.

DER SPIEGEL: Mr. Heusgen, you served as a foreign policy adviser to Angela Merkel from the time she took office in 2005 until 2017. Merkel is considered a major proponent of realpolitik, especially when it comes to foreign policy. What explanation can you offer regarding the degree to which Berlin was taken by surprise by the reality on the ground in Afghanistan?

Heusgen: It wasn’t just in German foreign policy circles – everyone was surprised by the dynamics that developed in Afghanistan.

DER SPIEGEL: Shouldn’t we have been able to predict that the Taliban was going to seize power in the country again?

Heusgen: Hindsight is always 20/20. As a matter of principle, it was right for us to be engaged in Afghanistan, both militarily and in terms of development policy. But we made the mistake of not forcing good governance on Afghan leaders. We should have attached much stricter conditions to our aid. Having seen how Afghan politicians thought first and foremost about themselves and their clans, it is not surprising in retrospect that this government had no standing with the population or with the security forces. When things got serious, everyone ran for the hills. This could have been foreseen with a little common sense.

DER SPIEGEL: Do you think the West could have succeeded in Afghanistan if things had been done differently?

Heusgen: Personally, I think we should have stayed longer in Afghanistan, just as the Americans did for decades in Japan, South Korea and Germany. The key difference was the that the governments there helped in building democracy and institutions, and they also had the backing of the people.

DER SPIEGEL: What bothered you more: the negotiations with the Taliban under former U.S. President Donald Trump or the unconditional withdrawal under Joe Biden?

Heusgen: Excuse me, but the Trump administration was an amateurish, diplomatic mess. It was a grave mistake to forge an agreement with the Taliban and sideline an Afghan government that had been receiving support for years. Biden’s decision was logical and consistent. He knows how incredibly expensive the deployment is and how unpopular it is in the U.S. But I still wish he would have decided differently.

DER SPIEGEL: What does the defeat in Afghanistan mean for current and future deployments? How, for example, can we prevent a similar situation from arising in Mali, where the German armed forces are also deployed?

Heusgen: The lesson is that we need to set clearer conditions. We cannot have a transitional president who refuses to move forward with the transition to civilian rule. We need to be clear: Either you implement good governance reforms, or we will end our support. If the government doesn’t look after the welfare of its people, the terrorists will continue to gain ground. Foreign troops can’t do anything to change that.

DER SPIEGEL: But you also then have to carry through with it.

Heusgen: Yes, then you have to get out.

"When the Chinese wake up in the morning, the first things they are thinking about is not how they can strengthen the international legal order."

DER SPIEGEL: Was Afghanistan a defeat for the West?

Heusgen: I have actually eliminated the term "the West" from my vocabulary.

DER SPIEGEL: Why?

Heusgen: From my point of view, it is no longer about a dispute between the West and the East today, but between states that adhere to a rules-based international order, to the United Nations Charter, to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and those that do not. These principles are not Western, but universal. The West has become a negative fighting word that the Russians and Chinese use against us, along the lines of: The West is yesterday’s news.

DER SPIEGEL: What’s your assessment of foreign policy in the Merkel era?

Heusgen: Over the past four years in New York (where Heusgen was Germany’s ambassador to the United Nations), I have seen that Germany has an excellent reputation, thanks in part to its chancellor. When I then return to Germany, I can only shake my head at my nagging compatriots, who complain about so many things here. People are always envious of us in New York, as an example of a country that works well and of a chancellor with foresight who, for 16 years, has ensured reliability, stability and balanced crisis management – in the euro and financial crises, the Ukraine crisis and the refugee crisis. When it comes to the refugee crisis, especially, perceptions in Germany and abroad diverge widely. My American colleague Susan Rice told me at the time that the refugee policy had permanently changed her view of Germany. Opening the border to Syrian refugees in 2015 was a great thing for our country’s reputation.

DER SPIEGEL: Crisis management is indeed considered to be Merkel’s legacy. But shouldn't the aim of successful foreign policy be to avoid crises, to pursue forward-looking policies? The refugee crisis, in particular, could have been avoided if the migrants in Syria’s neighboring countries had been dealt with at an early stage.

Heusgen: It is true that more could have been done. We have learned from that. Today, Germany is the second-largest financial contributor to the United Nations. We provide massive support to the World Food Program and UNICEF.

DER SPIEGEL: Could we not have predicted the Ukraine crisis? It was becoming clear, after all, that Russia was not going to accept the country’s orientation toward the West. Did Germany fail to prevent Ukraine from getting pushed into this conflict?

Heusgen: No, the chancellor had that in mind. We did not want to promote that conflict. That is why, against strong opposition from the United States, she prevented Ukraine from being granted the prospect of joining NATO; nor did the Association Agreement with the European Union open up any prospect of membership. She always kept in mind what was tolerable for Russia. But then, overnight, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych said: No, I'm not going to do this thing with the EU.

Chancellor Merkel, adviser Heusgen: "Germany has to do more."

DER SPIEGEL: Because Russia had placed massive pressure on him.

Heusgen: But we could not have known that Russia was planning an invasion. U.S. Senator John McCain, however, felt it could have been foreseen. From the moment when President Obama stood by and watched as Assad cross his red line in Syria in 2013 and deployed poison gas against the civilian population. McCain felt Putin saw this as a sign of weakness and believed that the Americans would not intervene in Ukraine either. But we still couldn’t tell the Ukrainians: Sorry, because of your geographical position, there can be no Association Agreement.

DER SPIEGEL: In your opinion, is Germany having a particularly hard time coming up with a forward-looking, strategic foreign policy?

Heusgen: I believe that Germany is still in the process of taking the step from being a divided nation to a reunified country that also parlays its economic strength into political strength. We have to get away from always looking first at what others want and think. Leadership is expected from Germany. This, of course, includes crisis prevention. We do that, too – in the Balkans or in Libya, for example. When it came to military intervention in Libya in 2011, Germany had the foresight to recognize that there was no upside, and it abstained at the UN Security Council.

DER SPIEGEL: The decision was not considered far-sighted, but rather typical of the Germans' reticence when it comes to military missions.

Heusgen: In retrospect, the decision has given us great credibility in Libya and in the region; it provides the foundation for our mediation in the country. I see this as part of a forward-looking policy to try to keep the EU’s backyard stable. This also includes our engagement in Africa, which has been a central focus of the chancellor in recent years.

DER SPIEGEL: Is Germany properly positioned for a leadership role in foreign policy?

Heusgen: No one else seems interested. The U.S. is pulling back, and you can see it everywhere. China has developed in a very nationalistic manner. When the Chinese wake up in the morning, the first thing they are thinking about is not how to strengthen the international legal order. So, Germany has to do more.

"If the chancellor then makes a decision, you have to accept it."

DER SPIEGEL: The election platforms of the center-left Christian Democrats and the business-friendly Free Democrats call for Germany to establish a National Security council along the lines of the one in the U.S. The Greens have similar ambitions. Is this a good idea?

Heusgen: A National Security Council would be good for a unified foreign policy. So that, for example, the Chancellery and the Foreign Ministry aren’t working at cross purposes. But that is difficult in a country that has coalition governments. The Chancellery, where central decisions are made, must coordinate closely with the ministries in order to implement them.

DER SPIEGEL: Are there issues where you say today: I should have been more persistent, even with the chancellor. It is said that you have always had a more critical stance about, for example, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline under the Baltic Sea.

Heusgen: Let me answer that on principle. My role in the Chancellery was that of foreign policy adviser. However, decisions very often also have economic or domestic policy dimensions that the chancellor must take into account. If the chancellor then makes a decision, you have to accept it. She’s the politician, I am the civil servant. If you can’t deal with that, then you should find another job or go into politics yourself.

DER SPIEGEL: You were known for making some striking statements during your time on the UN Security Council. Did it feel good to drop the diplomatic restraint at times?

Heusgen: Those are two completely different roles. As adviser to the chancellor, it isn’t your job to be in the public eye, but when you sit on the Security Council, you speak for Germany. In a situation in which Russia, China and Trump’s America had trampled on the international order, I saw it as my duty to stand up for international law from morning until night – especially in light of Germany’s history. I have indeed often taken a very clear stand on this, and many other countries have thanked me for it. Even my Russian counterpart says that things are no longer as interesting without me there.

"The Trump administration was an amateurish, diplomatic mess."

Foto: CHRISTIAN HARTMANN / AFP

DER SPIEGEL: You once asked China and Russia how their presidents could still look in the mirror after they cut off 500,000 children in Syria from humanitarian aid. Was that statement coordinated with Berlin?

Heusgen: I think about formulations like that while I am jogging. If something is crying out to the heavens, you need to consider how to express it in a way that it will be heard. On important issues, you have to seek polarization.

DER SPIEGEL: The chancellor has been accused of being too naive in her dealings with China.

Heusgen: The chancellor had China's growing strength on her radar from the very beginning. She knew early on that the country would be a world power. That’s why she has traveled to China every year since 2006 and started government consultations. This intensive attention paid to China was far-sighted and correct.

DER SPIEGEL: Many thought she was too optimistic about the potential for change created by trade.

Heusgen: I don't agree. I also think the EU's investment agreement with China, which Merkel pushed forward, is right. We must meet China at eye level. The chancellor has never been naive. She has raised human rights concerns with Chinese leaders, she has been critical of the situation of the Uighurs and Tibetans, and she has helped get dissidents out of the country. She has constantly addressed the difficult points, but in a way that kept the discussion going. Of course, we shouldn’t have any illusions. China has become a totalitarian state under Xi Jinping. This will not change in the foreseeable future. We have to remain in dialogue with China and also do business with the country, but in doing so, we must clearly defend our principles and prevent the world from being run according to Chinese rules in the future.

Heusgen on the eyebrow-raising statements he made as Germany's ambassador to the UN: "I think about formulations like that while I am jogging."

Foto: Andreas Chudowski

DER SPIEGEL: The Chinese UN ambassador said goodbye to you by saying that he was glad to be rid of you. What was your experience with the Chinese at the UN?

Heusgen: My experience in New York was that you can work with the Chinese if you do it from a position of strength. It is very important that we do not turn a blind eye, because that won’t get us anywhere. The Chinese will interpret it as weakness. I was given such a "warm” farewell by the Chinese UN ambassador because I was a source of discomfort and clearly addressed the shortcomings: the military threats in the South China Sea, the suppression of democracy in Hong Kong and the treatment of the Uighurs. And we must act together with other countries. We should not breathe a sigh of relief when Beijing goes after other countries like Canada or Australia. We have to stand together – that impresses the Chinese.

DER SPIEGEL: Can you give an example of where that has worked?

Heusgen: I experienced that last year, when the annual declaration of the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations was discussed, in which the situation of the Uighurs in Xinyang was condemned. In previous years, Britain and the U.S. were in charge, but last year we Germans took over. Instead of 23, 39 countries joined the declaration. That was an earthquake from the perspective of the Chinese. According to reports, a department head in Beijing had to resign as a result.

DER SPIEGEL: Is that also the way to confront Putin?

Heusgen: In contrast to Russia, China actually does care about its reputation abroad. The Russians don’t care if a resolution is passed against them in the General Assembly by a vote of 120 to five. The Chinese do care – they don't want to lose, and they will try to prevent losing by all means. They blackmail countries. When it comes to an issue that China cares deeply about, you sometimes see African ambassadors reading from Chinese talking points. It’s pretty brutal.

DER SPIEGEL: On the one hand, you are pleading for toughness, but on the other, you are sticking firmly to dialogue. Can that work in the long run?

Heusgen: Name an alternative.

DER SPIEGEL: The U.S. no longer sees China as a partner and competitor, but exclusively as a systemic rival.

Heusgen: The Americans call this "decoupling," but the policy doesn’t work. America’s trade with China may stagnate, but it will not decrease significantly. The economies are far too intertwined for that, and the economic losses would be too high. Furthermore, the Americans are not decoupling entirely. They still want to cooperate with China on climate policy.

DER SPIEGEL: Before Merkel brought you into the Chancellery, you served as chief of staff to Javier Solana, the EU’s first high representative for common foreign and security policy. Are you disappointed by how little has happened in EU foreign policy over the past 20 years?

Heusgen: Those were the golden days of European foreign policy. Solana had previously served as NATO secretary general and could speak on equal footing with EU heads of state and government. No such heavyweight has been appointed to the post of high representative since. Most countries are not prepared to hand more competencies over to Brussels. A first step would be if a former head of state or government were finally appointed to this office.

DER SPIEGEL: What about Angela Merkel?

Heusgen: I don't think she will seek a task like that after the end of her term as chancellor.

DER SPIEGEL: You are a member of the Christian Democratic Union. What distinguishes a Christian Democratic foreign policy from that of the business-friendly Free Democrats, the environmentalist Greens or the center-left Social Democrats?

Heusgen: As a Catholic and a Christian Democrat, the focus for me is on people. Human rights have always very much driven my foreign policy thinking and actions. There is definitely overlap with other parties.

DER SPIEGEL: Is it your hope that Armin Laschet will become chancellor?

Heusgen: Yes.

DER SPIEGEL: What's next for you personally? Is it true that you are likely to succeed Wolfgang Ischinger as chair of the Munich Security Conference?

Heusgen: As chairman of the circle of benefactors of the Munich Security Conference, I will now play an even greater role there and work together with my long-time colleague Wolfgang Ischinger. Apart from that, I have taken on a teaching position at my old university in Sankt Gallen, and I am very pleased about that.

DER SPIEGEL: Mr. Heusgen, we thank you for this interview.

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Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini. Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire; book review by Jennifer Wells

Um aspecto do direito humanitário internacional e do direito da guerra. 

H-Diplo Review Essay 371- "Human Shields"

by George Fujii

H-Diplo Review Essay 371

24 September 2021

Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini.  Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire.  

Oakland: University of California Press, 2020.  ISBN:  9780520301849 (hardcover, $29.95).

https://hdiplo.org/to/E371

Editor: Diane Labrosse | Commissioning Editor: Andrew Szarejko | Production 

Editor: George Fujii

Review by Jennifer Wells, George Washington University

In March 2011, as the Arab Spring rippled across North Africa and vicious conflict erupted in Libya between rebel forces and the country’s longtime leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the United Nations Security Council implemented a no-fly zone over the country, marking a dramatic escalation in the international community’s involvement.  Just days earlier, Gaddafi had promised an assault on any foreign troops should a no-fly zone be enacted.  Caught up in the midst of this wrangling were four New York Timesjournalists who had been captured by Gaddafi’s forces while covering the conflict and, at the time that the UN resolution was passed, found themselves in a well-appointed government jail in Tripoli.  The group later wrote that “after the no-fly zone was imposed and we heard volleys of antiaircraft fire, we thought that a desperate government could make us human shields.”^[1]

I would have forgotten about this episode and the journalists’ (well-founded) fears had it not been for Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini’s outstanding and thought-provoking book, Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire.  Theirs is a work laden with insights and offerings, the most salient of which force the reader to consider the innumerable ways in which a person can become a human shield, and, disturbingly, to confront the realization that not all shields – and thus not all humans – are created equal.  In untangling the complexity of shielding, the authors have achieved that most elusive of feats, producing a book that is at once pathbreaking for the specialist and compulsively readable for the public. 

The introduction frames the idea of the human shield fluidly and comprehensively.  From the outset, the authors make clear that there are two types of human shields: involuntary (those coerced to serve as a buffer) and voluntary (those who put themselves between aggressors and an intended target).  But, it soon becomes evident that political, social, cultural, economic, and geographic stakes attach different values to the “human” in human shields.  As the authors note, “it is the value ascribed to the lives of some people that explains why their vulnerability can become a weapon of deterrence, while the lives of others are perceived to be expendable” (5).  The death of Rachel Corrie, an American college student who placed herself between an Israeli bulldozer and the home of a Palestinian pharmacist in Gaza, shocked and appalled much of the world because she was a young, affluent, white Western woman volunteering with a humanitarian organization (1, 114-115).  Similar headlines and outrage would likely not have appeared if the victim had been a Palestinian.  The inherent disparity that characterizes human lives and determines who is an “effective” shield is accounted for in part by the laws of war, which reinforce how race, religion, gender, and class, amongst other conditions, have shaped contemporary and historical understandings of “the human” and, consequently, the ethics of violence (6).  This dynamic, between violence and power relationships, most animates the authors and becomes the book’s lodestar.  “Human shields are the book’s main protagonists,” Gordon and Perugini write, “and the production of humane violence is the plot” (12). 

The book proceeds chronologically as the authors make their case.  The first of its twenty-two snappy chapters addresses the American Civil War and the creation of the 1863 Lieber Code while the last offers a meditation on civil disobedience in contemporary protest movements, including Standing Rock and Black Lives Matter.  Its temporal breadth is matched only by its geographic and thematic scope.  The book moves from continent to continent, and conflict to conflict, detailing how human shielding is becoming more sophisticated and widespread while the laws of war and international humanitarian law (IHL) struggle to adapt to man’s seemingly endless ability to out-brutalize himself.  Human Shields can roughly be divided into three segments.  Chapters 1-9 are geographically and temporally restricted, addressing discrete conflicts from the mid-nineteenth century through the Vietnam War.  Chapters 10-17 revolve around different themes – environment; resistance; humanitarian crimes; manuals; scale; hospitals; proximity; info-war – that are sometimes bounded to a specific time or place but whose lessons can be applied to manifold conflicts, past, present, and future.  The final five chapters, which are also largely thematic, move into decidedly modern realms and tackle thorny topics such as propaganda, social media, and post-human shielding.  Sources consulted include scholarly literature in political science, international relations, law, and history; reports compiled by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the United Nations, and various governments; and countless investigative news articles, interviews, and legal records.  Photographs, infographics, paintings, drawings, Tweets, and even stills from To Kill a Mockingbird and videogames regularly appear, providing compelling visual imagery to accompany the text.  

The shielding narrative is twinned with the evolution of the laws of war and IHL from early modernity to the present.  Despite the fact that Gordon and Perugini routinely argue that human shielding has “blurred” the laws of war, the book does not include a substantive discussion on the subject.  On the one hand, avoiding a digression into the finer points and competing visions of the laws of war and IHL expedites the tantalizing read and propels the narrative forward; on the other, beginning in the seventeenth century, legal theorists Hugo Grotius and Emer de Vattel (both of whom are mentioned in chapter 2) addressed the complexities of man “presenting his Body as a Shield”^[2] and the ethics of subjecting noncombatants to “terror to a certain degree” when circumstances demanded it.^[3]Analyzing the work of Grotius, de Vattel, and other thinkers on their own terms rather than relying so heavily on secondary literature would only have enhanced the compelling arguments advanced throughout the book. It may also have elucidated other fascinating points that are raised but only cursorily addressed.  For instance, a key argument in both chapter 3 (on the Boer War) and chapter 6 (on the Italo-Ethiopian War) is that colonialism and the enemy’s race determined “which methods of warfare were perceived to be legitimate and humane” (37).  Because the Boers were white, humanitarians balked at “their use as human shields” while the fledgling international community, which regarded Ethiopians as “‘white negroes,’ where whiteness denoted their sovereignty and acceptance into the League of Nations, while negro gestured to the population’s ‘uncivilized’ nature,” brokered less resistance to the aerial bombings of medical units (41, 61).  These issues were hardly novel; jurists had struggled since the Middle Ages to differentiate between ‘civilized’ and ‘uncivilized,’ Christian and non-Christian, white and non-white, particularly in determining rights afforded to noncombatants.^[4] By the early twentieth century, a robust framework that rested on edifices constructed by Grotius, de Vattel, and Samuel von Pufendorf, amongst others, did consider race and religion in the application of both humanitarian law and the laws of war. Examining the nuances within this legal scaffolding would sharpen Gordon and Perugini’s significant contributions on how the laws of war have evolved to address shielding, complementing work by Anne Orford, Marco Sassòli, and Michael Schmitt.^[5]

Perhaps befitting of its title, Human Shields is at its best – which is often – in humanizing conflict.  By focusing on countless individual stories and seemingly minute details, Gordon and Perugini draw the reader into a deeply personal world, driving home the importance of the ethics of violence and the cost of war.  In the early twentieth century, progressive Western feminists, such as Millicent Fawcett and Emily Hobhouse, condemned man’s inhumanity to man, critiquing concentration camps established for Boer and African civilians, and demanding that Boer prisoners of war travel first class when serving as human shields on British trains (39-41).  Agnes Maude Roydon drew on Mahatma Gandhi’s theory of satyagraha in the 1930s in an effort to send activists voluntarily into the Second Sino-Japanese War and “create a ‘living wall’ against war itself” (56).  Roydon’s tactics radically altered how people thought about shielding.  Previously, it was a coercive tactic; from that point on it emerged as a voluntary choice that exposed flaws within the law of armed conflict. 

The tension between voluntary and involuntary shields unearthed by Roydon’s actions dominates the remainder of the book.  Following the Second World War, a wave of codifications, including the UN Charter, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, and 1949 Geneva Conventions, all struggled to address civilian protections during war (78).  Ultimately, the drafters of the Fourth Geneva Convention settled on protections for “passive civilians,” and agreed that warring parties could not transfer civilians into theaters of conflict to use as shields (81-83).  On voluntary shields, however, there was silence.  Civilians already stranded in war zones were similarly excluded from shielding safeguards, the argument being that military necessity might take precedence over the sanctity of individual human life (84-85).  These decisions, crafted by Western policymakers in the late 1940s, have had dire repercussions for human shielding in a host of countries from the Global South in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, revealing yet again the friction between an Atlantic-centric international order and the application of its laws in the wider world.  Legal hair-splitting in military manuals, CIA reports, NATO investigations, and UN tribunals only further cloud an already hazy picture as to permissible shielding (111, 122-124, 129-132, 142-143). 

Gordon and Perugini effectively draw out the complications that arise because of the lack of legal settlement in a series of provocative chapters in the middle of the book.  Framing the dropping of Agent Orange as a means to obliterate the vegetative shield afforded to the Viet Cong by the dense Southeast Asian jungle provides an excellent segue to environmental shielding more generally (93-95).  Here, the authors describe activists who, influenced by Roydon’s “living wall” and Gandhi’s satyagraha, hugged trees in India to prevent deforestation, lashed themselves to boats in Mururoa to protest nuclear testing, and sailed rubber Zodiacs between harpooners and whales (100-103).  The law of the sea and sovereignty are fleetingly discussed but neither one is evaluated in great detail, which would have both strengthened the overall argument and clarified the distinctions between the law of the sea and the law of armed conflict that render voluntary shielding “easier” (and legal) in international waters (106).  Back on land, activists from around the globe flocked to London in 2002 to ride buses commandeered by a US army veteran, Kenneth O’Keefe, to Baghdad to protest the impending American-led invasion of Iraq (110).  Policymakers were flummoxed by these actions, leading General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under George W. Bush, to proclaim “that all forms of shielding of military targets are illegal, even when civilians ‘volunteer for this purpose’” (111).  Collectively, these chapters illustrate human ingenuity in voluntary shielding and human uncertainty in how to effectively police it.  Further elucidation on these subjects would make for compelling scholarship. 

Even if, as Human Shields reveals, there is no satisfactory legal resolution, one thing becomes exceedingly clear: civilians, particularly nonwhite civilians, almost always bear the brunt of shielding and the law’s lackluster response to it.  This realization is born out chapter after chapter.  The Tamil Tigers and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) both effectively converted humanitarian zones and urban landscapes into battlegrounds, the former by constructing bunkers and fortifications in Sri Lanka, the latter through a maze of tunnels connecting apartment blocks and houses in Mosul and Raqqa.  The net effect was the same: “civilians became shields due to the space they occupied and its proximity to the fighting” (144).  Despite admonitions from Pope Francis and Amnesty International, which condemned ISIS for “ruthlessly and unlawfully exploiting civilian immunity from attack in an attempt to shield its own forces,” (160) there was no swift action from the international community in either the Levant or, years earlier, Sri Lanka.  Once fighting commenced, moreover, the proximity of noncombatants to the belligerents rendered them “potential weapons, thereby stripping them of some of the protections international humanitarian law bestows on civilians” (160).  Similar scenarios have played out, repeatedly, in Gaza, where, in July 2014, social media accelerated the spread of propaganda produced by the Israel Defense Forces.  Colorful infographics justified the bombing of Palestinian houses and shelters by invoking the “dual-use” doctrine to argue that “Some bomb shelters shelter people.  Some shelter bombs” (173-174).  (At the time of this writing in May 2021, Israeli authorities have once again besieged Gaza and destroyed a tower containing the Associated Press and Al-Jazeera offices, claiming that the building also housed Hamas militants). 

Some of the most arresting images to emerge from recent conflicts show lifeless children in the arms of their parents following blasts on a Gaza beach or aerial bombardments of refugee camps conducted under the pretext that militants occupied these places.  When the world sees these pictures, it reaffirms Gordon and Perugini’s point “that the concept of shielding has congealed to denote ‘mostly women and children’ – and mostly among populations that are nonwhite” (185).  Shielding, the authors astutely note, has little to do with these women and children, but rather is “more about the effort to depict men of dark skin color as inhumane,” the effects of which have bled into vicious debates over migration in Europe and the United States in recent years (187, 189).  These chilling observations bring Human Shields full circle, as Gordon and Perugini argue that shielding in the twenty-first century appears “almost exclusively in conflict zones taking place in decolonized parts of the world” and draw connections back to the earliest chapters (168).  Once again, accidents of birth – from gender to race to creed to country – prove determinative in sealing an individual shield’s fate.  And once again, the international legal order struggles to effectively respond. 

The critiques that can be made about Human Shields are extraordinarily few and exceedingly minor.  The sheer amount of material is the book’s greatest strength but it is also overwhelming to digest in one reading.  Gordon and Perugini also rightly point out that shielding has become more common as conflict moves into urban theaters, thereby rendering combatants and civilians virtually indistinguishable, but they do not necessarily offer any prescription to remedy or rectify this ever-expanding problem.  It would be worthwhile to hear how international law might develop to address human shielding in the twenty-first century.  How, too, do the authors envisage the human shield evolving?  Gordon and Perugini presciently acknowledge in their closing line “that Gaza becomes a terrifying prophecy, exposing how the denial of civilian protections in war zones is informing attacks on citizens participating in protests” but one wonders what cyber dimensions to shielding would look like beyond videogames and drone technology (217)?  Could there be a situation in which a shield is purposefully infected with an easily transmissible virus to induce a pandemic?  How does such an action complicate the “ethics of violence” and attendant international responses?  These questions, scenarios, and debates are the stuff of future books, articles, policy proposals, and, hopefully, changes in international humanitarian law to address a proliferating phenomenon. 

Here, I return to my recollection of the kidnapped New York Times journalists who feared becoming human shields in Libya a decade ago.  Excellent scholarship does not just make needed interventions for its intended audience.  Rather, it forces the reader to think beyond the immediacy of the page, to draw connections to current events, to reevaluate the past with newfound clarity, and to humanize inherently complicated situations.  Human Shields achieves these objectives on every level.  In the process, the book makes perhaps its greatest contribution, one that has little to do with the laws of war or the ethics of violence: it exposes, at times hauntingly, the frailty of the human condition and the precarity of life.

 

Jennifer Wells is Assistant Professor of History and International Affairs at George Washington University.  She has published widely on international law and history in Past & Present, Genocide Studies and Prevention, various law reviews, and for the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial & Museum.  Wells’s current research projects focus on war crimes, humanitarian law, refugees, and how non-state actors, rogue states, and ungoverned territories are financed through illicit international networks.  Her first book, Prelude to Empire: State Building in the Early Modern British World forced a fundamental reassessment of European empire by evaluating the shared links between early modern state formation and colonial expansion.

Notes

[1] Anthony Shadid, Lynsey Addario, Stephen Farrell, and Tyler Hicks, “4 Times Journalists Held Captive in Libya Faced Days of Brutality,” New York Times, 22 March 2011, https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/world/africa/23times.html. 

[2] Hugo Grotius, On the Law of War and Peace (1625): Book I, Chapter II, Section 1.

[3] Emer de Vattel, The Law of Nations, Or, Principles of the Law of Nature, Applied to the Conduct and Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns, with Three Early Essays on the Origin and Nature of Natural Law and on Luxury (1757): Book III, Chapter XV, Section 228.

[4] See, for example, Theodor Meron, War Crimes Law Comes of Age: Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).

[5] See, for example, Anne Orford, Reading Humanitarian Intervention: Human Rights and the Use of Force in International Law(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Marco Sassòli, “Taking Armed Groups Seriously: Ways to Improve their Compliance with International Humanitarian Law,” Journal of International Humanitarian Legal Studies 1:1 (January 2010): 5-51, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/187815210X12766020139767; Michael Schmitt, “Human Shields in International Humanitarian Law,” Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 47:2 (January 2009): 292-338, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004219120; Michael Schmitt, “Targeting and International Humanitarian Law in Afghanistan,” International Law Studies 85:1 (2009): 307-339.