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| Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals
ISBN: 9781400851713
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / Princeton University Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: International criminal courts; War crimes trials; Law and politics;
One of the major accomplishments of this impressive scholarly work is to deflate the myth that attempts to stage war crime trials began at the end of WWII. As Bass, a former reporter who now teaches politics and international affairs at Princeton, explains, the Nuremberg trials represent just part of a debate about the legality and effectiveness of endeavors to hold such tribunals, which began at the end of WWI and continues today. Bass judiciously takes a journey through the efforts to hold such trialsÄfrom Britain's attempt to try Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1919 to NATO's attempts to try those responsible for atrocities in the Balkans. Despite Bass's obvious support for the trials and what he calls "legalism"Äliberal nations extending domestic laws to the international sphereÄhe admits that the Nuremberg trials were the only successful venture to try in a court of law those accused of wartime atrocities. And even he says that what took place at Nuremberg, while "extraordinary," was not perfect, just "far better than anything else that has been done at the end of a major war." Even there, he allows, Britain and the United States were motivated more by a desire for retribution for what was done to their soldiers during the war than by a desire for justice regarding the Holocaust and other atrocities against civilians. The same "selfishness," Bass contends, continues to condemn more recent attempts to bring wartime scofflaws to justice. Balanced and thorough, this book ends on a note of mixed optimism with regard to the future of war crimes tribunals. Do they work? Bass asks. "The only serious answer," he continues, "is: compared to what?" (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Gary Jonathan Bass is Assistant Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. He worked as a Washington reporter and West Coast correspondent for The Economist , for which he wrote extensively on the former Yugoslavia war crimes tribunal. Bass has also written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic , and other publications. |
