War: A Crime Against
Humanity
Roberto Vivo
Editorial Hojas Sel Sur
S.A.
Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2014
I was sent this book by
an agent of the publisher after a brief email exchange in late summer
last year. Because I was without a real fixed address until November,
I arranged for it to arrive at my friends' home in Kitchener before I
arrived in mid-October. Shamefully, I have since neglected to review this book until now.
I was sent this book
because I had previously reviewed God's Hotel, a book I was sent by an agent of that publisher because of
previous book clubs; somehow, somebody has actually been reading
this blog. Weird. In subsequent emails, I assured the person who had
sent me War: A Crime Against Humanity
that my review would be posted here "within a few weeks";
this was back in November. I am sorry about my tardiness.
The
main reason my review is so late is the disappointment I felt reading
this book; this is not going to be a positive review.
When
I first received the initial email, describing the book and asking if
I would like to read it (for free!), I was already of the opinion
that war itself could be described as a crime against humanity, in
addition to the various war crimes committed during wars and other
conflicts that already count as crimes against our entire species. I
was expecting - and hopeful regarding - a book that constituted a
full-length argument supporting this thesis. The various bits of
you-should-read-this-book - the back jacket, on-line brief reviews,
etc. - contributed to this feeling that this book would provide a
foundation for future arguments condemning wars, warfaring, and the
callous disregard for peace exhibited by some people.
The
disappointment stems entirely
from the singular failure of this book to provide that coherent,
well-supported argument.
The
structure of this book is four major chapters, each divided into a
number of sections. The front matter lays out this structure clearly,
and describes the history of various ideas and sections. The book was
born from the author's sincere desire to explore and explain the
origins and consequences of war, both as a recurring (and frequent)
historical event and as a catastrophe each and every time it happens.
Again, this laudable goal raised my expectations and hopes for this
book!
The
first chapter, "Violence and Man" is introduced as a kind
of essay to discover whether war is something inherent in humanity
and thus will always be part of our societies, or something that we
might conceivably rid ourselves of, with the analogy - continued
throughout the book - that we have successfully rid ourselves of
several other historical horrors including slavery* and torture.
Unfortunately
- and establishing a pattern for the rest of this book - the opening
paragraph of Chapter 1 does not actually introduce the real topic of
the chapter. First, we get a series of statements regarding the
unjustifiable nature of war, the ways in which wars corrupt
those who engage in warfare, and the immense damage inflicted on all
societies and people by wars. The conclusion one draws from this -
aptly stated by the author - is that no quantification of warfare, no
meaningful comparison between wars or battles or strategies can take
place because a single death a result of war is itself a crime
against everyone. This absolute stand by the author is
excellent!
But then he goes and ruins the whole thing by proceeding to list wars
by their deathcount, to distinguish between civilian and soldier
deaths, and to explicitly rank history's greatest monsters! This is
shortly after he states (pg. 44) that "the events related here
are not comparable to one another" - then he rants about Hitler,
Stalin, and Mao! and compares across millenia between the Mongols and the 20th century! If even 1 death is a crime, then how is one million
deaths any more or less a crime than 10 million?
Then
we get a paragraph at the end of Chapter 1 that tells us that we've
just seen that war is not inherent in humanity. Wait, what? It feels
like an entirely different essay was written and all I got to see was
the first and last chapters, with the middle completely replaced by
something else.
Chapter
2 is titled and introduced as a counterpoint to Chapter 1, as a
chapter about the history of the world from the point of view of
Peace where Chapter 1 was a history of war. Unfortunately, other than
a brief, pointless list at the beginning of the chapter, it is no
such thing. There are big chunks of Chapter 2 that constitute an
apology for religion, including such ridiculous notions that when a
religious authority or text declares itself to be devoted to peace,
we can assume that's actually the case. Major world religions are
described by their self-description as peace-bringers, and
states (pg. 99) that "Buddhism has been transmitted to the
present day without there existing at any time in history evidence of
holy wars or violent colonisation of any kind whatsoever in the name
of this tradition." If this were true, South-East Asia, where
Buddhism runs into Hinduism and Islam (among others) would be
expected to be the most peaceful region on earth. Do I really need to
point out the violence in Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia... ? Go
tell the Rohingyas that Buddhism has never been violent. Go tell the Tamil Tigers about non-violence.
And
then there's some filler that includes the requisite insult to
atheism (by quoting a theologian) and lots of mindless blah blah blah about
God and Mystery and Spiritualism. Mr. Vivo even mentions Peace,
Justice and Hammurabi in the same sentence as the Old Testament (pg.
114) - the OT is just a story of blood, blood, and more blood!
Chapter
3 places various (mostly contemporary) societies along an axis of
openness and closed-ness, with mature modern democracies such as
Canada considered "open" and such nasty places as
Belarus considered "closed". So far, so much in line
with so many other writers I've encountered. These concepts clearly
link to other concepts such as Liberalism and Radicalism, and these
relationships seem to have led Mr. Vivo to contradict himself.
Whereas he stated in Chapter 1 (and to some extent in Chapter 2) that
no war could be justified, that war itself was unjustifiable, he
describes in Chapter 3 how Liberalism helped to defeat "absolutism,
fascism, and totalitarianism" in the World Wars of the 20th
century - which to my reading counts as justifying the most
destructive conflicts in history because they ended with greater
devastation among the fascist and totalitarian regimes than among the
democracies.
When a democratic country declares war on a dictatorship, that's a
justifiable war, Mr. Vivo? So why do you spend so much of Chapter 4
on the American (Democracy) invasion of Iraq (Dictatorship) in 2003?
Sorry,
I'm getting a bit out of order here (much as Mr. Vivo does in several
paragraphs, discussing later events before earlier events without
clear distinctions other than post-hoc-stated dates). The first part of
Chapter 4 is a discussion of the other widely-recognised crimes
against humanity, Slavery, Torture, and (institutional,
national-level) Racism. This part is not really problematic, though
at one point Mr. Vivo downplays the (pivotal, central) role of
slavery in the American Civil War (it was about slavery. Full stop.
Don't believe me? Read the articles of secession by each Southern
state that formed the Confederacy. It's all right there, in their own
words.).
I
feel like the point that war fits the definition of a crime against
humanity, right up there with Genocide, or the recruitment of
children as soldiers (there are others, I'm not going to defend
including or excluding a particular bit of awfulness on a list) is
fairly easy to make. Every war is devastating to both the aggressor
and the defender, every war kills huge numbers of people, both
civilians and soldiers. Wars are built on the worst human emotions,
with factors such as xenophobia and the dehumanisation of one's
ideological opponents allowing otherwise non-violent individuals to
kill and destroy on a large scale. Most of the crimes against
humanity that have been identified are intimately tied to war, with
wars providing both the opportunity and the motivation - and often
the means - for the darkest side of humanity to rise up. Thus, it
makes sense to include war itself as a war crime.
Mr.
Vivo barely makes this point, and certainly doesn't make this case.
He spends too much of the book fawning over irrelevant or
counter-productive notions such as the announcements of peaceful
intent by religious authorities (while they simultaneously call their
followers to arms), and not enough time on the actually good parts of
this book. Right at the end he does provide some reasons to be
hopeful, in two areas: international justice and global trade.
There's
a pretty good description of the International Criminal Court (ICC)
in the latter parts of Chapter 4, along with some interesting
suggestions for improving its reach and effectiveness. He seems
confused about the definition of sovereignty - having a country's
national courts carry out an action after requests from the ICC is
not really different from those courts carrying out those actions on
the orders of the ICC - but I am convinced by his arguments that this
organisation represents a strong push in the right direction on world
peace.
The
second argument, regarding world trade, is weaker. Wars destroy
trade, both internationally - obviously between warring states, but
third-party countries, too - and within nations. Trade matters.
International and within-national trade is a pretty good working
definition of the world economy, and major disruptions to trade cause
hardship and suffering - and deaths! - even in the absence of wars or
warfare. And reminding potentially war-mongering politicians about
the financial costs of war may help to avert violent conflicts. But
Mr. Vivo barely makes that point, and instead discusses the usual
mindless "teach the children!" answer to pretty much every
issue ever. Does nobody ever consider what teachers are doing
already, and what they would have to stop doing to fit in a
love-thy-neighbour curriculum, as worthwhile as that might be?
The
other good point made is that "pacifist" is not to be
confused with "passivist" (pg. 290). Peace is not simply
the absence of war, but an active PROCESS of history in which
conflicts and disagreements are resolved by dialogue and other
non-violent means, and people are enriched and enlightened by
interaction with other people from different cultures.
Overall,
this book is a disappointment, written only moderately well (blame
the translator here if you've read the Spanish-language original) and
missing too many opportunities to really make a great point.
My
opinion is apparently in sharp contrast to other bloggers, and is the minority opinion.
The Gal in the Blue Mask more-or-less repeats the glowing words
printed on the outside of the book.
Smashwords calls it "exceedingly
well-researched and documented", which makes me wonder if I we
were sent the same book.
The reviews on Amazon.com are 6/6 for 5 stars
Forewordreviews gives it a more believable 4 stars (and apparently
got paid for that review!)
Blueinkreview calls Mr. Vivo a "cooly elegant writer".
Maybe they read his original words, rather than a translation?
And
here's the webpage for the book, go see for yourself:
http://www.robertovivo.com/the-book/
*
OK, just to avoid a derailment regarding slavery - what I mean by our
successful abolition of slavery, and what Mr. Vivo means, is that in
no country on Earth is the ownership of other human beings officially
legal within that country. Yes, there are still slaves today, in many
places, but legally, at least, such practices unequivocally
constitute crimes in much the same way that murder, rape, robbery,
etc. still occur everywhere but are universally condemned as crimes.
Similarly, torture and racism are nowhere officially sanctioned by
laws and governments, but are still with us as crimes.
I
hope this Book Club entry does not prevent other agents of this or
other publishers from contacting me in future. I really enjoy reading
and I feel like I should do it more - and having somebody expecting
my reaction to a particular book is great motivation to get my ass
back onto the couch. So far, I have received books FOR FREE twice,
which is mind-blowing and awesome. Thank you!
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