THE HUMANITARIAN CONSCIENCE: Caring for Others in the Age of Terror

A former senior official in U.S. and U.N. refugee programs, Smyser begins by describing humanitarians at work, taking pains to demonstrate that they undergo risks and hardships no less than those faced by soldiers. He discusses the development of human rights in a natural-law context from Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas before introducing his villain: the sovereign national state. As they developed from the Renaissance through the 19th and 20th centuries, Smyser argues, states have asserted and enforced total authority within their borders and have disregarded international relations in favor of their own interests. The result is an increasingly callous disregard for human lives. Genocide was the defining crime of the 20th century, first as an outgrowth of its brutal wars, then as a manifestation of a sovereignty that is essentially unchallengeable within the existing international system. (The recent U.S. invasion of Iraq presents a complication to this argument.) Smyser's solution, predictably, is to strengthen humanitarian protection through the United Nations. He describes the parallel rise after WWII of permanent U.N. organizations for dealing with refugees and non-government organizations (NGOs) with humanitarian missions. He discusses the successful extension of their activities as the refugee problem became worldwide in the contexts of decolonization and superpower conflict. Smyser describes the 1990s as a "lost decade" in humanitarian terms and argues that humanitarian concerns have been relegated to the back burner in the new century's renewed climate of international anarchy. He concludes with an eloquent appeal for the West to base its policies on humanitarian goals. (Dec. 10)