Helping Humanity: American Policy and Genocide Rescue

“This is an important contribution, offering new insights to the crucial and complicated dilemmas regarding rescue in cases of genocides. Governments’ ability to help humanity, even powerful states like the U.S., has its limits. The author rejects the possibility of military intervention and proposes philanthropy as an effective way to save lives.” –Yair Auron, PhD, The Open University of Israel

“This is an outstanding work, and will have an effect upon the perceptions by historians and students of American policy.” –William Rubinstein, Aberystwyth University

“This is a work that engages a highly important issue in the country’s past, current situation, and likely challenges in the future in a manner that is both original and balanced. The reading public as well as the nation’s leaders and their advisors will find here helpful insights into a most difficult problem.” –Gerhard L. Weinberg, author of A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II

“Using an array of primary sources, Keith Pomakoy presents case studies of American rescue or relief measures in response to genocide. From Spanish anti-insurgency measures in late nineteenth-century Cuba to cases of genocide and ethnic cleansing in the 1990s, the United States has never devised an easy way to halt genocide. Expanding upon Merle Curti’s 1963 American Philanthropy Abroad, Pomakoy shows that private organizations often supplied effective assistance when government could not or would not.” —Journal of American History