Indicting liberal democracy for genocide.

AS CONTEMPORARY EVENTS in Darfur and Kenya illustrate, it seems that genocide and genocidal violence are now a constant presence in global politics. Academically, this is reflected in the work of various centres of genocide studies, such specialist journals as Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Journal of Genocide Research, and such books as Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur (Yale University Press, 2007), by the Australian historian Ben Kiernan. The Whitney Griswold professor of history, and director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University, Kiernan purports to provide a comprehensive comparative study of the history of genocide. Because this is such an important topic it is disappointing that Blood and Soil doesn't deliver on its promise but is instead fatally compromised by prior ideological assumptions and commitments that vitiate its analysis and distort its historical accounts.

This failure is even more disappointing in the light of the book's core promise that such academic work can provide an early intervention capacity to prevent genocides:

 
   Genocides ... have much in common. Six hundred years of evidence 
   helps us detect their essential elements not only in retrospect 
   but, by analysis of common causes, potentially in advance, which 
   increases the possibility of preventing future genocides with 
   timely action. 

As the reference to "us" suggests, it seems Kiernan imagines himself playing a role in any such pre-emptive, counter-genocide strategy. It is perhaps envisaged that potential genocides would be predicted by Kiernan and his colleagues and that intervention teams would be despatched to the problem area to operate under United Nations auspices in accordance with their analyses and directions.

Given such aspirations (which some might find frightening or fanciful) it is vital to explore the basic paradigm within which such scholars of genocide conduct their research, carry out their analyses and formulate their advice. Here, Blood and Soil provides a revealing case study.

Kiernan's main area of expertise is the history of Cambodia under the communist Khmer Rouge. He gained his PhD from Monash University (1983), worked at Australian universities and joined the Yale History Department in 1990 where he established the Cambodian Genocide Program (1994), and the Genocide Studies Program (1998). A member of the New Left and a supporter of the communist cause in South-East Asia, he visited Cambodia in 1975 after the Khmer Rouge takeover but initially rejected reports that they were implementing a systematic program of genocide, only shifting his position when the evidence became undeniable and communist Vietnam invaded Cambodia (Kampuchea) in 1978-79. He then became a fierce critic of the regime and subsequently wrote and edited several books on the topic.

In 1994 Kiernan's initial support for the Khmer Rouge attracted criticism from various quarters when he was awarded a grant to promote research into the regime. In particular, it was observed that Kiernan only become a strident critic after Hanoi publicly turned against the Khmer Rouge and it became respectable for those on the Left to finally acknowledge the genocidal nature of the regime, years after all objective commentators had done so.