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Deliver Us from Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords, and a World of Endless Conflict

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Overview

Reporting from war zones around the globe, acclaimed journalist William Shawcross gives us an unforgettable portrait of a dangerous world and of the brave men and women, ordinary and extraordinary, who risk their lives to make and keep the peace.

The end of the Cold War was followed by a decade of regional and ethnic wars, massacres and forced exiles, and by constant calls for America to lead the international community as chief peace-keeper. The efforts of that community -- identified with the United Nations but often dominated by the world's wealthy nations -- have had mixed results. In Africa, the West is accused of indifference or too little, too late. In Cambodia, the UN presides over free elections, but the results are overridden. In Iraq, Saddam Hussein continues to defy the UN, and in Bosnia and Kosovo, the West acts hesitantly after terrible slaughter and ethnic cleansing.

Editorial Reviews

The end of the Cold War may have reduced the threat of nuclear catastrophe, but shooting wars continued to ravage the planet throughout the '90s. Shawcross (Sideshow, Murdoch, etc.), an award-winning journalist, takes inventory of a decade's worth of conflict, ranging from Cambodia to Rwanda, Croatia to East Timor, and assesses the reactions of governments, the U.N. and humanitarian agencies to the carnage. The book proceeds chronologically, treating several crises in each chapter. In this way, Shawcross replicates the experience of those responsible for organizing the world's response to these fast-breaking, vicious little wars as they broke out, often simultaneously, all around the world. More significant than Shawcross's chronicle of these conflicts and their respective atrocities is his analysis of the ambiguities and paradoxes produced by the wars. He identifies the political forces shaping how the world selects some crises for effective intervention, while others merit platitudes and palliatives. Shawcross also explores how in some instances humanitarian aid, such as food shipments, serve only to supply the combatants and so prolong the suffering of the starving people for whom the food was intended. He gives evidence that while nations claim to rely on the U.N. as a peacekeeping mechanism, they withhold funds and complain of U.N. ineffectiveness. As Shawcross argues in this thoughtful and balanced account, we in the developed world "want more to be put right, but we are prepared to sacrifice less." Shawcross calls for greater consistency in how the developed nations react to '90s-style ethnic wars, so that nations can do something better than merely make the world "a little less horrible." In surveying the past 10 years, he makes a clear-sighted contribution to the policy debates of the next decade and beyond. (Mar.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of William Shawcross

Born in 1946, William Shawcross is an internationally renowned writer and broadcaster who appears regularly on television and radio. His articles have appeared in leading newspapers and journals throughout the world. He lives in London.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Simon & Schuster

Filesize

1.18 MB

Number of Pages

447

eBook ISBN

9780743225779

Awards

  • BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction

Excerpt from: Deliver Us from Evil by William Shawcross

Chapter One: Another World War

On a dark afternoon in January 1999, with the wind chill factor down to minus ten and snow rushing around outside the thirty-eighth floor of the United Nations headquarters in New York, the secretary general, Kofi Annan, could be forgiven for feeling beleaguered. Nineteen ninety-eight, he said to me, "was a hell of a year. But I think 1999 will be worse."

Eleven months before, he had been hailed in much of the world as a savior after persuading Saddam Hussein to permit UN inspectors to resume their search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, thus stopping the United States and Great Britain from bombing Iraq. One newspaper called him "the world's secular pope," a phrase which recalls Joseph Stalin's mocking question, "How many divisions has the pope?"

But within weeks Saddam had reneged on his agreement with Annan; Iraq continued to flout countless resolutions of the Security Council. For months Annan had continued to try to be the peacemaker, and in November 1998 he finessed another delay in a U.S. attack aimed at forcing Iraq to comply with the resolutions, to the fury of some American policymakers. But in December the United States and Britain lost patience and responded to Iraqi intransigence with four days of bombing just before Ramadan and Christmas.

The Anglo-American action split the Security Council. There was no precise warning when it began on December 16. Members of the council were debating the crisis when their cell phones started ringing almost in unison. Some, particularly the Russian ambassador, Sergei Lavrov, and the French ambassador, Alain Dejammet, were furious. Annan made a short statement: "This is a sad day for the United Nations, and for the world....It is also a very sad day for me personally."

Annan tried to find a way of reuniting the council. It was not easy. He had continual calls or visits from the Russians and the French to complain about the attacks. The French were especially bitter; from President Jacques Chirac down, they denounced "les anglo-saxons," by whom they meant not only the United States and Britain but also Richard Butler, the tough and sometimes undiplomatic Australian chairman of the UN's Iraq arms inspectors, UNSCOM -- the United Nations Special Commission, which had been set up to disarm Iraq completely of its weapons of mass destruction after the Gulf war in 1991. Butler's December 1998 report alleging continued Iraqi obstruction had been the casus belli for the bombing. Butler must go, Chirac said several times to Annan. The Russians said the same, more brutally and more publicly.