Description: The misuse of humanitarian intervention. Focusing on the 1991a99 breakup of Yugoslavia, David Gibbs raises basic questions about the humanitarian interventions that have played a key role in U.S. foreign policy for the past twenty years. Gibbs shows how these interventions often heightened violence and increased human suffering. First Do No Harm argues for a new, noninterventionist model for U.S. foreign policy, one that deploys nonmilitary methods for addressing ethnic violence.
Brief description: David N. Gibbs, Associate Professor of History and Political Science at the University of Arizona, is the author of The Political Economy of Third World Intervention. His articles have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, and Le Monde Diplomatique.
Review Quotes: "Gibbs offers a powerful new interpretation of the Balkan wars of the 1990s."
--Chalmers Johnson, author of The Blowback Trilogy (2000-2006)