Genocide and International Relations

A comprehensive new approach to modern genocide, providing the first systematic treatment in the context of international relations.

Genocide can be assumed to be a problem of dictatorial regimes. This book shows that targeted violence against population groups is a much larger problem, that patterns of genocide depend on international contexts, and that genocide in the modern world can be stimulated as well as constrained by global change.Genocide and International Relations lays the foundations for a new perspective on genocide in the modern world. Genocide studies have been influenced, negatively as well as positively, by the political and cultural context in which the field has developed. In particular, a narrow vision of comparative studies has been influential in which genocide is viewed mainly as a 'domestic' phenomenon of states. This book emphasizes the international context of genocide, seeking to specify more precisely the relationships between genocide and the international system. Shaw aims to re-interpret the classical European context of genocide in this frame, to provide a comprehensive international perspective on Cold War and post-Cold War genocide, and to re-evaluate the key transitions of the end of the Second World War and the end of the Cold War.