[Discussion] Book review - Benjamin A. Valentino. Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide

[gpultar@cstgroup.org]

Benjamin A. Valentino. Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the
Twentieth Century. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004. 253 pp. Index. $29.95
(cloth), ISBN 0-8014-3965-5.

Reviewed by: Paul B. Miller, Department of History, McDaniel College and the
International University of Sarajevo.

Published by: H-Genocide (August, 2005)


The End of Genocide: A Hopeful Approach to a Seemingly Hopeless Human Phenomenon

There is something strangely heartening about Benjamin Valentino's book, Final
Solutions, on the plainly disheartening topic of genocide and mass killing in
the twentieth century. For if the author is right about the critical role of a
relatively narrow political or military elite in the most heinous crimes of our
time, then genocide/mass killing may not be quite the mystery it would seem. And
if its origins can be understood in clear terms that apply to a wide range of
case studies, then perhaps something can be done to prevent it. This is, after
all, the real goal of all genocide scholars, who are concerned as much, if not
more, with the pragmatic consequences of their work in stopping the killing as
they are with its purely scientific value.

Generalizing about any human phenomenon--especially genocide throughout the
entire world and previous century--seems like a formula for disappointment. Yet
in an ironic twist, Valentino has avoided this in part by stretching his subject
to include what he calls "mass killing," or "the intentional killing of a
massive number of noncombatants" (p. 10). How massive? Here Valentino is
uncomfortably explicit in suggesting the figure of "at least fifty thousand
intentional deaths over the course of five or fewer years," though if his theory
works, he argues, it should hold for lower numbers as well (pp. 11-12). The
point is not so much the specific number (and one of the beauties of the UN's
Genocide Convention is that it does not put a numerical requirement on a
genocide finding), but understanding how the mass murder of innocent, unarmed
civilians becomes the policy of states.

Valentino is certainly not the first scholar to theorize about the origins of
genocide/mass killing. His broad perspective, however, allows him to make some
rather pointed and compelling critiques of earlier explanations such as social
cleavage, scapegoating, and raw governmental power. In undermining the "plural
society theory" that Leo Kuper and others have proposed to explain genocide, for
example, he reminds us that in Cambodia perpetrators and victims came from the
same social and ethnic groups, and that many victims, in fact, belonged to
dominant ethnic groups (see Chapter 1). Similarly, if less predictably, the
author draws on such incidents as French behavior in Algeria to undercut the
notion that genocide/mass killing takes place in a proportional relationship to
political power and that democracy provides a check on this type of violence. He
is equally dubious of scapegoating as the principal motivation, citing Michael
Mann's recent study of Holocaust perpetrators as proof that personal grievances
were rarely necessary to shape behavior. While these theories, Valentino
concludes, have "strong intuitive appeal ... they are simply too common to serve
as accurate indicators of this relatively rare kind of violence" (p. 28).

The author next challenges another implicit assumption concerning the cause of
genocide/mass killing: that it is popular with and supported by the larger
society. Most scholars, I imagine, will find little to disagree with in the
chapter "The Perpetrators and the Public," which reviews such classic literature
in the field as Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men (contrasted very favorably
with Daniel Goldhagen's drastically different conclusions for the same group of
men); the authoritarian personality experiments of psychologists Stanley Milgram
and Philip Zimbardo; and studies of what makes soldiers willingly risk their
lives for causes that have little direct impact on them personally. Valentino
argues that the motivation for mass killing lies in situational factors and the
initiative of a relatively small but powerful cohort rather than in broad public
support and deeply ingrained ideological hatred. This is well supported by the
chapter's diverse range of evidence. Indeed, this chapter could stand alone as
an overview of the growing scholarly consensus concerning what makes people
kill. The larger issue, however, is why.

To answer this, the remaining nearly three-quarters of Final Solutions is a
meticulous examination of the "specific situations, goals, and conditions" that
lead political and/or military leaders to embark upon a policy of genocide/mass
killing (p. 66). In chapter 3, the author, who has a social scientist's penchant
for lists and categorization, identifies six primary motives: communist, ethnic,
territorial, counterguerrilla, terrorist, and imperialist. Citing communist,
ethnic, and counterguerrilla mass killing as the most prevalent and deadly, his
work then devotes a chapter to each. Thus, in addition to the usual case studies
of ethnic genocide such as Armenia, the Holocaust, and Rwanda, Valentino's work
includes a lengthy chapter on the Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia, as well as
the counterguerrilla mass killings in Guatemala and Afghanistan. Moreover, and
crucial to his argument, he ends each chapter by examining regimes that were
considerably less violent and never became genocidal--such as Cuba, South
Africa, and the Philippines during its counterinsurgency against the Huk
rebellion of 1947-1953.

The upshot of all these case studies, several of which could constitute worthy
summaries for undergraduate teaching, is that, with the exception of Cambodia,
genocide/mass killing is "rarely a policy of first resort" (p. 240). Rather it
is a conscious and rational strategy chosen to achieve a certain aim. The Nazis
tried several means to remove Jews from their expanding territories, including
forced emigration and expulsion, before turning to extermination. Even Stalin
only unleashed the Ukrainian famine once more restrained methods of agricultural
collectivization failed. And the author outlines a similar process with regard
to the Guatemalan regime's escalating violence against its peasantry in view of
the rural population's growing support for the insurgency. While this reviewer
is unfamiliar enough with the Guatemalan case that he would have appreciated
some background on this 1970s insurgency, the author's points were clear and
well-taken: What matters is what the leaders want to do and how they decide that
genocide/mass killing is the best way to do it. In other words, killing innocent
people in large numbers is explained as a tactical decision based on a clear
vision of the end result. In effect, Valentino moves us beyond what motivates
people to kill directly, to the larger issue of what motivates their leaders to
order them to do so.

It is a compelling, well-conceived and, certainly, important argument, though
like most broad-based arguments it leaves some instances to slip through the
cracks of the author's six motivational typologies. Consider, for example, the
often lethal behavior of the men under the command of Bosnian Muslim Naser
Orić in the Serb villages surrounding Srebrenica. Now on trial in The Hague
for war crimes, Orić was operating without the authority of the Bosnian
leadership in Sarajevo and very much in response to the aggression of the
Bosnian Serb army (which was receiving aid and directives not only from their
civilian leadership in Pale, but from Belgrade itself). Valentino may argue that
Orić's actions, as those of similar rebels acting on their own fears and
authority, never reached the proportions of mass killings in which he is
interested. They did, however, terrorize the Bosnian Serb population around
Srebrenica as much as Guatemalan peasants were terrorized by their own
government. And though the Bosnian Serbs certainly did not need any additional
motivation for their clearly conceived program of ethnic cleansing and genocide,
Orić's actions were, we know now, on their minds when they entered
Srebrenica in July 2005.

This criticism may strike some as unfair since it perhaps overextends
Valentino's carefully conceived definition of mass killing. It does, however,
indicate that deeper (or different) motives such as revenge or simply fear, can
also provoke episodes of genocide/mass killing, particularly when a formal
governing authority is absent or limited. I mention this because Valentino's
arguments can at times seem overly optimistic in light of his effort to outline
policies that predict and prevent genocide/mass killing, the main theme of his
conclusion. A good example of this occurs at the end of the chapter on communist
mass killings when, with a tip of the hat to Francis Fukuyama, Valentino
postulates that if there is an "end of ideology," or at least to this
particularly deadly one, and "if no similarly radical ideas gain the widespread
applicability and acceptance of communism, [then] humanity may be able to look
forward to considerably less mass killing in the coming century than it
experienced in the last" (p. 151). That's a pretty big "if," and perhaps Rwanda
and Darfur have already disabused the author of such thinking. Yet when a young
scholar expresses this kind of optimism, it's difficult to be too critical. And
in terms of sheer numbers and barring nuclear threat, he may, we can only hope,
be right.

When first asked to review this work, my response was that as a historian rather
than a political scientist like the author, perhaps I was not the right person
for the job. While Final Solutions certainly demands to be read by scholars from
a wide array of disciplines, I was reluctant to critique something that required
specialized disciplinary or theoretical knowledge. I must admit too that I
struggled in the beginning to understand Valentino's methodology of "process
tracing," (defined awkwardly in the introduction as "identifying the causal
processes which link the factors and conditions implicated by the strategic
perspective to the outcome of mass killing" [p. 7]). But as I got further into
the work, I realized that this term almost elegantly captures the author's
patient efforts to understand genocide not as a foregone conclusion, but rather
as the carefully chosen means to achieve any number of state policies or
ideologies. Hence the apt title of this work is even more literal than it may
originally seem.

I offer this information on my academic background not as an excuse for any
shortcomings in my understanding of Valentino's important work and/or my
conveyance of his methodology and conclusions to H-Genocide readers, but rather
because it inevitably shades some additional criticisms that I have, despite my
overall admiration for the author's breadth of learning and the conclusions he
has drawn. First, readers should be aware that, despite Valentino's frequent
references to "my research" (see, for example, pp. 2, 4, 23, 71, 227), this book
is actually based on the research of others. Granted this is not so much a
criticism of the book's contents and contentions, but rather the way in which
they are presented by the author (and viewed by an, admittedly biased,
archive-oriented historian). While his sources are acknowledged and his book is
amply footnoted (though there is no bibliography), its conclusions rest upon an
impressive synthesis of research over the past half century or so rather than on
any original surveys, interviews, primary source work, or other research
program.

This bears mentioning because it sometimes leads the author to overstate the
obvious, perhaps in an overzealous effort to derive maximal meaning from what is
basically a synthetic work. Thus, for example, in chapter 3 he previews some
rather intuitive factors that make genocide/mass killing more likely, including:
"the higher the priority that communist leaders assign to the radical
transformation of society"; "the more rapidly ethnic cleansing is carried out";
and "the greater the physical capabilities for mass killing possessed by the
perpetrators" (pp. 74-90). Equally self-evident is the author's claim that "the
Holocaust was unique because each of the millions of lives it extinguished was
unique, never to lived again [sic]" (p. 177). Certainly less obvious and more in
need of a gentle corrective is the assertion that in Nazi ideology the Jews
occupied the lowest rung of the human racial hierarchy (p. 168). In fact the
Hitlerian worldview conceived of Jews less as the ultimate sub-race than the
preeminent anti-race, admired, as Valentino acknowledges, for preserving their
"racial" distinctiveness for thousands of years, yet feared for their inimitable
capacity to contaminate Aryan blood.

A work of this scope is bound to make a few missteps, and it is certainly not
this reviewer's intention to belabor them. Final Solutions succeeds in providing
us not only with a workable explanation for genocide/mass killing, but also with
many important suggestions for what we might do to stop it. And for such a
difficult and pressing topic as this, the sense of hope that Valentino's
scholarship delivers is perhaps its most lasting and welcome attribute.



Citation: Paul B. Miller. "Review of Benjamin A. Valentino, Final Solutions:
Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century," H-Genocide, H-Net Reviews,
August, 2005.


URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=131381128105048.