Marcus Bierich Lecture

Genocide Prevention: The Troubled Fate of a Post-War Ideal

The promise of “never again” was weakly codified at the end of World War II, only to be proven hollow during the Cold War and later by the genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia. The subsequent two decades saw a significant push to build a global infrastructure for preventing mass atrocities; however, that momentum was undermined by the disastrous aftermath of the NATO intervention in Libya. Today, the world’s deafening silence regarding ongoing mass atrocities in Sudan, and the acrimonious debate about the war in Gaza, indicate a profound collapse in global commitment, signaling a potential retreat into a past defined by geopolitical paralysis. By interrogating thirty years of academic and policy work, Scott Straus investigates whether the moral arc of international politics has fundamentally bent backward and what — if anything — remains of the promise to prevent genocide and mass atrocities.