No More Killing Fields: Preventing Deadly Conflict

Extract

No More Killing Fields: Preventing Deadly Conflict, David A. Hamburg, Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2004, pp. v, 365

David Hamburg, a physician, scholar, and policymaker, came to think preventively in the 1950s, when he saw the impact of the first polio vaccine. He built on this experience later when, as president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York (1982-1997), he became interested in preventing mass violence—“the prime problem of the twenty-first century” (vii). One of the most important questions he poses in this work is whether it is “beyond human capacity to create secure and decent living standards for people everywhere and to foster just interactions among diverse peoples” (1). Hamburg believes that an evolving worldwide awareness of unprecedented dangers and of equally unprecedented advances in science and technology can help humanity transcend “the ancient habits of blaming, dehumanizing, repressing, and attacking …” (5).