First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia

by David N. Gibbs

In First Do No Harm , 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. Using a wide range of sources, including government documents, transcripts of international war crimes trials, and memoirs, Gibbs shows how these interventions often heightened violence and increased human suffering.

The book focuses on the 1991-99 breakup of Yugoslavia, which helped forge the idea that the United States and its allies could stage humanitarian interventions that would end ethnic strife. It is widely believed that NATO bombing campaigns in Bosnia and Kosovo played a vital role in stopping Serb-directed aggression, and thus resolving the conflict.

Gibbs challenges this view, offering an extended critique of Samantha Power's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, A Problem from America in the Age of Genocide . He shows that intervention contributed to the initial breakup of Yugoslavia, and then helped spread the violence and destruction. Gibbs also explains how the motives for U.S. intervention were rooted in its struggle for continued hegemony in Europe.

First Do No Harm argues for a new, noninterventionist model for U.S. foreign policy, one that deploys nonmilitary methods for addressing ethnic violence.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction

327 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2009

Reviews

[Milan Vrekic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holistic view of the breakup of Yugoslavia

Recommended for anyone who wants to scratch beyond the veneer and understand the real causes of the breakup of Yugoslavia.

[Jeremy · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting review of the Balkan Wars of the ‘90s and how America’s intervention(s) helped to further strengthen its post-Cold War foreign policy hegemony. That being said, while the author tries, and for the most part succeeds in coming across as an impartial arbiter, some of the conclusions the he comes to seems to run dubiously close to anti-Islamic rhetoric that overall spoils what could make for a decent read.

[Rhuff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Professor Gibbs' recounting is the go-to source for the NATO-Balkan wars of the '90s. While not as richly detailed as Susan Woodward's "Balkan Tragedy (the only comparable post-Yugoslav title) it is more accessible and direct for the average reader.

Gibbs puts the prevailing Western ideology of the time to rest: that intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo was a "necessary" act of "humanitarian intervention" to "stop genocide." The good professor details not only that there were no "good guys" in this s**tshow, but that the United States deliberately *sabotaged* a peace deal in Bosnia, prolonging the war for three bloody and useless years before imposing the Dayton Accords which were no better. He also makes plain why: the floundering sense of "mission" following the cold war led the military-industrial planners scrambling for relevance and continued budgeting at cold war levels. No devil out there, and they're out of a job.

Thus the insistence on NATO expansion, and the Kosovo war as its trigger. By sticking Annex B into the final agreement at the Rambouillet conference, mandating the NATO occupation of *all* of rump Yugoslavia, its unacceptable terms were a clear provocation to launch war, unite NATO (especially its new members), and once again pose as Superman to the rescue. Even Henry Kissinger openly admitted it. One is reminded of the corrupt Ottoman official in Elia Kazan's film, "America, America" - "I am here only for the good I can do."

With NATO victory in Yugoslavia, and cold war hegemony in Europe retained, it was time to move into "out of area" operations. Thus the military response to 9/11 and a 20-year "war on terror," again for the "good we can do." Along came Libya, and now Ukraine, to fulfill this same role. Finally, however, this false coin has reached its bankrupt end: the same ones who lied the West into Balkan wars and then Iraq and Afghanistan turn a blind eye (and applaud) real, not media genocide, in Palestine. Their voided moral check has been revealed as not worth the rubber it's made of. Milosevic has the last laugh in his grave after all.

Highly recommended to those interested in duplicity at the highest and deepest levels. Whatever future blood-and-fog nonsense Trump may unleash at this writing, his liberal enemies trod that path long before.

[Axel Koch · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is almost certainly the single most insightful book I've read on the Yugoslav Wars, as David N. Gibbs takes a bravely non-conformist stance that exposes the myopia that lies at the heart of the simplistic (yet widespread) reading of the conflict as being simply due to "the Serbs going evil", instead illuminating the deep entanglement that Western nations had both economically and geopolitically within the Balkans from before the outbreak of war. The advice implied in Gibbs's title that, sometimes, the best way to do no harm is to do nothing at all, is one that sadly fell on deaf ears within the context of ex-Yugoslavia.

[Sara G · Rating 4 out of 5]

"It is widely believed that NATO’s decision to wage war in this case was taken “essentially as a last resort,” after all diplomatic options had been exhausted. But this perception has little to do with reality."

This made me so incredibly sad. This entire book. It kept just going over the horrible things done and saying "this wasn't justified actually and this excuse was a lie" and I honestly didn't realise that part would hurt so much. Ooofff

[Oleg M · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book has nothing to do with the title on its cover. This is just a pitiful antiamerican rant. Very primitive and disgusting commie thing.