This book traces the Western European response, materially and rhetorically, to instances of genocide or potential genocide since the end of World War II. Karen E. Smith first documents the positions of major European countries on the drafting and ratification of the Genocide Convention. She then explores whether and when genocide was invoked during the Cold War. Most of Genocide and the Europeans is dedicated to a treatment of post–Cold War cases—Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, and Darfur. Smith is particular interested in the interaction between the legal and social norms against genocide. By the former, she means the specific legal obligations undertaken as a party to the Genocide Convention. By the latter, she means the broader moral imperatives that arise when thousands or millions are being killed, irrespective of whether those atrocities meet somewhat technocratic criteria.

Smith's historical material is the most interesting aspect of the book. The internal debate within the British government over whether to ratify the Genocide Convention is fascinating, marked by a division between the Home Office and the Foreign Office. The former resisted the treaty as it interfered with existing British law on extradition, which prohibited extradition for political crimes. The convention, on the other hand, explicitly forbids treating genocide as a political act for the purposes of extradition. The author does some nice process tracing of the politics within the government, although it is ultimately unclear what leads the British to overturn their initial decision not to support the convention. This chapter also reveals a tantalizing morsel of a puzzle—the European colonial powers were not concerned that ratifying the Genocide Convention would pose problems for their continued ownership of overseas territories. Smith does not, however, enter into a detailed analysis of that glaring puzzle.

In her Cold War discussion, the author evaluates a number of cases in which European states were consistently reluctant to invoke the term genocide, either in its social or legal formulation, such as in Nigeria in the late 1960s and East Pakistan in the early 1970s. She finds this puzzling as the Genocide Convention does not require states to intervene to prevent genocide outside of their territory. This, however, would not be surprising in a traditional realist perspective on human rights in which any number of considerations might take precedence over taking action. This particular chapter exposes the weakness that comes with a lack of a theoretical scaffolding. Genocide and the Europeans does not develop a set of arguments or expectations of different approaches that are weighed against one another, which might frustrate some readers while pleasing others. Smith concludes that, among other reasons, European states were loath to mention genocide because this would create a public expectation of action.

The more contemporary post–Cold War case studies do not contain as much new material, and Smith unfortunately confines herself merely to the public rhetoric of European governments. Did they invoke the term genocide? Why or why not? There is obviously less of a documentary record in regard to these cases, but it is not clear why the author did not try to reconstruct some of the internal, private deliberations concerning whether genocide was occurring and whether or why it should not be acknowledged, for instance through interviews. This would have been an original contribution. For instance, the British government's resistance to using the term, as Smith notes, went hand in hand with a particular framing of the conflict as one of “moral equivalence,” a civil war between two sides both guilty of atrocities. However, I have shown in my work that this narrative was itself a reflection of a deep resistance, on ideological grounds, to anything like peace enforcement in the Balkans.

The reader will want Smith to go deeper, much as Samantha Power did in her colorful book The Problem from Hell (2002). As it is, the book offers a review of well-trodden territory even if European inaction frustrates no less the tenth time that one has read about it than it did the first. Going more in-depth might also have shed some light on some other tantalizing puzzles, such as why Germany has been so much more willing to declare genocide happening, has such a looser legal interpretation of the crime, and allows for more extensive domestic legal jurisdiction over genocide committed in other countries.

The evidence gleaned from the public rhetoric suggests that, again, European governments were extremely cautious over using the term genocide so as to avoid the concomitant pressure that would arise to take dramatic action. This is not surprising, but of course, in Darfur and Rwanda such an admission was made, largely to escape pressure for doing more. The reader is left wondering about the set of conditions when governments will or will not make such an admission. Are they more inclined to invoke the legal construct of genocide when they feel more of a moral compunction to act on the part of the social norm? Or is it a cynical strategy to remove pressure more likely on the part of those who care less about genocide? The book does not try to provide systematic answers to these questions, although perhaps there are not any.