ABSTRACT
The relationship between the Holocaust and genocides in general, the relationship between civil conflict and state destruction, and the reasons for the ineffectiveness of international peace-keeping agencies in reducing genocide. On a different level, however, it is an excellent basic text, especially for individuals who are not familiar with the subject of genocide. The cases selected are for the most part helpful and show a keen sense of the magnitude of the problems of genocide. Leo Kuper also confounds legal identification between Apartheid and genocide in South Africa with the empirical problem: the place and condition of the blacks within South Africa. Relativizing the issue of genocide particularly damages efforts to understand the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews. Kuper charges the United Nations with doing much less than it should. He argues that its capacities to curtail genocide, much less prevent or punish atrocities, has been blunted.
