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A FINAL SOLUTION TO A
RECURRENT TRAGEDY?
a
MICHAEL C. DESCH
a
Michael C. Desch is Robert M. Gates Chair in
Intelligence and National Security Decision-Making
at the George H. W. Bush School of Government and
Public Service at Texas A&M University.

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 A FINAL SOLUTION TO A RECURRENT TRAGEDY?
A REVIEW ESSAY

MICHAEL C. DESCH

HY STATES ENGAGE in mass killing is one of the most important, yet con-
W tentious, questions in social science. It is important because, as Benjamin
Valentino notes in his new book Final Solutions, somewhere between 60 mil-
lion and 150 million civilians lost their lives in mass killings compared with the
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34 million soldiers who died in combat in the various wars of the twentieth
century.1 This question is contentious because there are many competing the-
ories purporting to explain mass killings. Valentino notes that there are various
theories that stress the roles of social cleavages, national crisis, or unchecked
regime power in fostering mass killing.2 He offers as an alternative explanation
for mass killing his own strategic theory of mass killing. Valentino builds on
the functionalist explanation for the Holocaustthat the killing of the Jews
was not an end in and of itself but rather a means to other endsand develops
it into a general theory to account for other instances of mass killings.3
Valentinos strategic theory offers a controversial, but generally persuasive,
answer to the question of why states would engage in mass killing, which he
defines as the intentional killing of a massive number of noncombatants.
Massive for him involves at least 50,000 deaths, though the logic of this the-
ory should also explain smaller-scale killings of noncombatants, as I explain

Michael C. Desch is Robert M. Gates Chair in Intelligence and National Security Decision-
Making at the George H. W. Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M
University.

For very helpful comments, I thank Alexander Downes, Eugene Gholz, John Mearsheimer,
and Stephen Van Evera.

1. Benjamin A. Valentino, Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2004), 1.
2. Ibid., 2
3. Valentino, Final Solutions, 168. For a general discussion of functionalist theories of the
Holocaust, see Christopher Browning, The Decision Concerning the Final Solution, in Unan-
swered Questions: Nazi Germany and the Genocide of the Jews, ed. Francois Furet (New York: Schoken,
1989), 96118. The most recent statement of the intentionalist positionthat the killing of
the Jews was an end in itselfis Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitlers Willing Executioners: Ordinary
Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Knopf, 1996). For a thorough critique of the Goldhagen
thesis, see Norman Finkelstein and Ruth Bettina Birn, A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis
and Historical Truth (New York: Owl, 1998).

SECURITY STUDIES 13, no. 3 (spring 2004): 145159

Copyright

C Taylor & Francis Inc.

DOI: 10.1080/09636410490914068
 146 SECURITY STUDIES 13, no. 3

below.4 In his view, statesmen engage in mass killing because they think it helps
them achieve other ends: I contend that mass killing occurs when powerful
groups come to believe it is the best available means to accomplish certain
radical goals, counter specific types of threats, or solve difficult military prob-
lems.5 Final Solutions is an iconoclastic book, but it is precisely its willingness
to challenge the received wisdom about the Holocaust and mass killing that
makes it so useful.
In contrast to much of the literature on the Holocaust, which tends to have
an antisocial science bias, Valentino formulates and tests a general social
science theory of when and under what conditions states engage in mass
killing.6 Because this theory can explain both the Holocaust and many other
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instances of mass killing, it marks considerable progress in our understanding

of this horrible, but regrettably ubiquitous, phenomenon.7 His strategic theory
is convincing, which is not surprising given that it is based on functionalism,
the strongest theory of mass killing to emerge from the literature on the
Holocaust. Finally, most of the policy recommendations in Valentinos book
are clear and sensible. In sum, Final Solutions makes an important contribution
to our understanding of mass killing.
I begin this article by documenting how the Holocaust dominates the dis-
cussion of mass killing and showing why this is bad. The fact that Valentino
breaks with much of the literature on the Holocaust makes his theory im-
portant but also quite controversial in a field dominated by that one case.
In particular, I highlight one of the most striking implications of Valentinos
theory: if he is correct, there is good reason to fear that, under the right circum-
stances, even democratic Israel, the haven for many Jews after the Holocaust,
could engage in the killing of large numbers of noncombatants. I conclude by
registering a few reservations about Valentinos otherwise compelling theory
and suggesting some avenues for future research.

THE HOLOCAUST AND THE STUDY OF MASS KILLINGS

HERE IS LITTLE DOUBT that the Nazi Holocaust, in which six million inno-
T cent Jews were murdered for no reason other than their ethnicity, exercises
a disproportionate influence on our understanding of the phenomenon of
4. Ibid., 1012.
5. Ibid., 66.
6. Ibid., 26. Also see John K. Roth, The Ethics of Uniqueness, in Is the Holocaust Unique?
Perspectives on Comparative Genocide, 2nd ed., ed. Alan S. Rosenbaum (Boulder: Westview, 2001),
28.
7. Imre Lakatos, Falisfication and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes, in
Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, ed. Imre Laktos and Alan Musgrave (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1970), 91196.
 A Final Solution to a Recurrent Tragedy? 147

mass killing. A cursory survey of a major research university librarys holdings

reveals that the topic genocide warrants only 198 entries. In contrast, there
are 1,670 for Holocaust.8 By virtue of raw numbers, the Holocaust domi-
nates the scholarly literature on mass killing. This is clearly reflected in public
discourse, as the Holocaust is for many the emblematic case of large-scale
murder of noncombatants, and this shapes their understanding of this more
general problem.
This dominance of the Holocaust leads to a number of problems, however.
To begin with, much of contemporary Holocaust studies is driven by clear
political agendas.9 As historian Peter Novick explained, those concerned about
the erosion of Jewish identity in America have used the Holocaust as a way to
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bring together otherwise religiously and politically incompatible Jews:

It was very hard to find any other basis on which to ground a distinctive
identity shared by all Jews. It couldnt be grounded in distinctive religious
beliefs, since most Jews didnt have much in the way of such beliefs. It
couldnt be grounded in distinctive cultural traits, since most didnt have
much of these either. Support of Israel exerted a certain centripetal force,
but in recent years questions having to do with Israel have divided more
than they have united Jews. The only thing that all American Jews shared
was the knowledge that but for the immigration of near or distant an-
cestors, they would have shared the fate of European Jewry. Insofar as
the Holocaust became the defining Jewish experience, all Jews had their
honorary survivorship in common.10
Novick made a compelling argument, however, that it is a mistake for Jews to
make the Holocaust central to modern Jewish identity.11 It perpetuates a victim
mentality, detracts from the many positive aspects of the Jewish experience
in the twentieth century, and stifles debate about issues important to Jews,
such as Israeli foreign and domestic policies. Thus, the extent to which the
Holocaust analogy defines contemporary American Jewish identity is not good
for American Jews over the longer term.
There is also a good case to be made that making the Holocaust the basis for
Israeli identity has not been good for the Jewish states foreign and domestic
politics, either. As Tom Segev concluded, the heritage of the Holocaust, as
it is taught in schools and fostered in national memorial ceremonies, often
8. http://infokat.uky.edu.
9. See Michael Desch, Abusing the Holocaust, American Conservative, 12 April 2004, 21
27. Also see Norman Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish
Suffering (London: Verso, 2001); Tom Segev, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1993); and Peter Novick, The Holocaust and American Life (Boston:
Houghton-Mifflin, 1999).
10. Novick, The Holocaust and American Life, 190. Also see Segev, The Seventh Million, 32748.
11. Novick, The Holocaust and American Life, 281.
 148 SECURITY STUDIES 13, no. 3

encourages insular chauvinism and a sense that the Nazi extermination of the
Jews justifies any act that seems to contribute to Israels security, including
the oppression of the population in the territories occupied by Israel in the
Six-Day War. The assumption is that the Holocaust requires the existence of
a strong Israel and that the failure of the world to save the Jewish people
during the Second World War disqualifies it from reminding Israel of moral
imperatives, including respect for human rights.12
One of the most egregious Israeli exploiters of the Holocaust was former
Prime Minister Menachem Begin.13 Begin presided over the Lebanon debacle
and the expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank and in Gaza,
both of which did more to undermine than to bolster Israels security.14 He
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regularly used the rhetoric of the Holocaust to justify these measures and
deflect criticism of them.15 More recently, defenders of Israels assault on the
Palestinian Authority in the West Bank have also justified it by employing
Holocaust rhetoric.16
The Holocaust has also been employed by Jewish and Gentile supporters of
Israel to justify continuing American support for the Jewish state.17 President
Richard Nixon admitted that no American President will let Israel go down
the tubes [because] Israel is a haven for millions whose families endured
incredible suffering during the Holocaust.18 The Holocaust underlined, in
the starkest terms, the moral basis for Israels founding, Senator John McCain
wrote recently in Readers Digest, in standing by Israel, we are merely being true
to ourselves. If we ever turned our backs on Israel, we would be abandoning
the principles that built our nation.19 Yet a compelling case can be made that
unqualified American support for Israel has not always served U.S. national
interest, for this is the single most divisive issue in Americas relations with
the Muslim world.20

12. Segev, The Seventh Million, 517.

13. Ibid., 22526.
14. Ibid., 399. Also see Stephen M. Walt, Beyond bin Laden: Reshaping U.S. Foreign Policy,
International Security 26, no. 3 (winter 2001/2002): 71n36.
15. Zeev Schiff and Ehud Yaari, Israels Lebanon War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984),
39.
16. Yair Sheleg, A World Cleansed of the Jewish State, Haaretz, 18 April 2002, and William
J. Bennet, Where Bush Rewards Terrorism, Washington Post, 20 March 2002, A33.
17. Segev, The Seventh Million, 194, 327, 472; Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab
World (New York: Norton, 2002), 23, 238, 35354; and Walter Reich, Israel, An Indispensable
Haven, Los Angeles Times (on-line), 8 May 2002.
18. Richard Nixon, Beyond Peace (New York: Random House, 1994), 143. For similar sen-
timent see David S. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 19411945
(New York: New Press, 1998), xvi.
19. John McCain, Why Israel? Readers Digest, December 2003, 12627.
20. Jerome Slater, Ideology vs. the National Interest: Bush, Sharon, and U.S. Policy in the
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Security Studies 12, no. 1 (autumn 2002): 164206.
 A Final Solution to a Recurrent Tragedy? 149

When a major historical event becomes central to contemporary politics,

sound analysis, good history, and balanced moral reasoning all tend to suffer.
For example, the disproportionate influence of the Holocaust has skewed our
understanding of the process of mass killing. The dominance of intentionalist
explanations for the Holocaust has diverted attention from other factors, aside
from irrational hatred, that might explain why states engage in mass killing,
such as peer-group pressure, bureaucratic structures, and strategic necessity.
Indeed, because the Holocaust engenders such intense emotions among many
scholars, certain otherwise plausible theories of what animated the perpetrators
have been taboo.21 As the controversy about Hannah Arendts banality of evil
thesis and the strident attacks on Christopher Brownings Ordinary Men theory
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make clear, functionalist arguments raise many peoples hackles.22

Further, it is widely believed that the Holocaust represents a uniquely
egregious instance of mass killing. The Anti-Defamation Leagues Abraham
Foxman characterized the Holocaust as the greatest crime in history.23 Yet
this belief neglects the deaths of millions of other innocent victims. Indeed,
as the data compiled by Valentino and summarized in Table 1 make clear, the
Holocaust was by no means the deadliest incident of mass killing in the bloody
twentieth century. Unfortunately, the predominance of the Holocaust tends to
conceal the sad fact that mass killing has not been an isolated event in history.24
Finally, from a moral standpoint, our main motive in the study of mass killing
should be to understand it in order to avoid unnecessary loss of innocent life
in the future. Much of the study of the Holocaust focuses exclusively on
the Jewish victims of the Shoah because many scholars in the field regard
this terrible event as sui generis.25 As Steven Katz put it, The Holocaust is
phenomenologically unique by virtue of the fact that never before has a state
set out, as a matter of intentional principle and actualized policy, to annihilate
physically every man, woman, and child belonging to a specific people.26 The
implication of the view that the Holocaust and genocide are uniquely evil
crimes is that killing an entire race is somehow worse than the extermination

21. Segev, The Seventh Million, 360, 464.

22. See for example the debate surrounding the publication of Hannah Arendt, Eichmann
in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (rev. and enlarged ed.) (Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1994). For recent evidence of the intensity of such criticism, see Daniel Jonah Goldhagan, The
Evil of Banality, New Republic, 13 and 20 July 1992, 4952.
23. Abraham H. Foxman, Never Again? The Threat of the New Anti-Semitism (New York: Harper-
SanFrancisco, 2003), 23; also see 75.
24. David E. Stannard, Uniqueness as Denial: The Politics of Genocide Scholarship, in
Rosenbaum, Is the Holocaust Unique? 279.
25. See the various essays in Rosenbaum, Is the Holocaust Unique?
26. Steven Katz, The Uniqueness of the Holocaust: The Historical Dimension, in
Rosenbaum, Is the Holocaust Unique? 49.
 150 SECURITY STUDIES 13, no. 3

Table 1
THE GRIM STATISTICS OF MASS KILLINGS

Country or countries Numbers killed

Peoples Republic of China
Stalins Soviet Union
Nazis vs. Gentiles
Holocaust
Cambodia
Turkey vs. Armenia
U.S./U.K. vs. Germany
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10 million to 46 million
9 million to 35 million
10 million to15 million
5 million to 6 million
1 million to 2 million
500,000 to 1.5 million
300,000 to 600,000

U.S. vs. Japan 268,000 to 900,000

France vs. Vietnam 250,000
U.S. vs. Philippines 200,000
Source: Benjamin A. Valentino, Final Solutions: Mass Killing and
Genocide in the 20th Century (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
2004), 177.

of millions more people without such genocidal intent. A key example of this
twisted moral reasoning is the disproportionate attention paid to the Jewish
victims of Nazism and the virtual lack of acknowledgment of the fact that
the Nazis killed far more innocent Gentiles in their bloody reign of terror
between 1939 and 1945. Another related example is that the Holocaust is
commemorated far more regularly than the mass killings in the Soviet Union
under Josef Stalinwhich also took far more innocent lives.27 Obviously,
when genocidethe effort to exterminate a whole racial or ethnic group
leads to mass killing on the scale of the Holocaust, it is certainly worthy
of attention. Contrary, however, to the conventional wisdom among many
Holocaust scholars, what makes genocide so horrible is not the fact that it is
an effort to annihilate an entire race, but rather that it is one more pretext for
engaging in the mass killing of large numbers of innocent individuals.
In sum, the dominance of the Holocaust has skewed our understanding of
the phenomenon of mass killing in many ways. One of the major contributions
of Final Solutions, then, is to demonstrate that the Holocaust was neither unique
nor the worst instance of mass killing in recent history and to put the study of
it in a truly systematic and comparative perspective.28

27. See Michael McFaul, Camps of Terror, Often Overlooked, New York Times (on-line),
11 June 2003.
28. Valentino, Final Solutions, 915.
 A Final Solution to a Recurrent Tragedy? 151

WHY VALENTINOS STRATEGIC THEORY OF MASS KILLING

WILL BE SO CONTROVERSIAL

RECISELY BECAUSE it challenges so much of the conventional wisdom

P derived from the Holocaust, Valentinos strategic theorythat leaders
resort to mass killing because they think that it can help them achieve other
endsis likely to prove controversial. For many, Valentinos suggestion that
mass killing can be a rational means to an end will be hard to accept. Like
many other functionalists, Valentino maintains that even otherwise ordinary
men can become mass killers, and this is also a provocative stance.29 Valentino
shows that hatred is not even a necessary, much less a sufficient, condition for
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participation in mass killing, and this will be hard for many to accept.30 Final
Solutions clearly challenges the widely accepted view that the Holocaust was a
uniquely heinous event by showing that it was unfortunately one of a number
of such events.31 It also makes clear that democracy is no inoculation against
mass killing. Democracies such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and
France have all engaged in mass killings at various points in history, though they
have not been among the most egregious perpetrators.32 Valentinos approach
treats mass killing as a normal subject for social science inquiry, and this is
also apt to rub many Holocaust scholars the wrong way. His strategic theory
assigns most of the moral culpability for mass killings to a handful of leaders,
and many will read it as exculpatory of the bulk of the population in states that
commit mass killing.33 Finally, Valentino joins a number of us who believe that
the same dynamics that lead people to undertake mass killing can, in other
circumstances, promote positive behaviors, such as a willingness to fight for
your country.34
The most controversial aspect of Valentinos theory, however, is that, taken
to its logical conclusion, it should lead us to conclude that Israel is one particular
case to monitor as a potential perpetrator of, if not mass killing, at least the
large-scale killing of noncombatants. Many people will no doubt find this
implication appalling. After all, Israel is populated by many survivors of the

29. The classic statements of this are Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, and Primo Levi, The
Drowned and the Saved (New York: Vintage, 1988), 2023. Also see Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of
the European Jews (student ed.) (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1985), 26593; and Christopher
Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York:
HarperPerennial, 1992).
30. Valentino, Final Solutions, 3, and 2021.
31. Ibid., 172.
32. Ibid., 2627 and 201.
33. Ibid., 2.
34. Ibid., 59. Also see Michael Desch, Why Ordinary Men Commit Extraordinary Crimes,
Security Studies 3, no. 2 (winter 1993/94): 35968.
 152 SECURITY STUDIES 13, no. 3

Holocaust and their descendants, its military prides itself on its tradition of
purity of arms (whereby it strives to conduct military operations with great
scruples about protecting innocents), and it has a robust democratic political
system that should make it impossible for leaders to engage in such execrable
behavior.35 Yet if Valentinos argument is correct, the legacy of the Holocaust,
purity of arms, and democracy may not prevent Israeli leaders from engaging
in the killing of civilians in a number of fairly plausible scenarios.
Valentino suggests three reasons why states engage in mass killing: to pro-
mote radical domestic change, to seize and settle territory from others, or to
suppress an insurgency.36 The Israelis have pursued two of these three objec-
tives in their conflict with the Palestinians. Israel has already engaged in the
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transfer of Arabs in order to seize and settle territory in the past. As Israeli
historian Benny Morris reminded us, The idea of transfer is as old as mod-
ern Zionism and has accompanied its evolution and praxis during the past
century. And driving it was an iron logic: There could be no viable Jewish
state in all or part of Palestine unless there was a mass displacement of Arab
inhabitants, who opposed its emergence and would constitute an active or
potential fifth column in its midst. This logic was understood and enunciated,
before and during 1948, by Zionist, Arab and British leaders and officials.37
During Israels 1948 war of independence, for example, more than 700,000
Palestinians were driven from Jewish-controlled areas during the course of
military operations.
Today, there remains substantial support in Israel for the transfer of Pales-
tinians from Israel and the occupied territories. While this is not something
that has been widely discussed by Israeli government officials, a few politi-
cians now talk about it openly.38 Indeed, Moledet, a party officially advocating

35. For a strong defense of the propositions that Israel is a thoroughly democratic country
that has no interest in conquest of territory beyond the original United Nations mandate and
that it conducts its military operations with the utmost regard for the lives of Palestinian non-
combatants, see Alan Dershowitz, The Case for Israel (New York: Wiley, 2003).
For a somewhat different argumentthat Israel has a relatively low risk for engaging in
genocidesee Barbara Harff, No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust? Assessing Risks
of Genocide and Political Mass Murder since 1955, American Political Science Review 97, no. 1
(February 2003): 5773.
36. Valentino, Final Solutions, 23940.
37. Benny Morris, A New Exodus for the Middle East, The Guardian (on-line), 3 October
2002. Also see Benny Morris, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 18811999
(New York: Knopf, 1999), 139; Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities (New York:
Pantheon, 1987), 81118; and Walid Khalidi, Why Did the Palestinians Leave? Middle East
Forum, July 1959: 2124 and 35.
38. Lily Galili, Transfer? I Have No Ethical Problem with That, Haaretz (on-line),
12 December 2002; and Aluf Benn, Well Expel Illegal Arabs from Israel, Haaretz (on-line),
4 April 2004.
 A Final Solution to a Recurrent Tragedy? 153

transfer, is now part of Prime Minister Ariel Sharons governing coalition.39

Although the Bush administration is committed in principle to an indepen-
dent Palestinian state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, some American
politicians have nonetheless endorsed transfer.40 Given all this, it is not sur-
prising that, in one poll of Israelis, 57 percent of the respondents supported
transfer, either from an ideological commitment to ensuring Jewish control of
Eretz Yisrael (the biblical lands, including the West Bank) or because of fears
of escalating Palestinian violence.41
Israel managed to transfer 700,000 Palestinians in 1948, having to kill only
800 people to accomplish it.42 If Israel were to attempt to transfer Palestinians
from Israel or the occupied territories today, it would be highly unlikely that it
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could be done without much more killing. As Valentino notes, ethnic cleansing
requires mass killing under three circumstances: when there are large numbers
of people to be moved, when it has to be done quickly, and where there is no
refuge for the victims outside of the area to be cleansed.43 Any Israeli effort
to transfer Palestinians today would be very different from 1948 for three
reasons: First, there are now huge numbers of people involved, including
1 million Palestinians in Gaza, 2 million in the West Bank, and 1.2 million
Arabs in Israel. Moreover, the fertility rate among the Arabs in Israel and
the occupied territories is significantly higher than that among Jews. Figure 1
makes clear that as a result of these different population growth rates, Jews will
be a minority in Israel early in the next decade if they continue to hold on to
Gaza and the West Bank. Morris spoke for many Israelis when he noted that
the Israeli Arabs are a time bomb that must be defused through transfer.44
Second, most scenarios involve transfer taking place in the context of a
war or a catastrophic terrorist event in Israel.45 In either case, ethnic cleans-
ing would have to be done very quickly. Indeed, Israel has long understood
that any controversial action it takes needs to be done rapidly, before the

39. See their program at http://www.moledet.org.il/english/moledet.html.

40. Richard Armey, quoted in Matthew Engel, Senior Republican Calls on Israel to Expel
West Bank Arabs, The Guardian (on-line), 4 May 2002.
41. Arjan El Fassed and Nigel Parry, Israel Discovers That Democracy Is Not an Israeli
Value, Electronic Intifada (on-line), 22 May 2003, reporting the results of an Israeli Democracy
Institute survey.
42. See Morris in Ari Shavit, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz (on-line), 9 January 2004; and
Israeli Researcher Uncovers 1948 Massacre, Haaretz (on-line), 19 January 2000.
43. Valentino, Final Solutions, 15657.
44. Quoted in Shavit, Survival of the Fittest.
45. See Martin van Creveld, Sharons Plan Is to Drive Palestinians across the Jordan,
Telegraph (on-line), 26 April 2002; and Meron Benvenisti, Preemptive Warnings of Fantastic
Scenarios, Haaretz (on-line), 15 August 2002.
 Downloaded by [Arizona State University] at 18:07 29 June 2012

154
Figure 1
ISRAELS DEMOGRAPHIC TIME BOMB
 A Final Solution to a Recurrent Tragedy? 155

international community can respond.46 In many instances throughout their

historyincluding the collusion with the United Kingdom and France to
attack Egypt during the1956 Suez war, the preemptive strike on Egypt at
the beginning of the1967 Six-Day War, the effort to destroy the encircled
Egyptian Third Army before a U.S.- and Soviet-imposed cease-fire at the end
of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, or the invasion of Lebanon to destroy the
Palestine Liberation Organization, oust Syria, and install a friendly Christian
government in Beirut in 1982the Israelis have moved quickly to present
the international community with a fait accompli when they knew that their
actions would be controversial.
Finally, unlike in 1948, any displaced Palestinians will have great difficulty
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today finding refuge in Jordan, Egypt, or Lebanon, since for each of those
states, the presence of a much smaller number of Palestinians in the past
caused serious problems for those governments.47 Given that lack of refuge,
any transfer would inevitably involve far more killing than occurred in 1948.
In addition to seizing and settling territory, another conceivable motivation
for killing large numbers of civilians might be Israels efforts to suppress an
insurgency against its continuing occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
According to Valentino, counterinsurgency can lead to mass killing under two
circumstances. If the threat to the survival of the state becomes severe enough,
and if large numbers of people are seen to be supporting the insurgency, ethnic
cleansing has often seemed to leaders to be the only way to counter it.48 As
Valentino observes,
Ethnic cleansing becomes more likely when leaders perceive their ethnic
opponents as threatening, not merely to the continued power and privileges
of the regime, but to the integrity of the state or the physical safety of
the dominant group, and when leaders simultaneously perceive that less
violent policies have failed to meet these threats. . . . The belief that previous
moderate policies had failed to defuse these threats, combined with the
outbreak of wars in which minority groups were implicated, simultaneously
exacerbated these dire prediction and ensured that more radical solutions
would be put into practice [in previous historical cases].49
As Valentino makes clear in his discussion of mass killing to seize and settle
territory, ethnic cleansing very often involves mass killing.
46. Yair Evron, War and Intervention in Lebanon: The Israeli-Syrian Deterrence Dialog (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), 30; and Avner Yaniv and Robert J. Lieber, Personal
Whim or Strategic Imperative? The Israeli Invasion of Lebanon, International Security 8, no. 2
(autumn 1983): 13637.
47. Danny Rubinstein, In Jordans Nightmare, the Palestinians Arrive in Waves, Haaretz
(on-line), 28 October 2002.
48. Valentino, Final Solutions, 22830.
49. Ibid., 188.
 156 SECURITY STUDIES 13, no. 3

Why might the Palestinian intifada lead Israeli leaders to think that killing
large numbers of civilians is the only way to protect the Jewish states security?
According to a widely respected yearly poll of Israeli public opinion concerning
national security matters, it is clear that the majority of Israelis regard the
current al-Aksa intifada as a serious threat to their personal survival as well as
the survival of their nation. Eighty-three percent of Israelis polled were either
worried or very worried about their personal safety, and 60 percent believe
that the Palestinians want to conquer or destroy pre-1967 Israel.50 There is a
particular concern in Israel that suicide terrorism, the newest and deadliest
weapon in the Palestinian arsenal, poses an especially serious threat to Israel.51
There is some basis for these concerns. First, the Palestinians are closing the
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gap in terms of the numbers of Jews and Arabs killed. In October of 2000, for
example, the ratio of Palestinians to Israelis killed was 10:1. By April of 2003,
that ratio had closed to 5:1.52 Second, there is evidence of growing Palestinian
public support for suicide bombings against Israeli targets. Between 60 and
80 percent of Palestinians polled now express support for that campaign.53
Finally, recent polls among Palestinians suggest that more than 40 percent of
respondents see the current intifada as a means to liberate all of Palestine, not
just the occupied territories.54
Thus it is not surprising that there is a widespread perception among Israelis
that the Palestinian insurgency is posing a dire threat to the security and even
existence of the Jewish state. Moshe Yaalon, the chief of staff of the Israel
Defense Forces, compares the Arab threat with cancer: he is currently apply-
ing chemotherapy, but eventually he feels it may be necessary to amputate
organs.55 There is robust support among Israelis for restrictions on the polit-
ical rights of Arab parties (68 percent), the encouragement of voluntary Arab
emigration (57 percent), and even the forcible transfer of Palestinians from
the occupied territories (46 percent).56 Reflecting the growth of these senti-
ments, there are now billboards in Israel proclaiming, Only transfer will bring

50. Asher Arian, Israeli Public Opinion on National Security 2003 (Tel Aviv: Jaffee Center for
Strategic Studies, October 2003), 19, 23.
51. John Kifner, Cabinet in Israel Endorses Seizure of the West Bank, New York Times
(on-line), 22 June 2002.
52. Data compiled from http://www.btselem.org/.
53. Jerusalem Media and Communication Centre, Palestinian Opinion Pulse 3, no. 7
( January 2002), at http://mail.jmcc.org/publicpoll/pop/02/jan/pop7.htm.
54. Jerusalem Media and Communication Centre, On Palestinian Attitudes towards Pol-
itics Including the Current IntifadaJune 2001, JMCC Public Opinion Poll No. 41, at
http://www.jmcc.org/publicpoll/results/2001/no41.htm.
55. Ari Shavit, The Enemy Within, Haaretz Friday Magazine (on-line), 30 August 2002, and
and Zeev Schiff, Keep Qassams Out of the W. Bank, Haaretz (on-line), 6 October 2004.
56. Arian, Israeli Public Opinion, 30.
 A Final Solution to a Recurrent Tragedy? 157

peace.57 Transfer is now unlikely to happen without the killing of significant

numbers of noncombatants.
Let me be clear: I do not think that Valentinos strategic theory implies
that it is inevitable that Israel will kill 50,000 people in any of these scenarios.
What his theory does suggest, however, is that Israel is at greater risk now
of killing a large number of noncombatants, certainly more than it killed in
1948, both because of widespread support among Jews for the transfer of the
Palestinians and because of growing fears among Israelis that the Palestinians
are committed to the destruction of the Jewish state. If these trends continue,
neither the legacy of the Holocaust, nor purity of arms, nor democracy are
likely to present an insurmountable obstacle to such a campaign. Recall that
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Israel engaged in ethnic cleansing involving some limited but deliberate killing
of noncombatants a scant three years after the Holocaust, during the 1948 war.
The notion that the Israel Defense Forces routinely take great care to avoid
civilian casualties during the conduct of operations is also largely a myth belied
by their actions during the 1948 war (not all of the massacres were committed
by Irgun as at Deir Yassin), the Qibya raid of 1953, and the massacres at Sabra
and Shatilla during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Given all these
factors, Valentinos theory clearly suggests that Israel is a high risk case that
bears careful monitoring. This implication, more than anything, will make his
theory controversial in many quarters.

RESERVATIONS AND AVENUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

is a breath of fresh air in a field that, with a few notable

F INAL SOLUTIONS
exceptions, has focused disproportionately on a single case and resisted
drawing the sorts of theoretical, historical, and policy conclusions that a truly
comparative social science theory of mass killing ought to. Valentinos book will
be controversial, but it is precisely his willingness to challenge conventional
wisdom that makes it a valuable contribution to our understanding of the
dynamics of mass killing.
Nevertheless, Final Solutions is not without limitations. I would point to
three in particular. First, Valentinos strategic theory of mass killing strikes
me as true, but also in some respects trivial. What seems most true about it
is that, as he convincingly documents, mass killing is usually purposive. It is
rarely an end in itself; it is usually a means to some other end aside from the

57. Quoted in Ben Lynfield, Israeli Expulsion Idea Gains Steam, Christian Science Monitor
(on-line), 6 February 2002.
 158 SECURITY STUDIES 13, no. 3

destruction of large numbers of people. What is trivial about this argument

is that it does not go further to answer two key questions. The first is, When
does mass killing really work? Specifically, both Stalin and Hitler engaged in
some of the twentieth centurys most egregious mass killings. Hitler did so at
no benefit, and some argue at great cost, to his war effort. In contrast, Stalin
killed millions in an effort to consolidate and industrialize the Soviet Union.
Although his actions are in no way morally defensible, a case can at least be
made that they helped the Soviet Union drag itself into the twentieth century
and survive the Nazi onslaught in the early stages of the Second World War.
The second unanswered question is, What explains why sometimes states-
men believe mass killing works and other times they do not? This seems to
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me to be a very important theoretical issue with clear policy implications. If

there are lots of cases in which mass killing will not really work, how can we
persuade statesmen of this when they believe otherwise? Given that Valentino
concludes that mass killing failed to achieve its perpetrators objectives, at
least in the long run, in all of the cases examined in this book, the question
of why leaders think mass killing makes strategic sense assumes great impor-
tance.58 Like the role of perceptions in international politics more generally,
this issue is central to understanding mass killing.59
In a second limitation, it is not clear whether Valentino actually has a the-
ory of mass killing (for example, a certain level of necessity makes it more
likely that a leader will advocate mass killing) or just a framework or typology
(that is, mass killing seems to be purposive rather than an end in itself ). Obvi-
ously, a really useful theory needs to identify more precisely the threshold level
of strategic necessity above which mass killing becomes more likely, beyond
just saying that statesmen might consider mass killing as strategically rational
in order to effect social transformation, seize and settle territory, or suppress
a popular insurgency.
Finally, although Final Solutions nicely marries comparative theory testing
with first-rate policy analysis, some of Valentinos policy conclusions struck me
as a bit Pollyannaish. After laying out a theory that suggests that mass killing
is widespread because so many leaders think that it is useful, he comes to the
rather startling conclusion that mass killing should be easier to deal with than
we think. Valentino is optimistic on this score because he believes that, usually,
relatively small numbers of individuals are the driving force behind a mass
killing, and so it should be easy for the international community to intervene

58. Valentino, Final Solutions, 68.

59. Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1976).
 A Final Solution to a Recurrent Tragedy? 159

and put a stop to it. Yet if mass killing is really strategic, rather than an end
in itself, it may be even harder to deal with than he thinks. Structural realists
believe that irrational behavior by states tends to be selected out, whereas
rational behavior is reinforced by the structure of the international system.60
If mass killing really helps statesmen achieve their objectives, then there must
be powerful incentives in the structure of the international system reinforcing
this terrible behavior. Given the logic of Valentinos theory, then, I am more
pessimistic than he is that we can dramatically reduce mass killings.
Thus, Final Solutions still leaves at least three avenues for further research.
First, we need a more precise theory of when and why leaders will opt for mass
killing and when they will not. What level of strategic necessity is sufficient
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to drive statesmen to embrace such an extreme policy? Second, we need a

better sense of the conditions under which mass killing really works, or at least
when states can get away with it. Finally, we need to know what factors shape
leaders perceptions of when mass killing will work. Are such perceptions
reflective of reality or do statesmen often err in thinking that mass killing is
a panacea for their domestic problems? Valentinos book represents a good
start, but much further conceptual and empirical work remains.
Valentino has written a good book on a very depressing topic. He can take
solace that Final Solutions will advance the study of mass killing in important
ways, mostly because it challenges so much of the conventional wisdom about
the Holocaust that has dominated and distorted our thinking about the general
phenomenon of mass killing. Although it is not the last word on this subject,
I am confident that Final Solutions will be recognized as the crest of a new
wave of scholarship about the causes and consequences of this most extreme
manifestation of mans inhumanity to man.

60. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1979), 12728.