The Albright-Cohen Report: From Realpolitik Fantasy to Realist Ethics

The Genocide Prevention Task Force’s Preventing Genocide: A Blueprint for U.S. Policy Makers (the Albright-Cohen Report) has been touted as a comprehensive proposal for significantly improving the United States’ response to genocide and other mass violence in foreign regions.1 The report recommends various new initiatives, committees and groups, procedures, and resource allocations to support this goal. It also calls for increased attention to genocide at every level of the US government, from the president on down. The assumption is that if our leaders and others in government take genocide more seriously as an ongoing threat, and if effective institutional structures, processes, and resources are put in place, these will be used to prevent or intervene against genocide and other mass atrocities. At its most basic level, the report seeks to change the practical details and conceptual elements of the United States’ relationship to genocide, from what the report presents as relative indifference to active, productive engagement