Saving Democracy: Finding the Roots of Today's Crisis to Resolve It

by Judith Armatta
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15 books
We live in perilous times. We've lived through other crises: slavery, the Revolutionary War, the genocide of native peoples, the Civil War, Ku Klux Klan violence, WWI and II, Japanese American internment, McCarthyism, Vietnam, the terrorist attacks of 9/11, etc. Our history tells us we came through all those, that there was a conclusion, in many cases, a victory. Yes, but. . . . Underlying causes and consequences haunt us still. They fester and break out in unexpected ways. The current crisis of U.S. democracy has its genesis in the crises of the past, as does white supremacy. The fifteen books I've chosen expose the roots of today's critical divisions. By studying them, and paying attention to what impeded resolutions, we may yet avoid disaster.
Not only the United States but other countries are experiencing authoritarian rulers. We are no longer on a worldwide trajectory toward democratic and open societies as we thought we were after WWII. Wars have exploded in Ukraine, Darfur, Sudan, Myanmar, Israel/Gaza. Three decades ago, the multi-ethnic Yugoslavia dissolved in power grabs that led to war. Autocratic leaders such as Slobodan Milosevic undertook to conquer by violence lands that would not submit to his rule. In doing so, he ignored international law and wreaked havoc on innocent civilians, using whatever means available, including genocide of Bosnian Muslims. Ultimately, human rights activists forced the creation of the first international war crimes tribunal since Nuremberg and Tokyo, and Serbian citizens deposed him and sent him to face justice for crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide. The international justice movement stands as a warning to autocrats who will stop at nothing to secure power. Selected books on war crimes tribunals reveal the hard-won steps toward a peaceful international order built on accountability, as well as a forum for victims to tell the tragedies that derailed their lives before the strong men who caused it.
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Twilight of Impunity

The War Crimes Trial of Slobodan Milosevic
Judith Armatta, 2010
I wrote Twilight of Impunity after monitoring Milosevic's trial for four years, three of those on-site in The Hague. The book explains complex legal issues, assessing the trial's implications for victims in the Balkans and international justice more broadly. I acknowledge the trial's flaws, particularly Milosevic's grandstanding and attacks on the institutional legitimacy of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Nevertheless, the trial provided an indispensable narrative of events in the former Yugoslavia and a valuable forum where victims could tell their stories and seek justice. It addressed crucial legal issues, such as the responsibility of commanders for crimes committed by subordinates, and helped to create a framework for conceptualizing and organizing other large-scale international criminal tribunals. The prosecution of Milosevic (though ended prematurely by his death) was an important step toward ending impunity for leaders who perpetrate egregious crimes against humanity.

Justice in the Balkans

Prosecuting War Crimes in the Hague Tribunal
John Hagan, 2010
The story of how a committed group of human rights activists turned a mere UN resolution into the first effective international war crimes tribunal since Nuremberg and Tokyo. From empty offices lacking computers and courtrooms without indictees, the ICTY became a functioning institution with 1000 employees and, ultimately, 161 convicted war criminals. Hagan shows how committed individuals sharing a collective purpose can effect profound change.

Justice in a Time of War

The True Story Behind the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
Pierre Hazan, 2004
Hazan reveals the origins of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in realpolitik: the desire of international actors, including the United States, to avoid intervention in Bosnia. Despite a lack of funding, the Tribunal became a real court through the work of individuals who believed in its mission. Prosecutor Louise Arbour's indictment of Slobodan Milosevic led to the end of the war in Kosovo, his fall from power, and the first-ever war crimes trial of a former head of state.

Madame Prosecutor

Confrontations with Humanity's Worst Criminals and the Culture of Impunity
Carla Del Ponte, Chuck Sudetic, 2011
A former mafia prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte held the position of Chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia from 1999 to 2008 and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda from 1999 to 2003. In her memoir, she provides a readable overview of the situations in both countries that led to war, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. We learn of her efforts behind the scenes to investigate and secure the arrests and convictions of those most responsible, including Slobodan Milosevic and Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza. She describes highlights from their trials and their legal and political significance. Del Ponte dispels the myth that "ancient hatreds" were causative and discusses more complex situations

The Milošević Trial

An Autopsy
Timothy William Waters, 2013
This comprehensive interdisciplinary assessment of the Milosevic Trial is a valuable resource for scholars, especially legal scholars, and for an educated readership interested in a deep dive into what was called "The Trial of the Century." It ended abruptly and unexpectedly with Milosevic's death. There would be no judgment. For this reason alone, the book serves the much-needed purpose of summation and analysis. I authored Chapter 20: The Court and Public Opinion: Negotiating Tensions between Trial Process and Public Interest in Milosevic.

Surviving the Peace

The Struggle for Postwar Recovery in Bosnia-Herzegovina
Peter Lippman, 2019
Once the shooting stops, most reporters and commentators pack up and go home, as if everything important is over. Yet, as Lippman so eloquently shows, for many an entirely new life has begun, one they are not prepared for and have few resources to manage. Moreover, there appears to be almost an aversion to reporting on successes, i.e. former enemies reconnecting and working together. It does exist and is the part we should be emphasizing. Lippman reports both the successes and failures, as well as the continued challenges faced by a society torn apart by ethnic hatred. The book is about this little addressed aspect of war -- what happens when the shooting stops-- and how ordinary people are critical in reconstituting community.

Negro President

Jefferson and the Slave Power
Garry Wills, 2005
Books that astound me teach something important I didn't know. After 19 years of schooling, I still have much to learn, which keeps me reading. In Negro President, I learned that Jefferson achieved the presidency because of the then-clause in the U.S. Constitution that gave slave owners additional votes equal to three-fifths of a person, based on the number they owned. The slaves didn't have a say in it. While Wills admires Jefferson and has written much about him, he reveals how Jefferson helped maintain slavery in the South. This proves two maxims: 1) we're none of us all good or all bad, and 2) the U.S. was indeed created in slavery. This is a must read for anyone who wants to understand racism in the U.S., then and now.

Klan War

Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction
Fergus M. Bordewich, 2023
The Civil War did not end in 1865. As Bordewich shows, it took on a new aspect. Southern conservatives exchanged uniforms of grey for white robes, hoods, and masks. The main organization was the Ku Klux Klan, consisting of thousands of ordinary citizens, often led by lawyers, mayors, sheriffs, bankers, professors, and other supposed "upstanding" citizens. After the disgraceful, pro-Confederate administration of Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant responded to the pleas from Black Southerners and their white allies living under a reign of terror if they were allowed to live at all. The actions that destroyed Reconstruction in the South are the genesis of the white supremacy movement today. To address our current divisions, we must understand what they're based on. This book is a necessary piece of that puzzle. The trials of those who rode with or supported the KKK contributed legal theory (such as "following orders" is not a defense) that is used in international war crimes tribunals today.

Wilmington's Lie

The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy
David Zucchino, 2020
Well over one hundred years after the Civil War, Americans are only beginning to learn of the horrors perpetrated by white citizens in the South to reverse the North's victory and overturn reconstruction that allowed Black men to own property, vote, and achieve positions of prominence. In Wilmington, North Carolina, Black citizens held positions of political and economic power. By 1898, white city leaders had had enough of being "ruled" by Blacks, whom they considered grossly inferior. They planned and carried out murder and ethnic cleansing of the city, which continued for 70 years until the Civil Rights Movement. Zucchino, who won the Pulitzer Prize, reveals this shocking episode in our history that we shamefully did not learn in school.

Wrapped in the Flag

A Personal History of America's Radical Right
Claire Conner, 2013
I thought I knew all there was for an average, responsible citizen to know about the John Birch Society until I read Claire Conner's memoir of growing up with parents in the Movement. It was far more influential then and now than I understood. The Society has a prominent place in the history of today's radical right. Conner's personal story helped me understand how an ideology can consume one's thoughts, actions, and emotions to the exclusion of even one's children. It also illuminated the Herculean effort it takes to break free.

How Civil Wars Start

And How to Stop Them
Barbara F. Walter, 2022
An expert on civil wars, Walter identifies the conditions that give rise to them, such as the presence of vigilantes or militias, large gaps in equality, weakened institutions, and factionalism exploited by lust for power. The U.S., she writes, shows a number of those conditions, making it dangerously close to a violent split not seen since its Civil War of the 1860s. Though we're dangerously close to civil war, we can avoid it by bolstering the rule of law, increasing government effectiveness (give all citizens equal access to the vote; improve quality of government services), and regulation of social media.

Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America

James Poniewozik, 2019
Poniewozik built his career on following the development of mass media. In Audience of One, he shares his insights, most specifically, the evolution from three major television channels and a predominantly unified culture to the emergence of cable TV, its plethora of channels, and social media which divided the population into fragmented silos. Poniewozik asserts that Donald Trump's trajectory followed and exploited this cultural change. It goes a long way to explaining why 30% of Americans continue to support Trump despite his cruelty, narcissism, lies, contempt for the law, and provocation of insurrection.

After the Fall

The Rise of Authoritarianism in the World We've Made
Ben Rhodes, 2022
Rhodes explores the rise of nationalist authoritarian politics throughout the world, not least in the U.S. It is necessary to look at the worst of what America is to "truly love what America is supposed to be." We are at a crisis point where inequality has burgeoned under nearly unregulated capitalism; propaganda is rampant, and people are siloed from each other and live in different realities aided by new technologies such as the internet and social media. Under Trump, America experimented with Fascism. While Biden's election was a corrective, the forces that produced Trump predated him and continue to exist. Yet we have come through other crises (internment of Japanese Americans, McCarthyism) with our ideals intact. Americans are not monolithic. While some desire an authoritarian ruler, others cherish democracy.

The Soul of America

The Battle for Our Better Angels
Jon Meacham, 2018
Meacham exposes the ugliness as well as the achievements of U.S. history, highlighting the fundamental contradictions that have formed this nation: -- genocide of native peoples and theft of their lands; slavery necessary for its economic miracle; freedom of slaves through civil war and the reimposition of white power following; the expansion of democracy for Black Americans, women, and non-land-owning classes; the rise of a U.S. Eugenics movement that inspired Adolf Hitler; the creation of social programs to aid the poor, sick, and elderly; anti-Semitism that blamed Jews for the Great Depression; the Chinese Exclusion Act; internment of Japanese Americans during WWII; passage of the Civil Rights Acts and desegregation . . . . Still, he ends the book with hope, emphasizing that the struggle of darkness and light, the struggle carried out by the better angels of our nature (per Abraham Lincoln) is worth it -- and still possible.

Surviving Autocracy

Masha Gessen, 2020
Journalist Masha Gessen has survived autocracy once, growing up in the Soviet Union and Russia and reporting on Vladimir Putin's assumption of power for two decades before emigrating to the U.S. In 2016, she found she had replaced life under one autocrat for life under another. In Surviving Autocracy, she expertly unpacks the elements of Donald Trump's presidency that reveal him as an unapologetic autocrat intent on destroying American democracy. Her easily accessible style provides a warning to all Americans of where this country is headed if Trump and his supporters regain power in 2024 or after. To counter Trumpism, Gessen concludes that we must pursue a forward-looking vision of America that is inclusive of our differences and complexity and focuses on equity, not wealth, and solidarity, not competition. Gessen wrote Surviving Autocracy in 2020 but foresaw the violent backlash to Trump's 2020 defeat. She knows whereof she writes.