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The Genocide Convention was drafted by the United Nations in the late 1940s, as a response to the horrors of the Second World War. But was the Genocide Convention truly effective at achieving its humanitarian aims, or did it merely exacerbate the divisive rhetoric of Cold War geopolitics? A Rhetorical Crime shows how genocide morphed from a legal concept into a political discourse used in propaganda battles between the United States and the Soviet Union. Over the course of the Cold War era, nearly eighty countries were accused of genocide, and yet there were few real-time interventions to stop the atrocities committed by genocidal regimes like the Cambodian Khmer Rouge. Renowned genocide scholar Anton Weiss-Wendt employs a unique comparative approach, analyzing the statements of Soviet and American politicians, historians, and legal scholars in order to deduce why their moral posturing far exceeded their humanitarian action.

Cold War. --- Genocide intervention --- Genocide (International law) --- International criminal law --- Humanitarian intervention --- World politics --- Political aspects. --- Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide --- Convención para la prevención y la sanción del delito de genocidio --- Convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide --- Convention pour la prévention et la répression du crime de génocide --- Fang chih chi chʻeng chih wei hai chung tsu tsui kung yüeh --- Konvent︠s︡ii︠a︡ o preduprezhdenii prestuplenii︠a︡ genot︠s︡ida i nakazanii za nego --- Soviet Union --- United States --- Foreign relations --- Foreign relations. --- Communist. --- Genocide Convention. --- Raphael Lemkin. --- Soviet Union. --- Soviet genocide. --- Soviet-American. --- US. --- USSR. --- genocide. --- human rights. --- international. --- politics.