Are We Being Helpful?

At the end of the Cold War, Pandora’s box suddenly blew open, liberating the Evils that had been waiting patiently for their next release. It soon became evident that the relative peace the world had enjoyed for the last 50 years had rested upon the flimsiest of foundations: a balance-of-terror stand-off between two superpowers and their respective satellite states that had successfully held local tyrannies at bay, or controlled them from afar. When the Iron Curtain came down and an old ideology lost its power, new enemies filled the void. In Serbia, Tito’s communism dissolved into racist ethnic nationalism and “Greater Serbia” land hunger. In Rwanda, simmering ethnic resentments flared into genocide before the eyes of the world. In places such as Darfur, Uganda, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, corrupt government leaders and tribal warlords fought for control of wealth-producing natural resources...