SAMANTHA POWER

Chasing the Flame, tells the life story of a remarkable man. Sergio Vieira de Mello was born in 1948 just as the post World War II order was taking shape. He died in a terrorist attack on UN Headquarters in Iraq in 2003, just as the battle lines in the twenty-first century's first great struggle were being drawn. In nearly four decades of work for the United Nations, de Mello negotiated with - and often charmed - Cold War military dictators, Marxist jungle radicals, reckless warlords, and nationalist and sectarian militia leaders. By bringing us the life of this man who saw more war than any other person of his generation, Samantha Power allows us to live the central humanitarian and geopolitical crises of the last two decades - the conflagration in the Middle East, through Vieira de Mello's trouble-shooting in Lebanon in the aftermath of Israel's 1982 invasion; the clean-up of the Cold War's residue, through his taming of the Khmer Rouge and repatriation of 400,000 Cambodian refugees in the early 1990s, the explosion of sectarian and ethnic militancy, through his efforts to negotiate an end to the slaughter in Bosnia; the struggle to nation-build in war-torn societies, through his quasi-colonial governorships of Kosovo and East Timor; and the engulfing of Iraq in civil war and terror, through his tragic final posting as the UN representative in Baghdad, where he became the victim of the country's first-ever suicide bomb. In this finely reasoned and imagined book, Samantha Power reveals Sergio Vieira de Mello's powerful legacy of humanity and ideological strength, and by introducing a hero for our age offers new answers to the question: who will possess the moral authority, the political sense and the military and economic left to protect human life and bring peace to the unruly new world order?

Sergio Vieira de Mello - peacemaker, troubleshooter and charismatic negotiator - lived an extraordinary life at the centre of some of the most dramatic international crises of the last half century. As UN High Commissioner he tried to bring an end to the slaughter in Bosnia, talk to genocidal warriors in Congo and clear up the fallout of the Iraq invasion, where he was killed in 2003. Through the prism of this extraordinary life, Samantha Power, one of the most prominent thinkers in international affairs today, tells the story of the flashpoints in our recent history - and the perilous world we live in.

En esta controvertida obra ganadora del Premio Pulitzer 2003, la autora analiza cómo ha reaccionado el gobierno de Estados Unidos en los distintos casos de genocidio del siglo XX, desde la matanza de armenios en la primera Guerra Mundial hasta los asesinatos en masa de los tutsi de Ruanda en 1994. Su análisis revela un comportamiento consistente y devastador: Estados Unidos se ha negado a actuar o a emplear incluso la palabra genocidio para nombrar esos hechos atroces, y se ha refugiado en la invocación repetida a la ausencia de intereses estadounidenses en los países involucrados. Con entrevistas exclusivas, la revisión de documentos hasta hace poco restringidos y su experiencia como corresponsal de guerra, Power hace una escalofriante llamada de atención sobre las responsabilidades del poder económico y militar.

La muerte del carismático comisionado de los derechos humanos, Sergio Vieira de Mello, en un ataque suicida en Bagdad en 2003, representó, al mismo tiempo, la culminación trágica de un idealista que dedico su vida a luchar contra la guerra, y el inicio de una serie de desventuras para los representantes de la ONU en Irak En esta interesante biografia, la ganadora del premio Pulitzer Samantha Power sigue a Vieira a traves de su carrera, explica su condicion de exiliado, habla de sus aportaciones a la construccion de la paz y recuerda las trasgresiones a las practicas burocraticas de la ONU que lo llevaron a convertirse en una de las figuras centrales de la diplomacia internacional durante las decadas finales del siglo xx Basado en una investigacion originada en 1994, año en que la periodista conocio a Vieira, este relato sobre las experiencias del diplomatico, que trabajo en lugares como Camboya, Ruanda, Bosnia y Kosovo, es una estimulante incursion a los entramados de la politica internacional.