The war in Ukraine rages on, and peace talks have ceased after accusations of genocide have been brought by Presidents Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelensky. The Bucha killings were egregious, but they were not a genocide.
Genocide is commonly understood to be the deliberate, systematic extermination of a homogenous group of people, like the Jews or Armenians. Accusing someone of committing genocide is a serious accusation and we should not throw such a term around haphazardly.
It is politically risky to call genocide into question once the term has been invoked. French President Emmanuel Macron received criticism for questioning President Biden's accusation that Putin is committing genocide. He stated, "I want to try as much as possible to continue to be able to stop this war and to rebuild peace. I'm not sure that verbal escalations serve this cause." Perhaps Macron recognizes that "genocide" is the magic word invoked for military intervention.
But Biden is not the first person to make accusations of genocide in this conflict. By using the term most identified with the murder of 6 million Jews by Nazi Germany, Biden mimicked Putin, who justified his actions against Ukraine by claiming that a genocide had previously taken place in the Donbas.
Peace talks have halted since the most recent allegations of genocide, even though tens of thousands of people have been killed in the last two months. Was the word invoked to sabotage peace negotiations and keep the war going? If so, how is that good for the people of Ukraine?
Biden's genocide allegation came two months ago, after the Russian military killed Ukrainian civilians as the Russians attempted to set course down a street in Bucha. They indiscriminately killed everyone in their way. "It is well-documented that since 2014, both sides have committed human rights violation in Donbas and innocent people have been killed and abused, but there is no credible evidence that genocide is taking place," said Alexander Hinton, director of the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University.
Atrocities like the Bucha killings may be war crimes, but they are not unheard of. Unfortunately, similar atrocities have been committed by U.S. troops. In 1968, U.S. troops slaughtered approximately 500 civilians in My Lai, Vietnam. That incident will forever be a black stain on the United States military—a hideous war crime, but not a genocide (and not ordered by President Lyndon B. Johnson).
The Biden administration might want to think carefully before carelessly charging Putin with genocide. By their current standard, more than a few allied leaders would be guilty of the same crime.
Most recently, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have been guilty of a brutal war of aggression against Yemen in which nearly 400,000 civilians have died. Genocide Watch claimed the Yemeni genocide is at "Stage IX—Extermination" and "Stage X—Denial." Presidents Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden have all been accomplices, eagerly supplying the Saudis with war planes, munitions that targeted civilians, military intelligence, and fuel for Saudi and Emirati aircraft.
Arguably, the United Kingdom's staunch military alliance with the Saudi dictatorship has made its government directly complicit with these atrocities, as well. Former President George W. Bush is a well-known candidate for war crimes and genocide for his unjustified attack on Iraq. His war ended up killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians.
Putin is no liberator. He's a brutal dictator, and the killings of civilians in Bucha and elsewhere are war crimes, but before lobbing accusations of genocide at Putin, Western leaders should take a long, hard look in the mirror. American aggression against Iraq and Saudi aggression against Yemen have killed far more civilians than the Russians have yet killed in Ukraine. The West should take war crimes and allegations of genocide seriously. But that requires starting with its own.
Mislabeling the casualties of war as a genocide does nothing to de-escalate the war. If anything, it does the opposite.
Angela McArdle is chair of the Libertarian National Committee.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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