Gary Bass, an Associate Professor of Politics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School, has authored the forthcoming book Freedom's Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention  (Knopf, 2008).

Freedom's Battle explores the history of humanitarian intervention reaching back more than two hundred years. In the book Bass describes the political and cultural settings out of which activists arose, as an emerging free press exposed Europeans and Americans to atrocities around the world and motivated them to act. Bass explores advocacy in Britain, France, Russia, and the United States: the fight the British waged against the oppression of the Greeks in the 1820s, the huge uproar against a notorious massacre in Bulgaria in the 1870s, and the American campaign to stop the Armenian genocide in 1915.

The author demonstrates that even in the imperialistic heyday of the nineteenth century, humanitarian ideals could play a significant role in shaping world politics. He argues that the failure of today's leading democracies to shoulder such responsibilities has led to catastrophes such as those in Rwanda and Darfur-catastrophes that he maintains are neither inevitable nor traditional.

Freedom's Battle challenges the assumptions about the history of morally motivated foreign policy and sets out a path for reclaiming that inheritance.

Bass' research focuses on human rights, international justice, international security, and ethics in international relations. He is the author of Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals, as well as articles and book chapters on international justice.