Synopses & Reviews
NATO’s war on Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999 was unleashed in the name of democracy and human rights. This view was challenged by the world’s three largest countries, India, China and Russia, who saw the bombing of Serbia and Kosovo as a naked attempt to assert US dominance in an unstable world. In the West, the media networks were joined by substantial sectors of left/liberal opinion in supporting the war. Nonetheless, a wide variety of figures emerged to challenge the prevailing consensus. Their work, gathered here for the first time, forms a collection of key statements and anti-war writings from some of democracy’s most eloquent dissidents—Noam Chomsky, Harold Pinter, Edward Said and many others—who provide carefully researched examinations of the real motives for the US action, dissections and critiques of the ideology of ‘humanitarian warfare’, and chartings of the unnecessary tragedy of a region laid to waste in the pursuance of Great power politics.
This reader presents some of the most important texts on NATO’s Balkan crusade and forms a major intervention in the debate on global geo-political strategy after the cold war.
Contributors include Giovanni Arrighi, Robin Blackburn, Alex Callinicos, David Chandler, Régis Debray, John Gittings, Peter Gowan, Diana Johnstone, Oskar Lafontaine, Harold Pinter, Robert Redeker, Edward Said, Ellen Wood, Susan Woodward, Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Slavoj iek.
Synopsis
Harold Pinter, Edward Said, Oskar Lafontaine, Yevgeny Yevtushenko and other distinguished dissidents explain their opposition to NATO's war in the Balkans.
About the Author
Tariq Ali is a writer and filmmaker. He has written more than a dozen books on world history and politics—including Pirates of the Caribbean, Bush in Babylon, The Clash of Fundamentalisms and The Obama Syndrome—as well as five novels in his Islam Quintet series and scripts for the stage and screen. He is an editor of the New Left Review and lives in London.
Table of Contents
Introduction : after the war / Tariq Ali -- Part I. How to rule the world : geopolitics after the Cold War. The Euro-Atlantic origins of NATO's attack on Yugoslavia / Peter Gowan -- The Balkan war and US global power / Giovanni Arrighi -- Rasputin plays at chess : how the West blundered into a new cold war / Gilbert Achcar -- The strategic triad : USA, China, Russia / Gilbert Achcar -- Part II. On 'humanitarian warfare'. Humanitarian war : making the crime fit the punishment / Diana Johnstone -- In place of politics : humanitarianism and war / Robert Redeker -- The ideology of humanitarian intervention / Alex Callinicos -- Kosovo and the new imperialism / Ellen Meiksins Wood -- Part III. Balkan landscapes : the sleep of reason. War : building states from nations / Susan L. Woodward -- Bosnia : prototype of a NATO protectorate / David Chandler -- The criminalization of Albania / Michel Chossudovsky -- Part IV. Dispatches from the time of war. Open letter from a traveller to the president of the Republic / Râegis Debray -- The NATO action in Serbia / Harold Pinter -- Be more careful with the Balkans! / Yevgeny Yevtushenko -- The treason of the intellectuals / Edward Said --NATO's Balkan crusade / Tariq Ali -- Kosovo : the war of NATO expansion / Robin Blackburn -- May Day speech at Saarbrèucken / Oskar Lafontaine -- The Kosovo peace accord / Noam Chomsky -- The China card / John Gittings -- War in Kosovo : consequences and lessons for European security arrangements / Dieter S. Lutz -- Part V. The last word. 'Traitors' of all Balkan lands : unite! / Gazi Kaplan.