Masters of the Universe? Nato's Balkan Crusade

by Ali, Tariq

• ISBN13: 9781859842690
• ISBN10: 1859842690
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-04-17
• Publisher: Verso

Summary

Harold Pinter, Edward Said, Oskar Lafontaine, Yevgeni Yevtushenko and other distinguished dissidents explain their opposition to NATO's war in the Balkans. 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. This reader, edited by Tariq Ali, brings together essays written by democracy's dissidents during the conflict as well as historical texts that illuminate the issues at stake in the Balkans. Contributors include: Giovanni Arrighi, Robin Blackburn, Alex Callinicos, David Chandler, Regis Debray, John Gittings, Peter Gowan, Diana Johnstone, Oskar Lafontaine, Claude Lanzmann, Harold Pinter, Robert Redeker, Edward Said, Ellen Wood, Susan Woodward, Yevgeni Yevtushenko and Slavoj Zizek.

Author Biography

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.

Giovanni Arrighi (1937–2009) was Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University. His books include The Long Twentieth Century, Adam Smith in Beijing, and, with Beverly Silver, Chaos and Governance in the Modern World System. His work has appeared in many publications, including New Left Review—who published<a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?page=article&amp;view=2771"> an interview on his life-long intellectual trajectory</a> in March–April 2009, and <a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2814">an obituary</a> in Nov–Dec 2009—and there are more accounts on his <a href="http://www.sympathytree.com/giovanniarrighi1937/">memorial website</a>.

Robin Blackburn teaches at the New School in New York and the University of Essex in the UK. He is the author of many books, including The Making of New World Slavery, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, Age Shock, Banking on Death, and The American Crucible.

Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of American Power and the New Mandarins, Manufacturing Consent (with Ed Herman), Deterring Democracy, Year 501, World Orders Old and New, Powers and Prospects, Profit over People, The New Military Humanism and Rogue States.

Régis Debray teaches philosophy at the Université de Lyon-III and is director of the European Institute of the History and Science of Religion. He is the author of many books, including Media Manifestos, Critique of Political Reason and God: An Itinerary, also available from Verso.

Peter Gowan (1946–2009) taught international relations for many years at London Metropolitan University. He was the author of The Global Gamble and A Calculus of Power, co-editor of The Question of Europe, cofounder of the journal Labour Focus on Eastern Europe, and a longstanding member of the editorial board of New Left Review—who published <a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2803">an interview with Peter Gowan</a> along with <a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2801">an obituary</a> in Sept–Oct 2009.

Edward W. Said (1935–2003) was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Society of Literature and of Kings College Cambridge, his celebrated works include Orientalism, The End of the Peace Process, Power, Politics and Culture, and the memoir Out of Place. He is also the editor, with Christopher Hitchens, of Blaming the Victims, published by Verso. New Left Review published <a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2481">an obituary</a> in Nov–Dec 2003.

Ellen Meiksins Wood, for many years Professor of Political Science at York University, Toronto, is the author of many books, including Democracy Against Capitalism and, with Verso, The Pristine Culture of Capitalism, The Origin of Capitalism, Peasant-Citizen and Slave, Citizens to Lords, Empire of Capital and Liberty and Property.

Table of Contents

Introduction: After the War	ix
Tariq Ali
PART I HOW TO RULE THE WORLD: GEOPOLITICS AFTER THE COLD WAR
The Euro-Atlantic Origins of NATO's Attack on Yugoslavia	3	(43)
Peter Gowan
The Balkan War and US Global Power	46	(11)
Giovanni Arrighi
Rasputin Plays at Chess: How the west Blundered into a New Cold War	57	(42)
Gilbert Achcar
The strategic Triad: USA, China, Russia	99	(48)
Gilbert Achcar
PART II ON `HUMANITARIAN WARFARE'
Humanitarian War: Making the Crime fit the Punishment	147	(24)
Diana Johnstone
In Place of Politics: Humanitarianism and War	171	(4)
Robert Redeker
The Ideology of Humanitarian Intervention	175	(15)
Alex Callinicos
Kosovo and the New Imperialism	190	(13)
Ellen Meiksins Wood
PART III BALKAN LANDSCAPES: THE SLEEP OF REASON
War: Building States from Nations	203	(68)
Susan L. Woodward
Bosnia: Prototype of a NATO Protectorate	271	(14)
David Chandler
The Criminalization of Albania	285	(34)
Michel Chossudovsky
PART IV DISPATCHES FROM THE TIME OF WAR
Open Letter from a traveller to the President of the Republic	319	(8)
Regis Debray
The NATO Action in Serbia	327	(10)
Harold Pinter
Be More Careful With the Balkans!	337	(4)
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
The Treason of the Intellectuals	341	(4)
Edward Said
NATO's Balkan Crusade	345	(15)
Tariq Ali
Kosovo: The War of NATO Expansion	360	(21)
Robin Blackburn
May Day Speech at Saarbrucken	381	(6)
Oskar Lafontaine
The Kosovo Peace Accord	387	(10)
Noam Chomsky
The China Card	397	(6)
John Gittings
War in Kosovo: Consequences and Lessons for European Security Arrangements	403	(8)
Dieter S. Lutz
PART V THE LAST WORD
`Traitors' of all Balkan Lands: Unite!	411	(5)
Gazi Kaplan
Acknowledgements	416	(1)
Index	417