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Masters of the Universe: NATO's Balkan Crusade

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Involved in children humanitarian help during the Bosnian War and despite knowing the Western media bias, reading this book was an eye-opener. It showed all the interests of major powers in the region and explained the rational beyond the wars (Bosnia, Kosovo). Combined with Brzezinsky's 'The Great Game' title of the books could read: Realpolitik, theory and practice. A must read for anyone wanting to understand South-Eastern Europe and Middle East politics today.

...this is an excellent book. It is a must read for all those people who care about what actually goes on in the world. Although some articles are quite long, they are interesting and are great at showing how we have been misled by the media. How many people who have not read this book honestly knew that the "dictator" Milosevic doesn't even have a majority in parliament? Also great at showing how we don't think about things, such as how will bombing people help them? Or did the U.S. really intervene for humanitarian reasons, and if so why haven't we invaded Turkey?

This book questions the real U.S. motives in the Balkans. Its central question is why did the NATO intervene in Bosnia and Kosovo. Despite the fact that this is a legitimate question, this book grossly fails to provide honest answers. Every author of this book (all left intellectuals) seems to be oblivious to the following indisputable facts:

1. The war in Bosnia was an aggression, NOT a civil war. Therefore, the NATO intervention against Serbia was both warranted and justifiable.

2. Serbia attacked Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and ultimately Kosovo in order to create a "Greater Serbia" and ensure Serbian hegemony.

3. We are all obliged to act whenever someone is defenseless and powerless. The people of Bosnia and Kosovo were facing a much more powerful aggressor. How do you fight someone who is armed to the teeth?

4. The international community refused to rescind the arms embargo and also at first refused to intervene in Bosnia and Kosovo. NATO should have intervened sooner and the bloodshed in Bosnia could have been prevented. 300000 people had to die before the NATO decided to put an end to the Serbian aggression.

5. What was the alternative to military intervention? To allow Milosevic to exterminate all non-Serbs and realize his dream of a "Greater Serbia"? Why negotiate with a war criminal?

6. The NATO intervention in Kosovo did not exacerbate the situation on the ground. Even if it did, it was only a temporary escalation of the conflict. Perhaps we should have done what these left intellectuals suggest: continue negotiating with the tyrant (Milosevic) while his troops continue killing innocent civilians?

7. It is one thing to criticize the U.S. transgressions but it is a completely different thing to deny atrocities. Diana Johnstone, the notorious apologist for the Serbian atrocities, for example claims that the Serbs were the victims of the U.S./German conspiracy to destroy Yugoslavia. Johnstone denies that genocide took place in Bosnia. These assertions are so ridiculous that they warrant no serious comment.

8. Even if the U.S. had an ulterior motive for intervening against Serbia I do not think that the people of Kosovo care. All that matters to them is that someone (be it the U.S. Russia or France) comes to their rescue. If attacked by a vehement assailant, would you honestly care why someone saved your life?

All in all, a despicable book full of vicious lies, propaganda, preposterous revisionism and factual errors. If you want to condemn the U.S. imperialism, fine with me but when you start denying atrocities I say: shame on you!

A collection of essays on NATO's intervention in the Balkans during the 1990's, the volume includes work from a wide range of authors and covers a number of topics related to the conflict in that region. I will not refer to the essays by Giovanni Arrighi, Regis Debray, Harold Pinter, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Edward Said, Robert Redeker, Tariq Ali, Oskar Lefontaine, Noam Chomsky, John Gittings, Dieter S. Lutz, or Gazi Kaplan as their work provides zero citations (that's roughly ½ of the total book mind you), I think that only the serious pieces are worth examining for obvious reasons.

To begin, Peter Gowan's article is an examination of the underlying political dynamic between the U.S., the NATO powers, and the former Soviet Union prior to its collapse. The article is fairly speculative, its thesis is essentially that the U.S.'s interest in intervening in NATO were ultimately motivated by the post-cold war syndrome, namely that there was a fear of Russia's potential to dominate the region once it had collapsed. Unfortunately, the essay is dated and does not take into account Russia's economic decline during the post-cold war period, which rendered it incapable of competing with the U.S. and the great powers of Europe. Furthermore, Gowan makes a number of scholarly errors. For example, on page 5 he quotes the "Post" to the fact that "the Joint Chiefs went along with the campaign because of one key argument: `embracing the administration's view that U.S. leadership in NATO had to be preserved.'" However, he fails to provide a citation for this reference. He makes a claim on page 8 which makes little sense, stating that, "The political/diplomatic side of the Clinton administration, with Clinton's support, had been preparing a careful build up for a war against Yugoslavia for a full year. They wanted the war so that the US could pull its NATO allies under US leadership." And why is this? I thought the left was always adamant (correctly) that the US already had NATO under its leadership; plus the US simply does not need any further influence in NATO as it is far and away the most powerful state in the world. Gowan fails to explain this point. Furthermore, he includes a fancy chart on pages 38-39 to outline various "Programmes for Europe," buts it very amateurish. For example under "US Hegemony" and "Lead Powers" he writes, "The US as hegemony with Germany and France bandwaggoning." Interesting, I guess political scientists can get away with exacting terms like `bandwaggoning' these days. Gowan's article is generally dissatisfying, amateurish, irrelevant, and light on evidence.

Gilbert Achar includes two articles which seek to examine the US's role in international affairs in relation to Europe as well, and it too is highly speculative. He makes a number of scholarly blunders which dampen his argument. For example, on page 58 he writes: "Negotiations were under way on the production of two hundred and fifty further aircraft under licence in China." And the citation he provides is "According to the strategic analysis agency STRATFOR in `Kosovo Conflict Accelerates Formation of Russia-China Strategic Alliance', 25 June 1999, published on the World Wide Web (www)." (pg. 92). I'm sorry, but if you must refer to a web page you really need to provide a specific URL. Another factual problem occurs on page 103, in which Achar provides a US defense spending chart at the top of the page, which provides information relevant to post-cold war US spending. However, the chart doesn't seem to be presented in constant 1997 US dollars, so his point that the spending was greater in 1995 than during much of the cold war cannot really be confirmed from the data given. Furthermore, his footnote to military spending figures on page 137 (footnote 18) says that, "The criteria for evaluating and comparing military spending in different countries are always open to doubt [...]" Well if they're open to doubt why does he cite them? Achar's data is mostly unreliable, and he ultimately fails to incorporate the specific political and economic issues of the Balkans into his thesis.

The article by Alex Callinicos attempts to examine "The Ideology of Humanitarian Intervention" by pointing out the hypocrisy of NATO's proclamations of such intentions. The article is not particularly specific and tends to wander without providing conclusive evidence. He writes on page 175 that, "NATO's war against Serbia, by contrast, overrode Yugoslavia's territorial sovereignty on humanitarian grounds-namely securing the physical safety and political rights of the Kosovo of Albanians." This statement is false, NATO intervention didn't override Yugoslavia's sovereignty because Yugoslavia had no territorial sovereignty under international legal standards once the Titoist social system collapsed and the Serbs began to rage with violence against Muslims and Albanians, also invading their territory, which was stopped by NATO's intervention. Callinicos continues to cite totally irrelevant material such as Daniel Goldhagen on the matter of the "racist" attitudes against the Serbian population in the US intelligentsia. Such quibbling isn't necessary, nor is it relevant.

The next article, by Ellen Meisksins Wood, is titled "Kosovo and the New Imperialism," and it is quite humorous because it fails to provide any real evidence that NATO's intentions were imperialistic. Wood continually makes over the top claims without providing any evidence, such as on page 191 where the text reads: "With all these larger objectives in mind, it is probably unnecessary to invoke oil supplies and pipelines-which are regularly, and often correctly, cited to explain US military adventures, including to some extent this last one." No evidence is provided for this last sentence. On NATO's intervention, Wood writes: "but if its sheer destructiveness, its damage to human beings (never mind its failure to save a single human life), is a funny way to achieve `humanitarian' objectives, it has certainly worked much better as one of those exemplary displays of the fist" (195). No evidence is provided, and furthermore the bombing did eventually prevent the loss of life by stopping the ethnic cleansing of the Albanians, and today Milosevic stands on trial for the war crimes the author knows he committed. An almost completely faulty article.

The next article, titled "War: Building States from Nations," by Susan L. Woodward is about the context of the nationalistic/ethnic tensions among the people of the Balkans prior to Yugoslavia's dissolution, and it is far and away the best article in the book. She generally refers to excellent sources and does a very fine job of examining the history of these peoples. There are a few problems however. Her footnote for page 221 (#38) has no evidence contained within it, it simply states: "1.3 million Greeks left Asia Minor, and about 400,000 Turks left Greece. The division of India and Pakistan involved about 12 million Hindu and Muslim refugees" (pg. 261). There is no way to verify this claim. Additionally, footnotes #17 and 69 are not really valid, the latter simply reads: "There is some dispute about this event. I accept the version of a reliable informant who was present and knows there was no attack (interview with author). Not withstanding these scholarly blunders, Woodward's piece is generally serious and probably the most worthwhile read in the entire book, though it doesn't really fit with the book's overriding thesis of NATO imperialism in the Balkans.

David Chandler's article titled "Bosnia: Prototype of a NATO Protectorate," is totally unreliable and almost always relies on spurious electronic sources. For example, footnotes # 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 23, and 33, are all electronic (pgs. 282-284). This simply isn't serious scholarship, most of them are from op-ed cites. Don't waste your time on this one.

Moving along, Michel Chossudovsky's article titled "The Criminalization of Albania," seeks to examine the criminal/mafia ties of the Albanians for no known reason. The article is almost entirely irrelevant. Furthermore, many of his references are invalid, such as #63 "Interview by the author with an Albanian expert on the mining industry [...]," # 66 "Interview by author with an Albanian mining expert [...], (I wonder who these experts are), #76 "Interview by the author with the Chairman of VEFA Holding [...], (that one's a little better I guess). I'm afraid you can't just cite "interview with the author," more verifiable information is needed to be taken seriously. Once again, don't waste your time on this one.

Finally, I come to Robin Blackburn's article "Kosovo: The War of NATO Expansion," another piece of spurious scholarship about the alleged imperialism in the Balkans. Blackburn writes on page 362: "Following a meeting of the G8 the Russian Foreign Minister, Igor Ivanov, made it clear no agreement had been reached on this issue because Russia could not accept the transformation of Kosovo into a NATO protectorate." Yet no evidence is provided to support Blackburn's claim about Ivanov's actions/statements. Furthermore, Blackburn makes outright factual errors at several times during the piece, such as on page 372 in which he writes: "And the relentless air assault actually strengthened Milosevic's control over his own population." This is just factually untrue, NATO's bombing forced the Serbs to surrender and Milosevic is now on trial in the International War Crimes Tribunal in Bosnia, which of course explains Blackburn's failure to provide a citation. Furthermore, his footnote #21 is also not valid, it says: "Brzenzinski's comment on 15 June 1999 on the CSIS website was [...]" (pg. 380) He has failed to provide a specific URL for this citation, thus the material cannot be accessed, probably because it isn't accurate.

To conclude, Master's of the Universe is a terribly faulty book, riddled with poor scholarship and factual errors. I recommend Susan Woodward's piece for her scholarship and insight into the history of the Balkans, though she does not really discuss NATO or any `New Imperialism.' Diana Johnstone's piece is certainly not worth looking at as she is a complete joke as a journalist (see my review of her book "Fool's Crusade" for details), nor are any of the articles which fail to provide any legitimate evidence. The left is certainly right to be skeptical of NATO's proclamations of "Military Humanism," yet they must be willing to admit that there simply isn't enough substantial evidence to prove that NATO was motivated by "imperialism" either. Perhaps I will be proven wrong in the years to come.