Customer Reviews

NATO's Empty Victory

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

A real gem of an essay collection: articulate, passionate, and in the deepest sense, boldly patriotic. From several different angles, the authors of these essays -- eminently qualified scholars, diplomats, and foreign policy experts -- show why NATO's military aggression against Yugoslavia, under the guise of humanitarian intervention in Kosovo, was bad, very bad, for America's national interest. Here from the introduction, is a brief balance sheet on the Clinton-Albright war of aggression: "In the course of acquiring the dubious role of baby sitter of the Balknas, NATO inflicted enormous suffering on innocent Serbian and Albanian Kosovar civilians; created serious economic and political prolbmes for neighboring Balkan countries, stimulated fears through the world that the democratic West had embarked on a new round of imperialism under a phony banner of humanitarian intervention; further undermined a key provision of the U.S. Constitution; and badly damaged relations with Russian and China."

One wonders, after reading these essays, why did the so-called "independent" Western press act as publicist and promoter for US foreign policy? Where were the dissenters? Moroever, these essays suggest that the real dangers in the Balkans are Albanian nationalism and NATO expansionism. Do we want American soldiers sacrificed in foreign wars that have no impact on our national interest -- in fact, undermine out national interest? Read this book!

The author's writing style is clear and concise. There is good support in terms of data and comparisons to support the main points. The book addressed my concerns about what is really behind NATO's first ever military actions against a economic third world country that had not attacked nor threatened militarily any of the members of the NATO alliance. I was also curious how NATO justified acting on behalf of the United Nations in spite of a lack of consensus on the part of the Security Council - the book give a convicing explanation. More trouble is ahead in NATO occupied Kosovo. This book can be useful in understanding why. Good reading.

This brief survey of the Balkan War challenges the notion that NATO had waged a successful campaign against genocide, showing how the Kosovo Liberation Army is still a threat and considering how the war actually damaged relationships between major world powers. Recommended for any in-depth study of the Balkan War or Nato.

I would probably give this book 4 and 1/2 stars. The only thing that I found unappealing about the book was a long, dry discussion the the Presidential War Powers Act about half way into the book but once I got around that I was pleased with the treatment of the topic. The book took a look at many of the issues that were avoided or "spun" by the US media to paint the war as a humanitarian triumph when in reality it was a humanitarian tragedy that actually reversed the ethnic cleansing (Serbs forcibly removed by Albanians from their homes) and all done with US and NATO approval. The book also predicted that the support of the Kosovar Albanians during the war would fuel Albanian irridentism which would spill into Macedonia (which occured last year) and destabilize the whole region. This is a lesson on how NOT to conduct foreign diplomacy. The thing I found very revealing was the number of events leading up to, during, and after the war that, I remember, described by the Clinton, Albright, and the Western media in a certain way that in actuality happened differently and even some things that were never reported. An example was the bombing of bridges and power plants in Belgrade that did more to harm civilians than the Serbian military. Not only Serbia but a number of countries in eastern Europe were affected economically due to the blocking of Danube by the collapsed bridges. River commerce on the Danube just opened this year, almost 3 years later. The book also took a critical look at the US's foreign policy double standard: touting human rights as a reason for intervention but only when it serves US interests (read why not intervene in Rwanda, East Timor, etc.) or intervene except when the human rights abuses are commited by allies (i.e Turkey).

The Kosovo war is becoming more and more significant, especially in a post 9/11 world. It seems like Bill Clinton mostly got away with his own war of aggression, which was as manufactured a war as the recent one in Iraq.

This war was fought by NATO, which, no one noticed, had gone and switched its mandate after the Cold War to cover basically policing Europe, at least on paper. Funny that the Bosnian war went on for four years, but after Monica Lewinsky, everyone suddenly got interested in civil unrest in Kosovo. At least that's how it looked.

This book is a collection of essays with different angles on how the war in Kosovo was actually pretty damaging for America's foreign policy.

There are many relevant points here that shed light on the 'humanitarian' aspect of the war. How do you blow up a country in a humantarian effort? It doesn't make sense.

It's interesting is to read this book and look at this war and Slobodan Milosevic and then look at Saddam Hussein and the push for regime change in Iraq. As long as they were helpful and could be used by America as political pawns, both figures were spared war crimes indictments. Both were propped up longer by sanctions. But when they stepped out of line, watch out. Milosevic was pretty handy in negotiating a peace deal in Bosnia, which is eggshell-fragile and includes a laughable map. Saddam was a good guy when he was killing Iranians. But when he just wouldn't play nice with NATO, ultra-cynic Milosevic was bombed Saddam-style and slapped with a speedy indictment for not only Kosovo, but Croatia and Bosnia. Representing himself, always an entertaining spectacle, Milosevic is really suffering now as he stalls for time in a trial that will likely last four years alone. As far as the War on Terror goes, we see it's a selective War on Terror, as the CIA helped train the KLA, a terrorist group.

This book is definitely recommended. It covers a lot of material that isn't discussed in the many personal and historical accounts of Kosovo and all of Yugoslavia.

NATO's Empty Victory is an abysmal hodgepodge of questionable arguments about America's involvement that can only be considered sub-coherent at best. Reading through this work the editor Ted Galen includes arguments about everything from U.S. ordinance to neighboring economies to relations with Russia: things that are all peripheral to the issue of intervention. These so called "practical" considerations should always be subordinate to the ideal of the issue which has been shown to be preventing a terrible tragedy. The book includes such technicalities as "...Kosovo's autonomy was not revoked in 1989 but downgraded..." (23) In addition this work does add an interesting, though probably unintended facet, to the debate: partisanship. Clinton promised at the conclusion of the campaign to work to ease ethnic conflict worldwide to which the author quips "So far, though, he seems no more serious about keeping this promise than about keeping the many others he has broken." (43) The tangential nature of the arguments is suspect enough but combined with that rhetoric it is hard to see any relevant dispute in the book. While the cluster bombs used and ripples sent through the international community are matters for consideration very little in the arguments against the war is about the substance of the projection of genocide apart from some claims that the Albanians started the conflict. The intervention cannot be judged on such matters, the argument to intervene must be combated on the specific moral grounds it claims: all matters sound petty compared to possible genocide.

US readers seem to believe that the conflicts in Yugoslavia started in the 'nineties. As a matter of fact, they are the results of conflicts during the Ottoman empire, from the 15th to the 20th century. Kosova is only one part of it. The Serbian army took Kosova by force in 1913. Most of the time from that year, the Albanian population in Kosova has been encouraged by force, by money or by religion to move out.

Life was growing impossible for the Albanians in Kosova, when the semi-independence under the communist regime in Belgrade was abolished in 1989. A great wave of refugees left for Western Europe. Not until 1996, after the Dayton agreement left Serbian rule over the Albanian majority untouched, there was an Albanian armed resistance. When Belgrade launched its big campaign on this guerrilla, Western Europe faced a new wave of refugees, probably amounting to two million people. The attack on Yugoslavia by NATO was supported by humanitarian thinking, but the main reason was Western Europe's need to stop the refugees before it was too late.
If the world had supported the pacifist shadow president Rugova of the Albanians, before it was too late, the war could have been avoided.
Most thinking in the US on this problem has been strangled by the internal political needs, both leftists like Chomsky and a lot of republicans, use this conflict as a weapon against Clinton. Keep doing so, if you please, but don't tell the world you're writing analyses of the Balkan conflicts.