A New Generation Draws the Line: Kosovo, East Timor and the Standards of the West [Hardcover]

Noam Chomsky (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 18, 2001

1999 saw two major international crises which, looked at side-by-side by Noam Chomsky, illuminate the strategies of the Western powers in the new century. In East Timor the warnings of further escalation in an unfolding humanitarian disaster could not have been more apparent. The referendum on independence was predicted to prompt widespread savagery towards the local population by an Indonesian army and their cohorts. Noam Chomsky points out, the West did not need to do very much to prevent this, but East Timor is of little strategic interest to the US and its allies, so they did nothing, resulting in thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands being made homeless. By comparison, the intervention in Kosovo by NATO is very different, and Chomsky argues that strategic concerns were at stake; humanitarianism was not the moving force behind the military intervention in Yugoslavia. Ironically, the fate of the civilian population in Kosovo, as in East Timor, was incidental to the NATO action. Noam Chomsky explains with the combination of clinical focus and sweeping range that typifies his work, that it's business as usual for the new mandarins of the West.

Editorial Reviews

Review

One of the West's most influential intellectuals in the cause of peace. -- The Independent

About the Author

Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massaschusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of many books including American Power and the New Mandarins, Manufacturing Consent (with Ed Herman), Deterring Democracy, Year 501, World Orders Old and New, Powers and Prospects, Profits over People, and The New Military Humanism: Lessons of Kosovo.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Verso (January 18, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1859847897
• ISBN-13: 978-1859847893
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,584,688 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston. A member of the American Academy of Science, he has published widely in both linguistics and current affairs. His books include At War with Asia, Towards a New Cold War, Fateful Triangle: The U. S., Israel and the Palestinians, Necessary Illusions, Hegemony or Survival, Deterring Democracy, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy and Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Devastating refutation of The New Military Humanism, April 14, 2001

By 

Chris (Washington state, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A New Generation Draws the Line: Kosovo, East Timor and the Standards of the West (Hardcover)

Noam Chomsky presents an utterly devastating refutation of the justifications used to launch the Kosovo war and the idea that the people of East Timor benefited from the new moral fervor allegedly unleashed in American foreign policy.

This book has his most recent writings on the Kosovo war. He presents evidence from mainstream western news sources, Western diplomatic sources, reports of the war crimes tribunal, the U.S. government and the OSCE, and so on to show that the situation in Kosovo in the year before Nato began bommbing was hardly genocidal. Merely violence against suspected KLA collaborators and disproportionate retaliation as a result of KLA attacks and kidnapping against Serb civillians and policeman with the stated goal of provoking Serb violence to try to draw in the Western powers. He shows that Nato i.e. the United States deliberately sabotoged the pre-bombing negotiations by inserting a clause in appendix B in the peace accord they drafted at Rambouillet calling for an exclusively Nato occupation of Kosovo that would have virtual control over the rest of Yugoslavia as well. He shows that the Serb parliament in the days before the bombing denounced the withdraw of the verification monitors and passed a resolution agreeing to an international security presence in Kosovo, which like the clause in Appendix B was ignored. Once the bombing began, Serb tactics shifted to refugee expulsion and became much more violent, though vastly exagerated by Nato it seems, an absoultely predictable result of the bombings in the word of general Wesely Clark. The common response to this is that Milosevic was planning to expel the Albanians anyway, though the only evidence for this is the plan "Operation Horshoe" seemingly fabricated by the German defense ministry. Chomsky says that it is probably likely that Milosevic actually had such plans drawn up as it became likely that his country was about to be attacked by the world largest superpowers who were indiscreetly supporting a rebel group claiming to represent its most volatile minority. Just as Israel no doubt has plans to expel the Palestinians if Iran or Syria attack it. What would we say if Iran attacked Israel which caused the later to implement its diabolical plan and then Iran justified its attack by Israel's implementation of that plan? Chomsky suggests tongue in cheek that it would have been better if Nato allowed Milosevic to expel the Albanians, then started bombing and then allow the refugees back; or perhaps ordered the Albanians to get out of Kosovo, then start bombing and then allow the refugees back. After several months of serious war crimes against the Yugoslav and Kosovar peoples, Nato accepted dropped its appendix B demand and agreed to an international occupation force "with substantial Nato participation" and nothing more. But that was only on paper. In practice Nato i.e. the Americans instituted an exclusive Nato occupation of Kosovo. The KLA since under Nato's eyes has conducted a campaign of ethnic cleansing against gypsies, Jews, Serbs, their Albanian enemies and watches over a country where they only thing functioning is the sex slave industry.

Chomsky asks why zero in on the crimes of Milosevic? Why not call for the bombing of Indonesia (or Washington and London), the country that committed the worst genocide relative to population against the holocaust in East Timor from 1975 onwards with heavy support from the U.S., Britain, France, Japan, Australia and other freedom loving nations. Why weren't the supporters of the bombing upset that thousands of people were being killed as the Kosovo war was happening by the death squads organized by Kopassus, the Indonesian secret police, beneficiaries of years of U.S. training and idealism? Why did they not call for Clinton and Blair to bomb or much more rationally simply withdraw their military, diplomatic and economic support? If these leaders did not respond, Chomsky asks sardonically, why aren't these brethren joining the Bin Laden network? Why did the U.S. provide forensics support for East Timor war crimes investigations long after the rain season had washed away most of the evidence? Why did it take some small but effective gestures after most of East Timor had been destroyed and its population expelled? Why is the U.S. continuing to provide heavy support for barbaric governments in Colombia and Turkey, which continues to make life hell for its "miserable Kurds"(Alexander Sohlzhenitsyn's words). Serious and important questions.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Can't Argue With Facts, March 12, 2003

By 

"spalding177" (Indianapolis) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A New Generation Draws the Line: Kosovo, East Timor and the Standards of the West (Paperback)

(...). I had always towed the party line about the evil Serbs and their misdeeds, but have changed my tune after reading this enlightening, if disturbing book. Some may accuse Chomsky of being an apologist for Serb atrocities, but it is clear after reading this text that all sides, most notably NATO, were engaged in quite troublesome behavior that cost many thousands of lives. I heard Bill O' Reilly dismiss Chomsky as a "revisionist," and it is sadly interesting that most critics of this and similar works simply stick a "communist", "liberal", or "revisionist" label on the author without ever addressing the points made within the work. If you are looking for a wealth of facts on deceitful and imperialist American policy in Serbia/Yugoslavia and Indonesia/East Timor, I doubt if a better source could be found.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Odious comparisons, February 12, 2002

By 

Philip Challinor - See all my reviews

This review is from: A New Generation Draws the Line: Kosovo, East Timor and the Standards of the West (Paperback)

Here Chomsky compares and contrasts the responses of western governments (specifically, those of Clinton's USA and Blair's Britain) to two instances of "ethnic cleansing", both of which received extensive media attention at the end of the millennium. In Kosovo, there was NATO intervention, a 78-day bombing campaign, and a much-publicised war crimes tribunal; in East Timor, at the very most, a few regretful shakes of the head and perhaps the suspicion that we are not, as yet, quite living up to our high ideals of truth, justice and liberty. Chomsky collates some of the facts underlying this apparent irony and shows that, as usual, the paradox has a rather simple solution. For example: (1) The indictment against Milosevic confines itself largely to crimes committed after the bombing began; it seems logical to assume that (a) "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo was not a major motivation for the bombing, and (b) any crimes committed before the bombing are not a major concern of our new generation of moral crusaders. Nevertheless, on the grounds that they sanctioned and participated in "ethnic cleansing", Milosevic and his cronies have been routinely portrayed as the worst enemies of human life and moral decency since Adolf Hitler. (2) The 1999 massacre in East Timor (much advertised in advance as the inevitable consequence if a referendum concerning independence from Indonesia should go the wrong way) was the latest episode in an extremely well-documented record of slaughter dating from the Indonesian invasion of 1975. All the atrocities, including the accession to power of the Indonesian leader Suharto in 1965, with its attendant third of a million casualties, were carried out with western backing and with US armament and training. The solution to that paradox, then, is obvious: the west has, as is traditional, no problem with genocide just so long as it's done by the right people. Chomsky is adept at drawing out the salient points (e.g. the timing of the Serbian war crimes indictment noted above) from voluminous and often skewed information; and, as befits a scientist, his sources of evidence are painstakingly documented. The focus on two contrasted sets of events throws the Standards of the West into sharp and unpleasant perspective.