The New Military Humanism
Lessons From Kosovoby Noam Chomsky
Common Courage Press, 202 pp., $15.95 (paper)
In this, his latest compilation of foreign policy inconsistencies embraced by the United States, the United Nations, and NATO, Noam Chomsky pores over media coverage before, during, and after the latest military campaign against Serbia and Slobodan Milosevic. Beginning with premises put forth in the mainstream media by Clinton, Blair, and other “enlightened” leaders that the war in Kosovo reflects a new era of globally enforced humanitarianism, Chomsky reveals a less palatable reality beneath the propaganda, one in which the victims of human rights abuses are acknowledged by the global superpowers if, and only when, it is politically advantageous. Was the war in Kosovo avoidable? Chomsky only claims that diplomatic opportunites that may have averted the air attacks weren’t pursued in the best faith, citing the under-wraps Rambouillet Agreement, which was presented to Milosevic as accept-total-loss-of-sovereignty-or-be-bombed. Essentially, Chomsky cautions that as citizens in the “morally justified” United States, we must remain skeptical when digesting justification for humanitarian intervention lest we fall into the trap that Orwell outlined so well, one in which we voluntarily accept a world with “‘unpopular ideas silenced and inconvenient facts kept dark.'”
This article appears in February 4 • 2000.