Masters of the Universe? Nato's Balkan Crusade

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.

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.