Balkan Academic Book Review 14/2000
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Michael Ignatieff, Virtual War. Kosovo and Beyond.
New York: Henry Holt & Company, 2000, 246 pp. $23.00 (Hardcover), ISBN:
0805064907.

Reviewed by Toby Heaps (McGill University). Email: tobyheaps@...
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In reading Ignatieff's Virtual War, I could not help thinking of Punch
Imlach's autobiography in which he describes his coach when he played for
the Toronto Maroons. The coach had a masterful understanding of the game of
hockey and his team won championships, but his coaching was done from the
sidelines and when it came to playing hockey, the coach did not even know
how to skate.
In outlining his eleven characteristics of virtual war: moral impunity,
revolution in military affairs (RMA), virtual consent, virtual
mobilization, media war, legal war, virtual values, virtual alliances,
virtual victory and waiting for the barbarians, Ignatieff draws out with
brilliant clarity the meaning of war in our age of abstraction and
technology. But in his analysis of the Kosovo war, Ignatieff is
inconsistent and writes as if he has a vested interest in giving
credibility to NATO's actions. Though to say Ignatieff is a NATO propaganda
aid is unfair. Ignatieff's intrasigence toward applying his own virtual
paradigm to Kosovo could be linked to the influence of Isaiah Berlin (the
subject of his previous biography). Berlin is quoted in the book saying,
"it was not just a simple matter of plumping for good against evil, but
sustaining a commitment to good ends even when the means adopted were
questionable". (p. 72). In allowing himself to get caught up in the
reductionist rhetoric of "what other alternative did we have", Ignatieff
turns what could have been a good book into a virtual book.
Ignatieff outlines criteria for humanitarian war. There should either be
rising systematic abuses of human rights that have or are about to reach a
fury that is unacceptable, or there is risk of a spillover effect in which
other bordering countries would be de-stabilized. Ignatieff throws in the
caveats that any military intervention must come only after all other means
have been exhausted and the intervention is sure to mitigate the disaster.
Intimately familiar with the behind the scenes dealing that led up to
Kosovo, Ignatieff justifies the Kosovo intervention as if the only
information he had was from the front page headlines of the New York
Times. He accepts the German and American intelligence reports that stated
Milosevic had been planning Operation Horseshoe for over a year as a plan
to evict the Kosovar Albanians from large sections of their land. But, that
he accepts the link made by these intelligence agencies that because
Operation Horseshoe was planned, it was inevitable and therefore necessary
to proceed with airstrikes to forestall the imminent humanitarian disaster
shows Ignatieff in a light of skeptical weakness. All militaries have
contingency plans. In the Pentagon, there are hard-drives full of
contingency plans should another state attack. These plans are detailed and
ready to put into action if the day comes. If even 1/100 of all military
contingency plans were acted on the earth would be blown up many times
over. Operation Horseshoe existed and served a strategic function for
Yugoslavia. In the event of airstrikes from NATO, there were two key
reasons for Operation Horseshoe and possibly one ancillary function.
Firstly, with the support of the worlds' best airforce, the KLA, in the
absence of a Yugoslav offensive would be in a position to seize large parts
of Kosovo, possibly the whole province. There were rifts between Milosevic
and key Yugoslav military officials at the time because of his reluctance
to permit an offensive to wipe out the KLA. The heavy consensus was that
the KLA was beatable in a short period of time, but only through the use of
ruthless tactics. With the announcement of airstrikes, NATO gave the battle
cry for Operation Horseshoe to begin. Secondly, if NATO could stick it out,
Kosovo would end up as a protectorate and the portion the Kosovar Albanians
inhabited would eventually cede away from Serbia. From this perspective
clearing out Kosovo would help ensure that at least a section, (i.e. The
portion cleansed of Kosovar Albanians now under Russian control) would
remain a part of Serbia. An ancillary reason - and the only one that
Ignatieff cites - for clearing out Kosovars may have included Milosevic's
desire to de-stabilize surrounding regions to shake NATO's consensus. That
Ignatieff blindly accepts the link made by the American spin-doctors
between contingency plans and inevitable ethnic cleansing is a lapse that
is difficult to understand. The fact that he doesn't air out the other
explanations is disappointing.
Ignatieff also jumps on the headlines claiming that all the Kosovars living
in the refugee camps in Macedonia were forcefully deported by Serbian
militia. The refugees even told him as much so it is accepted for fact.
While it is certainly true that a number of Kosovar Albanians were
forcefully told to leave by armed militia, Ignatieff pays no attention to
other causes of refugees leaving or that they had no choice to leave. That
many Kosovar Albanians, including prominent ones such as the editor Veron
Surroi stayed in Kosovo throughout the war does not fit into his blanket
explanation of ethnic cleansing. Neither does it give fair weight to the
risk of staying in a province that is being bombed to smithereens by NATO
planes from 15 000 feet in the air. And in contrast with the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) specials on how some efugees were
fabricating stories to ensure the west kept up the strikes, neither does it
fit into the same sort of fact-checking to which we should expect
professional journalists to adhere.
Ignatieff then goes on to refer to Montenegro as a separate country. The
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is still composed of two republics, Serbia
and Montenegro. For Ignatieff to refer to Montenegro, as a country in its
own right is typical of the intellectual laziness that pervades much of
today's Balkan journalism.
Ignatieff also gives mention to the Racak Massacre where 45 civilians were,
as he describes it, massacred by the Yugoslav army. He acknowledges the
importance of Racak commenting "without Racak, airstrikes would never have
happened". The surprising part here, though it shouldn't be by now, is that
Ignatieff ignores the investigative reports done by Le Monde Diplomatique
and CBC that provide convincing evidence that the Racak massacre was staged
with the complicity of the KLA to galvanize western support for a final
NATO military solution.
Throughout the rest of the chapters, Ignatieff adopts the NATO explanation
verbatim for almost all the controversial parts of the war. The Chinese
embassy was bombed by mistake. No mention is given to the reports in the
Reuters dispatches or Observer and Guardian articles that cast serious
doubt on NATO's claims that the Chinese embassy was an accident (1). China
was using its embassy to relay information to the Yugoslav Army and collect
its own intelligence should Tibet or Taiwan become Kosovo. The strong
message sent by the sole target chosen by the CIA was a reminder to China
of who is in charge.
Robert Skidelsky (Keynes' biographer) writes in one of Ignatieff's chapters
that is an e-mail exchange between the two: I would have expected more
skepticism from you about NATO's claims.
The book does have a few bright spots. It is useful as an insight into the
decision-making procedures that went into Kosovo. For example, Albright in
a meeting with NATO foreign Ministers is portrayed as having an
idiosyncratic disposition to avoiding any semblance of appeasement,
possibly as result of her childhood upbringing in pre-WWII Europe. In this
meeting held in London, Ignatieff describes Albright as unbending in her
desire to deal sternly with Milosevic, insisting that "this is London
remember, not Munich". Ignatieff also gives a good picture of the intensity
with which Tony Blair operates. After the airstrikes had been launched,
Blair went personally to Wesley Clarke, and told him, "The political future
of every leader in Europe depends on the outcome" (p. 104). Ignatieff
writes with deep respect about his
fellow Canadian and former Chief Prosecutor for the ICTY, Madame Justice
Louise Arbour. When he asks her if she left the ICTY job because the
Supreme Court job in Canada was a train she had to catch, Arbour gives a
glimpse of her distaste for the very political world of international law
replying "No, the job was the train I had to leave" (p. 130).
Ignatieff quotes Isaiah Berlin: intense disagreement often occurs between
people sharing the same premises.

(1) For a ten-point summary of why the Chinese embassy was probably
intentional see:
(http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,3935960,00.html)

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The reviewer, Toby Heaps, worked in Belgrade as a economic affairs reporter
in 1997-1998, and is presently completing his thesis at McGill University
on the 1999 war between NATO and Yugoslavia.
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Book available at: http://www.henryholt.com/
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© 2000 Balkan Academic News.

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