The New Military Humanism: Lessons From Kosovo

by Noam Chomsky

'To guide us all through the three-star disasters of the Bush years I can think of no better pilot.' Alexander Cockburn, CounterPunch

Genres: Politics, History, Nonfiction, War, The United States Of America, Philosophy

157 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Avram Noam Chomsky is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is a laureate professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona and an institute professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Among the most cited living authors, Chomsky has written more than 150 books on topics such as linguistics, war, and politics. In addition to his work in linguistics, since the 1960s Chomsky has been an influential voice on the American left as a consistent critic of U.S. foreign policy, contemporary capitalism, and corporate influence on political institutions and the media.
Born to Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants (his father was William Chomsky) in Philadelphia, Chomsky developed an early interest in anarchism from alternative bookstores in New York City. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania. During his postgraduate work in the Harvard Society of Fellows, Chomsky developed the theory of transformational grammar for which he earned his doctorate in 1955. That year he began teaching at MIT, and in 1957 emerged as a significant figure in linguistics with his landmark work Syntactic Structures, which played a major role in remodeling the study of language. From 1958 to 1959 Chomsky was a National Science Foundation fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. He created or co-created the universal grammar theory, the generative grammar theory, the Chomsky hierarchy, and the minimalist program. Chomsky also played a pivotal role in the decline of linguistic behaviorism, and was particularly critical of the work of B.F. Skinner.
An outspoken opponent of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, which he saw as an act of American imperialism, in 1967 Chomsky rose to national attention for his anti-war essay "The Responsibility of Intellectuals". Becoming associated with the New Left, he was arrested multiple times for his activism and placed on President Richard M. Nixon's list of political opponents. While expanding his work in linguistics over subsequent decades, he also became involved in the linguistics wars. In collaboration with Edward S. Herman, Chomsky later articulated the propaganda model of media criticism in Manufacturing Consent, and worked to expose the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. His defense of unconditional freedom of speech, including that of Holocaust denial, generated significant controversy in the Faurisson affair of the 1980s. Chomsky's commentary on the Cambodian genocide and the Bosnian genocide also generated controversy. Since retiring from active teaching at MIT, he has continued his vocal political activism, including opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq and supporting the Occupy movement. An anti-Zionist, Chomsky considers Israel's treatment of Palestinians to be worse than South African–style apartheid, and criticizes U.S. support for Israel.
Chomsky is widely recognized as having helped to spark the cognitive revolution in the human sciences, contributing to the development of a new cognitivistic framework for the study of language and the mind. Chomsky remains a leading critic of U.S. foreign policy, contemporary capitalism, U.S. involvement and Israel's role in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and mass media. Chomsky and his ideas are highly influential in the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements. Since 2017, he has been Agnese Helms Haury Chair in the Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice at the University of Arizona.

Reviews

[Malsam - ملسم · Rating 3 out of 5]

في زمن أصبحت فيه "الإنسانية" ماركة / علامة تتزين بها الإعلانات التجارية* ... وتتغطى بها المشاريع التجارية* أيضًا
فليس غريبًا أن تحمل الحملات العسكرية أيضًا شعار "الإنسانية" بكل وقاحة !

الكتاب يتحدث بالأساس عن حرب كوسوفو (سنوات 1998-1999) وتحديدًا عن تدخل الولايات المتحدة بالحرب التي صعدت من مجريات الحرب وزادت من اثار العنف والجريمة (بغطاء إنساني أخلاقي عفيف).. الكتاب لا يدافع عن يوغوسلافيا واضطهادها للألبان ولا يبرر له، ولكنه يركز على عدم التبرير "للدول المتنورة" للدخول في الحروب بواجهة إنسانية تخفي نواياها السلطوية والاقتصادية ... ففي حين كانت تهاجم الدول التي لا تخدم مصالحها كانت تسكت عن جرائم الدول التي تخدمها (يتكرر مثال إسرائيل وتركيا ضد الأكراد في سنوات ال90 حيث كانت صديقة حميمة لامريكا والناتو التي تهيمن عليه الولايات المتحدة) وجرائمها هي نفسها في مناطق مختلفة من العالم .. والإعلام طبعًا يخدم ذلك ... مما لا نزال نراه حتى اليوم !

مما يجدر ذكره أن الكتاب يأخذ بعين الاعتبار أن للقارئ خلفية عن الحروب التي حدثت في سنوات التسعينات وبالأخص حرب كوسوفو .. بالتالي تصعبت شخصيا في فهم بعض الأمور وكنت الجأ لجوجل للبحث عن تفاصيل أكثر لفهم ما يحلله ويشير الكاتب إليه ببراعة وحرفية (لذلك أنصح بالإطلاع مسبقًا عليها)

ومن أعظم الإكتشافات (المخزية نوعا ما بالنسبة إلي) أن هناك حروب دموية قبيحة جدًا حدثت في هذه السنوات (ال90) وانا لا ادرك عنها شيئَا !! أمثلة : ،السلفادور والرهبان اليسوعيين ،تيمور الشرقية (عدد القتلي زاد عن عدد ربع السكان)، كولومبيا، لاوس، كمبوديا، الصومال وهاييتي، غواتيمالا ...

كذلك من الأمور الهامة التي تطرق لها الكاتب برأي (وقد اعتمد بالأساس على مراجع صحفية وخطابات) :
بيع الأسلحة والتغني بالأخلاق (بريطانيا أنموذجًا)
إرهاب الدول المتنورة الذي يتمثل في الحروب التي تُشن باسم القيم وبغطاء الأخلاق (أساس الكتاب)
تشبيه الدول المتنورة ونظامها بالمافيا ! واعتبار المجموعات الغير مرغوب بها إرهابية (كجيش كوسوفو مثلا) وشيطنتها لتبرير الهجوم عليها

* أقصد بالتجارية التي تهدف للربح المادي (مهما تغطت بقيم سامية ودعمتها الربح المادي على أشكاله يشكل أساسها)

[Amr Mohamed · Rating 5 out of 5]

كتاب قيم لأكثر كاتب قرات له
فقد قرأت لتشومسكي كتب كثيرة ولكن اعتبر هذا الكتاب من اهمها

كنت اريد ان اكتب ريفيو لهذا الكتاب يعطيه حقه ولكن مهما كتبت لن اقدر ان ألخص اهميه الكتاب
فهو يتحدث عن اسباب ضرب امريكا او الناتو لكوسوفو وانه ليس كما ادعو للانسانية او بسبب التطهير العرقي
فأمريكا سمحت بل وساعدت فى اكثر من مكان فى العالم بأشياء مثل وافظع مما حدث فى كوسوفو ولكن لأن ذلك فى مصلحتها

كتاب قيم انصح به

[عهود المخيني]

وصلت للصفحة 160، وهذا نفس جيد للمرابطة على كتابٍ مهم لم أستهوِ لغته، مما يضطرني لقراءة أصله. كما قال إدرورد سعيد فيه، "إنه كتاب لا غنى عنه"؛موجع ومؤلم ويمزع القلب مزعًا. وأوصي به لمن يقوى على نتع الحقيقة.

المراجعة خاضعة للتغيير بعد قراءة الأصل.

[Simon Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

MILITARY HUMANISM SHREDDED

Unusually for Chomsky "Lessons from Kosovo" is tightly focussed on one particular conflict: the much lauded NATO intervention in Kosovo in spring 1999 that was carried out under the banner of being an almost historically unique "Humanitarian Intervention". In this short book Chomsky destroys the NATO case on every major point, and tears apart the rhetoric and rationale of Clinton, Blair, et al and their many media cheerleaders into shreds.

Rather than being an intervention to prevent ethnic cleansing it inaugurated it, as a simple look at the chronology would reveal as well as paying attention to what military figures such as US-NATO commanding General Wesley Clark said, and the pre-war diplomacy which culminated in the Rambouillet Agreement was almost certainly set up to be refused by the Serbs, indeed it was more than NATO achieved after three months of bombing as well as flouting the agreements that brought the bombing to an end.

Chomsky takes the reader on a brief tour through the rhetoric used during conflicts through the ages and finds that practically every resort to arms is carried out under the banner of lofty words about "principles and values" and proclamations regarding it's "humanitarian" nature. With regard to other conflicts occurring during the 1990's that were minimally as serious as that in Kosovo, Chomsky makes the point that a NATO member, Turkey, was carrying out far worse massacres, with generous access to US weaponry, with hardly peep from NATO, Clinton, Blair and their media fanclub. Likewise Colombia, not to mention the murderous sanctions being inflicted on Iraq primarily by the US & the UK that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths.

In short this is a book that is still well worth reading, a tightly focussed and devastating critique of the NATO intervention and its immediate aftermath. The reader who is interested in the conflicts that tore Yugoslavia apart during the 1990's would be well advised to look at Susan Woodward's "Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution After the Cold War" which is exhaustive on the causes of the conflict as well as its early years. With regard to some of the aforementioned media cheerleaders Verso's fine Counterblast series includes looks at Michael Ignatieff, Thomas Friedman and Bernard Henri Levy.

[Bingustini · Rating 4 out of 5]

Since the end of the Cold War, American and NATO military interventions have been explained in large part as part of humanitarian missions, part of what Chomsky describes here as the New Humanism. Writing shortly after NATO's bombing campaign in Kosovo against Slobodan Milosevic, he interrogates this claim. Although Chomsky cites a number of scholars, journalists, and politicos who describe this new form of intervention as being a distinctly post-Cold War development in human relations, historical records contradict them. Counterexamples seem endless, extending from the Roman empire to the American bombing of Indochina.

Chomsky spends quite a bit of time describing actions by NATO states that seem no less sinister than those taken against the Kosovars. He focuses in particular on the Turkey's efforts to rid their country of Kurdish people and their culture and on the British and American support they received to do so.

I think that it would be easy to criticize a lot of this as "whatboutism," but that misses the point a bit. Yes, Chomsky does compare atrocities by Serbian forces to those committed by American allies and clients, but the point is not merely to draw a moral equivalency or claim that since we accept one, we must accept the other. Rather it raises the question of why, if bombing is justified since it will prevent ethnic cleansing, has no action been taken to end the killing of the Kurds given that it such an end could be achieved with only diplomatic pressure? Aside from raising questions about who decides what interventions have moral necessity, this is perhaps Chomsky greatest point in undermining humanitarian justifications for bombing campaigns.

Chomsky also spends quite a bit of time exploring the extent to which the bombing campaign truly was effective at protecting lives, and provides good evidence that the opposite was true. He quotes commanders before the bombing began warning that it would likely escalate killing of civilians. Sadly, hindsight seems to bear this out.

Throughout the book, Chomsky is insightful, clear, and erudite. I read the whole book with one finger in the source notes to flip back and forth between them and the text. Occasionally he is a bit verbose or opaque, but it does little to affect the cogency of the text.

It is a sad thing that this book is still relevant. Interventions in Iraq, Libya, and elsewhere have been explained through a similar frame. Even many of the same people are rattling their sabers in the pages of the New York Times despite getting it wrong so many times before (how does Thomas Friedman still have a job there?). As tensions grow surrounding a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine, I can only hope that assessments of possible actions are more sober and honest than they have been in the past.

[Old-Barbarossa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very uncomfortable book to read, and there are unpleasant parallels between the Kosovo intervention and the whole pile of pish that’s going on in Afraqistan and their handlings by the mainstream media.

[Jeremy R. Hammond · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential reading to understand the NATO bombing of Kosovo, particularly for how it documents that the bombing exacerbated the violence on the ground, creating the very humanitarian crisis that was then ex post facto used to justify it.

[Nick · Rating 1 out of 5]

Severely lacking historical context. Wouldn’t expect anything more from a linguist and a charlatan disguised as an intellect.

[A YOGAM · Rating 4 out of 5]

Das vorliegende Buch unterzieht die offizielle Rechtfertigung des NATO-Angriffs auf Jugoslawien im Jahr 1999, der mit der Wahrung der Menschenrechte begründet wurde, einer detaillierten Analyse. Chomsky untersucht Medienberichte und institutionelle Dokumente, um die erhebliche Diskrepanz zwischen politischer Argumentation und tatsächlichem Geschehen offenzulegen. Er zeigt, dass die von Clinton und Blair propagierte „Doktrin vom Kurswechsel“ den militärischen Einsatz moralisch überhöhte, obwohl die meisten ethnischen Säuberungen nachweislich erst nach Beginn der Bombardierungen stattfanden – ein Umstand, der durch eine freiwillige „Zensur des Weglassens“ verdeckt wurde. Zugleich prangert er die doppelten Standards westlicher Außenpolitik an: Während verbündete Klientelstaaten wie die Türkei trotz schwerer Menschenrechtsverletzungen weitgehend unbehelligt blieben, wurde Serbien aufgrund seiner Rolle als Hindernis im von den USA dominierten Weltsystem besonders scharf verurteilt.
Im folgenden Abschnitt entwickelt Chomsky eine alternative Rekonstruktion der Konfliktgeschichte. Er führt die Eskalation auf politische Fehlentscheidungen der USA seit den Dayton-Verhandlungen sowie auf die stillschweigende Duldung serbischer Gewaltakte zurück. Ergänzend zieht er Beispiele aus unterschiedlichen Krisenregionen heran, um seine These zu stützen, dass westliche Außenpolitik gegenüber staatlicher Gewalt eine bemerkenswerte Kontinuität der Toleranz aufweise.
Die kritische Würdigung des Buches äußert jedoch Vorbehalte: Chomsky neige dazu, sehr unterschiedliche Konflikte weitgehend parallel zu ziehen, was zu einer vereinfachenden Weltsicht führen könne. Besonders die Einordnung Israels als bloßen Klientelstaat vernachlässige die Komplexität des Nahostkonflikts. Dennoch gelten seine Hypothesen zu den tieferliegenden Motiven des NATO-Einsatzes als plausibel, auch wenn sich daraus die spezifischen Beweggründe für die deutsche Beteiligung nicht unmittelbar ableiten lassen.
Mit Blick auf den jüngsten Gaza-Krieg lässt sich diese methodische Kritik differenziert bewerten. Die Tendenz, komplexe regionale Konflikte unter ein einheitliches Erklärungsmuster zu subsumieren, trifft hier erneut auf Grenzen: Die politischen, historischen und sicherheitsrelevanten Dynamiken sind zu vielschichtig, als dass eine vereinfachende Kategorisierung ausreichend wäre. Gleichzeitig bestätigen die aktuellen Ereignisse Chomskys Kernaussagen zur politischen Doppelmoral, selektiver Empörung und der Rolle westlicher Staaten als zugleich Beteiligte und moralische Richter. Die mediale Rahmung der Gewalt, die ungleiche Gewichtung von Opfern und die politische Legitimation militärischer Aktionen spiegeln die strukturellen Machtmuster wider, die Chomsky schon damals herausgearbeitet hat.
Insgesamt zeigt sich, dass seine Analyse weniger für eine konfliktgenaue Erklärung gedacht ist, sondern als Werkzeug zur Aufdeckung systemischer Bedingungen, unter denen internationale Gewalt bewertet, gerechtfertigt oder relativiert wird. Gerade diese Perspektive macht „Der neue militärische Humanismus“ auch heute noch zu einer wichtigen Lektüre für das Verständnis globaler Machtpolitik.

[Steven McCallum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Underrated book from Chomsky. Here, NATO is exposed as being nothing more than an extension of American imperial power in Europe. It's remarkable how the supposed "victories" and justifications for NATO are uncritically repeated by the meda and aligned clients in the decades following it's intervention in Kosovo (as well as a reoccurring argument during Russia's early-2022 military operations in Ukraine). It's pretty much still the case that numerous similar crimes have taken place, some of which actually involve members of this supposed "defensive alliance", but are ultimately ignored because they don't involve an "official enemy" to American hegemony. Palestine, Yemen, and Somalia - today's East Timor and autonomous Kurdish regions in Iraq.

4/5.

[Neil Cake · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most enlightening... and extremely disturbing. Basically we need to maintain our nuclear weapons or there's a chance the US will bomb the fuck out of us at some point. And forget a move away from capitalism and neoliberalism; it will never be allowed to happen.

I can only give it 3 stars because while it's so revealing and insightful, I'm sure Chomsky could find clearer ways of expressing himself. Some of this is almost incomprehensible.

Finally, why are all books about Yugoslavia that I find written while the conflict isn't even over? Will I ever find one that covers what actually happened in the end?

Here's hoping it's a while before I have to read any more Chomsky.

[Sarunas Dignaitis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pabandžiau įsigilinti į mūsų, vakarų, kuriamą naratyvą apie NATO, apie pačius vakarus, per humanitarinę intervenciją Kosove.

Sunkiai skaitoma knyga, ne tik dėl to, kad parašyta sausais šaltinių citavimais, bet ir dėl to, kad apeliuoja į mano paties įsitikinimus apie tai, kas yra NATO.

Pasak N.Chomskio: etnininis valymas buvo eskaluotas NATO pradėjus karinius veiksmus, buvo pažeista tarptautinė teisė, buvo kuriami melagingi naratyvai ir atsirado precedentas ateities karams prisidengiant išgelbėtojų vėliavomis.

Nežinau ar aš tai ir išsinešu, bet ši knyga padėjo suprasti daugiau apie tai, ką mes vadiname geopolitiniais interesais.

[goodreads · Rating 4 out of 5]

A concise example of what Chomsky's politics are, this book seeks to uncover the actual events in Kosovo in order to compare it to the Us/Uk narrative of Nato intervention to stop genocide. Instead we find that rather than being more noble than the U.N. who refused to act in the face of atrocity, Nato infact became the catalyst for a political situation which engulfed thousands and further scared the already troubled balkans.

Anti-American? If misunderstood. Chomsky's anti-imperialist stance is the driving thrust of this work. Recommended but not perfect; to seasoned Chomsky watchers the comparisons with East Timor and Sudan et al are well worn, if worthy paths.

[Mariana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una crítica fuerte y aguda, una trágica realidad. La verdad estoy bastante desinformada del tema, y fue un duro abrir de ojos leer esto. Chomsky hace un buen trabajo fundamentando sus críticas.

[benjamin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Parenti's work on Yugoslavia is superior, but this is a good complement.

[Pelvis Resley · Rating 4 out of 5]

"First, do no harm," smirk
marauding superpowers
who "save lives," rain bombs.

[Alicia Pearl Ramirez]

I fuxxx with this book