A New Generation Draws the Line.
Subtitle: Kosovo, East Timor & the Standards of the West.
Publisher: Verso; Verso; VERSO
Published: 2000
Place of publication: S. l
Language: eng
Number of pages: 160
Description: "1999 saw two major international crises that, looked at side-by-side with characteristic acuity by Noam Chomsky, starkly illuminate the strategies of the Western powers in the new century. In East Timor atrocities mounted sharply, and warnings of further escalation in an unfolding humanitarian disaster could not have been more apparent. It was evident well in advance that the referendum on independence would prompt still more widespread savagery towards the local population by the Indonesian army and their cohorts. As Chomsky points out, the West did not need to do very much to prevent this; a firm word with Jakarta would have sufficed. But East Timor is of little strategic interest to the US and its allies, and so they did nothing. Thousands were killed, hundreds of thousands were forced to flee their homes. Precise figures are difficult to establish because little has been done by the West to uncover exactly what happened. In this respect, the situation in Kosovo was very different. In Yugoslavia, at the cessation of NATO bombing, hundreds of forensic experts were brought in to substantiate claims made by the State Department and the British Home Office concerning the thousands who reportedly had been massacred at the hands of the Serbs. In fact numbers of this scale have not been corroborated. Furthermore, the rich documentation produced by the US NATO, and other Western sources reveals that the atrocities that did occur took place overwhelmingly in the wake of the NATO bombing, and were its consequence not its cause. Humanitarianism was not the moving force behind military intervention in Yugoslavia; here strategic concerns were at stake and the fate of civilian populations was incidental to them. These conclusions are strongly supported by other events and policies during the same period."

"A new generation has taken over in the capitals of Western power. They show scant affection for the progressive politics that marked the years of their coming of age. Instead, as Noam Chomsky explains with a combination of clinical focus and sweeping range that typifies his work, it is business as usual for the new mandarins."--Jacket.