Yugoslavia: Peace, War, and Dissolution (PM Press)

- It’s useful to have these essays pulled together in one place. It supplements Chomsky’s earlier volume 'A New Generation Draws the Line: Kosovo, East Timor and the Standards of the West' (2001). There is some inevitable overlap and repetition since these were not written as a single volume, but overall a valuable addition.

Like always Chomsky is a brilliant mind alive.

Noam Chomsky’s edited together letters, essays and interviews, Yugoslavia: Peace, War, and Dissolution is a hard read. Professor Noam Chomsky is a highly degreed and respected academician but this is not the source of the difficulty factor. He uses hard words to speak plainly that which speaks his convictions. These convictions are not in accord with the western read on the war, civil war<?> that ended Yugoslavia. Unlike some modern leaders who simply say “Fake News” and walk away never having made any case, Dr. Chomsky documents and details why there should be another narrative.Pinning down his politics is not an easy matter. Among the terms he uses or are applied to him are: anarcho-syndicalism rather left of trade unionism but not strictly communistic. There is more then a streak of libertarianism in how he would describe himself. If you cannot deal with the distance between left leaning, Christian Socialism, Communism and Stalinism, then you are going to have a lot of problems reading this book. Chomsky has enough axes to grind to level every tree in Western Canada as a warm up to the Sequoias of the Americas Pacific. Again, his having a fixed point of view is a problem you are with which you are going to have to deal.What will follow will be some further warnings about how his politics and POV create traps for the reader. My bottom line is that for all of this there are reasons to listen and to dig for the possibility of facts many of us may never have considered.Speaking generally about the collection pulled together in Yugoslavia: Peace, War, and Dissolution, the amount of duplication is numbing. Entire pages could be moved about or removed and there would be no net change in the content. The use of letters written as part of a campaign, interviews crafted to repeat certain points and repeat them. In the almost ¾ of the book Part III Crisis in Kosovo almost any 20 pages could serve as proxy for the other 125 .Part I Yugoslavia is important. The nation that was Yugoslavia was never anything like what an American would think of as a nation. It was a set of borders scrawled around a collection of states, each given a quasy-independant sub national existence resulting in something that might have been a confederation. Chomsky make the case that these several nations had no common language, traditions, religions or national sense of identity. The modern State of Germany was built from something like this confederation but with enough in common to think of themselves as Germans. What Yugoslavians called themselves at home was rarely likely to be “Yugoslav’s”. As the risk of being glib, there was no melting pot. History made many of these people ancient enemies. Powers like Germany and Russia had their own agendas within their respective spheres of influence.Moving into the war and dismemberment. A bottom line is that Chomsky feels that there was certainly evils committed by any of several sides. The west, especially the west as lead by the US promoted more evil. That left to themselves the dissolution, blood bath or not would have been the doing of the locals. And better yet if done by the locals with less foreign, including American weapon sales. His detailed condemnation of US involvement in this region is unrelenting and unforgiving.Because of his grinding and his politics, it can be hard to separate out facts from his prejudices. Scraping from history, he involves Japanese aggression going back to the 30’s and almost any case he can promote. Most of these get tiresome, but given what he has to say about western blindness towards Turkey and its contemporary treatment of the Kurds, I have to think he is not just waving a Red Flag of Anti-Americanism. Against this he will claim that US involvement was driven by rich money interests. Who these rich interested people is not detailed. This is not an oil or even a rare earth metals region. All sides somehow had money or credit for legal and illegal arms but hardly enough money between them to motivate unnamed rich.Chomsky falls back on the belief that a choice was to keep negotiations. No mention of how time in negotiations also means time to conduct more evil. Violence in the name of insuring a stronger hand at those same tables. He is bitter that there was not more use of UN peace Keepers. No mention of the isolation, overrunning or basic lack of the kinds of rules of engagement that might have meant actual peace in the peace keeping.He must quote at least 50 times an admission by the US commanding general that (he is more precise in calling it NATO) bombing accelerated atrocities. Here the point becomes more difficult. If a bomb falls on a hospital, that may be inhumane. But if an army knows they are close to defeat uses the time to accelerate the killing and raping, either to insure a better negotiating stance, or to kill off the last witnesses or just because their goal was and remained killing and raping than the point becomes fast or slow, the intent was to murder and rape. Such an army should be bombed. That other armies, also engaged in murder and rape in Africa, In Iraq or elsewhere also needed bombing may be a good point or just the logic failure called deflection.These may be solid replies to Chomsky, or quibbling or memory failures. I will accept all criticisms. What a potential reader needs to know is that one can make, or try to make a case against parts of Yugoslavia: Peace, War, and Dissolution. Behind each of these denials there remains a detailed argument that the generally accepted version in the war, the intervention and the failure of undivided Yugoslavia may itself be a failure. I am recommending Yugoslavia: Peace, War, and Dissolution, not because I am certain of its possible inaccuracy but because I am certain that another look, another set of conclusions, another narrative is something honesty demands honest consideration.

I enjoyed reading this book very much. It explores very controversial topics in a balanced, objective way.It's true that most of the essays have been previously published, but it's nevertheless very informative. The editorial work is also very carefully done. It seems hard to imagine a more unbiased analysis of the 1990s wars in the Balkans presented in a single volume. Should definitely be on the reading list of everyone interested in the Balkans.

Another brilliant collection of Noam Chomsky's essays! Something very much needed in the English speaking world. Informative, detailed, documented... the way Chomsky does it.

Very disappointing. Not really Chomsky, just some of his letters and interviews put together. Very misleading cover page!Perhaps useful for people not familiar with the country and its history.

About the comment writer: Bosnian muslim, around 30 years old.The title of the book is misleading. You will not learn much about the Yugoslavia and the war in Yugoslavia. This book gives a good insight in the NATO bombing of Kosovo. If you are interested in the time from 1999 then this Book is for you.There are three parts in this book and if you look closely, you will notice that most of the pages are in the last part (Kosovo). The first to parts would have 5 to 10 pages if the editor hadn't write an introduction to Yugoslavia (which is not bad, but still not fully Chomsky).The reason I give 4 starts and not less is that even there are few pages about Yugoslavia and the events, they are probably the most objective pages you can find in all books at the moment...Comment résumé: This book is about NATO bombing of Serbia and the Kosovo conflict, it has nothing to do with the breakup of Yugoslavia. And the most important message there is "NATO bombing of Serbia was illegal under International Law without the approval of the Security Council"

great book to understand Yugoslavia's formation dynamics successes and failures,

Ein wichtiges Zeitdokument zur Geschichte Jugoslawiens

Quite radical views, not supported by arguments, which discredits the criticism formulated. One example: “Why is the US involved in the Kosovo crisis? We can exclude the possibility of humanitarian concerns because that is simply impossible. Then we can speculate. Turbulence in the Balkans, no matter what kind it is, is a threat to the interests of rich and powerful people”. (Page 106) a circular argument to justify an outlandish explanation. Another example, this about the euro area sovereign debt crisis: “All of this is, I think, part of the effort of, basically, the German financial sectors to expand German influence but also, and probably more significantly, to fight a class war”. (Page 203)

This insightful collection of writings provides a clear picture, both of the events that transpired in Yugoslavia, and misconceptions about them. The first section discusses the idea of Yugoslavia, its unique brand of socialism and Tito as well as Chomsky's thoughts on them. The book then moves on to discuss the end of Yugoslavia, from the loss of Slovenia to the bloody strife which engulfed Bosnia. It discusses both the local causes as well as those from further afield, in particular, the role of European powers and the US in causing the collapse. Lastly, the book talks about the NATO intervention in Kosovo and the reasons for the intervention. The book provides a clear introduction to each of the three sections-written by Davor Dzalto-which accurately sets the stage for the events discussed and provides some context to Noam's writings.Of particular interest is the last section, which discusses in great detail the circumstances surrounding the NATO intervention and challenges virtually the entire story told by the media. He focuses on the ongoing atrocities in other nations which are equal or greater in scale and brutality to the events in Kosovo but are virtually ignored in both the western press and in a lot of western academia. He dispels the myth of humanitarian intervention with several solid arguments and challenges the entire premise of the action as well as its intentions according to a large section of academia.The book does an admirable job of clearly dispelling myths about the conflict and instead paints a far more convincing if tragic understanding of the conflicts causes and its effects.

Good book, Chomsky should be on your reading list.