 |  | 
This absorbing letters exchange between writers Michael Ignatieff and Robert
Skidelsky occurred during NATO's bombing of Serbia in the spring of 1999. It
covers key questions such as: 'Does the West have free rein to make its values
and ethics prevail?' 'Did the West undermine the laws of international affairs
in by-passing UN authorization for its attack on Serbia?' Ignatieff is a
reporter, historian and author of The Warriors' Honor: Ethnic Wars and the
Modern Conscience; Robert Skidelsky is author of The World After
Communism.
|
| 
Listen to this WBUR-FM "The Connection" interview with Michael Ignatieff which took place a few
months after NATO's war ended. Ignatieff discusses the human rights movement's
struggle for legitimacy and the questions which have emerged since the Kosovo
conflict: Would we do it again? When, whether and how should we intervene for
human rights? In the Kosovo intervention, did NATO do as much harm as good?
|
| 
James A. Kitfield presents an overview of how historic concepts of nation-state
sovereignty and intervention have been changing as a result of humanitarian
disasters in Haiti, Bosnia, Rwanda and now, Kosovo. He maintains "the days of
absolute sovereignty--when governments could abuse their own people with total
impunity--are gone forever." Kitfield is the defense correspondent
for National Journal and the author of
Prodigal Soldiers: How the Generation of Officers Born of Vietnam Revolutionized the
American Style of War
|
| 
Tony Judt, professor of European Studies at New York University, places
Milosevic's ethnic cleansing in the context of other European leaders who have
exterminated minorities within national frontiers. He maintains that NATO's war on
Milosevic was a war it had to fight.
|
