An internationally respected journalist, political analyst and historian who has reported extensively on the Balkans and whose work has appeared frequently in The New Yorker and The New Republic, Michael Ignatieff will discuss the appropriateness of military intervention in regional conflicts and the moral implications of high technology warfare in a public lecture titled “Virtual War and the Future of Intervention” on Thursday, January 11 at 4 p.m. in UCSB Campbell Hall. Admission to the lecture is free and the public is encouraged to attend. Courtesy of the UCSB Bookstore, books by Ignatieff will be available for purchase and signing at the event.

In his book Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond, Ignatieff argues for the use of military force “when human rights abuses rise to the level of a systematic attempt to expel or exterminate large numbers of people who have no means of defending themselves or when these abuses threaten the peace and security of neighboring states,” and this only after all diplomatic alternatives have been exhausted. Beginning with a sketch of the situation in Kosovo, he voices support for the NATO bombing that forced the Serbs to withdraw, especially in light of the degree to which, nearly ten years earlier, the war in Bosnia had escalated before Western military intervened.

Despite his argument that force, used properly, can be humanitarian, Ignatieff warns that “those who support military intervention in defense of human rights need to back up their abstract commitments with devout attention to the question of whether, by intervening, we end up destroying what we set out to save.”

Beyond his exploration of military force and the situations under which it is justified, Ignatieff undertakes a discussion of the moral implications of the latest form of modern combat, “virtual war,” the perceived ability to inflict targeted damage to your enemy without suffering any casualties yourself. In “real war,” nations are mobilized, soldiers fight and die, and victories are won. In “virtual war,” however, there is often no formal declaration of war, the combatants are strike pilots and computer programmers, the nation enlists as a television audience, and instead of defeat and victory, there is only an uncertain endgame.

The Kosovo war, he points out, was conducted largely with impunity. The deaths caused by NATO military action in Kosovo were mostly hidden and above all, for Westerners, were someone else’s. He asks, “if war becomes unreal to the citizens of modern democracies, will they care enough to restrain and control the violence exercised in their name? (That is,) if Western nations can employ violence with impunity, will they not be tempted to use it more often?”

As unrest continues and escalates in the Balkans, the Middle East and other places around the world, Ignatieff raises the troubling possibility that virtual wars, so much easier to fight, could become the way superpowers impose their will in the century ahead.

Ignatieff is also author of Blood and Belonging, a prize-winning six-part television series and book about nationalism; The Warrior’s Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience; and an acclaimed biography of Isaiah Berlin. He is currently Visiting Professor at the Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He also serves on the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, launched by the Canadian Prime Minister at the Millennium Summit at the UN in September. This commission, chaired by Gareth Evans and Mohammed Sahnoun, will report to the UN Secretary General in October 2001.

Part of the lecture series Global Peace, Security and Human Rights, this event is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures, the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, Global Peace and Security Program and Global and International Studies, and the UC Institute for Global Conflict and Cooperation. Additional support is provided by the Santa Barbara Committee on Foreign Relations, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, PAX 2100, International Students Association at SB City College, and the International Studies Program at Ventura College.

For more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.

Editor: For photos, please call
Roman Baratiak at (805) 893-2080.