War of future is virtual

The nature of how our military engages in war is changing, Michael Ignatieff convincingly argues in his book "Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond" (Metropolitan Books: New York, 2000, $23). For all the talk we hear about investing in new technology and weapons by military brass and the Bush Administration, the 78-day NATO bombing campaign waged against Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia during the Clinton years showed just how questionable such seemingly victorious action can be. \nAs in his two prior books, "Blood and Belonging" and "The Warrior's Honor," Ignatieff spends his ink in "Virtual War," as he says, critiquing "the way Western governments have used military power to protect human rights since the end of the Cold War." He blames "the inability of governments to back principle with decisive military force," for our reluctance to engage in humanitarian missions around the world out of fear of casualties among our soldiers.\nThe central issue in Ignatieff's 246-page indictment of Western governments is determining why nations remain so reluctant to wage war at a time when they are more immune than ever from the risks of doing so.\nIn December 1998 the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, of which the United States is a member state, grappled with the question of whether to intervene in what some viewed as a sovereign country's internal affairs and others saw as a conflict with a considerable destabilizing effect on neighboring states, through massive flows of refugees out of Kosovo. Ignatieff, a London-based journalist and author, writes that then-United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan believed that American leadership could bring stability to the Balkans. NATO chose to make one final attempt to broker a peace agreement between the two sides. On January 31, 1999, NATO "authorized air-strikes against Serbia if it did not agree to talks with Kosovar leaders," Ignatieff writes. \nOn March 24, after the negotiations at the French château of Rambouillet failed, NATO began air operations against Serbia. \nIgnatieff guides his readers through the political developments during the conflict and throughout his book questions why NATO chose to bomb. He suggests that if it were not for an almost guaranteed scenario that no Western casualties would be inflicted during the bombings, NATO likely would not have taken the risk to help quell the repression, murder, rape and pillaging of the Milosevic's forces. War, to Ignatieff, is only "virtual," and not real, when one side can expect to have no losses. Even the size of the NATO force was small: 1,500 in air crews and 30,000 technicians, support staff and administrators.\n"Technological mastery removed death from our experience of war," he writes. "But war without death -- to our side -- is war that ceases to be fully real to us: virtual war."\nAnother question Ignatieff presents is whether risk-free warfare reportedly used for humanitarian reasons is perhaps itself a moral contradiction. "The concept of human rights assumes that all human life is of equal value," he writes.\nWhile President Bush wasn't yet elected when "Virtual War" was published last year, it presents several compelling indictments against those who believe that technology and war without casualties for the United States is entirely the way in which our nation's defenses should move. \n"Technologies create possibilities, but whether they are exploited depends on the ability of essentially conservative institutions to embrace them," he writes.\nAmong a myriad of questions for Western governments to ponder when choosing whether to do battle in another theater sometime in the future when events call for action -- or human rights activists demand it -- is a stinging statement. \n"America and its NATO allies fought a virtual war because they were neither ready nor willing to fight a real one," Ignatieff says.\nThe book is well-worth the $23 (or a trip to the public library) for anyone interested in military affairs or foreign policy.