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chris_h7654's review against another edition
4.0
A highly intelligent, informed, and angry book about the NATO war against Yugoslavia in the 90s.
My one criticism — albeit a significant one — is Parenti’s seemingly one-sided and highly selective presentation of the economic background of the Yugoslav conflict. Basically, he blames it all on the greedy and evil Western bankers. While I’m open to narratives along those lines, Parenti’s ideological Marxism seemed to blind him to the Socialist Yugoslav government’s failures and mismanagement.
Overall, however, such faults are more than redeemed by Parenti’s evisceration of Western governments’ and the media’s bias, duplicity, greed, and brutality. The book is a must-read for anyone interested in learning about the recent wars in the former Yugoslavia, or even about post-Cold War US foreign policy more generally.
My one criticism — albeit a significant one — is Parenti’s seemingly one-sided and highly selective presentation of the economic background of the Yugoslav conflict. Basically, he blames it all on the greedy and evil Western bankers. While I’m open to narratives along those lines, Parenti’s ideological Marxism seemed to blind him to the Socialist Yugoslav government’s failures and mismanagement.
Overall, however, such faults are more than redeemed by Parenti’s evisceration of Western governments’ and the media’s bias, duplicity, greed, and brutality. The book is a must-read for anyone interested in learning about the recent wars in the former Yugoslavia, or even about post-Cold War US foreign policy more generally.
tadici's review against another edition
3.0
I'm actually very glad that I read Karadjis' "Bosnia, Kosova and the West" before this. Both authors approach this subject with very distinct methodologies. Basically, whereas Karadjis focuses a lot on the acts and intentions of the West, in particular NATO, Parenti makes it his goal of disproving the prevailing view of the conflicts for the average Western audience that witnessed each war exclusively through the lens of the Western European and American mainstream news media.
These approaches end up necessitating different focuses when it comes to the sources they use. Karadjis discusses the inter-political conflicts of the major NATO countries and explains their proposals and actions that way. For instance, the push of Germany and France for a solely European defense force outside of NATO using the perceived mismanagement and domination of the US of the whole NATO engagement. The attempt of the US to keep a post Cold War NATO relevant as well as setting a precedent of NATO engagement outside of member countries. A lot of the numbers that Parenti questions and for which he finds contradictory sources, retractions in newspapers and other ways to argue their non-believability, Karadjis straight up just takes them at face value.
So the issue here with Parenti's arguments is that at various points they are very sloppy. His end goal is to prove that the Serbs and Milosevic were demonized which to a certain extent is definitely true. However, he ends up blasting past his initial point and repeats sources and quotations at face value without ever bothering to question that. There's a few that particularly stuck out to me and I'll just list them:
- Within a few paragraphs he mentions that Serbs accounted for about 30% of the population in Bosnia and that the army of the RS held 70% of the territory which the person he quotes argues was exclusively populated by Serbian people anyway. Which first of all is not true, neither before the conflict nor after the ethnic cleansing campaigns during the Bosnian War. He just repeats the quote without any comment whatsoever. The same quote is in Karadjis' book by the way and he gives a different context to it.
- With regards to the genocide committed in Srebrenica. He quotes that (at the time) only around 70 bodies out of the nearly 8000 dead men and boys were identified and pretends that the number of identified bodies is the number of found bodies. It's a subtle but crucial mistake on his part.
- He euphemistically calls the actions of the Serbian army and paramilitaries after the start of the NATO bombing campaign a forced mass evacuation of the Albanian population in Kosova. He later argues using anecdotal interviews that a major part of fleeing Albanians fled because of the NATO bombs even though the mass "evacuation" started right after the start of the bombing campaign which in the first weeks dropped most of its bombs in Serbia proper and not Kosova.
All in all, I am glad I read this book because Parenti has a different focus than Karadjis and both of them paint contradictory narratives of the Bosnia and Kosova wars but they only rarely directly contradict each other. It really comes down to their focus in the sources they used. The truth surely lies somewhere in between. There are parts that Parenti simply got wrong and overall I would say that Karadjis has a more materialist analysis but nevertheless this book has valuable arguments and data in it. At the very least it taught me that you can never stop at reading just one account of a particular historical event which is why I'm already reading another book about it and plan to read several more.
These approaches end up necessitating different focuses when it comes to the sources they use. Karadjis discusses the inter-political conflicts of the major NATO countries and explains their proposals and actions that way. For instance, the push of Germany and France for a solely European defense force outside of NATO using the perceived mismanagement and domination of the US of the whole NATO engagement. The attempt of the US to keep a post Cold War NATO relevant as well as setting a precedent of NATO engagement outside of member countries. A lot of the numbers that Parenti questions and for which he finds contradictory sources, retractions in newspapers and other ways to argue their non-believability, Karadjis straight up just takes them at face value.
So the issue here with Parenti's arguments is that at various points they are very sloppy. His end goal is to prove that the Serbs and Milosevic were demonized which to a certain extent is definitely true. However, he ends up blasting past his initial point and repeats sources and quotations at face value without ever bothering to question that. There's a few that particularly stuck out to me and I'll just list them:
- Within a few paragraphs he mentions that Serbs accounted for about 30% of the population in Bosnia and that the army of the RS held 70% of the territory which the person he quotes argues was exclusively populated by Serbian people anyway. Which first of all is not true, neither before the conflict nor after the ethnic cleansing campaigns during the Bosnian War. He just repeats the quote without any comment whatsoever. The same quote is in Karadjis' book by the way and he gives a different context to it.
- With regards to the genocide committed in Srebrenica. He quotes that (at the time) only around 70 bodies out of the nearly 8000 dead men and boys were identified and pretends that the number of identified bodies is the number of found bodies. It's a subtle but crucial mistake on his part.
- He euphemistically calls the actions of the Serbian army and paramilitaries after the start of the NATO bombing campaign a forced mass evacuation of the Albanian population in Kosova. He later argues using anecdotal interviews that a major part of fleeing Albanians fled because of the NATO bombs even though the mass "evacuation" started right after the start of the bombing campaign which in the first weeks dropped most of its bombs in Serbia proper and not Kosova.
All in all, I am glad I read this book because Parenti has a different focus than Karadjis and both of them paint contradictory narratives of the Bosnia and Kosova wars but they only rarely directly contradict each other. It really comes down to their focus in the sources they used. The truth surely lies somewhere in between. There are parts that Parenti simply got wrong and overall I would say that Karadjis has a more materialist analysis but nevertheless this book has valuable arguments and data in it. At the very least it taught me that you can never stop at reading just one account of a particular historical event which is why I'm already reading another book about it and plan to read several more.
yilliun's review
Stopped reading at around halfway through. Multiple sides to the story: true. Denying a genocide even happened? Disgusting.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Genocide, War, Torture, and Islamophobia
colettieb's review against another edition
4.0
This book was very interesting and made me hate and distrust NATO.
strawberryfruit's review against another edition
fast-paced
0.25
Don't read this book. It's full of misinformation and is very biased, taking into account only sources that fit the author's original claim. There are better works on this topic
das737's review against another edition
1.0
I prefer antineoliberalism books without a heavy serving of genocide denial
bird_smuggler's review against another edition
5.0
Michael Parenti brilliantly outlines how the United States and NATO overthrow countless governments to further the cause of capital, driven by predator multinationals, having little concern for such things as "other people" and their "lives."
This book argues a decidedly unpopular position: that Serbia was largely framed for responsibility in a conflict where they were far from the only, or main, aggressor; driven into an unwinnable position by attack from all sides, a squeeze that they resisted longer than any nation of their size and capability should be able to.
It is not a book of genocide denial, however, the argument being that it was the western powers that sanitized acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing by the other powers of the former Yugoslavia.
Parenti weaves together his arguments brilliantly and makes a case that only he could be so bold to make. Strong recommend.
This book argues a decidedly unpopular position: that Serbia was largely framed for responsibility in a conflict where they were far from the only, or main, aggressor; driven into an unwinnable position by attack from all sides, a squeeze that they resisted longer than any nation of their size and capability should be able to.
It is not a book of genocide denial, however, the argument being that it was the western powers that sanitized acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing by the other powers of the former Yugoslavia.
Parenti weaves together his arguments brilliantly and makes a case that only he could be so bold to make. Strong recommend.