Scott Horton Interviews Philip Cunliffe
February 19th, 2008Philip Cunliffe, freelance writer and researcher at King’s College in London, England, discusses the new “supervised independence” of Kosovo under the authority of the European Union, the fallacy of benevolent international humanitarian intervention and its consequences in Sudan and Iraq as well as the Balkans.
MP3 here. (41:28)
Philip Cunliffe is co-editor of Politics without Sovereignty: A critique of contemporary international relations (UCL Press, 2007). Read more about the book here.
February 20th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
People, your RSS podcast feeds are downloading incomplete files.
Great interviews as always.
February 20th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Good interview. I always enjoy reading spikedonline, particularly Brendan O’Neill and his contempt for “meaning-seeking” interventionist liberals, and I appreciate Cunliffe’s seeming contempt for the immature Kosovars in need of supervision. In contrast to my proud Slavic brethren in sovereign Serbia.
However, I was disappointed to hear Scott Horton rather inarticulately describe the 1999 NATO air war on Yugoslavia as lasting “a month and a half, or two”. It was 78 days, closer to 3 months than to 2. There are many of us who were deeply shaken by those those horrible days, and Horton’s low estimate of the crime’s duration is unfortunate to hear and stands out from the rest of the piece.
February 21st, 2008 at 8:06 am
Communitarianism and Moral Relativism are both teh suck.
February 22nd, 2008 at 5:13 am
You are quite right Vincent. Look… the NATO should celebrate the day
when they tricked former Yugoslav leader Milosevic into signing UNSC
1244, first threatening to use nuclear weapons against him, offering no borders would change! He backed down and let them into Kosovo, while UN was just a Trojan Horse! He was accused of performing genocide over Albanians or at least ethnically cleansing them. In 1999 there have been 1.2 million Albanians in Kosovo.
8 years later, the population count is 2.1 million! The genocide
resulted with more Albanians? The ethnic cleansing spin doctoring also
doesn’t hold any water - Albanians are back in Kosovo. Even Albanians
from Albania are in Kosovo! It is the Kosovo Serbs that are gone and
their safe return is now blocked by the the Albanians and US puppeteered
UN-MIK! Something is clearly false in the charges of the 1999 NATO
intervention in Yugoslavia apologists! NATO never had plans to run a long
lasting conventional warfare in Europe especially not aerial bombardment
lasting 3 or more months and was running out of ammunition in June 1999!
NATO and the US always planned to switch to NUCLEAR exchange after the
third day of conventional war with the Russians. The time it would take
Russian tanks from East Germany to reach Paris! The British going to WW
I had once thought - they would be back home by Christmas. They could
not have been more wrong. We all know millions never returned, four
years later. So did the US Joint Chiefs believed, it would only take 3
days of bombing, estimating 4 aircraft lost per day, provided Serbian
air defense gets suppressed first. It never was efficiently. Just go
ahead and multiply loss estimate by 78 days and that would give you an
idea, why NATO should erect a monument to Milosevic, he saved their ass!
Now we have the core of another world war in making over Kosovo. Is it
worth it? Why should the West be standing up for the largest drug
traffickers in Europe, the Kosovo Albanian narco barons disguised in the
form of “Muslim Lites’”. That is what Kosovo is all about. Albanians
claim they are US loving, “lite” Muslims. No Islam
can coexist with democracy as we might once regret to realize? People in
Europe and at the US, should not be that naive to think, anybody has got
a chance of returning home by Christmas, any Christmas on either side of
the new front in the making! Serbs were allies to the West in both world
wars. Now they vow, never again! This is a very bad example the Western
democracies are giving, presenting themselves as politically corrupted,
untrustworthy partners to any world nation, beyond Euro-Atlantic
dominion. Shame on us ! This is a prelude to a disaster!
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:16 pm
First of all, sorry for my bad english. I was studying russian in school
I must say that i experience a some kind of releef reading something like this, from someone who is several thousant miles away from Serbia, or to be more precise, a far, far away from abnormal situation that my people is facing.
Thank you for your openmindness.
I`ll continue to learn from people like you, how to react to some situations in US (like you do in Serbia), or enywere else on planet, without any prejudice or blindness.
Igor.
Nis, Serbia.
February 22nd, 2008 at 9:41 pm
Igor, greetings from Michigan, USA. I don’t know what to make of the violent parts of your countrymen’s protests, but I wouldn’t presume to pass judgement. I do find it sickening that after hundreds of Kosovo monasteries have been destroyed on NATO’s watch, Condoleeza Rice has the nerve to complain about Serbia’s obligation to protect US diplomats and the embassy.
You recognize a lawless theft of Serbia’s territory? How about a lawless assault on your embassy?
When I visit Serbia (which I hope to do someday) I hope to visit Kosovo (not “Kosova”) and its beautiful monasteries after Serbia returns and safeguards them. I’m not a believer, but Serbia’s resistance (in the face of libel and slander and violence) is inspiring to me, and maybe my tourist dollars may help your people to recover from the battles you have fought and will fight.
February 26th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
I have seldom heard anyone quite so incoherent as Mr Cunliffe. If we removed all the ‘kind of’ and ‘you know’ and other verbal ticks from his discourse, we would still be left with something very worthwhile — he is clearly a well-informed and intelligent man. But he is clearly in need of a remedial speaking course.