"Global
Peace, Security, and Human Rights" Lecture Series presents
Michael Ignatieff
“Virtual War and the Future of Intervention”
Thursday, January 11/ 4
P.M. / FREE
UCSB Campbell Hall
Internationally renowned journalist and author of the prize-winning TV series and book “Blood and Belongings,” Michael Ignatieff explores modern combat and the emerging morality that accompanies high-tech military action. Courtesy of the UCSB Bookstore, copies of his latest book, “Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond,” will be available for signing and purchase at this event.
For a decade, Ignatieff has provided eyewitness accounts and penetrating analyses from the world's battle zones. In “Virtual War,” he describes the latest phase in modern combat: war fought by remote control. In "real" war, nations are mobilized, soldiers fight and die, victories are won. In virtual war, however, there is often no formal declaration of hostilities, the combatants are strike pilots and computer programmers, the nation enlists as a TV audience, and instead of defeat and victory there is only an uncertain endgame.
Kosovo was such a virtual war, a war in which U.S. and NATO forces did the fighting but only Kosovars and Serbs did the dying. Ignatieff examines the conflict through the eyes of key players-politicians, diplomats, and generals-and through the experience of the victims, the refugees and civilians who suffered. As unrest continues in the Balkans, East Timor, 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.
Michael Ignatieff is a frequent contributor to “The New Yorker” and “The New York Review of Books,” among other publications. He is the author of many acclaimed books, including “Blood and Belonging,” “Isaiah Berlin,” and “The Warrior's Honor.”
This event is part of the "Global Peace, Security, and Human Rights" lecture series being sponsored by the UC Institute for Global Conflict and Cooperation, UCSB Arts & Lectures, Global and International Studies Program, Global Peace and Security Program and Interdisciplinary Humanities Center. It is being put on in partnership with the Santa Barbara Committee on Foreign Relations, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, PAX 2100, International Studies Association at Santa Barbara City College, and the International Studies Program at Ventura College.
