Book description
In Empire Lite, Michael Ignatieff explores both sides of what
he sees as a new global empire - the imperial and the humanitarian -
and argues that the international community has failed to engage
intelligently with the problems of nation building in the aftermath of
apocalyptic events.
The collapse of political order around the world is now seen as a
major threat, and a new international order is emerging, one that is
crafted to suit American imperial objectives. This presents
humanitarian agencies with the dilemma of how to keep their programs
from being suborned to imperial interests. Yet they know that it was
American air-power that made an uneasy peace and humanitarian
reconstruction possible, first in Bosnia, then in Kosovo, and finally
in Afghanistan.
This is the new world of geopolitics we live in and must try to
grasp. The vivid, cogent essays in this book attempt to understand the
phenomenon of state collapse and state failure in the world's zones of
danger and the gradual emergence of an American led humanitarian
empire. Focussing on nation building in Bosnia, Kosovo and
Afghanistan, Ignatieff reveals how American military power, European
money and humanitarian motive have combined to produce a form of
imperial rule for a post-imperial age.
Drawing on his own experiences of war zones, and with an
extraordinary account of life in Afghanistan, Ignatieff identifies the
illusions that make a genuine act of solidarity so difficult and asks
what can be done to help people in war-torn societies enjoy the
essential right to rule themselves.
Michael Ignatieff is Carr Professor of Human Rights Policy at Kennedy
School of Government, Harvard University. He is an outstanding literary
and cultural commentator, and also a powerful novelist, shortlisted for
the Booker Prize in 1993 for
Scar Tissue
. He is well known, too, as a presenter and critic on radio and
television. His acclaimed biography of Isaiah Berlin was published by
Chatto in 1998 and
Virtual War
, his study of modern warfare in Kosovo, in 2000.
