Virtual War - Softcover

This is a brilliant and indispensable history of the present in which Michael Ignatieff reports on the extraordinary way the war in Kosovo was fought - the dawn of a new type of warfare. In real wars, whole nations are mobilised, soldiers fight and die, victories are won. In virtual war, hostilities may not even be declared, the only combatants may be strike pilots and computer programmers, the watching nation is mobilised only as a television audience and instead of victory there is only an uncertain endgame. Kosovo was a virtual war; fought by pilots at 15, 000 feet, commanded by generals whose only view of the battle was through their pilots' bombing sites, and reported by opposing media with competing versions of collateral damage stories; a war in which Americans and NATO forces did the fighting but only Kosovars and Serbs did the dying.

In this moving exploration of the war in Kosovo, Ignatieff combines reportage, theory and analysis to produce a definitive study of a new type of warfare, the virtual war where the watching nation is mobilized as a television audience and instead of victory there is only an uncertain endgame.