Iain King

Lain King's first novel is astonishly brilliant. Best book I've read for a very long time. The story is not so much about Nazis, more really the cold war and modern times, but with lots of interesting history. The dead Nazi's main secret (there are two secrets - one big, one small) is the focos of an international team's hunt across Europe, and it is amazing. There are lots of details about the secret at the back of the book, which are fascinating. Includes a great American called 'Glenn'. Great book.… (more)

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I know the author from our shared careers as political activists and operators, but this book is entirely about ethics, attempting to establish a universal code of how to make the right decision. Ethics and politics are not always considered in the same breath, but they are not far apart in their intellectual roots, and indeed my father was nominally professor of both at University College Dublin (they were put in the same department when the National University of Ireland was created, though I understand they have since been split).

King's book is entirely about ethics, and while he refers to earlier writers (such as Rawls in particular) he seems to be putting forward a new schema, taking the search for value in one's life as an axiom and working forward from there through empathy and obligation towards one's fellow human beings to the Help Principle, that we should help other is the value of our help to them is worth more than the cost of that help to us. The second half of the (short) book works through practical examples of this principle in politics, romance and law.

I am not well enough read in philosophy to know how original all of this is, let alone how fairly King represents the views of other philosophers, but it is a very attractive and comprehensible argument, told in a chatty but far from superficial style. It reminds me most of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, though without the motorcycles, and it possibly has the potential to become a similar cult classic with the right sort of marketing. (Certainly has a catchy title.)… (more)

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This is a fairly damning indictment of the international efforts to put Kosovo on its feet since the NATO campaign against Serbia and Yugoslavia of 1999. From the very beginning, international officials conceded to thuggery on the ground, committed by both the ethnic Albanian majority and by the remaining ethnic Serbs where they could manage it. UN officials retreated into a colonialist mentality, failing to implement their mandate and questioning their own ability to do so. (Kosovo's electricity supplies now are in worse shape than they were before the conflict.) The highest ever per capita expenditure by the international community on post-conflict reconstruction has delivered indifferent results.

King and Mason have a list of prescriptions as to what could be done better in future. To me, the two key points - confirmed by this book - are, first, that any such international mission needs to move fast to establish the rule of law as a matter of extreme urgency; and second, that the end goal must be clear right from the beginning. The determination to put off deciding on Kosovo's future independence led directly to the discrediting of the UN mission within Kosovo and the violence of March 2004, and has exacerbated uncertainty in the wider region.

There were one or two other points that occurred to me when reading. In Bosnia, politicians were reined in by the international community when they lied about what was actually in the peace deal. No such measure was ever applied or even threatened in Kosovo, with the result that nationalist fantasies continued to be peddled by the top leadership until the start of this year. Freedom of speech, sure, but malicious lies about the basis of government should at the very least have been countered by the UN.

King and Mason make the argument, though I feel they are not completely convinced, that holding elections in Kosovo before the moderates were in a position to win was a mistake. In my view that is wishful thinking. While in these circumstances elections do often simply confirm the hold on power of local thugs, at least they are now in by virtue of the ballot box rather than by force and it becomes thinkable that they can be removed. And anyway, the first elections in Kosovo did, in fact, remove from power many of the KLA-linked structures that had gained local ascendancy during the war.

I think this is the first book-length piece on the Kosovo protectorate, and it's a thorough analysis, drawing of course among other sources from the work my own colleagues have been doing over the years. My one minor quibble are that some of the Serbian names are misspelt - the famously impaled Mr Martinović is Martimovic, Nenad Radosavljević has acquired an extra l in his surname, and Slaviša Petković's first name is spelt Slavisha, as if in Albanian. But those quibbles apart, it's a good book.… (more)