King, Iain 1971- (Iain Benjamin King)

PERSONAL:

Born January 29, 1971.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Westminster Foundation for Democracy, Artillery House, 11/19 Artillery Row, London SW1P 1RT, England; fax: +44 (0)20 7799 1312.

CAREER:

Writer and administrator. United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), 2000-03, head of planning for mission in Kosovo, 2003; then Westminster Foundation for Democracy, director of programs.

WRITINGS:

(With Whit Mason) Peace at Any Price: How the World Failed Kosovo, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Iain King, who was head of planning for the United Nations (UN) mission in Kosovo in 2003, is the author, with Whit Mason, who also served on the mission, of Peace at Any Price: How the World Failed Kosovo. In their book, the authors provide a look at Kosovo several years after the 1999 NATO air strikes drove Serbian forces out of the province and the United Nations Security Council established an interim civilian administration to oversee the area's rebuilding. "Kosovo was, in many ways, the last of the big Balkan Wars," the author told Fionnuala Sweeney in a 2007 interview on the CNN.com Web site. "The whole of the '90s were blighted in Europe for Bosnia, Croatia, and a whole series of bloodshed throughout the region." The author added: "Kosovo seems to mark the start of a new era in that there was a clear unanimity of international effort to try and solve the problem. Some of those hopes were maintained, so those hopes went a little bit awry and in a few years since the 1999 bombing up to the present."

Despite the UN mission to rebuild Kosovo, protect human rights, and create a democracy, Kosovo, according to the authors, remains an area with considerable ethnic strife and some violence with the potential for matters to get far worse. John R. Schindler, writing in the Naval War College Review, noted: "Peace at Any Price poses that difficult question and provides a richly disturbing series of answers that should be of interest to anyone concerned with the ability of Western governments and organizations to bring stability to failed states, even with overwhelming military force at their disposal." In their book, the authors explore the reasons why, in their opinion, the UN mission has failed and identify some of the most notable mistakes made by both the UN and NATO. They also outline the difficult challenges that are common to international interventions in unstable areas of the world.

Referring to Peace at Any Price as a "compact but thorough book," International Journal contributor Oisin Tansey also wrote in the same review that the authors provide "a comprehensive, illuminating, and often scathing account of the UN's efforts to date." A contributor to the Economist wrote that "despite its rather sensationalist title, they [the authors] have produced an excellent and timely book," adding later in the same review: "What is refreshing are their frank judgments."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Choice, July, 2007, F.S. Pearson, review of Peace at Any Price: How the World Failed Kosovo, p. 1983.

Economist, September 23, 2006, "Time for a Reckoning; Kosovo," review of Peace at Any Price, p. 95.

Foreign Affairs, May-June, 2007, Robert Levgold, review of Peace at Any Price, p. 153.

International Journal, summer, 2007, Oisin Tansey, review of Peace at Any Price, p. 717.

Journal of Peace Research, May, 2007, Thomas Jackson, review of Peace at Any Price, p. 369.

Naval War College Review, summer, 2007, John R. Schindler, review of Peace at Any Price.

Reference & Research Book News, February, 2007, review of Peace at Any Price.

ONLINE

CNN.com,http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/ (December 14, 2007), Fionnuala Sweeney, "Kosovo Spotlight; Afghan ‘Women of Courage’; Led Zeppelin Hype," interview with author.