UNIVERSAL ENEMY: SCHOLAR DARRYL LI ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TRANSNATIONAL JIHADISTS AND U.S. EMPIRE
In this bonus episode, Darryl Li discusses his recent book, “The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity.”
N THIS SPECIAL bonus episode of Intercepted, we take an in-depth look at one of the most consequential eras of modern history: the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The Berlin Wall fell in 1989 as the Soviet Union crumbled. The Russian occupation of Afghanistan came to an end, thanks in no small part to the covert and overt involvement of the United States. Bill Clinton brought an end to 12 years of Republican rule, defeating former CIA director George H.W. Bush for the office of president. And with Clinton’s two terms in office came a new spin on U.S. militarism across the world: the notion of liberal so-called humanitarian intervention.
The propaganda pitch was that the United States would use its military force as a sort of global police officer whose violent actions were wrapped in the justification that U.S. missiles, bombs, and troop deployments were serving a greater good. Nowhere was this more boldly asserted than in the wars in Yugoslavia, which stretched from the early 1990s all the way through 2008, when the U.S. officially recognized the independence of the Serbian province of Kosovo. The years that ushered in the declaration of the end of the Cold War would have a significant impact on global relations and war-making to this day.
University of Chicago scholar Darryl Li has written a meticulously documented book that seeks to understand the trends that emerged from this era, with a focus on putting into context the movement of foreign fighters from country to country. The book is called “The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity.” Li highlights the parallels between transnational jihadists, U.N. peacekeeping missions, and socialist nonalignment and examines the relationship between jihad and U.S. empire.
First aired on Intercepted.
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