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This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book considers security in relation to the political sector in terms of processes of democratization in the region and demands of new groups for wider and more meaningful access to political decision making. It establishes a theoretical context for redefining security in the Middle East by considering a range of concepts, debates and theories that have traditionally been absent from the field. The book provides an analytical model for redefining national security as a theory and as a practice in the post-Cold War era. It explores fundamental issues related to Islamophobia and the West, the relationship between Islam and democracy, and circumstances for groups and parties to gain political power and effect social change through indigenous tools and symbols.
This chapter considers a different conceptualisation of reality and representation in relation to the Kosovo conflict. It looks at Ferdinand de Saussure's arguments in order to offer some thoughts on the role of naming in relation to the Kosovo conflict. Using Jacques Derrida's thought, the chapter argues that the existence of a reality, which constrains the author's actions, is itself a representation, which has political implications. The chapter explores how North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's (NATO's) Kosovo operation. It also explores the Federal Republic of Germany's (FRG's) participation were represented as demanded by reality and, building on Derrida's arguments, highlights the problematic nature of these statements. Grasping the conflict as an ethico-political matter requires, or so the chapter examines a rethinking of the limits which we hold to be those of reality. The chapter assesses how the representation of the situation in Kosovo.
Kosovo is the first war in history said to be fought in pursuit of principle, not interest. In the new normative paradigm of Idealpolitik, sovereignty is no longer an ontological given, no longer inviolate. There was no contradiction between Idealpolitik and Realpolitik in Kosovo, as they were both manifestations of the same historical force, the same discourse of power. One of the great paradoxes of the war in Kosovo was that it was not just one campaign but two. There was the ethnic cleansing campaign in Kosovo and the allied bombing campaign against targets in Kosovo and all over Serbia. The war in Kosovo can be seen as the playing out of the competition between the two most publicised essays on international affairs, Francis Fukuyama's End of History and Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations. The prize in the contest was Russia.
Since the end of the Cold War, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) has been significantly reoriented and retooled across the board. This process of change has been captured under two main labels. Internal adaptation is NATO-speak for looking at how the institution works, and whether it can be made to work better and more effectively. The process has embraced the possibility of creating procedures and structures whereby European member states might undertake military operations without the frontline participation of United States forces. This chapter considers the effectiveness of NATO's integrated military command and planning structures. It examines their performance during Operation Allied Force. The external adaptation of NATO is a term that refers, fairly obviously, to the evolution of relations between NATO and its members, and non-member states in Europe. The most important and controversial element of the external adaptation has been the NATO enlargement process. Other elements include ‘outreach’ programmes such as Partnership for Peace. This chapter looks at the impact of the Kosovo crisis on NATO's external adaptation, with particular reference to its implications for enlargement.
The Weberian principle of the state as possessing a legitimate monopoly on violence is fading. Sovereigns no longer hold this monopoly; it now belongs to the international community. This chapter investigates the effects of this fading of legitimacy. Expanding on a framework suggested by the Copenhagen School of international relations, the chapter argues that the Kosovo war is a crucial part of two on-going shifts. In Kosovo, the states going to war as the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) Alliance represented themselves as 'humanity', the implication being that Serbia was cast as an enemy not only of human rights but of humanity. The Kosovo war defines the epoch exactly because it focused on the simultaneously existing conflict lines upon which politics is constituted. Serbia's attempts to legitimise its stance as a warring state defending the idea of state sovereignty was represented as an anachronism.
In this chapter, the author argues that Kosovo was an episode in the long-term process of the domestication and marginalisation of the United Nations (UN) by the United States (US). Although the systematic domestication of the UN began in the Reagan era, following the defeat of radical Third World calls for reforms, the author starts by reconstructing the 1990s' conflict between the US and Boutros-Ghali's UN. Having completed an analysis of the reasons for Boutros-Ghali's expulsion, he then discusses the functioning of the US-domesticated UN, led by the new secretary-general Kofi Annan. Recent developments, including the Kosovo episode, seem to confirm both the reconstruction of the deep grammar of US foreign policy and his analysis of global relations of domination.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's) bombing campaign in Kosovo and the refusal of most Western leaders to regard it as war have prompted numerous questions about the nature of this episode in European history. The debate on 'Kosovo' indicates that there is considerable uncertainty about war as a concept. A serious critique on the concept of war has surfaced, and alternative articulations are frequently explored. A broad sphere of non-war has emerged. Within a new constellation, war remains first and foremost a memory from the past. There is the sphere of classic war, which remains based on the modern story of states, sovereignty and territoriality. In Kosovo, war has transcended its modern meaning without becoming an integral part of the new and incoming, and without altogether leaving behind the old ideas of war.
The conflict in Kosovo represents a significant watershed in post-Cold War international security. Interpreting its political and operational significance should reveal important clues for understanding international security in the new millennium. This text analyses the international response to the crisis in Kosovo and its broader implications, by examining its diplomatic, military and humanitarian features. Despite the widely held perception that the conflict in Kosovo has implications for international security, unravelling them can be challenging, as it remains an event replete with paradoxes. There are many such paradoxes. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) entered into the conflict ostensibly to head off a humanitarian catastrophe, only to accelerate the catastrophe by engaging in a bombing campaign; the political aims of all the major players contradicted the military means chosen by them in the conflict. The Russian role in the diplomatic efforts demonstrated that NATO did not want Russia to be involved but in the end needed its involvement. Russia opposed the bombing campaign but ultimately did not have enough power or influence to rise above a role as NATO's messenger; the doctrinal hurdles to achieving ‘immaculate coercion’ by use of air power alone seemed to tumble in the face of apparent success; it is ultimately unclear how or why NATO succeeded.
In the eyes of some observers, the Kosovo crisis posed the greatest threat to relations between Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) since the end of the Cold War. This chapter first charts the course of Russian policy towards, and involvement in dealing with, the Kosovo crisis. It then examines the longer term impact of the crisis on relations between Russia and NATO. Russia and the leading NATO members were extensively engaged in discussing what to do about the developing crisis in Kosovo in 1997 and 1998. Two main forums were utilised for the conduct of these conversations, which produced a greater degree of agreement than is sometimes supposed. They were the Contact Group and the United Nations Security Council. When Russia and the NATO members began to disagree, it was over the possible use of coercion in order to impose a settlement on President Slobodan Milosevic of the former Yugoslavia. The launch of Operation Allied Force on March 24, 1999 followed the final breakdown of negotiations.
In the story of post-Cold War conceptual confusion, the war in and over Kosovo stands out as a particularly interesting episode. This book provides new and stimulating perspectives on how Kosovo has shaped the new Europe. It breaks down traditional assumptions in the field of security studies by sidelining the theoretical worldview that underlies mainstream strategic thinking on recent events in Kosovo. The book offers a conceptual overview of the Kosovo debate, placing these events in the context of globalisation, European integration and the discourse of modernity and its aftermath. It then examines Kosovo's impact on the idea of war. One of the great paradoxes of the war in Kosovo was that it was not just one campaign but two: there was the ethnic cleansing campaign in Kosovo and the allied bombing campaign against targets in Kosovo and all over Serbia. Serbia's killing of Kosovo has set the parameters of the Balkanisation-integration nexus, offering 'Europe' (and the West in general) a unique opportunity to suggest itself as the strong centre that keeps the margins from running away. Next, it investigates 'Kosovo' as a product of the decay of modern institutions and discourses like sovereignty, statehood, the warring state or the United Nations system. 'Kosovo' has introduced new overtones into the European Weltanschauung and the ways in which 'Europe' asserts itself as an independent power discourse in a globalising world: increasingly diffident, looking for firm foundations in the conceptual void of the turn of the century.