Politics
This chapter presents an anatomical comparison of the conflicts in Chechnya and Kosovo, emphasising the remarkable similarity between the two. It focuses on to the responses of Russia and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) to the respective Chechen and Kosovo problems. The chapter discusses rationales and motives can, in the absence of any convincing Realist interests, best explain NATO's and Russia's decision to go to war. It shows how Chechnya and Kosovo are linked, both by Realpolitik and, perhaps more directly, by each being the focal point of an on-going war of interpretation. The outcome of each of these wars of interpretation may influence the European security landscape more than the 'hot war' in Kosovo. Both the Chechen and the Kosovo conflict are essentially a by-product of the breakdown of the Soviet and Yugoslav ethno-federations.
When the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) undertook military action without an explicit mandate from the United Nations Security Council, it entered a kind of international no-man's land between upholding the sanctity of state sovereignty and that of human life. While NATO members asserted that the humanitarian and strategic imperatives of saving Kosovar Albanian lives and preventing destabilisation in South East Europe drove the action, states such as Russia and China saw the Kosovo conflict as an unacceptable violation of the former Yugoslavia's state sovereignty. NATO's military action best met the description of being an intervention, but this descriptor itself was full of variations, including the one that has been subject to the widest debate: humanitarian intervention. This book has argued that the Kosovo crisis played a smaller and more indirect role in helping initiate the development of the European Union's European Security and Defence Policy than many have assumed. It has also discussed the Atlantic Community, the Euro-Atlantic Area, and Russia's role and place in European security affairs.
One of the most frequently cited ‘lessons’ of the Kosovo crisis has been the alleged extent to which it spurred West European leaders to address a perceived need for Europe to carry out more for its own military security. Member states of the European Union (EU) decided to establish a ‘European Security and Defence Policy’ (ESDP) in the months following Operation Allied Force. This chapter considers the long- and short-term origins of the ESDP and assesses the extent to which the Kosovo crisis was the key driver leading to the decisions by EU members formally to create it in 1999. The most basic of what may be called the ‘permissive facilitators’ for the development of the ESDP can be found in the nature of the EU itself. The idea encapsulated in the concept of ‘functional integration’ exercised significant influence on political leaders in continental EU countries. This chapter also focuses on the ESDP during and after the Cold War, the Western European Union, and the role of the UK and France in the adoption of the ESDP.
Transatlantic relations have been a core issue in security in Europe—especially West Europe—since the end of World War II. This chapter examines the nature of the transatlantic relationship and its Cold War evolution. It then considers its development during the years since 1989. It argues that the crises in Bosnia and Kosovo have played a key role in helping to refine and reshape the nature and basis of the relationship during the period since the Cold War ended. The ‘transatlantic relationship’ was essentially a product of World War II. Prior to American involvement in that conflict—informally from 1940 and officially from December 1941—the United States had, with one exception, chosen to remain aloof from European security affairs. The onset of the Cold War had the effect of both extending and institutionalising the military-ideological relationship that had developed between the United States and the UK since 1941. This chapter also looks at the ‘Atlantic Community’, the Atlantic civic community, South East Europe, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and challenges to the Atlantic Community.
This book examines the impact of the Kosovo crisis, which reached its peak of intensity in 1998–1999, on the continuing evolution and development of key issues relating to post-Cold War European security overall. In measuring this impact, the discussions begin with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). The book considers structural issues as well as the impact of the conduct of Operation Allied Force—the NATO bombing campaign of March–June 1999—on both the internal workings of NATO and the expansion of its geographical areas of interest and remit within Europe. It also offers a detailed account of the difficult, occasionally tortuous, but ultimately essential diplomatic co-operation between Russia and NATO members which accompanied the ongoing air campaign in the spring and early summer of 1999. One of the favourite ‘lessons of Kosovo’ drawn by commentators and observers since 1999 has been to do with the extent to which Operation Allied Force painted up a military ‘capabilities cap’ between the European members of NATO and the United States.
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.