Humanitarian Coercion: Assessing the Strategic Role of Non-State Actors in the Kosovo War (original) (raw)
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This article explores how the 'liberal democratic peace package' is received in post-conflict spaces. As such, it is part of a critical peace research agenda that raises critical questions concerning the quality of peace in many post-conflict societies. A close reading of the peace-building process in post-conflict Kosovo provides the backdrop for the theoretical discussion that identifies friction in norm diffusion processes and the different agencies that are generated through encounters between global norms and local practices. We unpack the interplay between the 'global' and the 'local' in peacebuilding and, through the lens of friction, we reveal the diverse and unequal encounters that produce new power relations. By foregrounding agency, we theorise different agentive subjects in the post-conflict setting, and map local agency from various segments of society that may localise, co-opt or reject global norms pertaining to the liberal democratic peace.
World Affairs, 2023
When do Western powers intervene militarily on behalf of suffering strangers? Political elites’ perceptions of international conflicts may alter options for third-party management. Examining the precedent-setting case of the Kosovo Crisis via multi-language fieldwork, NATO archives, and content analysis, I discuss how Kosovo moved from the periphery of Western attention to becoming the litmus test of the Western security response. Contrary to literature that focuses on humanitarian norms or geopolitical interests as drivers of this NATO intervention, I argue that the Kosovo Crisis “earned” a humanitarian military intervention due to shifting favorable conflict perceptions, which encouraged Western institutional involvement. Such interactions between perceptions and intervention may apply to other global crises.
An Unfinished Justice: How International Community Traded Justice for the Stability in Kosovo
SSRN, 2016
Although, there is a considerable literature which analyzes the UN Mission in Kosovo from different perspectives, limited attention has been given to the mission " s contribution in confronting with war crimes and crimes against humanity in Kosovo committed by the Milosevic regime against Kosovo Albanians during the 1998-1999. This article intends to provide a comprehensive analysis of international justice mechanisms – UNMIK and the ICTY – in dealing with the past injustices in Kosovo by identifying their flaws and shortcomings, as well as exploring factors that impacted their performance and effectiveness. By using the existing literature, international organizations " reports, governmental documents, and media articles, the article argues that international community failed to deal with transitional justice issues in Kosovo – fighting impunity and delivering justice to victims as well as strengthening the rule of law and achieving reconciliation between the communities. In its endeavors to documenting the past crimes, international mechanisms relied mainly on retributive justice whilst ignoring restorative and reparation measures under justifications to preserving peace and stability in Kosovo. Regretfully, seventeen years after the war, justice in Kosovo remains an " unfinished business, " with a potential of negative implications to peace and reconciliation amongst the ethnic groups.
Legality Versus Legitimacy: Humanitarian Intervention, the Security Council, and the Rule of Law
Security Dialogue, 2002
This article sketches out the nature of legal responses to humanitarian intervention in general and the Kosovo intervention in particular, with particular attention given to arguments that were not made. Though some possible arguments appear to have been omitted through oversight, the nature of the discussion suggests a view of international law as one policy justification among others. These debates are then situated in a broader historical context by drawing parallels between the current international framework and earlier historical periods in which no body comparable to the Security Council existed. It is argued that developments since the end of the Cold War, and in the past few years in particular, suggest a reversion to pre-Charter paradigms, where the council exists merely to advise member-states and international order is contingent, once more, on the goodwill of the powerful. The reluctance of the Great Powers to submit themselves to law may yet have a more lasting effect on the international order than NATO's decision to wage war on behalf of the Kosovo Albanians. Security Dialogue © 2002 PRIO. SAGE Publications, Vol. 33(3): 293-307.
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The asserted doctrine of unilateral humanitarian intervention has given rise to considerable debate in international law. This article revisits the use of force in Kosovo to critically appraise this debate. The arguments for and against the doctrine are schematically compared and contrasted. Their differences are methodological, but underlying factors are relevant. These may include a conflict of values (notably, sovereignty versus human rights), but certainly involve deep disciplinary problems evidenced by confusing international legal terminology and, especially, the contradictions inherent in identifying and changing rules of general/customary international law. Three factors are considered as potentially helpful in bridging these fault lines: state practice (unavoidably), the stability of the international system and accountability. The latter two, at least, sit uncomfortably with unilateralism.
QUESTIONING THE USE OF FORCE IN HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION: COMPARING THE CASE OF KOSOVO AND LIBYA
Proceeding INDONESIAN HUMANITARIAN ACTION FORUM 2012 Copyright © 2012 by Institute of International Studies ISSN 2302-74700, 2012
There has been considerable attention within academic communities, by both theorists and practitioners in international relations, concerning the issue of so-called humanitarian intervention over the past decades. It has been argued that intervention related to problems of human security should come to the fore especially when the country has failed to maintain its governance of its people. Furthermore, the use of force in humanitarian intervention is generating a considerable amount of discussion in justifying this kind of action because the use of force in humanitarian intervention inevitably brings coercion and devastation to invaded states and often threatens the principle of state sovereignty. There have been many controversial examples of the notion of humanitarian intervention in places such as in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya as opposed to other places such as Rwanda, where in 1994 humanitarian intervention was absent when genocide took place. It follows that before any moral person resort to the use of force he should be questioned by a series of defining moral questions of Just War tradition as the first moral theory which distinguishes between two basic questions of jus ad bellum and jus in bello. In attempt to respond, the objective of this essay is to examine arguments for and against just war theory using Kosovo and Libya as a case study.