Conclusion
That Kosovo exploded with genocidal violence in 1999 and ultimately prompted outside intervention surprised few—it was a long-festering hotspot but one that fell low on the world politics priority lists, despite the brutal “wars of Yugoslav” succession that engulfed Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia. But for a relatively small scale conflict in a rather unknown corner of the world, Kosovo’s crisis of 1998–1999 brought with it a host of complex issues that challenge the international community to this day. As with any issue or case in the area of genocide studies, attention and understanding must first go to the dramatic human suffering inflicted upon one group by another. The macro-level political, legal, and ethical discussion and debates swirling about Kosovo should not and must not obscure the powerful and provocative human element at play. First and foremost, the Kosovo issue revolves around how best to save lives following an explosion of genocidal violence. Simultaneously, however, Kosovo in 1999 exploded with ramifications for the future of state sovereignty, the United Nations, and understanding the causes of genocide, nation building, and humanitarianism in the twenty-first century.
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References
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Annotated Bibliography
Abrams, Jason (2001). The atrocities in Cambodia and Kosovo: Observations on the codification of genocide. New England Law Review, 35(2), 303–309. A short response piece to Schabas (2001). (See the annotation of Schabas' piece below.) Abrams draws attention to the distinction between intent and motive vis-à-vis genocide and describes a scenario under which genocide is in essence a tool for a larger motive of ethnic cleansing.
American Bar Association. Central and East European Law Initiative and American Association for the Advancement of Science. Science and Human Rights Program (2000). Political Killings in Kosova/Kosovo, March–June 1999. Washington, DC: American Bar Association. 51 pp. A systematic and carefully statistical analysis of the casualties resulting from the Serb attack on Kosovo's Albanian population. The report documents in detail not just the total killings but also their timing and geography using data shared between the American Bar Association and Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights Watch. Their findings support NATO claims at the time, and conclude that just over 10,000 Kosovar Albanians were killed during the period in question.
American Society of International Law (1999). Editorial comments: NATO's Kosovo intervention. American Journal of International Law, 73(4), 824–878. A group of prominent scholars including Louis Henkin, Ruth Wedgewood, Richard A. Falk, and Thomas Franck provides various insights on the ultimate “meaning” of Kosovo. The extensively footnoted editorials provide focused insight even if they ultimately raise more questions than they answer.
Clark, Wesley K. (2001). Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat. New York: Public Affairs. 479 pp. A combination personal memoir and analysis from the retired general who served as Supreme Allied Commander, Europe during Operation Allied Force. Clark synthesizes his own experience, reflections, and provides an analysis of the larger questions into a must-read book that tackles the necessity and challenge of multilateralism, human rights as a national interest, “combatant immunity,” and a transformed Army for the twenty-first century.
Daalder, Ivo H., and O'Hanlon, Michael E. (2001). Winning Ugly: NATO's War to Save Kosovo. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. 362 pp. From two Clinton administration foreign policy insiders comes a detailed account of the Kosovo crisis, from diplomacy to the use of force. It is organized into two main sections, “Losing the War” (exploring why it took the world's most powerful alliance almost three months to defeat third-tier Yugoslavia) and “Winning the War.” Daalder and O'Hanlon ultimately argue that NATO did the right thing in the wrong way militarily.
Danner, Mark (1999). Kosovo: The meaning of victory. New York Review of Books, 46 (12), 53–54. Danner draws on his earlier and excellent coverage of U.S. foreign policy and the Bosnia conflict to frame the issue of the United States' role, as it relates to Kosovo in this short opinion essay.
Fromkin, David (1999). Kosovo Crossing: American Ideals Meet Reality on the Balkan Battlefields. New York: Free Press. 210 pp. A slim volume that was published very quickly after the end of the Kosovo crisis, this book lacks the depth and detail of other works covering the crisis—and of Fromkin's usual forays into global history. This is at root a conceptual piece about Wilsonian American foreign policy in the late twentieth century with Kosovo as one prism.
Human Rights Watch (1999). Under Orders: War Crimes in Kosovo. New York: Human Rights Watch. 593 pp. Available through the Internet at: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/kosovo/. A very useful and succint chronology of events from March to June 1999, with a clear focus on linking the crimes on the ground in Kosovo up the chain of command to Belgrade.
Ignatieff, Michael (2000): Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond. New York: Metropolitan Books/Harry Holt, 246 pp. Another installment in Ignatieff's thoughtful exploration of nationalism and ethnic tension in the modern world, here he turns his attention to the tension between Western ideals and the West's willingness to sacrifice to make those ideals reality in other corners of the globe. The “virtual” component explores the high tech/low casualty (ultimately no Allied casualties) NATO approach. Includes thoughtful, critical commentary on the “staying power” of the West to bring actual stability to areas like Kosovo and keeps the narrative compelling with focus on central players like Richard Holbrooke in the diplomatic arena, Wesley Clark on the military side, Aleksa Djilas from the Serb perspective, and Louise Arbour in the international law camp.
Independent International Commission on Kosovo (2000). The Kosovo Report: Conflict, International Response, Lessons Learned. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 372 pp. A collection of essays with a broad focus on the motivations of NATO members in the Kosovo crisis, with an emphasis on the gray area between legality and legitimacy in Operation Allied Force and the gray area of “sovereignty” for Kosovo after the war.
Jones, Adam (2000). Kosovo: Orders of magnitude. Idea 5(1), [On-line]. Available through the Internet at: http://www.ideajournal.com/jones-kosovo.html. Useful overview of the debate and discussion surrounding the number of victims in Kosovo—generally supportive of the claims made by the United States and NATO at the time
Judah, Tim (2002). Kosovo: War and Revenge. New Haven, CT: Yale University PRess. 349 pp. With a distinctly accessible journalistic tone and style, Judah melds research, interviews, and his own experience living in Belgrade into a compelling and insightful account of the Serb-Kosovo issue and how it exploded violently in 1998–1999. His account of early history Kosovo isn't as deep as Noel Malcolm's Kosovo: A Short History, but it's also much shorter and compact.
Kaufman, Joyce P. (2002). NATO and the Former Yugoslavia: Crisis, Conflict, and the Atlantic Allicance. Lanham, MD: Rowman & littlefield. 249 pp. A detailed analysis and case study of the alliance's involvement in Balkan affairs in the post-Cold War world. Helpful insight on the inner workings and wrangling of NATO as it struggled with policy and solidarity.
Malcolm, Noel (1998). Kosovo: A Short History. New York: New York University Press. 492 pp. Obviously mistitled, Malcolm's book is more magisterial than “short”. A very readable account with concise analytical flourishes, it is a whirlwind tour through Kosovo's past, beginning in the seventh century. Published in 1998, the book ends with questions about Kosovo's future which astutely, if broadly, presage the violence of 1999.
Martin, Pierre, and Brawley, Mark R. (Eds.) (2001) Alliance Politics, Kosovo, and NATO's War: Allied Force or Forced Allies? New York: Palgrave. 246 pp. An essay collection which, as the title suggests, concentrates more on the NATO issues than on the overall crisis. Several contributors bring international relations theory into the mix, including the realist/constructivist paradigms and the related clash of such.
McGwire, Michael (2000). Why did we bomb Belgrade? International Affairs, 76(1), 1–23. An interpretive look at the motives behind Operation Allied Force that emphasizes NATO's own interest as opposed to lofty humanitarian values.
Mertus, Julie A. (1999). Kosovo: How Myths and Truths Started a War. Berkeley: University of California Press. 378 pp. Delivers stinging indictments of Slobodan Milosevic for his instrumental and calculated use of myth and nationalism to incite violence and garner power and of the Western powers for missing the opportunity to build on the initially peaceful efforts at resolving Kosovo's status put forth by Ibrahim Rugova and others.
Mills, Nicolaus, and Brunner, Kira (Eds.) (2002). The New Killings Fields: Massacre and the Politics of Intervention. New York: Basic Books, 276 pp. An all-star cast of writers assembles to tackle morality, human rights, and intervention the world over. Contributors include Michael Walzer, William Shawcross, David Rieff, Samantha Power, and Michael Ignatieff. Rieff, Peter Maas, and Kira Brunner tackle the issues surrounding intervention in the Balkans. For each area covered, the writers also give important consideration to the post-violence situation.
Moorman, William (2002). Humanitarian intervention and international law in the case of Kosovo. New England Journal of International Law, 36(4), 775–784. This piece by Moorman, who at the time of writing was the judge advocate general of the United States Air Force, appeals to what he calls “fact based analysis” which reveals the unique environment that compelled an “exceptional” (as is not the rule), albeit problematic, intervention by NATO.
Power, Samantha (2002). “A Problem from Hell:” America and the Age of Genocide. New York: Basic Books. 610 pp. A comprehensive account of America's response to prominent instances of genocide beginning with the Armenian crisis in which Kosovo is only the most recent episode. Power squarely places Kosovo under the heading of “genocide” and while overall critical in tone, she sees reason for tempered optimism in NATO's action.
Schabas, William A. (2001). Problems of international codification—Were the atrocities in Cambodia and Kosovo genocide? New England Law Review, 35(2), 287–302. Schabas argues forcefully that the crimes in Kosovo should not be minimized but were not genocide. He also marks a careful, if ultimately uncovincing, distinction between “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and notes the relationship to “cultural genocide.” Followed by a companion/response piece by Jason Abrams (see above).
Schabas, William A. (2003). National courts finally begin to prosecute genocide, the “crime of crimes”. Journal of International Criminal Justice, 1(1), 39–63. The focus is on national-level courts getting involved in application of the Genocide Convention, but it includes a succinct and interesting section that encapsulates his 2001 perspective on whether what happened in Kosovo qualifies as genocide.
Schnabel, Albrecht and Thakur, Ramesh (Eds.) (2000). Kosovo and the Challenge of Humanitarian Intervention: Selective Indignation, Collective Intervention, and International Citizenship. Tokyo: United Nations University Press. 536 pp. This thick volume is a sampler that in most instances will leave you wanting more: thirty different essays and contributors including G. John Ikenberry, James Mayall, Felice Gaer, Lawrence Freedman, and George C. Herring. Overall, the book identifies Kosovo as symbolic of the struggle for a new architecture and code(s) of conduct for the post-Cold War era, but so far Kosovo has not become such an “order-building moment”.
Shawcross, William (2000). Deliver Us from Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict. New York: Simon & Schuster. 447 pp. Shawcross steps away from his previous focus on Cambodian issues (although commentary on Cambodia is included in this work) and provides a wide perspective on the challenges of humanitarian intervention and “nation building”. The book includes his insights into Bosnia, and the situations in Kosovo and East Timor serve as the two most recent case studies.
Simma, Bruno (1999). NATO, the UN, and the use of force: Legal aspects. European Journal of International Law, 10(1), 1–22. Expresses grave concern for international law if the Allied Force exception (illegal action for just cause) becomes the rule, although doesn't make a compelling case that this is likely to happen.
Staub, Ervin (1989). The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 336 pp. While not a book about Kosovo specifically (it obviously predates all of the Balkan crises of the 1990s), the overlay of his approach to understanding genocide (psychological, cultural, economic factors) onto the Kosovo crisis in enlightening and provocative.
United Nations (1999). Secretary-General Presents His Annual Report to the General Assembly. New York: UN Department of Public Information. Press Release UN Doc. SG/SM/7136 GA/9596.6 pp. Available through the Internet at: http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/1999/19990920.sgsm7136.html. A wide-ranging, highly conceptual speech delivered by Kofi Annan to the final meeting of the UN General Assembly in the twentieth century. Very strong emphasis on the challenges of resolving the UN's persistent schizophrenia—a foundation of state sovereignty coupled with constant evolution in the direction of individual/human rights and intervention to stop massive violations of those rights.
Vickers, Miranda (1998). Between Serb and Albanian: A History of Kosovo. New York: Columbia University Press. 328 pp. From one of Britain's leading authorities on the Kosovo issue, this book makes its mark with emphasis on the parallel history of difficulty between Kosovo Albanians and the Albanians in Albania proper and tracing the evolution of the Kosovar Albanian independence movement.
Woodward, Susan L (1995). Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War: Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. 536 pp. Detailed description and analysis of the broader Balkan breakdown in the early to mid 1990s. Provides relevant background/context for later events in Kosovo.
Zimmermann, Warren (1996). Origins of a Catastrophe: Yugoslavia and its Destroyers—America's Last Ambassador Tells What Happened and Why. New York: Times Books. 269 pp. An insider perspective on Milosevic and his hypernationalist leadership style related from the perspective of the last U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia.
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Ronayne, P. Genocide in Kosovo. Hum Rights Rev 5, 57–71 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-004-1028-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-004-1028-y