The Kosovo Crisis
Last updated: September 21, 2008
Published by Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security, University of Illinois
Swords and Ploughshares series
Vol. XI / No. 1-2 / 1999
Summary
Can violence be the solution to violence? In the case of Kosovo, the authors writing here have one thing in common. They doubt that NATO’s military actions will have a productive response to the Serbian ethnic cleansing campaign in Kosovo. However, the authors come at this question from very different perspectives.It may turn out that NATO’s bombing campaign provides the Serbian leadership with political cover for enlisting outside forces in the effort to suppress the KLA without formal territorial partition. While potentially fragile, such a relationship would allow Serbia to extract itself from the alternative of an ongoing intractable struggle without further decimation of the province and its own infrastructure, even if this means voluntarily giving up its military capability to wreak further destruction under the noses of NATO aircraft. In this case, violence may indeed have been the answer to violence, but at what cost?
Some of the authors hint at alternatives to violent response, but these require understanding, financial commitment, and moral courage. In the generations since World War II, no fiercely nationalist regime in Europe has durably been able to resist the gentler embrace of the institutions of its democratic and economically prosperous immediate neighbors. A generation of patience and persistence may thus nevertheless be the quickest way to overcome the legacy of centuries of oppression and hatred in the Balkans. Whatever the short-term outcome of the conflict over Kosovo, this long-term challenge will remain.
Contents
Introduction 
[PDF]
The Kosovo Crisis [PDF]
Are We Asking the Right Questions? [PDF]
The Real Problem [PDF]
NATO Alliance: Crisis in Transition [PDF]
Playing to Lose, Playing to Win [PDF]