Conflicts involve powerful experiences. The residue of these experiences is captured by the concept and language of emotion. Indiscriminate killing creates fear; targeted violence produces anger and ...a desire for vengeance; political status reversals spawn resentment; cultural prejudices sustain ethnic contempt. These emotions can become resources for political entrepreneurs. A broad range of Western interventions are based on a view of human nature as narrowly rational. Correspondingly, intervention policy generally aims to alter material incentives ('sticks and carrots') to influence behavior. In response, poorer and weaker actors who wish to block or change this Western implemented 'game' use emotions as resources. This book examines the strategic use of emotion in the conflicts and interventions occurring in the Western Balkans over a twenty-year period. The book concentrates on the conflicts among Albanian and Slavic populations (Kosovo, Montenegro, Macedonia, South Serbia), along with some comparisons to Bosnia.
This project advances the existing theoretical work on the CNN effect, a claim that innovations in the speed and quality of technology create conditions in which the media acts as an independent ...factor with significant influence. It provides a novel interpretation of the factors that drove Western policy towards military intervention in this area.
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 contributors challenge the epistemological definition of the Kosovo conflict, arguing that we should not only be concerned with the 'Kosovo out there', but also with the debate about what counts as security and how our definition of security is shaped by various power and knowledge interests in Kosovo. They have adopted an innovative critical approach, both re-essentialising and deconstructing orthodox assumptions about the nature of European and global security. This book is perfect for final year undergraduates, postgraduates and academics in the field of security studies and international politics.
In this revealing work, Dag Henriksen discloses the origins and content of NATO's strategic and conceptual thinking on how the use of force was to succeed politically in altering the behavior of the ...Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY). The air campaign, known as Operation Allied Force, was the first war against any sovereign nation in the history of NATO and the first major combat operation conducted for humanitarian purposes against a state committing atrocities within its own borders. This book examines the key political, diplomatic, and military processes that shaped NATO and U.S. management of the Kosovo crisis and shows how air power became the main instrument in their strategy to coerce the FRY to accede to NATO's demands. The book further shows that the military leaders set to execute the campaign had no clear strategic guidance on what the operation was to achieve and that the level of uncertainty was so high that the officers selecting the bombing targets watched NATO's military spokesman on CNN for guidance in choosing their targets. Henriksen argues that structures preceding the Kosovo crisis shaped the management to a much greater degree than events taking place in Kosovo and that the air power community's largely institutionalized focus on high-intensity conflicts, like the 1991 Gulf War, hampered them from developing strategies to fit the political complexities of crises. Because fighting and wars in the lower end of the intensity spectrum are likely to surface again, study of the Kosovo crisis offers lessons for future international conflicts in which the combination of force and diplomacy will play a very significant role.
Humanitarian intervention is a many layered and complex concept. This study analyzes the various ethical positions, particularly consequentialism, welfare-utilitarianism and just war theory to ...unravel this intricate topic.
War does not stop when the armed conflict ends. This compelling eyewitness account of a key political crisis in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2007 demonstrates how interventions from foreign powers to ...end armed conflict can create new forms of conflict that are not only as determined and resilient, but can lead groups to challenge the power of fragile states through political and legal means. Countering such challenges is an integral but often ignored part of peace processes. How do these nonviolent wars evolve? How can the power of fragile states be challenged through nonviolent means in the aftermath of armed conflict? And what is the role of diplomacy in countering such challenges? This book offers key insights for policy makers dealing with fragile states who seek answers to such questions.
The military intervention by NATO in Kosovo was portrayed in American media as a necessary step to prevent the Serbian armed forces from repeating the ethnic cleansing that had so deeply damaged the ...former Yugoslavia. Serbia trained its military on Kosovo because of an ongoing armed struggle by ethnic Albanians to wrest independence from Serbia. Warfare in the Balkans seemed to threaten the stability of Europe, as well as the peace and security of Kosovars, and yet armed resistance seemed to offer the only possibility of future stability. Leading the struggle against Serbia was the Kosovo Liberation Army, also known as the KLA._x000B__x000B_Kosovo Liberation Army: The Inside Story of an Insurgency provides a historical background for the KLA and describes its activities up to and including the NATO intervention. Henry H. Perritt Jr. offers firsthand insight into the motives and organization of a popular insurgency, detailing the strategies of recruitment, training, and financing that made the KLA one of the most successful insurgencies of the post-Cold War era. This volume also tells the personal stories of young people who took up guns in response to repeated humiliation by "foreign occupiers," as they perceived the Serb police and intelligence personnel. Perritt illuminates the factors that led to the KLA's success, including its convergence with political developments in eastern Europe, its campaign for popular support both at home and abroad, and its participation in international negotiations and a peace settlement that helped pave the long road from war to peace.
In spite of the growing literature on discourse analysis, the relationship of discourse to violent/non-violent outcomes of conflict is an under-researched area. This book combines theories on ethnic ...conflict, identity construction and discourse analysis with a comprehensive and inclusive survey of the countries of the former Yugoslavia. It presents an understanding of the interrelationship between 'words' and 'deeds' grounded through an extensively close analysis of film, television and newspapers samples taken from the period. This combination of ground-breaking applications of theory with detailed empirical case studies will make Media Discourse and the Yugoslav Conflicts of key interest to scholars across a range of social sciences including sociology, discourse analysis, media, conflict and peace studies as well as those concerned with ethnopolitical conflict.
When is the use of force for humanitarian purposes legitimate? The book examines this question through one of the most controversial examples of humanitarian intervention in the post Cold War period: ...the 1999 NATO intervention in Kosovo. Justifying Violence applies a critical theoretical approach to an interrogation of the communicative practices which underpin claims to legitimacy for the use of force by actors in international politics. Drawing on the theory of communicative ethics, the book develops an innovative conceptual framework which contributes a critical communicative dimension to the question of legitimacy that extends beyond the moral and legal approaches so often applied to the intervention in Kosovo. The empirical application of communicative ethics offers a provocative and nuanced account which contests conventional interpretations of the legitimacy of NATO's intervention. Summary reprinted by permission of Manchester University Press
This book represents a detailed and comprehensive examination of the developments of NATO's engagement in Kosovo, and the related policies of western countries. In addition to offering an in-depth ...analysis of historical developments in the relationships between Albanians and Serbs, the book also provides a constructive discussion of the events of the Kosovo conflict, which constituted one of the main concerns in the international agenda towards the end of the twentieth century. The basic theme set forth in this book is the reasoning behind NATO's intervention in Kosovo during the spring of 1999, namely to end the conflict between Albanians and Serbs and to aid the Kosovo Albanians in achieving their freedom from the jurisdiction of the Serbian state. Based on extensive evidence, the author analyzes the contradicting stances conveyed at the Security Council regarding the conflict, NATO's military intervention and the issue of Kosovo's future. The book provides useful information for any scholars, students and readers interested in gaining a more detailed understanding of Kosovo's historical developments on an international level. It offers the reader detailed insights into, and descriptions of, the events that took place in the military conflict in Kosovo; it provides various facts and figures, evidences and counterarguments in response to what happened in this politically volatile region.