1st Edition
Kosovo and the Collateral Effects of Humanitarian Intervention
Humanitarian intervention is rising ever higher in international relations discourse, with many publications exploring the nature, legality and success of these interventions. However, less attention is given to what happens after an intervention. This book looks in particular at the implications for territorial and border relations, exploring the case of Kosovo, which in many ways can be seen as a turning point in post-cold war international humanitarian intervention. The 1999 intervention has had significant consequences for Kosovo in terms of political transformations, territorial alterations and enclavisation, none of which was officially intended or foreseen when NATO intervened.
Two decades after NATO’s intervention and a decade after unilaterally declaring independence, Kosovo continues to be confronted with daunting existential challenges that inevitably affect the stability of the region, border relations, and the credibility of the organisations operating within Kosovo, namely the UN, the EU and NATO. The book claims that not only is the political and territorial conflict far from being settled, but that the implications have gone beyond Kosovo, creating shock waves which have galvanised conflicts elsewhere. In effect, Kosovo has been used as a pretext, as a legitimation and as an inspiration for those who aspire to challenge the border status quo.
The book is primarily aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate students of International Relations and Political Science and as well as Border Studies scholars, but will also appeal to researchers focusing on state-building, peace-building, humanitarian studies, nationalism/secessionism and Balkan studies.
Introduction
1. From secessionist challenge to armed insurgency: examining the spiral of violence in Kosovo prior to 1999
2. Coercive diplomacy: Humanitarian intervention and its controversies in Kosovo
3. Quasi-independence: The political and territorial impact of Humanitarian Intervention
4. Curtailed sovereignty: The complexities of consolidating the territorial transformation
5. The problem of the North and the potential for further border transformations in Kosovo
6. Kosovo beyond Kosovo: the collateral effects on other territorial conflicts
Conclusion
Biography
Jaume Castan Pinos works as an Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science and Public Management, University of Southern Denmark. He holds a Ph.D. in International Politics (Queen's University Belfast, 2011). He is the Director of the European Studies Bachelor programme at the University of Southern Denmark. His academic interests are framed by ethno-territorial conflicts, sovereignty and political violence. He has conducted extensive research in Catalonia, North Africa and former Yugoslavia.
"Geopolitics isn’t just the manoeuvres of great powers and Castan Pinos highlights the geopolitics of peripheral conflicts by focusing on NATO’s ‘humanitarian’ intervention in Kosovo. An artful blend of regional expertise and political theory, Castan Pinos’s latest book is a must-read for those interested in how geopolitics actually works." — Steven M. Radil, Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, University of Idaho, USA
"Castan Pinos’s study of the "collateral consequences" of NATO’s intervention in Yugoslavia and the subsequent Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence offers a timely and important examination into the ad hoc approaches to conflict resolution to one of the last open-ended conflicts in the Balkans. Challenging assumptions that Kosovo’s statehood is sui generis, this work links moral imperatives for humanitarian intervention with strategic policies of Realpolitik." — Michael Rossi, Lecturer, Department of Politics, Rutgers University, USA
