ABSTRACT
Kosovo is of profound importance to contemporary international relations. Since 1999, this inauspicious corner of Europe has been at the centre of some of the most controversial episodes in the post-Cold War era. As Marc Weller notes, many observers ‘have begun to see in the international response to the Kosovo crisis a new paradigm of international relations, a blue print for a new world order, in either a positive or a negative sense’ (2009: 259). International engagement with Kosovo since 1999 has gone through three distinct phases: intervention, statebuilding and, most recently, independence. During each phase international policy towards Kosovo has challenged prevailing norms, and ‘Kosovo’ has been cited as an exemplar for a new broader trend in international relations. The authors in this book explore the impact, and the often troubling consequences and implications, of the international response to the crisis in Kosovo.
