ABSTRACT
This chapter will study self-determination by focusing on the recent Kosovar secession from Serbia and concludes that Kosovo garnered the great powers’ support (in this case, the United States, and some European countries, such as the United Kingdom) necessary for its separation from Serbia throughout the 1990s, when Serbia was ruled by a rogue Milosevic regime and was widely portrayed as the culprit for the Yugoslav civil war. It was the great powers’ opposition to Serbia which contributed to their support of Kosovo. In fact, the 1999 NATO intervention on the territory of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was carried out by the great powers, which had politically opposed the Milosevic regime, and which had begun to support the Kosovar independence. Without such great powers’ support, Kosovo would have never been able to secede or to survive as an independent state. This chapter briefly reviews the history of Kosovo, before focusing on the more recent declaration of independence by the Kosovar parliament. Then, we analyze Kosovo’s legal right to self-determination. Finally, this chapter will focus on the great powers’ influence in enabling the Kosovar Albanians’ achievement of independence in 2008, as this case exemplifies the importance of the great powers’ rule in issues of self-determination.
