NATO's Kosovo war - one year later

Tn his article, the author discusses how NATO became involved in a civil wa r in the Balkans. He follows the development of the international involveme nt in the region's conflicts from 1991 to 1999 and argues that while Europe an and global security organisations have been involved since the very firs t days, the level of engagement has been steadily growing in size and ambit ion. Still, the international community has so far not found the means by w hich to deal with the region's crises in a uniform manner. The four open co nflicts we have seen so far have been dealt with in piecemeal fashion, ofte n laying the foundations for the next conflict in the solution of the prese nt one. While in many ways a dramatic change of approach from peacekeeping to enforcement, the war over Kosovo has not altered the fundamental nature of ad hoc Balkan crisis management. The author concludes that rather than h eralding the eve of a new and more just world order, the process that led N ATO to war with Yugoslavia was an exceptional case of a well intended, but ill-conceived and largely unsuccessful attempt at terminating a rampant cri sis in the South of Europe through presenting a sign-or-we-bomb ultimatum t o the Yugoslav government. Neither the experiences made during the war, nor the development that has taken place in Kosovo afterwards, seems to suppor t the idea this will be NATO's new approach to similar crises in the future .