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The Kosovo Quandary: on the International management of statehood

16/03/2007 By Susan Woodward

Far from completing the 16-year saga of the Yugoslav dissolution, a final decision on Kosovo’s status – internationally sovereign or highly autonomous within a new Serbia – appears no less thorny and contentious than the unsatisfactory compromise of UN Security Council Resolution 1244 of 10 June 1999.

Why is Kosovo’s status so contentious?
This comment will argue that the focus on nationalists in either Serbia or Kosovo as the problem does make the issue unsolvable, but that this is a consequence only of the way that outsiders (primarily the EU) have chosen to manage the problem from its beginning in 1991 -  alternatives were possible.

Second, nothing has changed in that initial approach to the problem of Kosovo, and the current proposal builds into the settlement a set of compromises that only make the current uncertainty worse, not resolved.

Third, while the past weighs heavily on the present, not all is lost. International management of the settlement’s implementation could still build a constituency to support it, in Kosovo and the affected region, and thus promote stability, not instability, if the proposed International Civilian Representative, International Steering Group, and European Security and Defense Policy mission choose such a strategy.

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Keywords

EU Kosovo Peace process Serbia UN Western Balkans

Related publications

• Can Democratic Elections Solve a Civil War? The case of Serbia and Kosovo
• Kosovo: From International Province to State?

Bio author: Susan Woodward

Professor of Political Science, The Graduate Center, City University of New York. A specialist on the Balkans, her current research focuses on transitions from war to peace, state failure, and post-war state-building.