The war in Kosovo has been a defining moment in post-Cold War Europe. Kosovo has great importance beyond the Balkans as the most ambitious attempt of the international community to prevent internal conflicts and rebuild a society destroyed by war and ethnic cleansing. As the danger of ethnic conflict prevails in the region and elsewhere around the world, the experience of Kosovo offers important lessons. This is a comprehensive survey of developments in Kosovo leading up to, during and after the war in 1999, providing additionally the international and regional framework to the conflict. It examines the underlying causes of the war, the attempts by the international community to intervene, and the war itself in spring 1999. It critically examines the international administration in Kosovo since June 1999 and contextualizes it within the relations of Kosovo to its neighbours and as part of the larger European strategy in Southeastern Europe with the stability pact. It does not seek to promote one interpretation of the conflict and its aftermath, but brings together a range of intellectual arguments from some sixteen researchers from the Balkans, the rest of Europe and North America.

This is a comprehensive survey of developments in Kosovo leading up to, during and after the war in 1999, providing additionally the international and regional framework to the conflict.

Peace and Conflict Studies is an increasingly observed discipline, as researchers seek to investigate complex issues and to aid in the building of knowledge which can be used towards transforming conflict. Analyzing case studies from Europe and beyond, this edited volume seeks to provide theoretical tools and alternative approaches for examining the root causes of violence, and to extrapolate possibilities for transcending peace through conflict transformation. The reader is presented with specific case studies from the Middle East, South Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean rim and South America. What differentiates this work is that more than just analyzing the conflicts, contributors offer either methodological or theoretical alternatives for their transformation. While not discarding the value of traditional approaches to conflict resolution a new generation of peace workers is emerging and proposing that a certain level of conflict is a natural and sometimes necessary aspect of human relations. There is a growing recognition that it would be almost impossible to rid society of conflict altogether. A view that is gaining increasing currency is one which promotes the idea of conflict transformation. This approach entails transforming levels of conflict in order to alleviate discord, avoid violence and create circumstances for future peace-building.

Catherine Baker offers an up-to-date, balanced and concise introductory account of the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s and their aftermath. The volume incorporates the latest research, showing how the state of the field has evolved and guides students through the existing literature, topics and debates.

Countries rarely disappear off the map. In the 20th century, only a few countries shared this fate with Yugoslavia. The dissolution of Yugoslavia led to the largest war in Europe since 1945, massive human rights violations and over 100,000 victims. Debating the End of Yugoslavia is less an attempt to re-write the dissolution of Yugoslavia, or to provide a different narrative, than to take stock and reflect on the scholarship to date. New sources and data offer fresh avenues of research avoiding the passion of the moment that often characterized research published during the wars and provide contemporary perspectives on the dissolution. The book outlines the state of the debate rather than focusing on controversies alone and maps how different scholarly communities have reflected on the dissolution of the country, what arguments remain open in scholarly discourse and highlights new, innovative paths to study the period.

Can the Balkans ever become a peaceful peninsula like that of Scandinavia? With enlightened backing, can it ever make common cause with the rest of Europe rather than being an arena of periodic conflicts, political misrule, and economic misery? In the last years of the twentieth century, Western states watched with alarm as a wave of conflicts swept over much of the Balkans. Ethno-nationalist disputes, often stoked by unprincipled leaders, plunged Yugoslavia into bloody warfare. Romania, Bulgaria and Albania struggled to find stability as they reeled from the collapse of the communist social system and even Greece became embroiled in the Yugoslav tragedy. This new book examines the politics and international relations of the Balkans during a decade of mounting external involvement in its affairs. Tom Gallagher asks what evidence there is that key lessons have been learned and applied as trans-Atlantic engagement with Balkan problems enters its second decade. This book identifies new problems: organized crime, demographic crises of different kinds, and the collapse of a strong employment base. This is an excellent contribution to our understanding of the area.

This book improves our understanding of battlefield coalitions, providing novel theoretical and empirical insight into their nature and capabilities, as well as the military and political consequences of their combat operations. The volume provides the first dataset of battlefield coalitions, uses primary sources to understand how non-state actors of varying types form such groupings, reports interviews with policymakers illuminating North Atlantic Treaty Organization operations, and uses cases studies of various wars waged throughout the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries to understand how other such collectives have operated. Part I introduces battlefield coalitions as an object of study, demonstrating how they are distinct from other wartime collectives. Using a novel dataset of actors fighting in 492 battles during interstate wars waged between 1900 and 2003, it provides, for the first time, a comprehensive portrait of the universe of battlefield coalitions. Part II explores processes and dynamics involved in the formation of battlefield coalitions, addressing how potential coalition members prepare for future battles in peacetime (as well as the consequences of such preparations) and the dynamics of mission design. Part III focuses on how battlefield coalitions are organised and fight when combat ensues, notably their decision-making rules and practices, command structures, and learning capacities. Part IV addresses three curious tendencies observed in the operations of battlefield coalitions: partners under-providing effort in combat, rebels and terrorist networks persisting in cooperation even when their interests diverge, and members defecting from the collective. Part V concludes with a chapter outlining for future researchers what we know about battlefield coalitions and what remains to be understood. This book will be of much interest to students of military and strategic studies, defence studies and International Relations.

Intelligence has never been more important in world politics than it is now at the opening of the twenty-first century. The terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, along with the politics and diplomacy of the Second Gulf War, have brought intelligence issues to the forefront of both official and popular discourse on security and international affairs. The need for better understanding of both the nature of the intelligence process and its importance to national and international security has never been more apparent. The aim of this collection is to enhance our understanding of the subject by drawing on a range of perspectives, from academic experts to journalists to former members of the British and American intelligence communities.

This book asks how, and under what conditions, external-domestic interactions impact on peacebuilding outcomes during transitions to peace and democracy. Why do so many peacebuilding interventions in post-war states result in stalled transitions despite heavy international support? This book suggests a new interaction-based explanation for this puzzle and proposes an ‘analytical framework of peacebuilding interactions’. Based on eight cases of peacebuilding interactions, it demonstrates that the limited rationality of the actors involved in external-domestic interactions influenced the post-war transition results in Kosovo. Drawing on interviews and focus groups, the insights build on the process tracing of peacebuilding reforms in the area of Local Governance and Police Reform, with a specific focus at the local level. Through an in-depth analysis of peacebuilding negotiations, this book shows how peacebuilders’ use of ad hoc interaction tactics – intended as heuristics to simplify decision-making in overly complex post-war environments – have the unintended effect of offering domestic actors additional leeway to prioritise their domestic agenda, often at the expense of achieving full democratisation. The resulting consequences of these actions mean that, even in highly resourced interventions, such as those implemented in Kosovo, stalled transitions become one of the most likely outcome of the peacebuilding process. This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, war and conflict studies, European politics, security studies and IR in general.