Kosovo 1999: The False Dawn of Humanitarian Intervention

This article argues that the optimism about the future of humanitarian intervention prevalent post-Kosovo in 1999 stemmed from a fundamental misreading of the underlying dynamics that impelled that intervention. The intervention in Kosovo was welcomed because it was said to have occurred due to a confluence of two factors, the leverage exercised by global civil society and the power wielded by the West. I argue that, while global civil-society activists unsurprisingly welcomed the intervention because it cohered with their normative vision of humanitarian intervention, the actual influence of global civil society on the decision to intervene was minimal. Likewise, the then prevalent belief in the immutable primacy of the West and its inherent commitment to the protection and promotion of human rights has proved mistaken in the years since, as Western power has waned and Western support for human rights has been selective rather than principled. Having highlighted how these two core features of post-Kosovo optimism have fared since 1999, I illustrate these trends through an examination of the fate of the responsibility to protect (R2P), which emerged as a direct result of the controversy surrounding the Kosovo intervention