How Exception Became the Norm: Normalizing Intervention as an Exercise in Risk Management in Kosovo

Abstract

This paper explores how intervention has gradually become normalized as an exercise in risk management in Kosovo. It focuses on the post-1999 political process through which the operational conditions of international intervention have been established and reproduced over time. It argues that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) 1999 military intervention left two important legacies that have shaped the policy and practices of intervention throughout the past decade. One is discursive, rooted in the intervening powers' legitimization of the military campaign as an ‘exceptional’ breach of the non-intervention principle. The other is political that underpins the administrative state of affairs the NATO intervention created, which perpetuated the prolonged practices of the external regulation of governmental and institutional affairs in Kosovo.