The politics of order building? Reviewing western policy in Kosovo and Southeast Europe

Abstract

The Kosovo conflict revived Southeast Europe's traditional reputation as a region of intractable ethnic conflicts, failing states and reform deficits. The post‐war challenge is to speed up the consolidation of security and stability in a region that has known little of either in the last decade. This article examines the policy failures of the West in the Kosovo crisis; the impact on and the reactions of the Southeast European states to the Western strategies and the economic and political aspects of the EU's postwar strategy in the region. Also, the necessary preconditions as well as the impediments to the development and successful implementation of a working regional approach to the problems in the Balkans are discussed.