Rebuilding Kosovo: cooperation or competition between the EU and NATO?

Dursun-Ozkanca, Oya (2009) Rebuilding Kosovo: cooperation or competition between the EU and NATO? In: UNSPECIFIED. (Submitted)

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Abstract

Civil wars and humanitarian contingencies are a common fact of life in many societies. In the post-cold war era, bringing an end to intrastate conflicts and building a long-lasting peace have become important policy agenda items of the international community. However, the knowledge about how international and regional organizations cooperate with one another in post-conflict reconstruction is very limited. Increasingly, the study of security must confront the question of how international organizations such as the United Nations (UN), the European Union (EU), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and the North Atlantic Treaty Association (NATO) can best learn to effectively deal with post-conflict situations. This paper contributes to the international security and organizations literature through an examination of international community’s post-conflict reconstruction activities in Kosovo. The need to come up with a comprehensive analysis of the factors that make the difference between successful peace-building and failure is not merely theoretical. Post-conflict reconstruction in Kosovo has wide-ranging implications on European and international security. After the failure of the negotiations to settle its future status, Kosovo has made headlines through its unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia on February 17, 2008. The response from the international community will be a litmus test for determining the success of international organizations in producing enduring peace in post-conflict zones. Consequently, this article conducts a case study of the division of labor between UN, NATO, OSCE and EU as well as the effectiveness of cooperation between them in rebuilding Kosovo and attracts attention to the importance of effective division of labor between international institutions in the field. It presents the results of a comparative analysis of the institutional responses of each organization to the situation in Kosovo conducted through an analysis of official documents of these missions. It finally addresses the following question: What can be done to improve the effectiveness of comprehensive and multi-dimensional peace-building activities by international and regional organizations? The findings of this research have profound implications on other post-conflict reconstruction cases, such as Bosnia-Herzegovina, Iraq, and Afghanistan, as well as on the future of NATO-ESDP relations.

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