The Kosovo Intervention in Liberal, National, and Imperial Globalization(s)

The 1999 military intervention by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the Federal Republic of Yugoslava, commonly refered to as Kosovo intervention has largely been framed as a humanitarian intervention, marking the rise of liberal internationalism after the end of the Cold War. A closer examination of the literature, however, reveals the coexistence of competing ways of imagining the emerging global order. This article examines scholarly knowledge and meaning production surrounding the Kosovo intervention as a site in which competing meanings of globalization were articulated and contested. Through a discourse analysis of publications published during and immediately after the intervention, it traces how different intellectual traditions constructed the intervention and the world order it was thought to inaugurate. Drawing on the conceptual framework of multiple globalizations, the article identifies three distinct discourses: one that frames the intervention through human rights and humanitarianism as part of a liberal globalization project; another that denounces it as a violation of the United Nations–centered international order grounded in sovereignty and non-intervention; and a third that interprets it as an act of imperial aggression. To demonstrate that these competing discourses articulate existing globalization projects, namely liberal, national, and imperial, the article situates the Kosovo intervention alongside the Russian intervention in Chechnya and the US-led intervention in Iraq. This contextualization highlights the coexistence of rival global imaginaries and power structures. Hence, rather than the triumph of humanitarian interventionism, the Kosovo intervention exposed the coexistence of competing globalization projects and the enduring contest over the principles upon which global order should be organized.