Whose Kosovo?

Those who are most vocally critical of the 1999 NATO bombing of then Yugoslavia in connection with the Kosovo crisis – both on the “left” and on the (libertarian) “right” – tend to assume that the intervention was an American initiative. On this view, the Kosovo war was just another episode in the grand narrative of American “Empire”. Even some – notably, “conservative” – supporters of the NATO intervention have managed to convince themselves as much. Things look rather different – and in connection with Kosovo always did look rather different – if one consults the German media. This from a report in last Thursday’s (7 April 2005) Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung [link in German] on a visit by German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer to Kosovo:

At the end of his two day visit, the Foreign Minister could consider his action validated, inasmuch as his first major foreign policy project – the destruction by military means of an aggressive nationalism in the Balkans and the subsequent steering of the region toward an integrating Europe – has in any case thus far not failed, but rather even shows signs of progress, however fragile they may be.