Kosovo as a laboratory of the liberal order after the Cold War

In Kosovo, it was tested whether the West was willing to act in accordance with the values ​​it preached, even when these actions conflicted with the classical norms of international law and the principle of territorial sovereignty. The fact that the intervention occurred without a direct mandate from the Security Council makes this moment even more significant: the liberal order acted not through formal legality, but through moral legitimacy.

One of the most compelling and profound readings that emerges from Sylë Ukshin’s book, “The Role of German Foreign Policy Towards Kosovo 1990–2008,” although not always explicitly articulated in theoretical terms, is the idea that Kosovo represents the normative laboratory of the post-Cold War liberal European order. It was not simply a regional crisis, but a structural test of the very principles on which Europe claimed to be built after 1989: the protection of human rights, international responsibility, and the limitation of absolute state sovereignty.

The year 1999 marks a historical turning point. For the first time since 1945, in the heart of Europe, state sovereignty was limited in the face of protecting the human rights of a defenseless population. NATO's military intervention in Kosovo was not justified by territorial interests, natural resources or classical geopolitical calculations, but by a new normative argument: that there are circumstances when non-intervention is more harmful than intervention, and when neutrality constitutes moral complicity.

In this sense, Kosovo was not simply the passive beneficiary of an expanding liberal order; it was its most radical and dangerous test. In Kosovo, it was tested whether the West was willing to act in accordance with the values ​​it preached, even when these actions conflicted with the classical norms of international law and the principle of territorial sovereignty. The fact that the intervention occurred without a direct mandate from the Security Council makes this moment even more significant: the liberal order acted not through formal legality, but through moral legitimacy. In this sense, Ukshini highlights that the Kosovo case became a catalyst not only for the development of international law, but also for the transformation of German foreign policy.

In Ukshin's analysis, Germany emerges as one of the most important architects of this moment. Not as the most vocal or harsh leader, a role attributed to the US, but as the actor that gave the intervention normative and institutional European legitimacy. Germany placed Kosovo in a broader framework: as a test for Europe, not as a local Balkan conflict. This is precisely what made the intervention politically absorbable for European opinion and sustainable over time.

This interpretation moves Kosovo from the periphery of European history to its center. Kosovo becomes the place where the European liberal order was most clearly articulated, but also most fragile. And precisely for this reason, it remains to this day a point of reference – whether to defend or to relativize, in debates on humanitarian intervention and international responsibility.

Rambouillet, UNMIK and the architecture of state formation

In the wake of this normative moment, Ukshini pays particular attention to the German role at Rambouillet and in the construction of the post-war order in Kosovo. Against the common narrative that sees Germany as a secondary actor alongside the US and Great Britain, the book argues that Berlin was one of the institutional engineers of the process, skillfully utilizing the multilateral mechanisms at its disposal.

Rambouillet is not presented simply as a diplomatic failure or an imposed ultimatum, but as a fundamental step towards the internationalization of Kosovo's status. Through its role in the EU, in the Contact Group and in coordination with the US, Germany contributed to building a framework in which Kosovo was no longer seen as an internal Yugoslav issue, but as a problem of European security. Although the agreement was not signed by the Serbian side, Rambouillet definitively moved Kosovo from the sphere of Yugoslav sovereignty to that of international administration.

After the war, this process was institutionalized through UNMIK. Ukshin interprets international administration not as a temporary technical solution, but as a transitional phase of state formation. UNMIK, with all its contradictions and limitations, served as a mechanism for the gradual separation of Kosovo from Serbia: legally, administratively and symbolically. Germany, through its role in the UN and EU structures, was one of the main guarantors of this architecture. Moreover, Ukshin directly links the genesis of the creation of UNMIK with the German peace plan, known as the Fischer Plan (April 1999), which in practice turned into a kind of p (exit strategy) during the period of NATO air strikes. This plan also served as a mechanism for the return of the United Nations and Russia to the international peace process for Kosovo, proposing that the post-war administration of Kosovo be entrusted to a UN-led peacekeeping mission, mandated by the Security Council and supported by NATO peacekeeping forces (KFOR).

Likewise, Ukshin sees the post-war process not as a period of endless administration, but as a phase of consolidation of a new political reality, where Kosovo’s statehood was built through the interaction between international actors and local institutions. Germany was not simply a supporter of this process; it was one of its main architects.

Recognition of independence: culmination, not improvisation

The German recognition of Kosovo’s independence in February 2008 is treated by Sylë Ukshini not as an immediate political act or as a mechanical reaction to the unilateral declaration of independence, but as the logical culmination of a long diplomatic, normative and legal process that had begun much earlier. In this reading, the recognition was not a moment detached from history, but the point where fifteen years of strategic reflection, international engagement and moral responsibility met.

Ukshin carefully documents how the German political elite was deeply divided before 2008. The hesitation did not stem from a lack of sympathy for Kosovo, but from a full awareness of the consequences of recognition: the risk of divisions within the European Union, tensions with Russia, the implications for the international order, and the fear of precedent. It is here that the weight of his analysis emerges: Germany did not act as an impulsive actor, but as a state seeking to reconcile principles with stability.

The debates in the Bundestag, which are comprehensively analyzed in this book, the arguments of the Foreign Ministry and the intensive consultations with transatlantic and European partners show a foreign policy that moved slowly but with internal coherence. The recognition of Kosovo was understood by Berlin as the “last responsible option”, not as the ideal choice, but as the least destabilizing alternative in a situation where the status quo had become unsustainable. In this sense, the recognition was a rational act of an order that sought to end a long European crisis, not to prolong it indefinitely.

The thesis of the “sui generis case”, which Ukshin treats with analytical care, is presented not as a rhetorical maneuver to avoid legal debate, but as a political instrument to maintain the balance between three competing principles: the right to self-determination, regional stability and the integrity of the international order. For Germany, it was essential that Kosovo’s independence was not read as an exportable model, but as a specific response to an equally specific history of violence, international administration and state dissolution.

In this perspective, Germany emerges not simply as one of the states that recognized Kosovo, but as the legal and diplomatic guarantor of its statehood. Its commitment did not end with formal recognition: Berlin played a key role in defending Kosovo’s independence internationally, especially in preparing the political and legal ground for the process at the International Court of Justice. This role places Germany in a unique position: not as a symbolic sponsor, but as an architect of Kosovo’s international legitimacy.

In this way, Ukshini sees 2008 not as the end of history, but as the moment of the closure of the first phase of Kosovo's state formation, where international recognition was the result of a patiently built relationship between Kosovo and one of the major European powers.

A book about the past and the future

The study “The Role of German Foreign Policy Towards Kosovo 1990–2008” is more than a historical study of German foreign policy towards Kosovo. It is a book about the internal dynamics of international decision-making, about how values, fears, norms and interests intertwine in moments of crisis and about the fact that states do not act solely on the basis of power, but also on the basis of memory, identity and moral responsibility.

At a time when the liberal international order is in crisis, when the principles of humanitarian intervention are being relativized, and when Kosovo itself is often treated as a space under tension, Ukshin's book serves as a critical reminder: that Kosovo's statehood was the product of a historical moment in which the West decided to act in the name of values ​​and not simply interests, and when the orientation of Kosovo's political and military elite pursued the right strategic goals. And that Germany, more than any other European state, linked its normative fate to the fate of Kosovo.

This is why Germany remains Kosovo’s most enduring ally: not because of geopolitical coincidence, but because Kosovo was part of Germany’s own transformation, from a historically self-contained power to an actor accepting responsibility beyond its borders. The relationship between Kosovo and Germany is not just strategic; it is deeply historical and normative.

In the end, this book does not just invite us to remember history. It invites us to read it as an obligation: to understand that Kosovo's statehood was not a random development, but was built through difficult decisions, international compromise, and the ongoing defense of its meaning.
Defending Kosovo today means, first and foremost, defending its history as a European emancipatory project, in which Germany – as one of the most important European actors and of the transatlantic military alliance – played a decisive role. Not only Kosovo’s European future depended on this role, but also the alliance’s own credibility and normative future. In this sense, this study is indispensable for anyone who wants to understand not only German policy towards Kosovo, but also the transformation of the Kosovo issue from a peripheral regional problem into a central issue of international politics.

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