Kosovo and the End of Hubris: 2009–2019

This chapter charts the degeneration in Kosovo’s fortunes after the 2008 declaration of independence up to the 2019 general election. As noted in Chapter 5 , the intervention and subsequent statebuilding in Kosovo were a product of the “unipolar” moment. As such, Kosovo’s fate was intrinsically tied to Western power, especially that of the US. The unipolar era led not to the benign transformation of the world, but rather to the emergence of a multipolar era characterised by the rise of alternative great powers, a crisis of confidence within West, and the wholesale resetting of Western foreign policy towards a significantly more insular and transactional outlook. In this chapter I argue that this had profound implications for Kosovo; between 2008 and 2019, the West’s support for Kosovo diminished significantly as it sought to incorporate Serbia into its sphere of influence. The Internationals sought stability in Kosovo rather than progress domestically or internationally, and persistently interfered in Kosovo’s domestic political system—in both formal and informal ways—to realise this goal. Kosovo’s compliant political elite acceded to the Internationals’ new stance in return for them turning a blind eye to their corruption; thus, to secure the Kosovo government’s compliance, the Internationals tolerated—if not supported—the process of state capture, which contributed to mass unemployment, poor education, and inadequate healthcare and mass migration. As a consequence of all the above, by the time of the 2019 general election in Kosovo, the public mood had soured dramatically.