| Summary/Abstract |
Overall, there is mixed evidence of the enduring impact of the Kosovo crisis and Operation Allied Force (OAF) twenty years after the events. OAF and the follow-on deployment of the Kosovo Force (KFOR) in 1999 did consolidate and in effect make permanent a NATO and wider Western presence and set of interests in the Balkan region. NATO’s use of force against Serbia also caused the most serious rupture to date in its already-fragile institutional and diplomatic relationship with Russia, which revealed its fundamental weaknesses and limitations and from which it would never fully recover. On the other hand, and despite the widely perceived existential importance of its prevailing over Kosovo for NATO’s institutional credibility and effectiveness at the time, the longer-term impact of OAF and the KFOR deployment has proved transient and limited in terms of the institution’s ongoing post–Cold War evolution. This is evident not least in the failure to sustain and develop any distinct humanitarian dimension to NATO over the past two decades.
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