Canada and the Kosovo Crisis
| Date | 01 June 2009 |
| Author | Michael W. Manulak |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200906400215 |
| Published date | 01 June 2009 |
| Subject Matter | Coming Attractions |
Michael Manulak is finishing an MA at in the Norman Paterson School of International
Affairs, Carleton University and, as of October 2009, beginn ing a doctoral degree in
international politics at the University of Oxford. He is indebted to Norman Hillmer for his
supervision, editing, and support of this research. He would also like to extend particular
thanks t o Kenneth Cald er, Stephe n Harris, a nd Valerie Percival for their extensive and
constructive commentary, as well as to numerous former officials who submitted to
interviews: clearly this study would not be possible without their enlightenment and gracious
support.
1 Michael Bliss and Janice Stein, “The lessons of Kosovo: Interview with Michael Bliss
and Janice Stein,”
Policy Options
, October 1999, 7-17.
Assessments of Canada’s involvement in the Kosovo War of 1998-99 have
generally depicted Canada’s role in the crisis within the period’s broader
discourse of diplomatic and military decline. Much of the Canadian academic
and media opinion at the time depicted the Department of Foreign Affairs
and International Trade under Lloyd Axworthy as overmatched players in the
major leagues of crisis diplomacy, as historian Michael Bliss epitomizes:
“Instead, as junior partners, we simply w ent along. Our politicians were,
publicly, ventriloquists’ dummies, and from the public record, it’s not at all
clear that Canada exercised anything like real independence.”1However, this
COMING ATTRACTIONS
Michael W. Manulak
Canada and the
Kosovo crisis
A “golden moment” in Canadian foreign policy?
| International Journal | Spring 09 | 565 |
| Michael W. Manulak |
| 566 | Spring 2009 | International Journal |
article will demonstrate that Canada did not simply offer troops in a
fainthearted or half-hearted gesture to NATO, but effectively employed its
resources to play an important part in the diplomacy that led to United
Nations security council resolution 1244, in the maintenance of allied unity,
and in operation
Allied Force
. Using public source documents and extensive
interviews, it will concentrate on the intensification of diplomatic attention
to the Kosov o issue, Ottawa’s decision to in tervene, th e conduct of the
campaign, consideration of the “ground option,” and the diplomatic process
that brought the crisis to a resolution.
THE CRISIS UNFOLDS
““No one should dare to beat you,” exclaimed Slobodan Milošević, chairman
of the central committee of the Serbian League of Communists, to a crowd
of Kosovar Serbs in April 1987. His rhetoric, inspired by perceived injustices
inflicted by the Albanian majority, injected a potent drug into the veins of
the Serbian public, contributing to a decade of ethnic violence in Yugoslavia.
In March 1989, Milošević coerced the Kosovo assembly into amending its
constitution, repealing the political, educational, and linguistic autonomy of
the Kosovar Albanians, who represented about 90 percent of the province’s
population. Although Kosovo was not a “republic” within the Yugoslav
Federation, the south Serbian province had been granted considerable
autonomy un der Marshall Tito’s regime. After years of passive resistance
and oppos ition to violence, many Albanians began to favour violent
responses, such as those employed by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
Through 1997 and 1998 the KLA conducted periodic campaigns against
Yugoslav targets in Kosovo. T he Yugoslav forces, i ll-trained for
counterinsurgency operations and shocked by the audacity of the KLA, often
retaliated disproportionately, targeting Albanian civilians. In February 1998,
Serbian police and the Yugoslavian army commenced a high-level campaign
to eliminate elements of the KLA. Despite occasional international attention,
Milošević was able to sideline any sustained interest in Kosovo by insisting
that its fate was an internal matter.
Canada had a strong historic commitment to European security and was
extremely active through the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia. Canadians were
lead participants in the United Nations protection force, committing 1300
troops to the dangerous and frustrating mission to freeze Balkan violence in
Bosnia-Herzegovi na and Croatia. Despit e this contribution, Canada was
excluded from the “contact group,” composed of Britain, France, Germany,
Russia, and the United States, which coordinated the approach to Bosnian
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