Securitising the Present through the Prism of the Past: State-Building and the Legacy of Interventions in Kosovo and Serbia

Abstract

In this article, the author argues that political actors in Kosovo and Serbia, together with international actors from the UN, NATO, and the EU, have developed strategies of political communication in which the threat or promise of external intervention in Southeast European processes of state-building and state consolidation have been deeply inscribed. Based on a critical security studies theoretical framework, especially pragmatist securitisation, the author illustrates such “securitised state-building” with speech acts on interethnic violence, the Kosovo army, and NATO intervention commemorations. While securitised language does not necessarily lead to violence, actors with communicative strategies of segregation, confrontation, and even violence have proven more likely to be favoured by the governing mode of “securitised state-building”. Such a mode thereby may shape regional processes of de- and re-territorialisation in the future, too.