The International Missions in Kosovo: What is in a Name?

Abstract:

This article problematizes the concept of 'mission' in international interventions, who is entitled to missionize and how the missionized subject is conceptualized. By looking at the international missions in Kosovo (those of the UN and particularly the EU), we problematize how the EU mission in Kosovo is entrenched in a trajectory of 'missionizing' that makes it bear the stigma of a structure non-responsive and non-sensitive to the local. Employing Derrida's deconstruction, we explain that the criticism (academic, dogmatic, ideological and empirical) of international missions relates not so much to how they operate in their host countries, or to the policy choices they make. Rather, looking at the path dependency of missions in the Western historical and civilizational trajectory, we maintain that the problem derives from the idea and very concept of 'mission' as intervention in itself.