Second paragraph of third chapter (though I did not get that far):

The following section considers several explanations forwarded to explain the shift from pursing narrow national interests in foreign policy to focusing on human rights questions in areas where Western states have little economic or geo-strategic interest. It suggests that while international changes have provided the opportunity to present foreign policy in ethical terms, the main dynamic behind ethical foreign policy lies in the domestic sphere and the search for new forms of political legitimacy. Subsequent sections develop this analysis, considering the low costs involved in ethical foreign policy and the selective nature of its application, further suggesting that the lack of clear policy aims in human rights promotion reflects a desire to use foreign policy for domestic purposes rather than any concern with human rights issues per se.

I reviewed one of Chandler’s earlier books for a defunct website back in 1999, and also wrote up an essay collection that he edited more recently, so I knew in advance that I was unlikely to agree with this book (I have the second edition from 2005). He makes the argument that the human rights justification for international interventions is fundamentally wrong-headed, but I would reflect that criticism back at the writer.

I’m not even sure that it’s correct to say that the Afghanistan war (his main reference point other than Kosovo) was framed to the Western public as a human rights-driven intervention. My memory is that the core argument was about security and removing a government that was supporting Al-Qaeda. Twenty years on, especially after the last few weeks, it’s very difficult anyway to make the case that there is a dominant human-rights culture in international military interventions, so one feels that Chandler was attacking a straw man at a particular moment in history when it maybe looked more substantial than it has turned out to be. But it also seems to me that it is a Bad Thing if the concept of intervention to protect human rights has disintegrated.

I was also startled to read a series of statements about the 1999 Kosova conflict on pages 15-16 which are simply objectively wrong. Cherry-picking is a tactic that we are all sometimes tempted to use, but at least make sure that you are picking real cherries rather than fictional ones. I’m not going to waste time here by dissecting statements in a twenty-year-old book that nobody who reads this is going to go and read, but really, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said, you are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.

So I gave up after the second chapter. You can get From Kosovo to Kabul here, but I do not recommend it.

This was my top unread book about Kosova of the bundle that I acquired in 2022. Next on that pile is NATO’s Air War for Kosovo, by Benjamin S. Lambeth.