Edinburgh Napier University

  This paper takes a closer look at the Bosnia and Kosovo peace talks and attempts to analyze why the former was a success and the letter a failure in terms of ending war. This is done through the prism of the three main theoretical approaches in IR - realism, liberalism, and constructivism - as well as the negotiation theory. The paper argues that in essence the Yugoslav crisis was very realist - an ethnic security dilemma caused by an emerging internal anarchy in Yugoslavia. The resulting conflicts presented liberal Western states with a difficult riddle of finding the right balance between support for self-determination and sovereignty. The paper shows that in trying to solve this riddle they chose the middle way of alternating between realist and liberal policies, leaving behind imperfect solutions.