From Rambouillet to Paris

Abstract

The peace conference that began in the French chateaux at Rambouillet on 6 February has been described as the greatest ‘what if’ of international society’s engagement with the Kosovo conflict.¹ While this is something of an overstatement given the missed opportunities of the early 1990s that were discussed earlier, there is little doubt that in February 1999 the interim settlement proposed at Rambouillet represented the best last chance for peace. The amount of consensus in the West on whether to use force increased in the immediate aftermath of the Racak massacre, so that although the KVM remained in place, international involvement reluctantly shifted from unarmed intervention to coercive diplomacy. This transition occurred in the final two weeks of January with debate in the West about whether to act on NATO’s Activation Order. This involved discussion about whether to issue an ultimatum to the belligerents and the likelihood of achieving an international consensus on using force to impose an interim political settlement. While these debates proved inconclusive, the Russian government was persuaded of the need for an international summit aimed at securing acceptance of a peace plan based on arrangements being worked on by Christopher Hill even though that process was underpinned by an explicit threat of force by NATO.