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CONCLUSION
first ten months of the Kosovo civil war, the West continued to hope
that the two sides could somehow reach an agreement on their own.
Following the televised aftermaths of the Drenica and Gornje Obrinje
massacres, the West continued to push for the same end, while chang-
ing the tactical aspects of its policy. After the images and framing from
the Racak massacre, however, it became apparent that the strategic
policy itself was insufficiently defined and inadequate in scope.
Without a more comprehensive overhaul of policy, including its
strategic aspects, it was widely believed that more Racaks were
inevitable. As such, a revised policy had to incorporate what the two
parties could not achieve on their own—a political plan. This strategy
would be based on an interim settlement devised by the West that
included a Kosovo protectorate—a plan that would be implemented
and safeguarded by force, if necessary.
Insights on the CNN Effect
This book has focused primarily on a novel understanding of the
CNN effect, termed the “challenging effect,” and identified a novel
means of qualifying cases of this effect through five criteria. The case
study on the prelude to the Kosovo intervention also revealed insights
on the pattern by which this effect operates. Two insights, in particu-
lar, are worth highlighting at this stage. The first relates to the pattern
by which events meeting the media criteria for the CNN effect impact
government actions, referred to as the “double-hump” in this study.
This pattern involved two successive spikes of government activity, as
demonstrated in graphical format in chapter 6. The first hump dealt
largely with government reactions in the form of condemnations of the
incident, while the second related to attempts at imposing a solution.
After the Drenica massacre, for example, the initial hump over denun-
ciations was followed by a solution calling for FRY troop withdrawals
and negotiations between the two sides. This was backed up by a
series of threatened sanctions that emerged at a March 9 Contact
Group meeting. After the Gornje Obrinje massacre, the attempted
solution was the cease-fire and monitoring regime incorporated in the
Holbrooke-Milosevic Agreement of October 13, 1999. This was
backed up by the threat of NATO air strikes. After the Racak mas-
sacre, the solution was an interim settlement based on a Kosovo pro-
tectorate under NATO guard. This was again backed up by the threat
of NATO force, which was realized once the FRY rejected the
imposed solution at Rambouillet and Paris. Each attempted solution
became tougher than the previous one, requiring greater concessions