I was in Kosovo during the March 2004 riots. I saw the SUVs burning, was confronted by the riot police, and took pictures of the tear gas and tanks at the top of the hill. I talked to young people who were involved. However, that was only the latest experience in what is now more than a decade-long involvement with Kosovo.

Shortly after I became Dean of Chicago-Kent College of Law in June 1997, I invited U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke to speak at the law school. Holbrooke had mediated an end to the war in Bosnia, the bloodiest and most protracted conflict over the breakup of Yugoslavia. In his address at Chicago-Kent, Holbrooke emphasized the need for credible threats of NATO military action to facilitate diplomacy, criticizing the flaccid approach taken by the UN in Bosnia. I had gotten to know Holbrooke during the previous year via Project Bosnia, an initiative launched at my former institution Villanova University School of Law by my former student Stuart P. Ingis. Through Project Bosnia, scores of law students worked to establish capacity in new legal and press institutions in Bosnia.

We became part – albeit a small part – of engagement by the international community in nation-building activities in the Balkans. The phrase international community signifies an ill-defined class of foreign governments and other official organs.