A Just Humanitarian War: Kosovo 1999 Essay

No man is an island entire of itself…. any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

John Donne, Meditation XVII, 1624

Nothing is more essential, than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular Nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded.

George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

A just war has to be just. Yet, to defend a just war is not the same as saying that all wars are just. War – the use of calculated, organized violence to achieve political objectives – is an unpleasant and brutal endeavor. But in certain instances, the use of force is justified.

In some cases, the use of force is morally justified. The case of Kosovo is that example. The NATO use of force in Kosovo 1999 was morally and legally justified to halt genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Human beings have always fought – for and over power, religion, and cultural beliefs, race, ethnicity, resources, land, wealth. The struggle often occurs between brother-nations, which is, at times, the worst example of human violence.

Since one force is usually superior to the other, the threat of full extinction and massacre arise in military conflicts. In such situations, it is appropriate to seek outside forces for assistance, even if this assistance challenges international law of national sovereignty and the problematic outlook of violence to establish peace.

Such cases have acquired the name of “humanitarian war.” A humanitarian war is the use of force to deter or prevent the aggressor from harming innocent people, and to protect their inherent human rights. The purpose of humanitarian wars is to avert human suffering, genocide, rape and other crimes against humanity (Roberts 1).

Though it is not a completely peaceful undertaking, and presupposes proactive and even offensive military activities from the side of peacemakers, humanitarian war is appropriate in cases when it is necessary to alleviate human suffering and arrest abuse of human rights. (Heinze 4,8,15).

Various definitions of humanitarian war exist. In our paradigm of analysis, we narrow it down to four essential criteria: 1) just cause, 2) right intentions, 30 last resort, and 4) proportionality and distinction. First, the humanitarian war needs to be a just cause, such as alleviating great human suffering. Second, this war has to have the right intentions – saving people, stopping massacre, and establishing peace.

Third, the use of force should be the last resort after having exhausted all non-violent means. Lastly, the use of force has to be proportional to the level of aggression already launched. Moreover, the war has to be conducted in such a manner that military combatants and civilians are treated distinctively. The intervention in Kosovo meets all four criteria.

The allied forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) deployed their forces and attacked the forces of the then Yugoslavia to prevent them from further committing acts of crime against Albanians (Kosovars), as the population of Kosovo had been struggling for its secession from Yugoslavia (Rizer 1).

In Kosovo, the gravity of the offenders’ atrocities obliterated all reasonable boundaries, rendering the non-intervention principle invalid.¹

Genocide was the primary cause for intervention. President Bill Clinton repeatedly voiced the right intentions – to save Albanians from genocide by ethnic cleansing. The NATO intervention was the last resort for the Albanians.

Though there was unfortunate collateral damage, NATO war fighters took extraordinary measures in targeting to ensure distinction between military and non-military targets. In a way, such distinctions influenced NATO’s sense of proportionality. That is, NATO forces never targeted Milosevic himself.

This paper will argue that the war in Kosovo was legitimate and legal. The origins and developments of the war will be examined, before and after the NATO intervention, the consequences of the war will be outlined, and the opposing opinions will be considered to produce a comprehensive overview of the ethical, moral, and legal implications of the humanitarian intervention.

War in Kosovo

The outbreak of the war, violence and genocide revealed. The contention over Kosovo, a former province of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, spanned over six centuries. The Kosovars desired secession from the Slavs, who had consistently oppressed and committed atrocities against them. The struggle for independence began with the first Balkan war and continued during WWII.

Military activities and violent opposition in Bosnia were the instigators of the war in Yugoslavia, since the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina was also based on the religious grounds, and was very severe.

As Schatzmiller notes, the losses for Bosnians were great, and after signing the Dayton Peace Accord on the 14^th of December, 1995 (which was the fragile peace settlement) still 90,000 people were displaced or refugees to the neighboring regions (Schatzmiller 156).

Seeing the success of the religious and ethnic opposition in Bosnia, Slobodan Milosevic initiated the nationalist opposition against Albanians residing in Kosovo, in the Yugoslavian territory. Up to 1998, the military opposition led by Milosevic escalated in Yugoslavia, with displacement of thousands of Kosovar Albanians (Independent International Commission on Kosovo 148).

The key players in the war were the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), the Milosevic government and the Serbian army, various organized militia groups that had close links with the government, and NATO forces. (Lutz and Lutz 119-120).

There was a significant international effort to curb the violence and terror organized by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), and Milosevic pledged to terminate the violence against Albanians in the June 1998 Moscow agreement.

However, no pledges were observed by him, and the scale of human suffering increased; even the UNSC Resolution 1199 did not make the Yugoslavian forces stop the massacre, after which the NATO authorities started their urge for the humanitarian intervention (Independent International Commission on Kosovo 148).

Kosovo existed in the context of other developments – Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia and Croatia claimed independence. Slobodan Milosevic fueled slavic nationalism from the early 1990s and encouraged violent conquests in the name of Serbia. The Serbian attack on civilians in Sarajevo, and its attacks on the Red Cross and convoys with food supplies for the peaceful population were horrific. (Yoder 88).

The Serbs initiated the massacre against the civil population, a breach of fundamental human rights. Milosevic instigated national hatred towards Albanians and converted nationalism into racism, in essence, engaging in ethnic cleansing of non-slavs, non-Serbs.

The main casualties were the unarmed civilians of Kosovo. The world community was shocked by these atrocities, the likes of which had not been seen since WWII (Totten and Parsons 423).

Yugoslavia consisted of four provinces: Kosovo, Serbia, Montenegro and Vojvodina where Orthodox Christian, Islam and the minority Roman Catholics resided (Wilson 21). From the very start of the conflict, it was clear that the war was asymmetrical, pitting an ill-armed Kosovo militias agitating for independence, against the well-armed Serbian forces.

The Kosovo fighters also could not match Milosevic’s troops in terms of weapons and number of troops. The residents of Kosovo (the Albanians) considered the Kosovo Liberation Army to be freedom fighters while the Serbs considered them terrorist militias aiming to create chaos and anarchy.

Russian mercenaries allegedly participated in the war on the side of the Serbs while Kosovo received help from Albania and Saudi Arabia (Herbst 70). The gravity of atrocities became unacceptable. The Albanian part of the country would never be able to protect themselves without outside intervention.

The international community tried to establish some semblance of peace in Yugoslavia, but it was inadequate. The UN Security Council (UNSC) had planned to impose sanctions on the country, particularly an arms embargo. But China and Russia opposed any military resolution and threatened to veto any measures that could undermine the sovereignty of Yugoslavia.

The longstanding integrity of national and sovereign borders was the main mitigating factor in the activities against genocide and massacre. The two permanent members of the UN Security Council argued that the country had undertaken no aggression against another nation, and that it was acting within its boundaries and therefore, should be left alone.

Thus, no agreement was visible, and the divide in the Security Council, as well as the escalating massacres in Yugoslavia forced NATO members to attack without the UN consent. (Mertus 306).

(How does this paragraph support your thesis? It does not seem to have any relevancy on the justification of the war).

Religious and ethnic reasons for the war. The Kosovo conflict was mainly a religious one with reconciliation and negotiations coming to a dead end by the late 1990s. Religious and ethnic wars of independence have a long tradition in the region, with Slovenia seceding in 1990, Croatia following in 1991 and Bosnia-Herzegovina following suit in 1992.

During the early 1990s, Croats mainly practiced Catholicism, Serbs were Orthodox Christians, and Islam dominated the Bosnian population. All these groups had a Slavic ethnic origin, but their religious inclination made them consider themselves as distinct people, especially in regard to the recent military activities and separation.

As Shatzmiller points out, religion has intimate connections with the expression of ethnic/national identity that distinguishes Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians from each other (Shatzmiller 33).

Each of these groups held extremist views with no religious tolerance. Such lack of tolerance sowed the seeds for the 1998 Kosovo war when Milosevic fueled intolerance towards Albanians with their free practice of religion and bourgeois attitude to life (Mertus 38).

The severity of the conflict, and the critical escalation that saw no peaceful resolution came primarily from the fundamental differences between Serbs and Yugoslavians (????), and the inability to reach any consensus but the full extinction of one of the parties.

The Religion became a symbol of national identity and unity in the newly-formed states, and manifested itself in the language and communication forms used. For example, in Serbia, Orthodox Christianity became a part of being a citizen of the nation.

Unlike in these nations, where religion was the main catalyst of secession, the war in Kosovo had both ethnic and religious origins. Before the massacres and ‘ethnic cleansing.’ most of the population in Kosovo were Albanians who had lived in the area since Roman times with a language different from other languages of the area. Kosovars were predominantly Muslims.(Shatzmiller 66).

NATO attacks and occupation. Prior to the Kosovo intervention, NATO had not participated in any military operations. Operation Allied Force (OAF) lasted for eleven weeks, from March to June 1999. The main aim of the attack was to stop the crimes against humanity committed by an independent state within its borders. The international community had been reluctant to take action but the escalating atrocities could not be ignored.

The context for a humanitarian intervention pre-existed in the international community. The authoritarian rule of the Chilean leader Pinochet prompted the UN Security Council to recognize his crime against humanity. The British Appeal Chamber had just approved Pinochet’s extradition to Spain on charges of crimes against humanity (resolution 827 (1993)).

This ruling paved the way for the philosophical justification of the NATO attack and raised the issue that some crimes were too severe to be ignored or overlooked despite existing international law that stipulated that all nations are sovereign. To wit, any nation committing crimes against humanity was subject to the international effort for the sake of establishing peace and stopping the massacre and alleviating human suffering.

On the day of enactment of the resolution on Pinochet, NATO forces from most of the member countries attacked Kosovo for the sake of preserving peace and precluding genocide (Roberts 53).

It is very positive about the NATO peace troops’ intentions of deterrence and defense had been the main agendas of NATO prior to the war – this fact speaks eloquently about the right intentions of NATO forces. NATO, the world’s most effective and efficient military alliance, felt it was time for a change in policy and approach to atrocities.

The main reason for failure to establish peace by non-offensive means was the unwillingness of the Yugoslavian government to reach any agreement; the objectives of the conflict included extermination and not agreement.

Hence, after a series of unsuccessful efforts to establish peace without military actions, bombing of enemy forces became the last resort of Albanians. NATO failed to effectively deal with previous atrocities; yet it undertook the role of establishing peace in Yugoslavia, so it continued with more offensive measures taken (Boyne 33).

The actual military operation lasted eleven weeks and involved all NATO members except Greece.² OAF’s objective was to make Kosovo free from Serbian invaders, and to involve international peacekeepers in the rebuilding and reconciliation process. NATO decided to launch air strikes limiting ground combat to secure the lives of peacemakers. The attack was to last only a few days, but it lasted much longer for a variety of reasons.

The initial aim of OAF was to destroy the Serbs’ aerial attack. The initial attacks intensified the conflict. Serbs reacted to the attack by intensifying their ethnic cleansing activities. In the very first week of the attack, more than quarter million people fled from their homes and by April, almost a million had fled, resulting in the overflow of refugees to neighboring countries (Meggle 283).

OAF forces bombed everything that looked suspicious or that could be dual-use by Serbian forces. NATO warfighters accidentally bombed refugees escaping from their homes and killed more than forty of them.

Though NATO forces admitted the mistake, it remained wary of the Serbian practice of mixing the civilian caravan with military conscripts. The Serbs claimed the bombing was deliberate due to the intentions of the U.S. to take over Yugoslavia. (Meggle 180-181). But these claims were groundless as there was no interest in exploiting the country’s resources.

International tensions heightened after the accidental and embarrassing bombing of the Chinese Embassy which resulted in the death of three reporters. The bombing resulted in angry Chinese mobs demonstrating outside NATO members’ embassies in Beijing.

However, the representatives of NATO retracted the claim by admitting their mistake and claiming that they has the wrong map coordinates, which resulted in the mistaken bombing.

One more challenging situation occurred as a result of bombing the prison causing hundreds of prisoners’ deaths – people from various countries not interested in the conflict were held there, as well as many oppressed Albanians had also been put to prison in the process of their prosecution in Yugoslavia, so the prisoners were mostly innocent people, those whom NATO forces pledged to protect.

OAF did not seem to be attaining its set goal of peace-making and civilians’ release from the burden of violence and oppression. Consequently, allied forces started weighing the option of an infantry attack, showing that they pursued their initial peaceful aim and tried to adjust their activities to make the result as effective as possible (Krieger 3).

After witnessing much of the damage done to his country, Milosevic accepted the various conditions of the mediation team still striving to the peaceful resolution of the conflict. These conditions included the deployment of UN peacekeepers to Kosovo, which he had earlier rejected (Heinze 30).

Obviously, the victory of allied NATO forces was not easy; even after the 11-week bombing, Milosevic did not agree to participate in the negotiations over the destiny of Kosovo. Hence, all NATO and UN member states, Russia included (though Russia has been the opponent of the military intervention, it was also interested in establishing peace in Kosovo).

It was only at the G8 meeting in Cologne that the member states worked out a seven-point peace plan, and Victor Chernomyrdin, the Russian envoy, held negotiations with Milosevic on May 19, 1999 (Independent International Commission on Kosovo 95).

Only after that, having taken into consideration the continuous discussions of unleashing ground troops to Yugoslavia, Milosevic finally agreed to the peace plan on June 3, 1999 and left Kosovo with his military troops and the KFOR (the NATO Force) entered Kosovo on June 12 for the sole aim of peacemaking (Independent International Commission on Kosovo 96).

End of the war and its consequences. The allied forces and peacekeepers occupied Kosovo, the Yugoslavian forces finally withdrew from Kosovo and Yugoslavia as a country suffered the beginning of its disintegration. The air strike strategy proved to be very effective.

The infrastructure of the country was left in disastrous conditions as roads, bridges and railway lines had been ruined by NATO bombings. Amenities like schools, hospitals and churches also suffered from bombing because of the NATO forces’ attempt to prevent their usage in housing government forces; factories and industrial capacities were in a similar condition (Independent International Commission on Kosovo 4).

The Kosovo rebels proved to be very effective; their land attacks lured the government forces out of hiding, which in turn enabled the allied forces to bomb them. The achievement of the Kosovo Liberation Army propelled the group to the limelight and they became actively involved in the national building process (Knudsen 77).

Nonetheless, the establishment of war cessation was not the end of the Kosovo’s story. The international tension regarding the issue grew, and multiple opponents of the intervention insisted on reconsidering the case with the NATO’s voluntary actions and the sanctions towards the NATO forces.

The relationship between the West and the East deteriorated with China accusing the West of infringing on the sovereignty of other states. Claims about the arrogant display of military might and economic prowess on the side of the NATO nations became common, similarly to the Korean War that the USA unleashed.

The countries opposed to the operation stressed the need of discussing any sort of future military operations in the UN Security Council. Russia tried to propose a draft for the withdrawal of foreign forces, but was unsuccessful. Yugoslavia accused the NATO forces of crimes against humanity, the country filed a case at The Hague for the International Court of Justice to arbitrate on the matter.

The case was never opened as the accuser was said to have no capacity to file a case because at the time of the atrocities, she was not a member of the UN, which is a minimum requirement for a case to be heard (Edwards and Samples 228). Despite these misgivings, one cannot deny that the war stopped ethnic cleansing. Kosovo became autonomous and in 2008 declared its formal independence.

Arguments for Opposition to the War

The attack of Yugoslavia by NATO was viewed as one way of Western powers extending their imperialist activities to ensure other countries do their bidding.

They also ague that such intervention helps the powerful countries to actively exploit the natural resources of other countries (Kosovo has large deposits of natural resources and thus critics view this as a way of ensuring the powerful countries will be involved in the exploitation of these resources). However, no obvious exploitation ever took place, and the question can be asked – if the interventions should be prohibited, who will dare to save suffering nations?

As in case of Kosovo, the majority of superpowers prefer to engage in the political demagogy but not save the people in real crisis and horror. The world sat on its collective hands as some 800,000 people in Rwanda were massacred.

NATO forces did not get the assent of the UN Security Council, yet the war was to enforce the Council’s resolutions and ensure observation of humanitarian laws of the Geneva Convention and Genocide Convention. However, every analysis of the NATO decision to intervene should stipulate the value of the human life at first, and decide whether human rights trumps national sovereignty.

The case of Kosovo shows that it does. There is no pretext to remain ignorant to the mass violations of rights by a stronger force inside a single country, the rights’ abuse by state authorities, the violence and genocide taking place with the authorization by a nationalistic government.

Undoubtedly, NATO forces made mistakes during the Kosovo war, accidentally bombing innocent civilians like the convoy of refugees. OAF also killed neutral parties as they bombed Chinese journalist. Nonetheless, these facts only show that the war was not well-planned or was utilizing unreliable sources for executing their mission. It does not find that NATO warfighters made no distinction between civilians and combatants.

Arguments for the Support of the Humanitarian War

The decisions of NATO to overlook the authorization of the UN Security Council left experts and international community divided. However, this was not just any war. The UN Security Council resolutions were one of the two arguments to support the attack.

The UN Security Council Resolution 1203 (1998) of 24 October 1998 and Resolution 1160 (1998) demanded that Yugoslavia halt and cease all actions affecting the civilian population and if the country failed to observe the resolution, then any measure was legal to compel the country to adhere to the resolution (Krieger 292).

Resolution 1244 (1999) demanded that the Serbs were to observe and adhere to the various resolutions from the past negotiation meeting in Belgrade, which Serbs had agreed to observe, and also respect the fact that Kosovo was of great concern to the international community (Krieger xxxii).

By predefining the consequences of a breach of fundamental human rights, the UN Security Council paved the way for force to be legitimately used in Kosovo. On a national and international basis, on legal and moral grounds, OAF was authorized. Immediately after the bombing began, Russia sponsored a draft resolution in the UN Security Council that demanded the immediate withdrawal of foreign forces from a sovereign Yugoslavia.

Out of the fifteen-member country, only three supported Russia while twelve opposed. The Security Council’s refusal to support Russia’s call for withdrawal was an indirect support of the intervention that buttressed the intervention’s legality and legitimacy.

Proponents of the military intervention claimed that the UN was the primary body in maintaining world peace, but was not absolute. Hence, the UN Security Council cannot make ultimate decisions on the legitimacy of NATO’s actions, as NATO is not subordinate to the Council and can make individual decisions on peacemaking activities, especially when the NATO members agree to the necessity of intrusion and rescuing people.³

Another major legal basis for the support of the intervention is general international law. The international community has legalized the use of force to deter crimes against humanity, although some requirements had to be met. There are certain criteria that the humanitarian war should fit in order for it to be justified.

The international community had to agree unanimously that there was clear evidence of massive human suffering. Force could only be the last resort after all other ways to stop the suffering had failed or were found to be ineffective.

The force had to be objective with focus being on minimizing human suffering. The use of force also had to be reasonable and proportionate to the course of establishing peace (Krieger xxxii). The war in Kosovo met and exceeded all of these criteria.

The report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) supported the humanitarian reason for intervention stating that overwhelming crimes constituted the only aim of peace troops in Kosovo. The existence of bodies like the International Court of Justice further stressed the need for the observation of human rights.

The Geneva Convention and Genocide Convention were created to prevent the reoccurrence of the atrocities of both world wars. From a basic human rights’ position, one may find it reasonable to argue that any means is possible if that is the only method effective in preventing genocide.

In the name of purity and nationalism, fascists killed millions of Jews in a similar fashion as the one that was going on in Yugoslavia. After World War II, the international community put measures to ensure that such incidents never occurred again.

Such measures, internationally accepted, endorsed, and signed to be part of the national laws. International Courts emerged to ensure members or leaders who acted against the international laws were tried. The NATO intervention was thus justified as it was trying to ensure observation of and adherence to existing international laws.

Genocide exists elsewhere but in most cases, the international community overlooks these occurrences. The League of Nations’ failure to enforce international laws was one of the reasons Benito Mussolini attacked Ethiopia, a sovereign country, and forcefully occupied it. The failure of the League to contain leaders like Mussolini and Hitler led to the outbreak of WWII.

The intervention in Kosovo was carried out to neutralize leaders like Milosevic who created a political climate in his country similar to Hitler. Failure to deal firmly with such leaders who have no respect for international laws would encourage other leaders to follow suit, and eventually a world without order will emerge. (Laureij 88).

There have been many cases of deafness towards genocide and mass murders, but the case of Kosovo caused a divide in opinions, mostly due to the fact that it involved serious political concerns. Nonetheless, the key to the issue is a value of the human life, and the universal value of the human rights that was protected by NATO, thus making the intervention legal in all points for the sake of saving the humanity.

The War in Kosovo is the first war of its kind, as it set precedent of a ‘humanitarian war’. This means that the war had no other reason other than to save the civilians from the atrocities of the Yugoslavian government.

The proponents of the war have cited this as a commendable act, and the NATO forces should be praised for their efforts. War is a risky venture, and any country that commits its troops to fight for humanitarian reasons has a great passion for justice, puts the observation of Human Rights above all (Mertus 67).

Evaluation of the Humanitarian War’s Propriety on the Example of Kosovo.

The situation in Kosovo fits the criteria of a humanitarian war completely: genocide and massacre were only intensifying by the time NATO forces intervened, but the hatred, segregation, and discrimination had revealed itself some years earlier due to the overall tension in the region.

The official reports clearly show how many victims of the religious and ethnic struggle there were, and how negligent the authorities were about the situation. Actually, there were no authorities interested in peace, as Milosevic was gaining force, and his aim was to destroy, kill, and oust Albanians from Yugoslavia.

The nation of Yugoslavians, namely the Albanian part, suffered tremendously from rapes, kidnapping, murders, violent attacks, and other mistreatment that led to the great tension within the country.

No resolution for the situation was seen until there would be no Albanians in the region. Therefore, the humanitarian intervention in Kosovo was justified under the conditions of the unfair, unequal struggle of Albanians and well-trained, organized, and sponsored troops of Milosevic.

No one claims that everything went according to plan in OAF. Nonetheless, one should always keep in mind the broader context. It is a tragedy that innocent people died and failed to flee to neighboring countries because of the broad nature of the bombing, but the country was saved from the extinction. Milosevic did what he pleased, without care or adhering to any international laws.

Thus, the conflict in this particular region presupposed the universal threat to the security of other nations. As Rizer states, this is a legitimate pretext to interfere – for the sake of the civilians in Yugoslavia, and to preclude the spread of the epidemic of violence further throughout Europe (Rizer 37-38). NATO therefore had no other effective alternative measures to ensure international accords were respected.

Looking back at the events of 1999, one can surely say that NATO made the right decision as no other authority seemed to be willing to make it. The situation in Kosovo was subject to a great number of political intriguing and struggle for power, which precluded the advanced nations to help the nation in need of protection and peace.

The USA was the only country that dared to help, and not only talk about help despite the common disagreement in the UN Security Council. The NATO forces revealed the decisiveness that does not cause much approval in the world of politics, but looks highly humane and justified from the lens of morality and compassion.

Hence, while the UN Security Council was still hesitant to participate in the internal conflict, NATO dared to stop the series of silent murders and genocide that the world has seen in excess within the past century.

The claims about utility and profitability have no sense in the case of the NATO intervention, as the activities of NATO peacemakers constituted only the establishment and maintenance of peace. It is clear from the attacks of the US opponents that it were they who first of all thought of the profit from the intervention, as the USA has not been exploiting the Yugoslavian resources even during the peacemakers’ stay in the region.

They used no oil or gas deposits, and preserved the integrity of the country’s riches, which dissolves the opponents’ criticism fundamentally. The only serious claim against the intervention of such kind is the absence of an authority that would be able to approve of such measures legally.

Conclusion

The value of every human life – codified in laws of universal human rights – is inviolable. Geographical divisions in the name of nation-states cannot eradicate the fact that the human community is one. (Clark 122) The Kosovo internvetion demonstrates eloquently that fundamental human rights trumps national sovereignty.

In this case where mass atrocities and authorized murders were undertaken by the state, the use of external force to establish justice and peace was justified.

Humanity is universal and human rights transcend all barriers. Thus it is moral failure of the highest kind to fail to take action when a nation, an ethnic group or an individual commits crimes against humanity. Moreover, one can argue that failing to take action has the effect of indirectly supporting the aggressor.

At times, in certain cases like Kosovo, war is necessary to compel nations like to observe the rights of individuals and prevent injustice being committed. If the international community had acted promptly and swiftly, over six million Jews persecuted by Hitler would not have died.

The international community has thus properly become cautious so as to avoid being blamed for inadvertently supporting regimes that have no respect for universal human rights. (Meggle 113).

The humanitarian war in Kosovo was necessary to ensure that the dictatorial regime of Milosevic was ousted. In this case, war was necessary to dethrone a tyrant regime that did as it pleased with impunity. Democracy the fundamental right of a people to choose their leaders – is the wave of the 21^st century.

Dictatorships and dictators have no place in the modern world. During the Cold War, dictatorial regimes were tolerated for their steadfastness in the pursuit of proxy wars by the U.S. and the USSR. Such assumptions of the Cold War are anachronistic. (Amstutz 45).

There is no dispute that NATO intervention resulted in the removal of the radical nationalist regime of Milosevic, and rescued millions of people, both Serbs and Albanians, who did not take any part in the fight whose only dream was to live peacefully.

In the absence of an external military intervention, Kosovo would have faced devastating consequences. More people would have died and the situation may have called for an intervention after the situation had become far worse than in March 1999.

The NATO intervention in Kosovo resulted in a pragmatic and moral victory. Yugoslavia seized to exist, the Kosovo people were saved and peace was restored. The territory now has a new name and its people can look forward to a new history of its own making due to the efforts of the NATO warfighters. The NATO intervention forced religious and ethnic groups to reach a reasonable consensus on how to co-exist amicably.

And the NATO intervention in Kosovo demonstrated the unity of the West in upholding the principles of universal human rights. “Never again” was the operating moral principle by which the Western powers guided it foreign policy after the experience of Nazism. That principle of universal human rights was appropriately and legitimately implemented in the case of Kosovo.

References

Amstutz, Mark. International Ethics. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, Publishers. Inc, 2005. Print.

Antizzo, J. Glenn. U.S. military intervention in the post-Cold War era: how to win America’s wars in the twenty-first century. Baton Rouge, LA: LSU Press, 2010. Print.

Bellamy, J. Alex. Kosovo and International Society. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. Print.

Boyne, J. Walter. Air Warfare: an International Encyclopedia: A-L. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2002. Print.

Byers, Michael. War Law: Understanding Law and Armed Conflict. London: Atlantic Books, 2005. Print.

Chomsky, Noam. The new military humanism: lessons from Kosovo. London: Pluto Press, 1999. Print.

Clark, Howard. Kosovo work in progress: closing the cycle of violence. Coventry: Coventry University, 2002. Print.

Daalder, Ivo,.O’Hanlon. Winning Ugly: NATO’s War to Save Kosovo. Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2000. Print.

Edwards, R. Chris, and John Curtis Samples. The Republican revolution 10 years later: smaller government or business as usual? Washington DC: Cato Institute, 2005. Print.

Glennon, Michael. Limits of Law, Prerogatives of power: Interventionism after Kosovo. New York; PALGRAVE^TM, 2001. Print.

Heinze, Eric. Waging Humanitarian War. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009. Print.

Ignatieff, Michael. Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond. Toronto: Penguin Books. Print

Independent International Commission on Kosovo (2000), Kosovo Report. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Print.

Judah, Jim. Kosovo: War and Revenge. Yale: Yale University Press, 2002. Print

Knudsen, Tonny. Kosovo between War and Peace. New York: Taylor and Francis, 2007. Print.

Krieger, Heike. The Kosovo Conflict and International Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Print.

Laureij, Milo. Conflict Coverage in Kosovo. Lap Lambert Academic Publishing, 2010. Print.

Lutz, M. James, and Brenda J. Lutz. Global Terrorism. 2^nd ed. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis, 2008. Print.

Meggle, Georg. Ethics of Humanitarian Interventions. Piscataway: Transaction Books, 2004. Print.

Mertus, Julie. Kosovo: How Myths And Truths Started A War. London: University of California Press Ltd. Print.

Peters, E. John. European contributions to Operation Allied Air Force: implications for transatlantic cooperation, Issue 1391. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2001. Print.

Ptontl, Jochen. The UN Security Council and Informal Groups of States. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Print.

Rizer, Kenneth. Human Resistance to Humanitarian War in Kosovo and Beyond. Alabama: Air University Press, 2000. Print.

Roberts, Adams. Humanitarian War: Military Intervention and Human Rights. Staffordshire: Keele University, 1993. Print.

Shatzmiller, Maya. Islam and Bosnia: conflict resolution and foreign policy in multi-ethnic states. Quebec (Canada): McGill-Queen’s Press – MQUP, 2002. Print.

Totten, Samuel, and William S. Parsons. Century of genocide: critical essays and eyewitness accounts. 3^rd ed. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis, 2008. Print.

Wilson, Stephanie. Effectiveness, Legitimacy and the Use of Force in Modern Wars. Wiesbaden: GMBH, 2009. Print.

Yoder, Amos. The evolution of the United Nations system. 2^nd ed. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis, 1993. Print.

Footnotes

¹ Since then humanitarian wars have taken place with the latest one being the intervention of Libya by NATO to prevent the government forces from annihilating the rebel forces (Rizer 43). However, the question of the legitimacy and legal basis for the humanitarian interventions remains in dispute as some have characterized the NATO intervention as “illegal but legitimate” (Heinze 1).

² The Greek Orthodox Church largely opposed the NATO activities, and the public opinion poll showed 90% of people disapproved the bombing decision (Peters 42).

³ Additionally, the support is evident in the Security Council Resolution 1244 (1999) (Krieger xxxii)