The Means and Ends of Intervention

An assessment of NATO's intervention in Yugoslavia hinges on two issues, both of which are related to political principle and justice. The first issue has to do with the policy of intervention itself, the second with the means that were used. These can be framed as follows: was intervention in the internal affairs of a sovereign state by a regional alliance justified without the sanction of the United Nations Security Council? And was the NATO strategy of an air campaign against Serbian targets justified according to just-war criteria?

On the first issue, it must be granted that the conflict in Kosovo between Serbs and Kosovar Albanians was a local and internal matter of which the current round is only the latest in a centuries-long history of reprisals and counter-reprisals based on ethnic claims. The current intervention has often been justified as a response to Milosevic's policy of large-scale ethnic cleansing and atrocities. The basis for a more compelling justification for this war, however, was the real possibility of regional destabilization and widespread conflict due to the ongoing policy of Serbian dominance and aggression in post-Tito Yugoslavia. This is what distinguished it from Rwanda.

On either ground, the sanction of the UN Security Council is the preferred avenue, following international law and the requirements of UN membership. However, it was and is also obvious that the UN is ineffective in politically explosive situations over which the principal members of the Council disagree. And for historic and civilization reasons, Russia was bound to register a veto on this issue. Therefore, intervention occurred at the level of the region affected—the European states—by their regional alliance, NATO, backed by the United States, which the Europeans have continued to welcome at NATO's center. The UN has a role to play in this situation by sanctioning the peacekeeping force, KFOR, and by supervising the prose-cution of war crimes and crimes against humanity. But it would be misplaced legalism to insist on an exclusive UN role in a situation where there are four interrelated dimensions: intrastate, regional, superpower, and the United Nations.

If the intervention of NATO and its principal ally, the U.S., can be justified even without UN sanction, the strategy of an air war used to pursue this objective is much more tenuous. Without any appropriate declaration of war, the joint military action lacked formal legitimacy. The intervention also represented a curious war by committee, albeit with the U.S. holding sway in the background. It is difficult, moreover, to justify this military effort in terms of the just-war criterion of efficacy even in view of NATO's eventual success in getting Milosevic to back down. In all likelihood a combined air and ground war would not have been as protracted and would have directly countered not only Milosevic's overall political objectives but also the atrocities that were taking place. Instead, the air war alone was less effective and actually exacerbated the ethnic cleansing for a time. The criticism that the U.S. and NATO countries were being self-serving by avoiding military casualties is entirely on the mark.

This leaves the just-war criteria of proportionality and avoiding harm to civilians. On the latter point, NATO argued that it was targeting military sites, and its strikes, by and large, fit this approach. The distinction between military and nonmilitary targets is hard to make at times, but it is clear that NATO did not practice saturation bombing of the kind seen in W.W. II. However, the related harm brought by this strategy to Albanian civilians was unspeakable. As for proportionality, the extent of the air war seemed to have more to do with bringing Milosevic to his knees than with arresting his extremist political strategy. In short, NATO and the U.S. pursued a just cause in ways that largely do not square with just-war criteria. Unfortunately, it appears that the pattern of fighting proxy wars has been replaced by the even more disturbing trend of fighting technologically sophisticated air wars, giving the U.S. new ways to project its power as the world's lone superpower in causes that are somehow worth fighting but not dying for.

Intervention in the internal affairs of a state is always a messy affair at best, as the KFOR forces have now experienced in witnessing the counter-atrocities of the Albanians against their Kosovar Serbian neighbors. With the end of the massive and systematic ethnic cleansing by Milosevic, let us hope that the more sporadic and localized reprisals by the Albanians can be stopped and order restored. Let us also hope that progress can be made on the task of finding a just way for Orthodox Serbians and Muslim Albanians to live side-by-side in a multi-ethnic Kosovo, stable and at peace with its neighbors.

[Dr. Cooper, a specialist in international relations, is President of Redeemer College in Ancaster, Ontario, Canada.]