NATO’s bombing has been criticised for breaking international law. While supporters have claimed that it stopped the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo’s Albanian population and brought down Slobodan Milosevic’s government, which they believed was to blame for Yugoslavia’s isolation from the world, war crimes, and human rights abuses.
Some people refer to the bombing campaign as a “humanitarian war”. To end the humanitarian situation, including the significant displacement of Kosovar Albanian refugees brought on by Yugoslav forces, was one of NATO’s justifications for the attack.
Ironically, critics have used “humanitarian bombing” to express their mockery. Some argue that the humanitarian situation got worse after the bombing campaign began, calling into question NATO’s proclaimed goal. The NATO bombing campaign has come under fire for going above and beyond what is permitted under international humanitarian law, such as the Geneva Conventions (a series of treaties on the treatment of civilians, prisoners of war and soldiers who are otherwise rendered incapable of fighting)[1].
NATO described the situation in Kosovo as a threat to regional stability. As a result, NATO and certain governments claimed they had a legitimate interest in developments in Kosovo because of their impact on regional stability – which they claimed is a legitimate concern of the Organization.
Regardless of these claims, NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia clearly violated international law because it was conducted without proper UN authorisation. The United Nations Security Council did not sanction NATO’s use of force in Yugoslavia. Furthermore, NATO did not claim an armed attack against another state occurred. However, its supporters argue that NATO’s actions were per the United Nations Charter because the UN Charter only prohibits unprovoked attacks by individual states.
However, this argument is legally flawed because, in Chapter Seven of the U.N. Charter, the Security Council is given the authority to preserve the international community’s peace and safety. Although the Security Council has repeatedly addressed the Kosovo issue, it did not specifically authorise the use of force against Yugoslavia.[2]
The Charter also clearly states that any use of force must not be used in self-defence except when an armed attack against a member state occurs. Yugoslavia has not attacked any NATO member state. No NATO member borders Kosovo, except Hungary – which shares a border with Vojvodina. Yugoslavia has warned all countries with which it shares borders not to participate “directly or indirectly” in any NATO actions.
The problem with using Yugoslavia’s threats as justification for exercising the right to self-defence under Article 51 is that the warnings were issued after the first NATO attacks. The fact that Yugoslavia issued threats at all proves that Yugoslavia is a constant threat to its borders as long as it pursues its “ethnically pure” Serbian territory expansion. NATO’s action appears justified if there is a collective right of anticipatory self-defence.
Yugoslavia’s actions in Kosovo and its recent history of border aggression raise the prospect of an armed attack on a neighbouring country. Although most of those countries are not NATO members, NATO has assured; Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Romania, and Slovenia that a Yugoslav attack on them would be taken “very seriously”. It is not necessary to have a formal treaty to establish the existence of collective self-defence; informal arrangements of this type are likely sufficient.
Article 1 of the North Atlantic Treaty imposes two obligations on NATO that the bombing of Yugoslavia may have violated. The first obligation requires that the Parties undertake, as stated in the United Nations Charter, to settle any international disputes in which they may become involved in through peaceful means in such a way that international peace, security, and justice are not jeopardised [3]. NATO members have made numerous attempts, individually and collectively, to resolve disputes with Yugoslavia peacefully. Bombing another country, on the other hand, is inherently dangerous to international peace and security, even if the goal is to preserve peace, security, and justice.
According to Article 1, the NATO parties must “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.” It should be noted that the language used here is slightly different[#]. In the first part of Article 1, the parties agree to settle disputes following the United Nations Charter. However, in the second part, the parties promise not to use force in a way that is inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations rather than promising not to use force in a way that is inconsistent with the U.N. Charter.
Yugoslavia’s actions in Kosovo pose a genuine threat to the region’s stability. There does not appear to be a customary international law that allows states to use force to prevent other states from killing or expelling their own populations. However, the behaviour of states in response to this incident (the NATO action) may result in a change in customary international law: a high level of approval, or even tolerance, for NATO’s action on the part of other states may indicate the emergence of such a norm.
If, on the other hand, a consensus emerges that NATO’s actions in response to the Kosovo crisis were legal despite the lack of formal Security Council authorisation, the international legal order will have undergone significant revision. New community mechanisms must be developed to avoid being forced to choose between unqualified respect for a state’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, on the one hand, and the right to intervene without Security Council authorisation, on the other.
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