Armed Humanitarian Intervention In Post Cold War Conflicts: An Analysis Of Nato's Intervention In Kosovo (1999)

Ever since the Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years War in 1648, the twin principles of sovereignty and non-intervention have governed international politics. Sovereignty meant that no authority stood above the state, except that which the state voluntarily conferred on any organization it joined. Non-intervention meant that states could manage affairs inside their territorial boundaries without external interference. As the twentieth century drew to a close, several instances of foreign military involvement in the civil wars of other states raised questions about the Westphalian rules of international politics. Sovereignty no longer seemed sacrosanct. According to many political leaders and theorists, humanitarian intervention is not only legally justified, but morally necessary in situations where brutal governments were violating the human rights of their citizens. This dissertation employs the case study of the 1999 war in Kosovo, an armed conflict between the Federal Republic of Serbia, former Yugoslavia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), that highlights many of the issues surrounding the concept of humanitarian intervention. The study comprises five chapters.Chapter one, which is the introduction, gives a general background to the study. Succinctly, it presents increased intra-state conflict and it's accompanying internecine killings as one of the central challenges of the post-Cold War era. The reality of this era has therefore, become concomitant with the imperative for what is today known as armed humanitarian intervention. To intervene or not intervene, and how to intervene at the face of these realities of incessant civil wars, assumed also a part of the problem that plague the post Cold-War world. Chapter one as part of its task, sets this problematic and the need to critically evaluate it using the Kosovo case study, as the focus of this research. This chapter captures the research questions that hoped to be addressed by the research: what was the historical and political context under which the Kosovo crisis erupted? Was NATO right in its intervention into Kosovo? Was NATO's intervention into Kosovo devoid of other interest aside humanitarian concerns? What lessons has the Kosovo conflict and its management left for states in the post-Cold War era? The proffering of answers to the questions is to be situated in the theoretical framework of the Just War theory, which provides the analytical scaffolding for this research. Just War is premised on the philosophical foundations of morality of war and warfare, and offers criteria for judging whether a war is just and whether it is fought by just means. This theory is thus used to debate moral obligations of states in relation to violence and the use of lethal force. The thrust of the tradition is that war and its conduct is surrounded with moral constraints and conditions. The theory is generally traced to Augustine of Hippo. There are two categories to Just War theory: jus in bello and jus ad bellum. While the former concerns when states may justly resort to war, the later discusses how the war may legitimately be fought. The conditions that necessarily qualify a war of intervention to be justified are that the intervener must have the right intention; authorization must be by a legitimate authority, etc. Chapter one inter alia, delves into the review of related literature. Here, it draws heavily from what numerous authors and scholars have written on the three areas of Intervention, Conflict, the nature and character of the post Cold-War era in relation to conflict, and the Kosovo conflict. The aim is to gather enough data for the research, make comparative considerations that will make the research rich at the end.Chapter two gives an in-depth insight into the nature and character of Cold War era, and conceptual clarification on humanitarian intervention. However beneficial the end of the cold war may have been in other respects, it certainly has far reaching negative implications on conflicts. Among other things, it let loose a global deluge of surplus weapons into a setting in which risk of local conflict appears to have grown markedly. It goes without contestation that the image of the post-Cold War era is that of increased endemic and protracted internal conflicts. Contrary to the general expectations, the end of the Cold War did not generate a heaven of good will and stability in most parts of the world. Rather than a world that was expecting peace dividends after the Cold War, conflicts rooted in. Since the end of the Cold War, from the Balkans to East-Timor, throughout Africa and parts of Europe, the world has witnessed outbreak of ethnic conflicts of such magnitudes and intensity that threatened the survival of the states, leading the prevalence of such expressions as state collapse, state failure etc. Security analysts now seem to have agreed that the nature of conflicts has changed since the end of the Cold War. Most wars in the 1990s have been fought within countries rather than, as hitherto were the case, between states. Both in terms of complexity and intensity, the post Cold War conflicts differ significantly from those of the period before this era. Another feature of the post Cold-War conflicts has been their devastating consequences on the on the civilian population, especially women and children. In these wars prosecuted by armed groups that ignore international conventions governing the conduct of war, the suffering of the civilian population has evoked compassion from the international community. Paradoxically, just as the complexities so also have the effort to prevent and resolve conflicts increased. The total paralysis of governance and breakdown of law and order that have however, meant that international efforts to resolve them have to go beyond military and humanitarian tasks to include the promotion of reconciliation and re-establishment of effective government. The increase in intra-state conflicts in this era, has added pressure on the United Nations Organization involved, the body tasked with managing conflicts in the world, and has resulted in conflict management at the sub-regional levels. This has made the study of the activities of sub-regional organizations necessary, especially with a view to suggesting ways through which their efforts in conflict management can be enhanced to meet the challenges.Chapter three is a thrust into the historicity of the causes and course of the Kosovo conflict. The Kosovo conflict was one among many other conflicts that characterized the post-Cold War period. With the death in 1980 of longtime Yugoslav leader Josep Broz Tito, the relationship between Kosovo Albanians and the Yugoslav government began to deteriorate noticeably. Throughout the 1980s, tensions between ethnic Kosovo Albanians and the Yugoslav government rose. These tensions peaked in 1989 when Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic officially revoked Kosovo's autonomous status within the Republic of Serbia. This action exacerbated the already volatile situation and further setting Serbia and Kosovo on a course toward conflict. Reacting to their increasing political marginalization by the Yugoslav government, Kosovo Albanians declared Kosovo an independent republic within the Yugoslav state in 1990. Two years later, the self declared republic elected its own parliament and named Ibrahim Rugova as president. Until the mid-1990s, the Kosovo Albanians adhered to a policy of peaceful resistance embraced by Rugova. However, by 1996, Rugova and his policy of non-violent opposition were increasingly discredited due to their inability to raise international support for the Kosovo Albanians'cause. Internal opposition forces began to take a more assertive approach and support for civil disobedience grew. It was at this time that the Kosovo Liberation Army emerged as an armed opposition force. With the rise of the KLA, incidents of human rights abuses against Albanians increased, including arbitrary arrest and extrajudicial killing. The US-led NATO and UN, employed diplomatic settlement for the crisis, repeatedly offering the Serbs the opportunity to accept the Rambouillet agreement, a peaceful solution that would be fair to all parties. But while the ethnic Albanians and the KLA chose the path of negotiation and peace, the Serbs rejected it. As a result, NATO claimed being left with no choice than to attack Serbia in order to save Kosovo.Chapter four tasks itself with the weighing of the intervention by NATO on the theoretical scale of Just War theory. Weighed in this scale of Just War theory, the finding of this research is that NATO's intervention in Kosovo leaves much to be desired. Among other flaws of the intervention is that it was based on sham humanitarianism, grossly violated the United Nations Articles 53(1), 2(4) and 2(7), and set a wrong international precedence. Besides the evidence of the chances that other interests, other than the claimed humanitarian reasons, informed the intervention, NATO by that act, offended both itself and the world, by carrying out an operation in contravention of its own treaty, and that of the United Nations charter. Upon its establishment in 1949, NATO was explicitly an alliance, to defend the territorial integrity of its member states. The Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty described the region to be covered. In contravention of this, and logic of the historical reality that informed its creation, NATO launched air war against a sovereign state that was neither its member, nor attacked/threatened NATO's members. That Kosovo witnessed atrocities might not be so much in doubt, but NATO is not empowered to carry out raids against a sovereign state without the authorization of the United Nations, the only universally recognized and genuinely global organization backed by international law. The appropriate procedure is prescribed in Article 39 of the United Nations Charter"The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of peace, or act of aggression, and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security." The study advances to chapter five, which is the conclusion and thesis of the research. Deriving from the Kosovo example, the possibility is there that the major powers, including the United States, are trying to bypass the United Nations or using it to provide a fig leaf of respectability for largely hegemonic activities. The persistent attempt to substitute partial military alliances such as NATO for the United Nations is bound to be destructive of what authority of the United Nations has. It is also likely to alienate the non-European world, and some part of Europe from otherwise legitimate attempts at intervention. This research work suggests a major shift in NATO and mainstream American attitudes to the world body, which is far too hostile. True, there are many things that need reform in the United Nations, but it is still a primary locus of hope for peace through much of the world, and positive efforts to build it up rather than ignore or undermine it are required. Since the United Nations, with all its faults, is viewed in most of the world as the primary agent of international legitimacy, UN authorization of interventions should remain the norm. The NATO action against Serbia was blemished from the beginning by its ignoring of the Security Council. The problems posed by the likelihood of some members of the Security Council like Russian veto were certainly real, but UN approval for the operation should at least have been sought. It may be that a different form of military intervention or the threat of it might have been approved, or that some form of intervention might have reasonably proceeded in the face of what could have been represented as a blatantly misguided veto.