NATO's First Humanitarian War

Paper Summary:

This paper argues that NATO intervention to Kosovo opened a new era for the UN-based international system. It looks at how this intervention can be considered a part of new interventionism in the post-Cold War era, which is aiming to reconstruct failed states and is justified on political and moral grounds. It discusses how although NATO members tried to justify their action on humanitarian grounds, they failed in their humanitarian objective. It was the first major bombing campaign intended to bring a halt to crimes against humanity being committed by a state within its borders, but it also created more disastrous humanitarian effects.

Outline
Introduction
The Historical Background of the Kosovo Problem
The International Efforts for Solving the Kosovo Crisis
Holbrooke-Milosevic Negotiations
Rambouillet Negotiations
The NATO Intervention
The Debates on Humanitarian Intervention
The Place of NATO Intervention to Kosovo Among the Interventions in 1990s
The Reconstruction of "Failed States"
The New Interventionism and the Legality of the Kosovo Intervention
Different Perceptions of States
Conclusion
Bibliography

From the Paper:

"Before the crisis, Kosovo was a small territory in Europe with a population of only two million. But later on it became the focus of the most serious international conflict of the last years of the twentieth century. The problem in Kosovo dates back to the nineteenth century but assumed an international significance with the dissolution of Yugoslavia. After the suppression of Kosovo's autonomy but Slobodan Milosevic in 1989-90 conflicts started in the territory. Later with the acts of Serbian forces and Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA-UCK in Albanian initials) in Kosovo in late 1997 and during 1998 provided the context for direct intervention by external powers, which resulted in the NATO-led war and occupation of Kosovo in 1999. This intervention also contributed to the most serious international conflict of the post-Cold War period, threatening to undermine the grounds for consensus and cooperation between the great powers, mostly between the West and China and Russia."

More papers on NATO's First Humanitarian War:

• Essay # 4644 : "Humanitarian Intervention: Rumping Sovereignty in Kosovo"
• Essay # 8511 : "Nationalism and the First World War"
• Cause and Effect Essay # 73515 : "Causes of the First World War"

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