Kosovo and the Limits of International Law

Fordham International Law Journal Volume 25, Issue 1 2001 Article 5 Kosovo and the Limits of International Law David Wippman∗ ∗ Copyright c 2001 by the authors. Fordham International Law Journal is produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press (bepress). http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/ilj Kosovo and the Limits of International Law David Wippman Abstract This article examines the legality and wisdom of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (“NATO”) intervention in Kosovo in 1990. The Kosovo campaign pushed at the boundaries of international law in at least two important respects. First, NATO’s decision to engage in large-scale military action without prior Security Council authorization raised significant doubts about the status of the law governing the use of force and the viability of United Nations (“U.N.”) primacy in matters of international peace and security. Second, NATO’s high-altitude bombing campaign, conducted without a single NATO combat casualty but with significant civilian casualties within the FRY, called into question the appropriate relationship between means and ends in an intervention designed to save lives. The long-term impact of the Kosovo intervention in each of these areas of law remains uncertain. KOSOVO AND THE LIMITS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW David Wippman * INTRODUCTION In March 1999, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ("NATO") launched a massive seventy-eight day bombing campaign to force the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia ("FRY') to end repression of Kosovo's predominantly ethnic Albanian population and to accept NATO's terms for the resolution of Kosovo's future political status. International lawyers have been debating the legality and wisdom of the intervention ever since.' The Kosovo campaign pushed at the boundaries of international law in at least two important respects. First, NATO's decision to engage in large-scale military action without prior Security Council authorization raised significant doubts about the status of the law governing the use of force and the viability of United Nations ("U.N.") primacy in matters of international peace and security. Second, NATO's high-altitude bombing campaign, conducted without a single NATO combat casualty but with significant civilian casualties within the FRY,2 called into question the appropriate relationship between means and ends in an intervention designed to save lives. The long-term impact of the Kosovo intervention in each of these areas of law remains uncertain. It depends on whether future cases generate similar responses, and on the reaction of States generally to such responses. But one thing at least is clear. NATO's intervention in Kosovo is part of and contributes to a broader phenomenon, a loosening of the legal and political constraints on the use of force that is directly related to the end of the Cold War. * Professor, Cornell School of Law. 1. See EditorialComments: NATO's Kosovo Intervention, 93 AM. J. INT'L L. 824 (1999). 2. INDEP. INT'L COMMISSION ON Kosovo, THE Kosovo REPORT 94 (2000) [hereinafter THE Kosovo REPORT], available at http://www.reliefweb.int/library/documents/ thekosovoreport.htm (reporting that approximately 500 Yugoslav civilians were killed in the bombing, and that no NATO service members were killed in action). 130 FORDHAMINTERNATIONALLAWJOURNAL [Vol. 25:129 I. NATO'S DECISION TO USE FORCE FOR HUMANITARIAN ENDS Past instances of humanitarian intervention-cases that can plausibly be understood as a use of force to end grave human rights abuses-have been few and far between. 3 In most of these cases, a single State has intervened in a neighboring country, usually invoking a collective self-defense rationale, however implausible such a claim might be.4 Such interventions have typically engendered one of two responses. Either most States have condemned them as violations of international law, or most States have tacitly accepted the interventions without probing too deeply into their legal basis.5 Either way, the impact on international law and institutions has been relatively marginal. But the intervention in Kosovo was unique in two respects. First, it was a collective action by the world's richest and most powerful States, the States most directly associated with and interested in the maintenance of the rule of law in international affairs. Thus, the intervention could not be dismissed as a simple and transient breach of international law or the aberrant action of a single State carrying little or no precedential value. Second, the States involved made relatively little effort to shoehorn the intervention into the legal categories available under the U.N. Charter for the use of force. 6 The United States in particular did not advance a specific legal rationale for the intervention, as it usually does when it engages in significant military action. Instead, the United States articulated a series of contextualized factors that in the U.S. view rendered the intervention 'Justified."7 These distinctive characteristics of the NATO intervention created an irresolvable tension between the formal law of the U.N. Charter and the actual practice of States whose conduct is central to international lawmaking. The breach of the Charter 3. See Jules Lobel, American Hegemony and InternationalLaw: Benign Hegemony, Kosovo and art. 2(4) of the U.N. Charter, I CHI.J. INT'L L. 19, 28 (2000) (discussing how selfserving geopolitical interests, rather than humanitarian interests, often dictate a country's willingness to commit to humanitarian intervention). 4. See id. at 27. 5. See SEAN MURPHY, HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION: THE UNITED NATIONS IN AN EVOLVING WORLD ORDER (1996) (providing a thorough analysis of past cases). 6. See Thomas Franck, Lessons of Kosovo, 93 AM. J. INT'L L. 857, 859 (1999). 7. See Lobel, supra note 3, at 27. 2001] KOSOVO AND THE IJMITS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW 131 was clear and apparent. NATO did not seek or receive Security Council authorization, and it was not acting in self-defense. For many international lawyers, the analysis ends there. But simply labeling the intervention illegal is unsatisfactory. The authority of international law rests on a reasonable congruence between formally articulated norms and State behavior; when the two diverge too sharply, the former must adapt or lose their relevance. The scope of the Kosovo operation, the identity of the participants, and the lack of a coherent legal rationale all combine to render it difficult to dismiss the intervention as an anomaly with no lasting impact on international law. But at the same time, the continuing disagreement within NATO and among States generally over the legitimacy and desirability of unauthorized humanitarian intervention make it difficult to discern any clear change or evolution in the law. The result is a persistent and disquieting uncertainty. It is easy enough to make the case that NATO's intervention in Kosovo was illegal, and that such interventions should re (...truncated)