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Bernd
Riggert
project
March 25, 2024 – 11:33
NATO attacked Serbian forces to prevent a humanitarian disaster in Kosovo in 1999. The comparison with Ukraine is wrong.
After months of fruitless negotiations, on March 24, 1999, NATO intervened in the war between the Yugoslav and Serbian armies on the one hand, and the Kosovo Liberation Army forces on the other.
By carrying out air strikes on Serbian targets, NATO countries hope to force Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to stop ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and prevent a humanitarian disaster in the region that the United Nations fears will occur.
Yet despite the use of precision weapons, the UN did not authorize the military strikes that killed many civilians. NATO countries, under the leadership of US President Bill Clinton, authorized themselves to conduct “humanitarian intervention” to prevent the worst and implement UN resolutions that Yugoslavia had not yet implemented. But even 25 years later, most jurists who study international law still believe that NATO’s mission is inconsistent with international law.
“If you ask the general opinion, then this is a violation of international law, because previously it was said that military measures against Serbia would be taken only with the approval of the Security Council. At least no other reasons could be considered. According to the mainstream opinion,” Professor Wolff Heintschel von Heineigg told DW. Von Heineigg teaches international law at the Viadra European University in Frankfurt an der Oder.
Western politicians’ reasons for NATO’s intervention included protecting the people of Kosovo, stabilizing the war-torn Western Balkans, and Russia and China’s blockade of the UN Security Council. Even then-German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer spoke of the moral necessity of intervening to prevent massacres like those in Bosnia and Herzegovina. “These are all good reasons, but international law is not created by a small group of people, nor is it customary law. We need a supermajority of states. And we simply don’t have that experience,” said Wolf Heinchel von Heiniger, an international law expert.
NATO’s attack on Yugoslavia, which ended with the surrender of Slobodan Milosevic on June 10, 1999, was an original sin. “We heard the arguments of the eight NATO countries that participated in the Kosovo operation, and also when Crimea was annexed,” von Heiniger said, describing the aftermath. When annexing Crimea in 2014, Russia cited precedent, allegedly to protect the Crimean people from threats. The same pattern reappeared after the February 24, 2022 attack in Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that the people of eastern Ukraine had asked for help and invoked the UN Charter as justification for “special military operations.”
For these reasons, the judgment of international law expert von Heiniger is clear: “Even if humanitarian intervention is recognized, Russia’s argument is certainly absurd. It cannot be related to the situation in Kosovo at the time. I only mention the notorious ethnic cleansing, which did not happen either in Crimea or in southeastern Ukraine.”
Therefore, the situation in the Western Balkans 25 years ago cannot be compared to today’s Ukraine. Russia’s invasion and war against Ukraine remain illegal under international law. “This is the draft law for Kosovo, and now we are facing the same arguments as then, even though the facts are of course fundamentally different,” said von Heiniger from the European University Frankfurt Oder.
Legal investigations of NATO’s actions against Yugoslavia by the UN Tribunal for Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice have both failed. In the current Ukrainian war case, the International Court of Justice in The Hague ordered Russia to stop all combat operations in Ukraine in March 2022. However, Russia ignored this. The main hearing on the Genocide Convention is still ongoing. /DW
Clarification: All opinions in this column reflect solely the opinions of the author and not necessarily those of NGB “Zeri” LLC
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