Kosovo
Before Republican George W. Bush and his saber-rattling retinue assumed the Presidency, Democratic President Bill Clinton demonstrated that neither major political party shies from initiating warfare in violation of international law. That is precisely what the Clinton administration did when intervening in Serbia’s civil war against the secessionist province of Kosovo, the very type of intervention that Abraham Lincoln warned other nations against while waging his war to prevent the South from seceding from the Union. Rounding out this hypocrisy is the federal government’s recent recognition of Kosovo as an independent nation, implying that foreign citizens have a greater right to seek secession against their governments than American citizens do from our own.*
Nation-states may do anything that international law does not specifically prohibit, and nothing in international law prohibits governments from quelling secessions or insurgencies. What international law does condemn is foreign interference in civil wars, since such interference undermines a nation’s political independence and sovereignty. For example, during the 1980s the United States argued that Nicaragua’s aid to insurgents in neighboring El Salvador violated El Salvador’s sovereignty, and therefore the United States claimed the right to defend El Salvador by conducting military operations against Nicaragua. Taking this argument at face value, President Clinton’s open aid to the Kosovo insurgents clearly violated Serbia’s sovereignty, and other governments could have followed the United States’ earlier Nicaragua example and come to Serbia’s defense during the American bombing campaign of 1998 and 1999.
When Kosovo announced its intention to secede from Serbia and began conducting guerrilla operations toward that end, Serbia had a right to respond with military force, which it was doing with much success when the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) intervened. Such intervention was illegal not only because the civil war was none of NATO’s business, but also because none of the enumerated criteria for an attack against Serbia had arisen: Serbia had not launched or threatened to launch any aggression against another nation-state, and no Security Council resolution had authorized the use of force against Serbia either.
Notwithstanding the absence of a legal foundation for military force, the United States and NATO threatened to bomb Serbia unless it submitted to the terms dictated at the Rambouillet talks of 1998. Serbia was ordered to “agree” to the evisceration of its sovereign rights by granting NATO access to all Yugoslav territory (not just to Kosovo); by withdrawing the Serbian military from Kosovo; and by holding a referendum in three years on Kosovo’s future. NATO fully expected Serbia to reject such ridiculous terms, thereby allowing the bombing of Serbia to commence. As one Clinton administration official crowed:
The temporary fig leaf for this otherwise naked aggression was “humanitarian intervention,” an amorphous doctrine resembling the “just war” theory that proposes military force against governments that brutalize their own citizens. No clear-cut standards for this doctrine have gained wide international acceptance, either in treaties or in customary law, a deficiency that opens the door for any powerful nation to undermine the law of the use of force and to interfere in another nation’s internal affairs.
Even the most vocal advocates of humanitarian intervention acknowledge its open-ended nature and have therefore attempted to limit it to rare circumstances, such as to prevent genocide or widespread violations of human rights. Yet Serbia’s actions against Kosovo hardly cleared this hurdle. Only 2,000 persons were killed during the Kosovo civil war in 1998 and the first two months of 1999, a remarkably small number when considering the far more horrific bloodshed of civil wars festering around the world at any given time. During America’s own Civil War, over 600,000 people lost their lives as a result of the North’s “total war” against Southern soldiers and civilians – a gruesome tactic that few in the federal government deny or regret. If foreign governments of the day had adhered to the United States’ modern interpretation of humanitarian intervention, then they would have demanded that the North cease its war against the South and recognize Southern independence. In short, if humanitarian intervention was justified in Kosovo, then it is justified almost anywhere, an outcome that demolishes national sovereignty and blesses unrestrained international intervention (which is likely the whole point).
In hindsight, most commentators agree that what the United States did in Kosovo was illegal, but nobody condemns it.
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*This is, of course, exactly backwards. While international law does not prevent either the federal government or the Serbian government from combating a secessionist movement, the federal government is a creature of a voluntary union of enumerated powers under the Constitution, and therefore has far less of a right (if any) to resist secession.
Before Republican George W. Bush and his saber-rattling retinue assumed the Presidency, Democratic President Bill Clinton demonstrated that neither major political party shies from initiating warfare in violation of international law. That is precisely what the Clinton administration did when intervening in Serbia’s civil war against the secessionist province of Kosovo, the very type of intervention that Abraham Lincoln warned other nations against while waging his war to prevent the South from seceding from the Union. Rounding out this hypocrisy is the federal government’s recent recognition of Kosovo as an independent nation, implying that foreign citizens have a greater right to seek secession against their governments than American citizens do from our own.*
Nation-states may do anything that international law does not specifically prohibit, and nothing in international law prohibits governments from quelling secessions or insurgencies. What international law does condemn is foreign interference in civil wars, since such interference undermines a nation’s political independence and sovereignty. For example, during the 1980s the United States argued that Nicaragua’s aid to insurgents in neighboring El Salvador violated El Salvador’s sovereignty, and therefore the United States claimed the right to defend El Salvador by conducting military operations against Nicaragua. Taking this argument at face value, President Clinton’s open aid to the Kosovo insurgents clearly violated Serbia’s sovereignty, and other governments could have followed the United States’ earlier Nicaragua example and come to Serbia’s defense during the American bombing campaign of 1998 and 1999.
When Kosovo announced its intention to secede from Serbia and began conducting guerrilla operations toward that end, Serbia had a right to respond with military force, which it was doing with much success when the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) intervened. Such intervention was illegal not only because the civil war was none of NATO’s business, but also because none of the enumerated criteria for an attack against Serbia had arisen: Serbia had not launched or threatened to launch any aggression against another nation-state, and no Security Council resolution had authorized the use of force against Serbia either.
Notwithstanding the absence of a legal foundation for military force, the United States and NATO threatened to bomb Serbia unless it submitted to the terms dictated at the Rambouillet talks of 1998. Serbia was ordered to “agree” to the evisceration of its sovereign rights by granting NATO access to all Yugoslav territory (not just to Kosovo); by withdrawing the Serbian military from Kosovo; and by holding a referendum in three years on Kosovo’s future. NATO fully expected Serbia to reject such ridiculous terms, thereby allowing the bombing of Serbia to commence. As one Clinton administration official crowed:
We intentionally set the bar too high for the Serbs to comply. They need some bombing, and that’s what they are going to get.Serbia predictably balked, and the bombing campaign was soon underway.
The temporary fig leaf for this otherwise naked aggression was “humanitarian intervention,” an amorphous doctrine resembling the “just war” theory that proposes military force against governments that brutalize their own citizens. No clear-cut standards for this doctrine have gained wide international acceptance, either in treaties or in customary law, a deficiency that opens the door for any powerful nation to undermine the law of the use of force and to interfere in another nation’s internal affairs.
Even the most vocal advocates of humanitarian intervention acknowledge its open-ended nature and have therefore attempted to limit it to rare circumstances, such as to prevent genocide or widespread violations of human rights. Yet Serbia’s actions against Kosovo hardly cleared this hurdle. Only 2,000 persons were killed during the Kosovo civil war in 1998 and the first two months of 1999, a remarkably small number when considering the far more horrific bloodshed of civil wars festering around the world at any given time. During America’s own Civil War, over 600,000 people lost their lives as a result of the North’s “total war” against Southern soldiers and civilians – a gruesome tactic that few in the federal government deny or regret. If foreign governments of the day had adhered to the United States’ modern interpretation of humanitarian intervention, then they would have demanded that the North cease its war against the South and recognize Southern independence. In short, if humanitarian intervention was justified in Kosovo, then it is justified almost anywhere, an outcome that demolishes national sovereignty and blesses unrestrained international intervention (which is likely the whole point).
In hindsight, most commentators agree that what the United States did in Kosovo was illegal, but nobody condemns it.
____________________________________
*This is, of course, exactly backwards. While international law does not prevent either the federal government or the Serbian government from combating a secessionist movement, the federal government is a creature of a voluntary union of enumerated powers under the Constitution, and therefore has far less of a right (if any) to resist secession.
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