The Real Meaning of the War Over Kosovo

Abstract

Although everybody has had to work out where they stand on NATO's seventy-eight-day air war against Yugoslavia, they have had to do so in a context of scarce and selective information. In the English-speaking world there have been few books on the Kosovo background or on contemporary Serbian politics. But no less important has been the absence of reliable information about the NATO side of the war. The diplomacy leading up to the war was, of course, shrouded in secrecy. The formal decision to launch the air war was, for example, taken by NATO's North Atlantic Council but we do not even know the decision rules which NATO now applies for taking military action outside the area of the NATO states. The same secrecy applies to much of the conduct of the war and not least to its diplomatic side. Therefore in the case of this extremely important event for the future not only of the Balkans and of Europe but of the whole world, a wise policy would be one which recognizes that our initial judgements on the NATO air campaign should be subject to revision in the light of further research and of information released now that the war is over.