Kosovo Crisis: National Security and International Military Intervention

摘要

The 1998-1999 crises in the Kosovo-Metohija region of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia resulted in the unilateral armed intervention of the United States and NATO against Serbia. This military 'humanitarian' intervention directly and negatively affected both the national security interests of Serbia as well as the strategic stability in a very sensitive region of the Balkans that had started to emerge from the catastrophic Yugoslav Civil Wars in the 1990s. This largely unilateral intervention was not based on the usual premises of international law nor was it sanctioned by the multilateral decision making mechanisms of the United Nations. Instead, this intervention and subsequent United States policy assisted without preconditions the violent secessionist movement of the ethnic Kosovar Albanians to unilaterally declare their own 'independence' in Kosovo in February 2008. This case study analyzes the Kosovo crisis and examines its aftermath and impact on the national security interests of Serbia.