Nnato and Humanitarian Action in Kosovo

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NATO and Humanitarian Action in Kosovo The 1999 Kosovo War has raised notable attention throughout the world not only due to its shocking and cruel human rights abuses executed under Milosevic's leadership, but also because it served as a foundation for the first sustained application of force by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. During the Kosovo war NATO acted without the consent of the UN Security Council and accordingly initiated an intense debate over the justifications for military inference, justifying its mission upon its humanitarian advocacy to bring human rights abuses to a halt. Kosovo's case fundamentally put the notion of state sovereignty into question and altered the perceptions of the laws of Westphalia and led to the rise of concepts like the responsibility of the international community to protect human rights within all states, and not only its domestic ones. This essay will focus on and discuss the concept of military intervention based on moral motives, and on NATO's performance in Kosovo taking into consideration its strategic intentions and the legality of its interference as well as the actual military execution carried out during the Kosovo war. Contrary to popular belief, although mediation was considered highly necessary in order to avoid a second 'Bosnia' within Europe, the supposedly humanitarian fulfilment by NATO has fundamentally failed due to a faulty legal system accompanied by disruptive strategic intentions as well as inconsistent performances during its war campaign. Accusations against states of strategically selecting humanitarian causes for economic and calculated benefits have been fairly common after the 1990’s. Current events in Libya as well as other interventions demonstrate that the international community acts with an inconsistent behaviour in addressing their respective intervention cases. It must be
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