The NATO War on Yugoslavia:
Reflections and Outlook

Bernhelm Booss-Bavnbek, Roskilde University

1. The scale of the alleged Serb atrocities in Kosovo before the war. Prior to NATO's engagement there was a low-intensity civil war in the region, monitored by international observers. Villagers were fleeing battle zones, but usually returned home shortly after. The biggest alleged `massacre' the observers reported on was a mass grave near the village of Racak with some 40 corpses. The circumstances of death have not yet been disclosed unambiguously, even not by a Finnish forensic team. Until March 24, 1999, the beginning of the bombings, the United Nations' High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported no data on refugees. Kosovars - Albanians and Serbs - who left the province before the war could not obtain refugee status in EC states.

2. The character of the Rambouillet negotiations. There were no negotiations involving the government of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) and the Albanian opposition groups present, only (rather) ultimate demands by the US, British, German and French negotiators. In particular, it was and is hard to see how the FRY could have accepted the claimed occupation statute for the whole of its territory (Chapter 7 and Appendix B of the draft treaty).

3. Deciding on military intervention. The pre-Kosovo international law attributed the right to decide on military intervention to the UN Security Council (or General Assembly). But no such authorization was given; neither an explicit authorization by the national parliaments of individual states, nor according to the NATO treaty. There was no formal declaration of war. The decision on war was made by a gathering of state leaders, who chose to ignore widespread opposition in Italy, Bulgaria, and Greece, Kosovo's neighbouring countries. International law, international treaties, and national constitutions were broken.

4. How effective was the bombing? To subject the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to NATO's will and the Rambouillet draft treaty, three successive phases were anticipated for the air war: (1) neutralizing the Yugoslavian air defence; (2) raids against primary military targets; and (3) raids against civilian objects / infra structure. Phase (1) was never completed. The Stealth technology of radar reflection minimizing by exotic geometric surface shape had its first war test, but did not prove safe; the Yugoslavian air defence was sufficiently mobile and sufficiently passive to remain undetected and a threat until the end of the war; NATO's air planes had to maintain a security altitude of 5000 metres. Therefore, phase (2) was restricted to stationary targets (barracks) and never used effectively against mobile targets (tanks, troops, artillery). For lack of military targets, phase (3) became dominant. In terms of ravaging, the targeting of the infra structure was extremely effective due to new types of precision guided munition and positioning systems. It seems that there were remarkably modest human losses. But the deliberate destruction of civilian objects was of dubious military value - and a war crime according to the Geneva Additional Protocol I (of 1977, ratified by most NATO states, but not by the USA; entered into force on 7 December 1978).

5. How massive was the war support in the populations of the NATO countries? According to opinion polls the public support of the war was massive, especially in countries like Denmark and Norway which were remote from the `theatre', and less massive or even absent in neighbouring countries like Italy, Bulgaria and Greece. With hindsight it seems that the massive support largely depended on a perceived virtual character of the war: no losses on the NATO side were accepted, nor substantial bloodshed on the Yugoslavian side. But public opinion accepted the use of military force against the infra structure of the FRY - bridges, transportation means, factories, hospitals, schools etc - to impose NATO's will on the FRY. The NATO bombing generated a mass exodus and perhaps a Serb effort to expel the Albanian population. These `countermeasures / retaliations' hardly came as a surprise to NATO whose declared war goals became an absurdity. Not one of them were ever achieved: the FRY has still not signed the Rambouillet draft treaty and the non-Kosovo territory of the FRY is not transformed into occupied territory; a multiethnic society in Kosovo seems finally out of sight. But Serb retaliations helped keep or even enhance the public war support in NATO countries.

6. Are legalistic pacifist arguments against NATO's bombing objectionable from a moral point of view? There were critical voices in the NATO countries. But they were often met with the anti-Hitler argument: `Wasn't it good that the USA entered the war against Hitler even though the USA were not attacked and never threatened by the Nazis?' Now, Milosevic was not Hitler, the FRY not Nazi-Germany, and some philosophers and historians may - rightly - argue that the Nazis (and the Japanese imperialism) would have been abolished also without the intervention of the USA. [After all, unarmed citizens achieved in the (mostly) non-violent revolution on October 5 and 6, 2000, in about 24 hours what NATO violence could not achieve in 78 days. Added in proof] And then there was the anti-positivist argument: `How dare you argue legalistically when so many people suffer and you have the means to end their suffering?' But have the NATO air raids reduced sufferings in the region, or escalated them? And what about the long term effect of breaking international law?

7. What is the role of the public in mathematics and high-tech based modern warfare? In NATO's air raids against the FRY a new quality of modern warfare has become visible: the high-tech mathematics based selection and precision destruction of mainly civil targets from large distances. The combination of distance and precision minimizes the war operating cost and promises that the soldiers always return safely home, free of post-traumatic stress since they have not witnessed the consequences for the local people. This might well lower the threshold of using violence. But efficient destruction does not guarantee achieving political objects: the war is not automatized by the new means. On the contrary. The active accept and support by the highly qualified and autonomously acting flying personal is necessary as well as is the will of the knocked to surrender. The new character of a mathematics based warfare is that in spite of the automatization aspects it requires not less but more public support. A thoughtful public could perhaps induce changes in the conduct of war, if not lower the risk of new wars.