2
Draft
Panel on the Dilemmas of Ethics of International Intervention
ISA Meeting
Hawaii’05
Dilemmas and Overlaps in the Ethics of International
Intervention: the Case of Kosovo
David Shugarman
Overview
Operation Allied Force, NATO’s military intervention in the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), which began on March 24, 1999 and
consisted of 78 days of aerial bombardment, has been the subject of a vast
amount of commentary on its legality, morality and implications for
international order. A large question raised by the bombing campaign is
whether the NATO response to the conflict between Serbs and Albanian
Kosovars was credibly a humanitarian one, whether such a purpose and the
efforts that go with it can be squared with the application of force. There is
both a general, theoretical question here and one that addresses the particular
circumstances of the conflict. This paper, part of a two-part study that takes
up both questions, focuses more on the second and reviews the background
and lead-up to the NATO engagement as well as the actual results of the