The Case of Kosovo

Abstract

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's (NATO) unilateral intervention in Kosovo marked the first time the use of force had been justified on humanitarian grounds and employed without authorisation from the UN Security Council (UNSC). While there has been a considerable quantity of analysis regarding many aspects of the intervention in Kosovo comparatively little attention has been paid to the significance this case has for international relations theory. This paper aims to redress this imbalance by considering whether the intervention indicates a substantive move towards a solidarist society. It does so by systematically examining the conflict against Nicholas Wheeler's solidarist theory of legitimate humanitarian intervention to establish whether the engagement can be regarded as solidarist within his own terms. Moreover, in the light of this examination the paper considers if his theory sufficiently reconciles the conceptual difficulties which realists and pluralists expose.