NATO's War Research Articles

Is NATO's Onslaught a "Just War"?

Countless commentators have insisted that NATO's war against Yugoslavia has revived the medieval notion of the "just war." The notion of the "just war" has been adapted many times throughout history to differing sets of values and ideas. Since the eighteenth century, it has been used to justify independence wars as well as revolutionary wars, by currents ranging from liberalism to communism, through nationalism, or any mixture of those and other ideologies, including typically medieval ideologies. For instance, the famous "jihad" so much heard of in the last decades, is nothing but the Islamic version of "just war." Perhaps some commentators simply wanted to hint at the fact that there is now a renewed version of the Western Christian version of "jihad."This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

The Kosovo Liberation Army

The political struggle between the various Kosovo Albanian factions has intensified since NATO's air war against Yugoslavia began in March. The prize is rule over Kosovo after it has been liberated from Belgrade, and the split is creating increasing dilemmas for Western policy-makers. On one side are the main leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which for the past year has been waging an armed rebellion against Yugoslavia, but which is deeply distrusted by European NATO governments. On the other are Ibrahim Rugova and other leaders, who for a decade carried out a campaign of civil disobedience against Serbian rule. However, this group too is divided, leading to a complicated and potentially highly unstable Kosovar political landscape.

A Perfect Failure: NATO's War against Yugoslavia

A Perfect Failure: NATO's War against Yugoslavia

Russia, NATO and European security after Kosovo

NATO's air campaign against Yugoslavia precipitated the most dangerous turn in Russian-Western relations since the early 1980s. Although tensions have eased since the end of the Kosovo war, the anger and suspicion engendered on the Russian side will not easily dissipate. The anger will endure not least because the Russian reaction had little to do with the Serb-Kosovar conflict itself, and much more to do with Russia's growing unease about NATO's post-Cold War transformation: its enlargement and pretensions to act beyond the territory of its members, without an explicit UN mandate. Repairing relations will require political realism in Russia, the absence of a major new crisis in Kosovo, and restraint from NATO.

Infrastructure: Etymology and Import

As attention to the nation's infrastructure becomes a matter for political discussion, there is also a focus on the word itself. The funding formula will depend upon definition, and a review of the etymology is in order. The word is traceable to NATO war mobilization studies in the 1950's and to the economic development literature of low income nations shortly thereafter. Gradually it came to be used for capital investment of all sorts—human capital as well as physical plant investment. With so diffuse a meaning, the term tended to drop into disuse. Now in the 1980's we see a revival in the use of the term, with a likely repeat of its evolution as discussion develops over resource allocation to such legitimate claimants as transportation facilities, flood control, water and sewer facilities, health, education, and other public sector responsibilities.