Limits of Law, Prerogatives of Power: Interventionism After Kosovo

NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia was justified. NATO violated the United Nations Charter - but nations have used armed force so often that the ban on non-defensive use of force has been cast into doubt. Dangerous cracks in the international legal order have surfaced - widened, ironically, by the UN Security Council itself, which has ridden roughshod over the Charter’s ban on intervention. Yet nations remain hopelessly divided on what the rules should be. An unplanned geopolitical order has thus emerged - posing serious dilemmas for American policy-makers in a world where intervention will be judged more by wisdom than by law.

MICHAEL J. GLENNON is Professor of Law at the University of California, Davis, School of Law. From 1977 to 1980 he was Legal Counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including Constitutional Diplomacy (Princeton University Press, 1990).