Air Strikes on Bosnian Positions: Is NATO Also Legally the Proper Instrument of the UN?

Abstract

For weeks, the air strikes that NATO executed in defence of the ‘safe area’ of Sarajevo were ‘hot news’. The fact that NATO would, eventually, execute these strikes had seemed inevitable for some time. The well-informed observer had sufficient indications to this effect via television and the newspapers. However, the media, and all of the debates in national parliaments, have never, or have scarcely, addressed the legal basis for these strikes. At first sight, this appeared to be a relatively simple question, since NATO repeatedly stressed that it was acting on a mandate from the UN Security Council. At a second glance, however, the legal basis of the NATO actions gives rise to a number of questions for which the answers are less easy to ascertain.

NATO Coercive Military Activities in the Yugoslav Crisis (1992-1999)

“…179 It has also been argued that NATO decisions and subsequent military involvement in the Yugoslav crisis have led to a tacit revision of the Treaty, 180 or at least to the creation of soft law or quasi-legal obligations, 181 thus rendering advisable, if not indispensable, a formal review of the Treaty itself. 182 The most convincing view, however, underlines the clear unwillingness of NATO member states to create new legal obligations. NAC decisions are therefore qualified as documents having political character.…”