And with this we arrived at a crucial aspect of the whole Kosovo crisis: when is a country or group of countries entitled to impose its will on another country by violence? What conditions must be fulfilled in order that a war be legitimate? We were talking, in short, about the international legal order. And so the time had come, at least on paper, to turn back to the Netherlands in order to exchange thoughts with Professor Paul de Waart, expert on international law and one of the people who during the war lodged a complaint on behalf of Yugoslavia with the International Court of Justice in The Hague against NATO and its member states. Surprisingly enough the oft-cited lack of a mandate from the Security Council turned out not to be the first argument that he brought forward against the NATO bombing. When later we brought that aspect into the discussion his views on it were just as remarkable. But first the obvious opening question. What is your first and most important objection to the war? De Waart: 'For me the big problem was that NATO was extremely unclear about what precisely its motives were in acting abainst Serbia. The Americans did not trust Milosevic, and fpr this, on the basis of earlier experiences in Bosnia-Herzegovina, they had of course quite a few reasons, but it determined to a large extent the strategy adopted in Rambouillet. The Americans wanted an international troop contingent in Kosovo in order to protect the Kosovars. Protection by the OSCE observers, which had already been arranged, no-one was ever actually willing to give a serious chance. On the contrary, they were already moving towards believing that in Rambouillet the Serbs must be threatened with military violence. Not for a moment was there any talk of humanitarian reasons for the use of violence. On the contrary, the threat of the air force was used because it was thought that it would be a big stick with which Milosevic would be forced to sign Rambouillet. It was thought that the threat arising from the bombing - and no ground troops, that was also made clear from the very start - would be sufficient to bring Milosevic to his knees. And so no-one actually worried themselves about the legitimacy of the use of military violence. Although they were actually overstepping the mark when it came to international law. Because under international law you can certainly force an agreement using violence or the threat of violence, but that goes only for peace treaties. All other treaties are by definition invalid whenever they have been concluded under the threat or the use of violence. So Milosevic could, so to speak, calmly sign everything, and then go to the International Court of Justice and ask them if they would declare it invalid, because it was signed under the threat of violence.'
77