Legal and Ethical Lessons of NATO's Kosovo Campaign.

• Author: Becker, John D.
• Position: Book Review

LEGAL AND ETHICAL LESSONS OF NATO's KOSOVO CAMPAIGN, Anduu E. Wall, (Ed.),, International Law Studies, Volume 78, U.S. Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island, 2002.

Kosovo stands as a symbol for many things in the world of international security affairs. First, it stands for intrastate war in a multi-ethnic society. Second, it stands for the role of collective action by regional organizations in intrastate wars. And lastly, Kosovo stands for the problems of fighting in interstate wars by regional organizations. Accordingly, many recent texts have looked to Kosovo as a case study for modern war. Popular works like Waging Modern Wars by General Wesley Clark and War in a Time of Peace by David Halberstam are reflective here. More scholarly works are following in kind, including Legal and Ethical Lessons of NATO's Kosovo Campaign, edited by Anduu Wall.

Wall's text contains the proceedings from a scholarly colloquium entitled Legal and Ethical Lessons of NATO's Kosovo Campaign hosted by the Naval War College on August 8-10, 2001. The colloquium looked at the international and legal lessons to be learned from NATO's Kosovo conflict from the standpoint of jus ad belle concerns. In other words, consideration was given to issues relating to the conduct of hostilities, rather than the jus ad bellum questions regarding the legal justification of NATO's initiation of the air operation in Kosovo. A variety of scholars and practitioners participated in the colloquium including representatives from the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, the Center for National Security Law at the University of Virginia School of Law, Duke University of Law School, and the United States Naval War College, as well as all the branches of the U.S. military and military allies from NATO to Israel and even Sweden and Switzerland.

The opening remarks by Vice Admiral Arthur Cebrowski, then-President of the Naval War College, are insightful in two regards. First, unlike many postconflict conferences, Cebrowski notes this one is not focused on lessons learned, rather it is on lessons to be examined. The distinction is important in that only the future will show if the lessons have in fact been learned. Additionally, and probably more importantly, Cebrowski talks about the linkage information age and modern warfare. This nexus was first seen in the Gulf War and is now more in evidence in campaigns like Kosovo and Iraq war.

The information age has been characterized by three trends--networking, greater globalization and economic interdependence, and technology assimilation. Each of those trends, in turn, has enormous implications for societies and their militaries throughout the world. These changes have been analogized as significant as the change from the agricultural age to the machine or mechanical age.

Network-centric warfare most notable enables a shift from attrition-based warfare to a much faster effects-based warfighting style, characterized by operating inside an opponents decision loop by speed of command as well as by a change to the warfare's context or ecosystem. In theory, at least, the result may well be decisional paralysis.

It is forth noting here that network-centric warfare is the generational successor to what was called maneuver warfare in post-Cold war defense analysis. This movement, initially articulated by a group of young Turks in the Army and Marines in the late 1980's and early 1990's, challenged traditional military doctrine and standards and opened up the fields to extended discussion both within and outside the...