NATO's air campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999 is first ever “humanitarian intervention” launched without prior authorization of UN Security Council. Though the bombing led by US eventually forced Mirocevic to pull out of Kosovo, it incurred fierce debates over its legality and legitimacy, and over its failure in preventing escalation of abuse of human rights during the campaign. Military wisdom of having resorted solely to air bombing was also challenged.
After September 11^th 2001 we have been witnessing fundamental changes taking place in the way force is used in international relations. The wars in Afghanistan and then in Iraq compels us to ponder upon a grave question. Can and should force replace diplomacy in dealing with regimes considered to be undemocratic and hostile to established norms and regulations?
Notwithstanding differences in political background NATO's armed intervention in Kosovo and the US-led war with Sadam's Iraq have one thing in common. In both cases military force was used in massive scale bypassing UN Security Council. Thus UN's role and authority as guardian of international peace and human rights has come to be seriously contested.
In this paper the author tried, by re-examining the political and military aspects of NATO's bombing operation, to draw lessons for building a security architecture which is more widely acceptable and yet better workable in the changed international environment.
The gist of lessons drawn is as follows;
(1) The UN Charter must be revised to give legality to legitimate humanitarian intervention. An independent committee should work out principled guidelines for legitimate intervention.
(2) Resort to force is to be considered only after other peaceful means have fully been exhausted. Use of force should be legitimatized solely by prior approval of UN.
(3) The UN organs, in particular Security Council, need to be reformed to enable a fair, quick and effective crisis management.
(4) Democratization and economic development are key to regional stability. EU's assistance to and future admittance of the whole of Balkan should be closely observed. It is a test case of proving that soft power rather than hard power plays vital a role in establishing a sustainable peace in regions traditionally vulnerable to chauvinistic nationalism and of war-ridden history.

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Which countries were considered as comprising “Eastern Europe?” Generally speaking, Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania are regarded as having belonged to Eastern Europe and, without a doubt, the concept of Eastern Europe as one region was grasped most easily in the era of the Cold War. However, even this conclusion is hasty. Yugoslavia never joined the Warsaw Pact and it was only a semi-member of COMECON, while Albania withdrew from the former in 1968 and from the latter in 1962. Even those people who think that “Eastern Europe” really did exist as an entire region are faced with the current dissolution of Eastern Europe because of the EU's eastward expansion.
Furthermore, the case of Kosovo illustrates the dissolution of Eastern Europe as one region. Kosovo was an autonomous province of Serbia, but because of human rights violations against the majority Albanian population of Kosovo by the Milosevic regime, from March to June 1999, NATO undertook air strikes not only in Kosovo, but also in Serbia proper. This was a clear example of infringement of Serbia's state sovereignty, both formally and substantively. After the fall of Milosevic, state-building in Kosovo is being undertaken by neither Serbia nor Eastern Europe, but by the international community. On 2 February, Martti Ahtisaari, the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General of the United Nations for the future status process of Kosovo, announced his Draft Comprehensive Proposal on the Kosovo Status Settlement. According to the draft, Kosovo can, in practice, obtain independence. Kosovo will be an independent state, although Serbia strongly opposes this. Neither Albanians, Serbs, people in neighboring countries, or even the international community imagine “Eastern Europe” as one region.
Nowadays, the EU member states in Eastern Europe are only interested in strengthening their political and economic relations within the EU and in building special relations with their eastern neighbors Russia and Ukraine. The non-EU member states of the region only desire EU membership. Moreover, the term “Eastern Europe” is closely connected with the memory of domination by the USSR. EU enlargement and Soviet connotations of “Eastern Europe, ” which cannot be detached from the term, ensure that Eastern Europe will no longer remain as a distinct region in the future.

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Yugoslavia disintegrated due to internal war in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. Six republics (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia) were newly born, and one more republic (Kosovo) is appearing. The warring party which participated in all three of the internal wars was the Serbs. In this paper, I reconstruct the process of these internal wars from the perspective of the Serbs. The international community considered Serbs, especially their leader, Slobodan Miloševic as an “evil, ” through a simple dichotomy, but Serbs always felt fear as a minority during the internal wars.
Generally speaking, when relations among ethnic groups are worsened, there will be a tendency for the minority to feel fear. Which factors will worsen interethnic relations? First of all, it is pointed to that a decline in the economy can deepen the cleavage among ethnic groups. Then, the security dilemma will function, especially when there is a certain pattern of demography, and/or interethnic history. Nevertheless, leadership will be needed when an ethnic minority makes a hostile action against the majority, even if the minority feels dissatisfaction, uneasiness, and fear.
Serbs were the largest ethnic group in Yugoslavia. According to the census in 1981, 36.3% of the total population was Serbs. Serbs were also the most powerful ethnic group in politics. Nevertheless, the Serbs had two problems in maintaining their power. Firstly, Serbs were an ethnic minority in some republics and autonomous regions which belonged to Serbia. In 1981, the proportion of Serbs was really 85.4% in Serbia (excluding two autonomous regions, Vojdodina, and Kosovo), and 54.4% in Vojvodina. However the proportion was 32.0% in Bosnia, 13.2% in Kosovo, 11.6% in Croatia, 3.3% in Montenegro, and 2.3% in Macedonia. Serbs in Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo would therefore drop from relative ethnic majority to minority when those areas became independent. Secondly, the ratio of Serbs in the population was decreasing year by year. The proportion of Serbs decreased from 14.2% to 12.2% in Croatia from 1971 to 1991, from 37.2% to 31.3% in Bosnia, and from 18.4% to 10.0% in Kosovo. In contrast to the Serbs, the proportion of Muslims in Bosnia increased from 39.6% to 43.7%, and the proportion of Albanians in Kosovo from 73.7% to 84.0%.
Serbs hoped to hinder the independence of the republics from Yugoslavia, but there were no mechanisms for mediation in the conflict between ethnic groups, and no leadership for resolving the ethnic conflict as had been provided by Josip Broz Tito. Particularly, the federal leaders could not use their power to support new leaders in the republics, because the latter obtained more democratic legitimacy through democratic elections in 1990. Serbs who wanted to maintain their status as an ethnic majority could only build their quasi-states, and attack the newly-born states.

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