Twenty-five years ago, NATO launched an air campaign to stop ethnic cleansing by Serbian forces against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, then a province of Serbia in the former Yugoslavia. It was the first humanitarian intervention of its kind, and it was spearheaded by the United States.
The intervention started after Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic refused to sign a deal for interim broad autonomy for Kosovo. The air campaign lasted 78 days until June 10, 1999. The United Nations Security Council did not back the intervention, and critics say it was a violation of international law.
Reflecting on those events and their repercussions,…
