The 1949 Washington Treaty expressly established the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as a mutual defense pact under Article 51 in Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter. Chapter VIII of the U.N. Charter empowers the Security Council to delegate peacekeeping to regional organizations which must then report on measures taken while subject to U.N. oversight. U.N. peacekeeping in Bosnia involved not only members of NATO, but also Russia and other Eastern European states party to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

Before undertaking military action in Iraq and elsewhere the U.S. had first obtained Security Council resolutions authorizing use of "all necessary means." Germany did not want to set a precedent for unauthorized NATO action, but did not prevent the allied consensus to threaten bombing.

The President's advisers now wanted NATO to exercise independent peacekeeping authority without submitting to the Charter obligations in Chapter VIII. "Secretary of Defense William Cohen said in June, 1998, that the U.S. took the position that NATO would not need a U.N. Security Council authorization to intervene in Kosovo."34 "Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbot agreed: ". . . [W]e must be careful not to subordinate NATO to any other international body or compromise the integrity of its command structure. We will try to act in concert with other organizations, and with respect for their principles and purposes. But the Alliance must reserve the right and the freedom to act when its members, by consensus, deem it necessary."35

National Security Adviser Berger concluded that several of NATO’s 19 members so opposed ground troops that an air campaign was the only possible consensus approach. Combat decision-making might become a problem for the U.S. if all NATO members had to agree on bombing targets. U.S. General Wesley Clark the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR), might have less freedom of action over Yugoslavia than General Schwartzkopf enjoyed in the U.N. approved Gulf War. The only way to circumvent a Russian veto in the Security Council would be a "Uniting for Peace Resolution" adopted by the General Assembly. The allies had so little prospect of winning an Assembly majority, that U.N. approval of air strikes appeared impossible. By using NATO as its agent, the U.S. could still affirm multilateral principles while avoiding the legal/political sin of unilateral intervention.

Contents