Of course. Theyâre already attacking Europe.
American commitment to a ârules-based international orderâ is seen as doubtful by anyone with a memory span of longer than five minutes. The start of this century was dominated by US/NATO shredding the rules and intervening where they wanted with the attacks on Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. Anything the US now says about these âprinciplesâ is laughable.
Do you mean the bombing in Belgrade SERBIA, which was very much aimed at stopping yet another round of genocidal acts?
I would not remotely put US/NATO actions in the Balkans as the same as Afghanistan and Iraq. Really fucking awful shit was happening there, including acts of genocide (as has been ruled by the IOC). There were certainly major problems with western intervention into those conflicts (including major failures to protect civilians in Bosnia), but I still think that doing what they could to end the last war before it turned into another Bosnia was the right move. As a historian, I donât say that lightly either.
The US actions in Kosovo were a breakdown of the international order though, by going around the UN and invoking NATO instead â an alliance specifically meant to exclude Russia. It is very different from Iraq in that there was an actual reason for it, but there is also a reason Russia kept cynically referring to it in their pre-Ukraine invasions.
Personally it seems to me like the fracture was less the intervention under Clinton, and more when Bush unilaterally declared negotiations afterward could only end in Kosovar independence instead of actually negotiating. Itâs tough to tell at that point though, since that blurs right into Afghanistan and Iraq and the explicit attitude that superpower America makes its own rules. Thatâs obviously the big one â who knows how things would have gone otherwise. 
Yes, because Srebenica⌠or the YEARS long siege of Sarajevo⌠Iâd argue that not preventing an act of genocide was a much more serious breach of the international order⌠And honestly, since Putin was support of genocidal actions in the Balkans by backing a leader with genocidal aims because they happen to share an ethnicity, Iâm not sure that I care if he felt slighted by the unilateral actions. The reality is that the bombings in Serbia saved lives in Kosovo⌠I suspect had Kosovo NOT broken away that the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Albanians that had occurred over the course of the Socialist era would have continued under Serbian control.
Again, Iâm all for criticizing the US when it takes actions unilaterally, especially since the war on terror. But this conflict was going to drag on with thousands more dead had this action not been taken. 
Russia was probably not keen on stopping Milosevicâs attempted invasion of Kosovo, as they backed their claims over the region.
[ETA] Let me just add that even with the bombing, that the people who stopped the war and got Milosevic out of office were the Serbian people themselves, who came out on the streets to protest his actions. Itâs because of their bravery that the attempted invasion came to an end and Milosevic ended up on trial in the Hague.
Iâm less criticizing and more noting its place in things. After all, not everything about upholding the international order is actually good. Hereâs my cartoon version of how it looks to me:
Russia: the rules say listen to us and do nothing.
America: intervenes in Serbia anyway
âWhoa, is America actually putting human rights and preventing genocide above the rules then?â
America: invades Afghanistan, Iraq
âOh, I see, they just donât think rules apply to them.â
It would have been nice if it had instead led to a push for a better international order that took things like genocide seriously, but that got thrown away.
Sure, I agree with that. Just wanted to point out that Russia wasnât exactly a neutral party taking a principled stance on the conflicts. They had a partisan interest and just because they opposed the US doesnât make them the good guys there (or here now). This is a rare case of US interventionism being the right thing to do and Iâll stand by that position. Lives were saved by Clintonâs actions (and I say this with the knowledge that the peace has been a big pile of shit that didnât solve the underlying problems and are likely to explode again).
The problem was and remains more powerful nations treating everyone else like pawns on a chess board for their own ends (often in order to maintain a particular political and economic order - a capitalist one). That applies to both the US and to Russia (and to China as well), which Iâm sure youâre aware. That was the problem all through the Cold War, too - the Soviets worked to bring the global south under its orbit and did their part to destabilize the world as the US did, just without as much of a reach as the US had.
Precisely this- The US/NATO actions were taken in defiance of the UN, as part of a series of actions that said to the world âWho cares about international law, weâre powerful, and we do what we want to.â At the time, the whole thing was a political shift after the UN backed missions in Bosnia were not effective enough, but the response should have been to make the UN sanctioned response more effective, not undermine it completely, and end up with another frozen conflict and more ethnic cleansing happening in the Kosovo region.
This has had disastrous consequences that weâre living through right now.
Like I said the last time this came up- When NATO started bombing, the violence in Kosovo intensified and more killing happened on the ground, which only stopped when there was military occupation and a peacekeeping force to separate the two sides. Weâre now left with a frozen conflict with no prospect of peace,where people have retreated to ethnic enclaves. As interventions go, it wasnât a great success.
Which I just agreed with. But that doesnât mean letting an ethnic cleansing happen would have been the right move.
I do reject the notion that the only actions that mattered was what the US/NATO did and that theyâre the only ones responsible for what was happening on the ground. Both the Serb forces and KLA made choices and they are responsible for their actions, too.
Would another round of genocide been better?
I think we can agree that the peace has been fucked, but continued hostilities would have been much worse.
Of course- Every side in that conflict shares some responsibility for the outcome. Literally everyone shares some blame over what happened to the civilian population in the region, while at the same time, there isnât one course of action that would have fixed everything. If anything I focus on the actions of NATO in this situation because Iâm (a)- linking it to the rest of this thread and talking about how their unilateralism has undermined the international order with the consequences we see today and (b)- I live in a NATO country that claims to be democratic, what holds a permanent UN security council seat, so of course I criticise them and hold them accountable.
Yeah⌠me too.
Iâll agree with you that the peace has not been great, but primarily because it backed the ethnic worldview bullshit. But the fact that the UN spectacularly failed in Bosnia and because of that, there were acts of genocide, meant that it was highly unlikely that they were going to do anything different in Kosovo. In a situation with no good answers, heading off more acts of genocide was a victory for humanity at the time. And, no, it doesnât excuse unilateral actions elsewhere (or the lack of actions in other places), but we shouldnât dismiss US actions in this case, just because itâs America⌠Sometimes, nuance is really called for.
