Garcevic Publishes OpEd on 1999 NATO Yugoslavia Intervention
Ambassador Vesko Garcevic, Professor of the Practice of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, published an Op-Ed on the 1999 NATO intervention in Yugoslavia and its implications for global affairs.
Amb. Garcevic’s Op-Ed, entitled “NATO’s Intervention Changed Western-Russian Relations Forever,” was published in Balkan Insight on March 22, 2019 and in the Eurasia Review on March 25, 2019.
From the text of the article:
Legally doubtful, the NATO intervention was justified as the only way to end a humanitarian crisis. However, its humanitarian character did not end the controversy. Interpretations of the intervention revolve around two opposite set of arguments. For some, it was “a criminal act, an aggression against a sovereign country and its people”; for others, it was a just war launched to stop a humanitarian tragedy.
In retrospect, the Russian veto in 1999 was a turning point in Russia’s relations with the West. This policy shift paved the way to the more confrontational Russia that we know today.March 1999 was a litmus test for Russia’s foreign policy interests and for its sense of honour… The first challenge was NATO’s 50th anniversary summit in Washington in April, which welcomed three former Warsaw Pact states, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary, into the Atlantic alliance. Only 10 days later, the alliance launched its intervention against Russia’s will. If Moscow saw NATO as a challenge before 1999, since those events, Russia has made it clear that it views NATO expansion as a security threat.
During his diplomatic career, Amb. Vesko Garcevic dealt with issues pertinent to European security and NATO for almost 14 years. In 2004, he was posted in Vienna to serve as Ambassador to Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He had been a Montenegro’s Ambassador to NATO from 2010 until 2014 and served as a Montenegro’s National Coordinator for NATO from 2015 until he joined the faculty at the Pardee School.