ABSTRACT
This chapter examines all the United Nations Security Council debates on the Kosovo crisis, providing an in-depth study of the legitimation of NATO’s military intervention in Yugoslavia in 1999. This is a “crucial” case study for legalization in that the invocation of international law for legitimating purposes is least expected – i.e. it would have been easier for the supporters of the intervention to embed it in another legitimacy discourse (namely, morality). Contrary to much of the literature on the Kosovo intervention, this chapter shows that, despite its relative unsuitability, international law was the predominant frame of reference during interstate debates. This is precisely the expectation for a legalized legitimacy system, where the agents of legitimation have no choice but to build their legitimation strategies on the normative structure of international law.
