The causes of the Kosovo war and of NATO intervention against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia: a preliminary exploration of Yugoslav and USA declassified political and military documents

For almost a quarter of a century, a central question still animates the debate inside and outside academia: why did NATO intervene against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia? In this research proposal I address this and its correlated questions by using declassified Yugoslav and USA political and military archival documents, after having preliminarily consulted them.

I advance the working hypothesis that the historical events around the Kosovo war should be conceptually reframed. That means that the escalating crisis between the West and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, that led to the NATO intervention in March 1999, whilen being pressed by evident humanitarian reasons, should be put in a larger context of stabilization of the Balkans. The West, after having stopped the proxy wars of Milosevic in 1995 with the Dayton peace agreements and being faced by an incumbent crisis in Kosovo in 1998, decided to put under pressure the autocratic regime in Belgrade.

While Milosevic’s goal was the perpetuation of his power exploiting belligerent Serbian nationalism, the goal of the West was the democratization of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The available archival sources give us evidence to overcome the conflicting historical interpretations, offering a new paradigm of interpretation.