"But we acted pre-emptively in Kosovo in 1999 to stop Milosevic from doing what he was doing and increasingly doing the ethnic cleansing in a systematic way"
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“Pre-emptively” is doing a lot of diplomatic heavy lifting here. Lord Robertson is defending NATO’s 1999 intervention in Kosovo by framing it as moral urgency rather than geopolitical choice: action before catastrophe, not aggression after provocation. The phrasing turns a controversial precedent - bombing without explicit UN Security Council authorization - into a kind of ethical reflex. If you move first, the argument goes, you’re not escalating; you’re preventing.
Notice the careful vagueness of “what he was doing and increasingly doing.” It’s a rhetorical telescoping: the specifics of Milosevic’s campaign are simultaneously invoked and blurred, allowing the listener to supply the worst images while sparing the speaker from litigating details. Then comes the anchoring term, “ethnic cleansing,” hardened further by “systematic.” That combination isn’t incidental; it’s designed to foreclose the usual counter-questions about sovereignty, proportionality, or whether diplomacy had been exhausted. Systematic evil demands systematic response.
The context is a post-Cold War NATO searching for a mission that could sound like collective security rather than residual power. Robertson’s intent is to normalize intervention as responsibility, not exception - to make Kosovo a model case where legality and legitimacy don’t perfectly align, but legitimacy wins. The subtext is also defensive: Kosovo remains the argument critics cite when they warn about humanitarian rhetoric becoming a blank check. He’s insisting this wasn’t a blank check; it was a stop button.
Notice the careful vagueness of “what he was doing and increasingly doing.” It’s a rhetorical telescoping: the specifics of Milosevic’s campaign are simultaneously invoked and blurred, allowing the listener to supply the worst images while sparing the speaker from litigating details. Then comes the anchoring term, “ethnic cleansing,” hardened further by “systematic.” That combination isn’t incidental; it’s designed to foreclose the usual counter-questions about sovereignty, proportionality, or whether diplomacy had been exhausted. Systematic evil demands systematic response.
The context is a post-Cold War NATO searching for a mission that could sound like collective security rather than residual power. Robertson’s intent is to normalize intervention as responsibility, not exception - to make Kosovo a model case where legality and legitimacy don’t perfectly align, but legitimacy wins. The subtext is also defensive: Kosovo remains the argument critics cite when they warn about humanitarian rhetoric becoming a blank check. He’s insisting this wasn’t a blank check; it was a stop button.
Quote Details
| Topic | Human Rights |
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