When I was in grad school in the mid-aughts, one Professor was a die-hard supporter of George W. Bush’s foreign policy. When challenged over the legality of Iraq, he noted that it is inconsistent for any liberal to oppose the invasion of Iraq while supporting the NATO intervention in Kosovo. Both were ostensibly in support of humanitarian goals, and neither received UN Security Council authorization, rendering them illegal.

This may be less of a dilemma now that restraint has become a buzz-word among Democratic foreign policy circles and liberal internationalists seem few and far between. But it is relevant to those mustering a response to Donald Trump’s war against Iran. If it is illegitimate, does that mean other military interventions were as well? If not, what is the difference?

The Kosovo intervention and R2P

Others have made this comparison. But Kosovo may have been on my mind because I read about it each semester. I assign Kofi Annan’s Interventions in my introduction to international relations class, and we read his take on Kosovo for the lecture on the use of force.

As he discusses, Slobodan Milosevic, the genocidal leader of what was then Yugoslavia, began conducting another campaign against Albanians in the Kosovo region seeking independence. Attempts to organize a UN intervention were blocked by Russia on the Security Council. Annan issued a call for international action, emphasizing that the “rights of sovereign states to noninterference in their internal affairs could not override the rights of individuals to freedom from gross and systematic abuses of their human rights.”

If Kosovo was legitimate, does that make this war legitimate?

Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy to the Balkans, organized an observer mission through the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. This mission verified the brutal acts against the Kosovar people, but did little to catalyze UNSC action. The US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright then organized a NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.

Annan agreed with the US about Milosevic’s “failure…to comply with the demands of the international community” but also noted his preference for the UN to authorize all military force. He then began working towards acceptance of the “Responsibility to Protect,” what he described as a “developing international norm in favor of intervention to protect civilians from wholesale slaughter,” which he saw as a challenge to the sovereignty concerns that were raised in response to interventions such as Kosovo. It was codified in a 2005 resolution that called on member states to protect their populations from deprivation and violence; if they failed to do that, the international community had a responsibility to do it for them.

Iran and Kosovo

The West, and liberal internationalists, celebrated Kosovo. I remember cheering it as a high schooler. And as I express opposition to Trump’s war on Iran I remember my Professor’s argument. If Kosovo was legitimate, does that make this war legitimate?

One can see some parallels. Iran’s government was committing mass murder against its people, with at least 10,000 dead in about a month. This follows a pattern of widespread government violence against political dissidents, with particular repression directed towards women and religious minorities. So the Iranian government was committing atrocities against its people; R2P demanded an international response. And if the UN Security Council would not act—which it never would thanks to Russia’s veto—then the United States must act on its own to uphold the norm of R2P.

However, the similarity ends there. The Kosovo intervention was not just a sudden, unilateral bombing campaign. It was preceded by a UN debate over Yugoslavia’s actions, and a fact-finding mission. It was followed by intensive, multi-lateral diplomacy to compel Yugoslavia to stop its assault on Kosovo and allow Kosovo to break away.

Trump could have gained some legitimacy for this war if he had worked in concert with allies and made a diplomatic push in the UN. Ironically, those are the aspects of US foreign policy that the Trump Administration has cut or ignored.

Trump’s war on Iran demonstrates none of these features. There were negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, but it was unclear how seriously Trump was taking this since he previously pulled out of a negotiated agreement. And he claimed to have destroyed Iran’s nuclear capabilities during strikes last year. At times Trump’s major concern seemed to be Iran’s treatment of protesters. So the goal was unclear.

Rather than being a last resort after it was clear the UN wouldn’t act—as with Kosovo—Trump seemed primed to attack Iran from the beginning of this crisis. And there wasn’t even an attempt at international observersation of the situation; Iran likely would have refused them access, but that would at least tell us something.

How to make interventions legitimate

Obviously, the ideal situation is an intervention that has UN Security Council authorization. Given the state of the world that is unlikely. The next best situation is one in which the intervention follows concerted diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis and objective assessment of the facts on the ground. This lacks narrow legal legitimacy but is arguably in line with the UN-approved R2P.

Trump could have gained some legitimacy for this war if he had worked in concert with allies and made a diplomatic push in the UN. Ironically, those are the aspects of US foreign policy that the Trump Administration has cut or ignored.