NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia was justified. NATO violated the United
Nations Charter - but nations have used armed force so often that the
ban on non-defensive use of force has been cast into doubt. Dangerous
cracks in the international legal order have surfaced - widened,
ironically, by the UN Security Council itself, which has ridden
roughshod over the Charter's ban on intervention. Yet nations remain
hopelessly divided on what the rules should be. An unplanned
geopolitical order has thus emerged - posing serious dilemmas for
American policy-makers in a world where intervention will be judged more
by wisdom than by law.