Miroslav Baros

International Law and Yugoslav Conflicts Miroslav Baros

This book analyses the international response to the Yugoslav conflicts from a legal perspective. It examines several episodes of international involvement in the crisis. The research covers the period from early 1980s, when the international financial institutions conditioned their financial help to the former Yugoslavia, to the conclusion and implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreements, the subsequent NATO intervention in the FRY and the Macedonian conflict that developed in the wake of the intervention. The starting point in the analysis is the writer's conviction that international law consists of a set of rules determining relations among states and non-states actors, as opposed to the perception of the law as authoritative decision-making processes. Because of this perception of international law, there is a pervasive insistence on stricter and consistent application of the law to the conflicts. It is argued that, during the resolution of the crisis, law was circumvented for the sake of short-term political benefits.