In the 1990’s, following its atrocities in Bosnia, Slobodan Milosevic’s Serb regime abolished Kosovo’s long-standing autonomy, suppressing the rights of the province’s overwhelming Albanian majority. Instead of simply watching in horror, as it did at the start of the Bosnian war, NATO decided to intervene before Milosevic’s forces could again devastate one of the constituent ethnic groups of the former Yugoslavia.
20世纪90年代，继在波斯尼亚实行暴力之后，米洛舍维奇政府又废除了科索沃长期以来的自治，并压迫在科索沃占绝大多数的阿尔巴尼亚人。和波斯尼亚战争一开始一样，北大西洋公约组织并没有恐惧地袖手旁观，而是在米洛舍维奇的军队再次摧毁前南斯拉夫又一个少数民族前进行了干涉。当时，二战后欧盟的安全及欧洲的道德责任受到了威胁。