Commentary: Kosovo and the Responsibility of Power

Abstract

The bombing of Kosovo was a crude manifestation of a clash of immanent world-views. The negative of a pre-1945 horizontal and bilateral international structure by a post-1945 vertical and multilateral structure is beginning to produce a new structure, a structure of international social order, a third dimension which contains and surpasses the other two. The International Court, itself an institutional relic of an horizontal and bilateral world, is not well placed to assert social responsibility over the arrogant public-realm power which is being wielded in the name of international social order.