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My question stems from the NATO campaign in Serbia in the 90s, a campaign that resulted in the bombing of marketplaces and hospitals, and in the destabilisation of the power grid.

I could not find any NATO general charged for war crimes in the past twenty years, nor any opinion piece or similar providing evidences or proof that those bombings may be considered war crimes. Does this mean that NATO attacks have always been deemed legal?

In the conclusions from the report of the Committee Established to Review the NATO Bombing Campaign Against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia it is mentioned that

election of certain objectives for attack may be subject to legal debate.

Has this legal debate ever been brought forward?

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    How would an opinion piece "prove" whether a bombing was a war crime or not? Opinion piece are just that: opinions. They have no legal weight in either direction.
    – F1Krazy
    Commented Oct 25, 2022 at 16:13
  • @F1Krazy good question.
    – EarlGrey
    Commented Oct 25, 2022 at 16:14
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    Can we not close the question? I am not sure if it was asked in good faith or not, but it surely is relevant amidst all the brouhaha and whataboutism used to justify Russian activities in Ukraine to track how related events have been reviewed at the UN in the past. Serbia and Kosovo are favorite ploys there. Stan's answer does a good job indicating that it was not considered a war crime by the assessors. Closing it seems like the question is "uncovering hidden facts".
    – Italian Philosophers 4 Monica
    Commented Oct 25, 2022 at 20:03
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    I’m voting to close this question because of the "more heat than light" I judge this to be not a good faith effort, but an attempt to provoke argument.
    – James K
    Commented Oct 25, 2022 at 21:48

2 Answers 2

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Let's complete the citation that is present in the question because seems lacking some context:

Selection of certain objectives for attack may be subject to legal debate. On the basis of the information reviewed, however, the committee is of the opinion that neither an in-depth investigation related to the bombing campaign as a whole nor investigations related to specific incidents are justified. In all cases, either the law is not sufficiently clear or investigations are unlikely to result in the acquisition of sufficient evidence to substantiate charges against high level accused or against lower accused for particularly heinous offences.

So basically the document recommends against in depth investigation and concludes that such an investigation likely will not bring any results. Hence there is nothing to "bring forward" from this exactly debate. If anything was ever investigated, then because of other reasons, debates and initiatives.

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    " If anything was ever investigated, then because of other reasons, debates and initiatives." can you elaborate a bit on "other"?
    – EarlGrey
    Commented Oct 25, 2022 at 16:57
  • Regarding context, what about the passage The committee must note, however, that when the OTP requested NATO to answer specific questions about specific incidents, the NATO reply was couched in general terms and failed to address the specific incidents. ? How would you read it, if instead of NATO was the Chinese Army, or the Talibans?
    – EarlGrey
    Commented Oct 26, 2022 at 6:33
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    To be honest, this reads much more as "the US won't collaborate with this investigation, and we have no means to force it to do it, so opening an investigation is pointless" than "we don't think anything foul happened". The whole report was closed with "sure, there's been war crimes but the US pays more than 50% of our budget, so shut up".
    – Rekesoft
    Commented Oct 26, 2022 at 6:49
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    To be honest, a question with that much context hidden looks very much like a push question.
    – Stančikas
    Commented Oct 26, 2022 at 6:51
  • @Stančikas I do not understand what you mean with hidden context. There is the entire report linked, clearly I expect from the answerers to have skimmed through it, additionally if you have other publications or opinions on the topic, feel free to link them.
    – EarlGrey
    Commented Oct 28, 2022 at 11:15
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There is a bit of mismatch between the two questions, one in the title and one in the body of the question.

There has been a review, and it is the report linked in the question itself. However the report is heavily debated, one may follow the debate by looking after the publication "The ICTY prosecutor and the review of the NATO bombing campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia" (Benvenuti, 2001) and the academic papers citing it (which are 138, according to Google Scholars).

Main point of the paper here linked are the followings:

The author analyses the report on the NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, prepared by the Review Committee created by the ICTY’s Prosecutor, and observes that the recommendation that no investigation be commenced because ‘either the law is not sufficiently clear or investigations are unlikely to result in the acquisition of sufficient evidence’ appears prima facie questionable.

Unbalanced evidence on which the Committee’s statements are founded and by the restriction of the collateral damages of the campaign to the civilian casualties.

The Committee’s assessment of general issues (damage to environment, legality of weapons, target selection, proportionality) [...] deviates from well-established ICTY case law.

The Committee’s assessment of specific incidents is also characterized by shortcomings: inter alia, the report frequently slips from the level of individual criminal responsibility to that of state responsibility.

So there is no proof that the legal debate has been brought forward, but there is some (peer-reviewed) discussion on the topic.

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