When is the use of force for humanitarian purposes legitimate? The book examines this question through one of the most controversial examples of humanitarian intervention in the post-Cold War period: the 1999 NATO intervention in Kosovo. In the face of contemporary problems of legitimacy and justification, this book offers a deep engagement with developments at the intersection of Habermasian communicative ethics and international relations. The result is a set of rigorous normative guidelines - the 'communicative imperatives' - intended for application in analyses of the process and...