Croatia | Was Operation Storm Legal?

On 4 August 1995, Croatia launched a huge military offensive - Operation Storm - to retake control of the breakaway Republic of Serbian Krajina, the RSK. Over quarter of a century later, the anniversary of the Operation has become a controversial and highly divisive annual event in the Balkans. While Croats celebrate it as Victory Day, the day when then their “Homeland War“ - the Croatian War of Independence - was won and their quest for full sovereignty and independence finally realised, Serbs regard it as a moment for national mourning, an occasion when hundreds of thousands of ethnic Serbs were ethnically cleansed from their ancestral homelands. More generally, the operation still raises important questions about how countries use military force to retake secessionist territories. So, how should we regard Operation Storm? Hello and welcome! My name is James Ker-Lindsay. Here I take an informed look at International Relations with a focus on territorial conflicts, secession, independenc