Dette omdannes til lejligheden til et angrebsforbund, der blander sig i en konflikt, som ligger uden for alliancens geografiske område. Jugoslavien har aldrig været en del af NATO 's område.
NATO was a purely defensive alliance to begin with and has been converted for this particular conflict into an offensive alliance which is intervening outside its geographical sphere of action, since Yugoslavia has never fallen within the ambit of NATO.