Day: October 19, 2012
A step in the right direction
So Dačić and Thaçi have met in Lady Ashton’s office in Brussels. The world has barely noticed. That’s the good news. While their domestic oppositions may criticize the two prime ministers (of Serbia and Kosovo, respectively) for “giving in” to each other, no one else thinks this meeting is really a big deal. They may not have shaken hands, but they have taken a quiet step towards normalizing relations.
That is what the European Union has rightly insisted on. Ashton deserves credit for pulling this meeting off, so far as I know as a surprise. I find myself in comfortable agreement with my professor colleagues Ognjen Pribićević and Predrag Simić, former Serbian ambassadors in Berlin and Paris respectively. The meeting is important symbolically and will reduce the tension between Belgrade and Brussels. There is still a long road ahead, at the end of which Serbia will have to choose between the EU and Kosovo. This is a first step in the right direction.
The question is whether there is more in than that. I suspect so. The EU has made it clear in recent days that Serbia cannot expect to hold on to part of Kosovo. Dačić has implicitly, if not explicitly, accepted this EU condition in meeting with Thaçi, whose commitment to Kosovo’s territorial integrity is not to be doubted. President Nikolić and Aleksander Vučić, defense and deputy prime minister, must be enjoying putting their coalition partner Dačić out front on an issue that has little upside in Serbian politics.
What did Thaçi give? Implicitly if not explicitly he has I trust agreed to discuss north Kosovo with Belgrade. This is very much the right thing to do. There can be no resolution of the situation there without cooperation from Belgrade in the reintegration process, which will have to be carefully planned and implemented. But there are those in Pristina who prefer to use north Kosovo has a bludgeon rather than get it resolved, so Thaçi will no doubt get some flak for moving ahead.
I trust Washington contributed something to this effort, if only encouraging Thaçi. I suspect it may also have had a hand in the strange high-profile visit of Clint Williamson to Belgrade earlier this week. He is the American the EU has named to lead an investigation of crimes against Serbs, including alleged involvement of Thaçi. That enabled the Belgrade’s political leaders to pose as protectors of the Serbs just before the meeting with Thaçi.
Kosovo and Serbia still have a long way to go. It is my hope that they can develop the habit of helping each other get over the bumps in the road. That will require a lot more effort from both Brussels and Washington, both of which should be gratified to see that their tough stance on partition has bent Belgrade in the right direction.
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Follow the money
The real difference between the candidates on foreign policy issues is not what they say they would do but what they want to fund, which ultimately affects what whoever is elected can do. The Ryan budget proposal, which Romney has said he backs, cuts international affairs spending by almost 10% in 2013 and close to a quarter by 2016 while funding a giant military buildup (on top of the buildup that has occurred since 9/11). Obama does not propose cuts to military spending, but he is trying to keep it below previously projected levels. His “international affairs” budget proposal for 2013 would keep that category more or less at current levels, taking inflation into account.
The consequences of this difference between the candidates for American foreign policy are dramatic. We are already overusing our highly competent, effective and expensive military forces. In Iraq and Afghanistan, they often substituted for far cheaper, but unavailable, civilians: the military provided not only humanitarian aid, which it is required to do in “non-permissive” environments, but also development and state-building assistance. I won’t be surprised if the U.S. military (along with the paramilitary parts of CIA) now has more foreign assistance money available than USAID. The Ryan budget proposal, if adopted, would dramatically increase reliance on the U.S. military for non-military aid, statebuilding, international law enforcement and other fundamentally civilian tasks.
This is not smart. At well over $1 million per deployed soldier (counting support and infrastructure costs), the U.S. military is a fabulously expensive way of getting things done. Relying on it for civilian tasks is the international equivalent of relying on emergency rooms for routine medical care. You may get it done, but only at a far higher price than providing the same care in doctors’ offices or community clinics.
The supposedly business-savvy Governor Romney is suggesting both health care in emergency rooms and use of our armed forces when civilians might suffice. Moreover, experience indicates that the existence of a strong military instrument without equally strong civilian instruments will get us into wars that we might otherwise avoid: need I mention Iraq? If anyone doubts whether our military has been thinking ahead to Iran, this map should be instructive:
I do not mean to suggest, as many of those publishing this map do, that we would be better off without these military installations. Clearly they lend credibility to the threat of force that will be essential if ever there is a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear problem. And if diplomacy fails, the military option needs to be on the table.
But it is hard for me to imagine that we spend more 1 one-thousandth of the cost of these bases on the diplomatic effort with Iran. We may in fact spend significantly less. That means that a 1 one-thousandth chance of a diplomatic solution is worth pursuing. I would put the real odds of diplomatic success at more like 50/50 or maybe 25/75. Someone on the right might say the odds are 1/10. But what Ryan and Romney are proposing is that we cut the diplomatic effort and increase the military push. Does that make financial sense?
I hasten to note that Romney has also made some sensible proposals to use American foreign assistance money more effectively by focusing on rule of law and establishing conditions for successful private initiative. The trouble is there won’t be any money in the government kitty to do those things if he is elected and the Ryan budget adopted.
Iran is the odd problem these days. It may require a military solution, but that is unusual. China as a currency manipulator does not. Even Russia as a geopolitical threat, if you think it one, requires diplomacy more than military mobilization. George W. Bush, no retiring violet, did not try to respond militarily to Russia when it went to war with Georgia, a country he wanted to get into NATO. The list of problems not amenable to military solution is long: Pakistan’s drift toward extremism, Afghanistan’s corrupt government, the stalled Middle East peace process. It is striking that the international community is busy mobilizing an exclusively military response to Islamist extremism in Mali, where a more balanced approach that emphasizes local community economic development would be far more likely to succeed.
I know it won’t happen, but this is what the two candidates should be asked at the debate: given the strains on the U.S. military, what would you do to strengthen America’s civilian instruments of foreign policy and how are those priorities reflected in your budget proposals?
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