Day: May 1, 2013
Inviolability is like beauty
Unwilling to pledge adherence if a referendum on the Belgrade/Pristina normalization agreement fails, the Serbian opposition and its allies in northern Kosovo are instead going to court.
This is a smart move. A referendum would have be likely to show majority support for the agreement in Serbia, where people are far more concerned about jobs and the economy than political arrangements for a relatively small number of Serbs in northern Kosovo. The popular Deputy Prime Minister Vucic and his coalition partner Prime Minister Dacic are solidly in favor of the agreement they negotiated.
I am not a lawyer, but it is not difficult to anticipate at least part of the case the opposition will make. Article 8 (Territory and Border) of the 2006 Serbian constitution reads:
The territory of the Republic of Serbia is inseparable and indivisible.
The border of the Republic of Serbia is inviolable and may be altered in a procedure applied to amend the Constitution.
Part of the preamble reads:
Considering also that the Province of Kosovo and Metohija is an integral part of the territory of Serbia, that it has the status of a substantial autonomy within the sovereign state of Serbia and that from such status of the Province of Kosovo and Metohija follow constitutional obligations of all state bodies to uphold and protect the state interests of Serbia in Kosovo and Metohija in all internal and foreign political relations.
Let’s leave aside the fact that this constitution was only passed because Kosovo Albanian names were not counted on the voting list, thus enabling the constitutional referendum to meet the requirement that 50% of registered voters participate. That’s true but likely irrelevant seven years after the fact. Does the normalization agreement alter the “inviolable” border of the Republic of Serbia, which seems to require an amendment to the constitution?
Inviolability, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. The normalization agreement certainly provides for the reintegration of the judicial, police and electoral systems of northern Kosovo into those of the Pristina-based institutions, which are outside Belgrade’s authority. It also implies that Kosovo is an independent and sovereign state that will proceed on the path to the European Union independent of Serbia. Belgrade has also agreed to an EU-invented border/boundary regime that is normally practiced only at an international border.
Still, the normalization agreement does not alter the Serbian border. The Serbs in Kosovo will govern themselves at the municipal level and participate in an association of Serb municipalities. They can receive assistance from Belgrade. I can imagine a court decision that simply confirms that the border has not changed. I can also imagine a court decision that declares the agreement in violation of the constitution. And then there are all those in-between possibilities: a decision not to decide for procedural reasons, a decision that the court is not competent to rule on matters of this sort….
Any judicial process will take time. If the Serbian government does what it is now saying it will do, implementation of the agreement will come well before a court decision, fait accompli. Delaying implementation to see how things will turn out would put at risk Belgrade’s big prize: the date for EU accession talks to begin. Dacic and Vucic won’t want to do that. Most of Serbia’s citizens won’t either.
So implementation will proceed. Those who take this case to court run the risk of winning so late that it makes no difference. But if they win it will mean that Serbia’s eventual entry into the European Union will require, as many of us have suspected, a constitutional amendment. That’s hard to picture, but not long ago it was hard to picture meetings between Dacic and Thaci. Inviolability, like beauty, may not last forever.
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The Americans are coming
President Obama, bless his heart, is sending John Kerry off to Moscow next week to convince the Russians that something needs to be done about Syria’s use of chemical weapons. Yesterday’s leak that the President is considering supplying weapons directly to the opposition is presumably intended to strengthen Kerry’s hand in what must be an uphill push.
The smart money is betting the Russians won’t budge. I’m not so certain, but in any event Obama is doing the right thing to pursue them. He may eventually have to act without Russian concurrence, in order to maintain American credibilty in the eyes of the Iranian and North Korean regimes. But it would be far better reach a political accommodation that ends the Asad regime with the Russians on board, so as not to endanger their cooperation in the nuclear talks with Iran or the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Obama needs Moscow for both.
Kerry’s push could get some help from unexpected quarters. Missiles were fired yesterday at a Russian civil aircraft flying over Syria. There is no reason to believe the opposition has the capability to target aircraft at an altitude anywhere near 9000 feet. If they did, they would surely use the capability against the Syrian air force. The Russians were already busy denying that they were urging Hizbollah to withdraw from Syria. Someone in Moscow has to be scratching his head and asking if Russia is on the right side in Syria.
Russia need not change its mind and come over to the opposition. Great powers rarely do that. Russia wants to convince the world it is again a great power. A wink and a nod would suffice. That’s what Moscow did in Kosovo in 1999. The UN Security Council resolution legalizing that intervention passed after the war.
The really vital interest for Russia in Syria is to avoid a Sunni extremist takeover, which Moscow fears would infect its restive Muslim population in places like Chechnya and Dagestan. Here Obama and Putin are in the same sinking boat. What they’ve done so far has increased the likelihood of an extremist takeover in Syria, not decreased it. If Russia is serious about dealing a blow against jihad in Syria, it is becoming eminently clear that Bashar al Asad is not the guy to do it.
The Russians do not believe that Asad has used chemical weapons. I trust Kerry will be going to Moscow with a gaggle of intel analysts in tow to make the case. It will not be easy. The Russians don’t trust anything we say. Our record, from the Tonkin Gulf to weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, is not a great one. Let’s leave aside “Remember the Maine!”
But I think there is good reason to believe chemical weapons have been used in Syria, likely to test our reaction to their use. If we don’t react, they’ll be used a bit more, slowly erasing that (red) line in the sand.
Obama might like to just ignore the challenge, as chemical weapons are no better at killing people than conventional arms and a good deal more difficult to handle. That’s where Iran and North Korea come in. If he fails to react to Syria’s use of chemical weapons, how will he convince Tehran or Pyongyang that there is a credible threat of military action against their nuclear programs? That threat is vital to any possibility of diplomatic success with either of them.
This gloomy picture could change dramatically if Moscow decides it has bet on the wrong horse and decides to abandon Asad. It’s not likely, but it’s highly desirable. Obama and Kerry are right to try.
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