The US, EU and Kosovo: can they sync up?

Here are the speaking notes for the talk I gave this morning under the auspices of KIPRED in Pristina, Ambassador Lulzim Peci presiding:

1. It’s great to be back in Pristina, and an enormous privilege to talk with you here at the Swiss Diamond, though I hope next time to have a Marriott at our disposal as well. Don’t tell your foreign minister I said that!

2. I’d like to discuss with you the triangle that has so often driven progress in the Balkans in general and in Kosovo in particular: the US, the EU and of course you.

3. When those three are in sync, nothing stops us. When they are out of sync, little progress is made on big issues, including those that can threaten peace and stability.

4. Let me start with the US. Its circumstances have changed dramatically since the 1990s and early 2000s, when relatively small American interventions—military and diplomatic—ended and prevented wars in the Balkans, including the 2001 conflict in Macedonia.

5. That was the unipolar moment, when Yeltsin’s Russia was on the ropes and China had not yet started to show its financial muscle.

6. In the 1990s, the US was not yet tired of playing the role of global policeman and it was confident of its own strong democratic tradition.

7. The 17 years since 9/11 have changed that. The attack on the World Trade Center prompted a justified US invasion of Afghanistan and an unjustified US invasion of Iraq, both of which seemed to go well at first but bogged down into quagmires that sapped American finances, strength and confidence.

8. Now we live in a multi-polar world, one in which President Putin is trying to reassert Moscow’s claim to great power status and President Xi doesn’t even have to try.

9. The financial crisis of 2008 sent the world’s economy into a tailspin. Though the American recovery was relatively steady and even fast compared to Europe’s, a large portion of the relatively uneducated, white, male working population still hasn’t recovered.

10. It was their discontent, especially in the Midwest, that led to President Trump’s election in 2016. He lacked a majority of the popular vote but gained a modest margin in the electoral college, which gives less populous states greater weight in determining who wins the presidency.

11. The Trump Administration is not a conservative one: it has abandoned a central conservative tenet—concern about the budget deficit—in favor of a massive tax cut for the wealthy and an unprecedented boost in military spending as well as sharply increased military activities focused on Islamic extremism, especially in the Middle East and Africa.

12. It has also been sometimes belligerent towards North Korea and always towards, while abandoning both the Trans-Pacific and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnerships and throwing down the gauntlet on trade and investment as a challenge, especially to China.

13. The Administration’s initial hostility towards NATO has been corrected, but the President has little use for the EU, whose sharing of responsibilities is anathema to an America First attitude.

14. I need only mention briefly that the Administration is also preoccupied with a series of dramatic scandals that involve Russian tampering in the US election, the President’s many sexual affairs, and his financial and other legal improprieties. This is a confused White House under siege.

15. As a consequence, Trump focuses on keeping his big money donors and his white working-class base happy. He explicitly states that he has no interest in how others govern themselves and has warmed to autocrats like Presidents Duterte, Putin, Xi, and Sisi.

16. The kind of liberal democracy “of the people, by the people and for the people” that many in Kosovo aspire to is under threat in America and out of fashion in much of the rest of the world, as ethnic nationalists and kleptocratic elites feel unconstrained by Trump.

17. So you shouldn’t be surprised when I say that the Balkans and their governance failures are one of the last things on minds in Washington. Even if he is married to a Slovene, President Trump hasn’t spent more than a few minutes on the Balkans since taking office.

18. Instead, career officials in the State and Defense Departments have thankfully kept US Balkans policy on their previous course, and Vice President Pence as well as former National Security Adviser McMaster have intervened constructively.

19. But it is going to be difficult to match even the low Obama-level interest in Balkans democracy with President Trump in the White House.

20. The situation in Europe is better. The Europeans were for years preoccupied with their own financial crisis, the Greek debt debacle, and their consequences for the euro and for growth.

21. Europe was also deeply scarred by the refugee influx from the Middle East and Africa and its implications for terrorism. More than 100,000 illegal border crossings occurred here in the Balkan, putting economic, logistical and political strain on the region.

22. Some Europeans even within the EU have turned to demagogic leaders who promise to protect nativist groups from foreigners, while the British made the enormous mistake of voting narrowly to withdraw from the EU, in large part due to xenophobia.

23. But Europe’s economy is now slowly recovering, and the Europeans have become much more alert to Putin’s trouble-making since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, the attempted coup in Montenegro in 2016, and this year’s attempted murder of defectors in Britain.

24. To my delight, the European Commission, alarmed by Putin, seized an opportunity in February to reopen the political window for EU accession in 2025, saying that those who qualify by 2023 will be welcomed in two years later. They did not say when the window would close.

25. For good reasons, many doubt the sincerity, and even the feasibility, of this promise to enlarge once again. It is explicitly conditional on internal reforms to strengthen the Union, and it will require ratifications by current members that may prove difficult to elicit, including referenda in France and maybe the Netherlands.

26. This is nevertheless an extraordinary opportunity. It is my hope that as many Balkan countries as possible will take advantage of it. Most of the benefits of EU membership come in preparing for accession.

27. Montenegro and Serbia lead the regatta, as they have achieved candidacy status and are making their way as quickly as they can through the chapters of the acquis.

28. But others are not so far behind: the Commission has recommended candidacy status for Albania as well as Macedonia, and Kosovo has approved border demarcation with Montenegro and will now I hope get the visa waiver. That will be an important milestone in synching up with the US and the EU.

29. Bosnia and Herzegovina, although it has applied for candidacy, is in many respects the laggard, as its governing system is based on the awkward constitution Americans wrote at Dayton.

30. Nevertheless, a process that has been frozen pretty much since Croatia acceded to the EU in 2013 has restarted. Opportunities like this one don’t come often.

31. That brings me to the Commission’s Progress Report on Kosovo and its implications for your government, parliament, and civil society.

32. In my reading, the Progress Report is so-so for Kosovo, which has struggled with internal political difficulties, most of which it is now overcoming, I hope.

33. So it is a good time to think about the road ahead. What are the big missing pieces in Kosovo’s EU entry puzzle?

34. First and foremost is rule of law. Many of you will know the details of what the Europeans want better than I do, so I won’t bore you with those.

35. I prefer to underline how truly fundamental an independent judiciary is to good governance. The essence of liberal democracy is individual rights.

36. If I am unable to rely on the justice system to protect my rights as an individual, I’ll look elsewhere for security: to my family, my clan, my neighborhood, my language group, my ethnicity, my race, my religion, or my political party. We all have those identities, but when threatened with insecurity one or the other of them becomes dominant, or even exclusive.

37. The result is a political struggle for power among different groups that all consider themselves victims. That struggle degenerated in post-Communist Yugoslavia into war at least five times. I needn’t lecture you on how unsatisfactory that is when it occurs.

38. But what may not be so apparent is the role of an independent judiciary in making sure that it doesn’t.

39. If I can expect to be treated fairly and objectively by the courts and hence also by the police and the rest of the public administration, I’ve got precious little to fight about, or grievances with which to rally others.

40. I happily confess that I am an ethnic minority in America and feel privileged to be afforded in principle the same protection as those who are in the ethnic majority. But that is not true for all minorities in the US, which is what gives us a lot of problems.

41. America’s history is essentially one of extending protection—originally afforded only to English-speaking, wealthy, white males, especially if they were Protestant—to the less wealthy, to blacks, to immigrants, and, and to other religions. That is what makes America what it is today, though of course the process is not yet complete for several of those categories.

42. So I need to repeat what I said Tuesday in Macedonia. There is nothing more important to Kosovo’s future as a state than establishing that kind of judicial system: one that treats, and is perceived to treat, everyone equally and fairly: Albanians, Serbs, Ashkalli, Turks and Roma, women and men, members of LDK, PDK, AAK, Vetevendosje, the Serb list, and the other 15 or 20 political parties.

43. This is especially important when it comes to high-level corruption and abuse of power. All too often, people regard indictments of ministers and other officials as bad signs. I regard them as a good sign, one we see in America all too frequently.

44. It isn’t easy. You are watching in real time as the American judiciary tries to establish whether there were abuses during our last election. We’ll get through it, but not without a lot of problems.

45. Kosovo is a small country. It is not a big secret when politicians or others dispose of far more income than they can reasonably assumed to make from their day jobs.

46. They need to be held accountable for that, and for the nepotism that is all too frequent throughout the Balkans, where hiring your cousin and putting your finger on the scales of justice to protect him are regarded more as family obligations than as an abuse of power.

47. One further point: the kind of liberal democracy I am talking about requires a viable, constitutional opposition with a real possibility of alternating in power. That possibility should never evaporate, because it keeps politicians honest and alert to the needs of their constituents.

48. George Washington is known as the father of my country not only because he was its first president but also because he refused a crown and chose not to run for a third term.

49. Balkan politics need to adjust to the notion that opposition is a vital part of democracy, as is eventual retirement from politics. Being out of power is hard, but just as important as being in it. It is your behavior out of power that will determine whether you can win the next election.

50. Someone will say, what about the external factor? Even if we get an independent judiciary, even if alternation in power is a real possibility, even if our opposition is a viable one, Serbia is blocking our path to NATO and the EU. We haven’t been able to build an army because of Belgrade. Even if we meet all EU accession requirements, won’t Belgrade still be a problem?

51. On the army, the key is to find some Serb support, which the Americans and Europeans want to see. The question I ask is whether the army, the Association of Serb Municipalities and the question of UN membership might be solved in a grand bargain, insofar as possible consistent with Kosovo’s constitution as interpreted by the Constitutional Court.

52. Serbia, to qualify for EU membership by 2023, needs a final status settlement with Kosovo sometime next year, or at most the year after. We are no longer talking about a long time horizon.

53. Whenever the phrase “grand bargain” is heard, another issue pops up: what about partition, or exchange of territories?

54. In my view, that is not just a bad idea but a catastrophic one. Partition or exchange of territories between Serbia and Kosovo would encourage those who want to partition Macedonia as well as Bosnia, re-igniting in turn irredentism in Bosniak areas of Sandjak.

55. In addition to the radicalization and destabilization that would cause in the Balkans, it would also have broader repercussions in Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine.

56. The result would be a downward spiral that would end any hope of NATO and EU accession, give Vladimir Putin nicely wrapped pieces of several different countries to play with, and extinguish any remaining embers of US interest in Kosovo and the Balkans.

57. The alternative is a virtuous spiral that accepts the tough NATO and EU conditions and keeps the country intact, leading in due course to a much higher standard of living and elimination of hard borders with Albania and Macedonia as well as Serbia.

58. I know of course what I would choose. NATO and EU membership are obviously preferable, but are they achievable?

59. I think they are, but you need to make sure you are synched up with the EU and US. That won’t be easy. There are big challenges ahead. The Montenegro border issue was a taste of things to come.

60. If the Special Tribunal hands down indictments, the indictees are going to have to go to The Hague to defend themselves, as I would have to do if I were indicted.

61. If Kosovo courts convict some of your high-level indictees, they are going to have to leave their ministerial positions.

62. If the Europeans and Americans want international prosecutors and judges to stay in your courts, they will have to stay.
63. Statebuilding is not pain free, and statesmen will need to rise to the challenges.

64. Kosovo needs its friends as much as ever during the next few years, to achieve its strategic goals: not just NATO and EU membership but a liberal democracy in which all its citizens can enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, aided by much higher incomes.

65. A Balkan friend whom I asked for advice on this talk wrote back: “The question is how we maintain the EU path with all these problems [throughout the Balkans and in the geostrategic environment]. How do we keep it as a value system and not just as a quick carrot? Can we hold with our institutions and economy until things will get more stable in the EU?”

66. Those are the right questions. It is up to you to answer.