Day: April 30, 2018
“Wicked” globalism
“Wicked” is the word wonks use to describe problems that are difficult to solve because they are so complex it is difficult to predict the impact of anything you do, which may cause consequences different from those you intend. That’s what is happening today: the US is facing nuclear issues with both North Korea and Iran that defy resolution in part because they may interact in both predictable and unpredictable ways.
This was not necessary. President Trump has chosen to schedule a decision for withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal for May 12, the date on which Congress requires him to certify whether continuing it is in the US interest. He refused to do that three months ago, without consequences. This time around he says he’ll withdraw if the deal isn’t “fixed” to include ballistic missile and eliminate the expiration clauses. There is no indication that can be done in the time frame available, though the Europeans are trying to back him down by committing to a follow-on agreement. The Iranians, however, show no sign of being interested in that.
Meanwhile, things are moving in the other direction with North Korea, which has expressed some interest in “denuclearization,” though what that means to Kim Jong-un is not yet clear. It almost surely doesn’t mean “complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization” that the Americans want. The North Koreans have a long history of reneging on agreements with the international community, but the Trump Administration seems determined to ignore that and instead seek still another one. Trump has already given Kim a big prize: the promise of a meeting that will legitimize Kim’s regime, something he would have criticized ferociously had his predecessor done it. Any agreement will have to involve some concessions from the US, likely on the American military presence in South Korea and maybe elsewhere in Asia.
Israeli President Netanyahu today went on TV to demonstrate that Iran was lying when it claimed not to have a nuclear weapons program prior to 2004. That was already well known. How that is supposed to undermine the agreement concluded in 2015 known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is not clear. The JCPOA committed Iran to international inspections that have so far confirmed there is no longer a nuclear weapons program, as well as dismantling of most of Iran’s centrifuges and one of its reactors. The JCPOA looks to many like a good antidote to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Netanyahu’s TV appearance confirmed that.
Trump has nevertheless indicated he will withdraw from it and reimpose unilateral sanctions. That will give Iran the option of sustaining the agreement with the Europeans (thus splitting them from the US and weakening the impact of sanctions) or withdrawing and going hell bent for nuclear weapons. Neither outcome would benefit the US. Withdrawal would also give North Korea good reason to doubt that any agreement with the US concerning its nuclear program will be maintained, though admittedly it already has ample reason for doubts. Iran racing for nuclear weapons would certainly give North Korea more than enough reason to hold on to its own.
This trifecta of likely bad outcomes has not been enough to convince Trump that he should override whatever promises he made during his election campaign. Most Americans support the JCPOA. But Trump isn’t interested in what most Americans think, only what his deep-pocketed donors like Sheldon Adelson think. That’s what Trump meant when he told French President Macron he would withdraw from the JCPOA due to domestic political pressure.
Netanyahu has also ordered airstrikes on Iranian facilities in Syria that reportedly store missiles for use against Israel. Tehran, including the Iranian Supreme Leader, has promised a response, while denying any Iranians were killed. Escalation of the tit-for-tat in Syria could well get out of hand, leading to a still wider war and even the Israeli ground invasion Syrians often warn of. The Americans have shown no interest in joining such an enterprise to drive the Iranians back from the Israeli border, but they likely aren’t saying a loud “no” to it either.
We are at one of those tipping points, like the eve of the Iraq war. The US can barge ahead on its current path, with some predictable negative consequences and likely many other unpredictable ones, though it is hard to think of positive outcomes. Or it can pause, rethink, and try to unravel the global interconnections that make its current course so likely to produce bad results. Globalism has its virtues, but it also has its exceedingly complicated, “wicked,” side. Clarifying problems so they can be solved is a lot better than muddying them, as Trump and Netanyahu both prefer to do.
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Stay the course
I spent last week visiting two allegedly dysfunctional states in the Balkans: Macedonia and Kosovo. Rumors of their incapacity or even demise are exaggerated. I visited with government officials, parliamentarians, NGOers, journalists, and old friends. I saw their presidents and prime ministers, but not their foreign ministers, as both were traveling. Despite their real problems, both states are functional and have made enormous progress over the past twenty years.
I started in Macedonia, which is saddled with two current issues: a law on language that the President refuses to sign and a dispute concerning its name with Greece.
The former raises constitutional questions, as the parliament has passed the law twice, after which the President is obliged to sign. He claims however that the law, which increases the required use of Albanian by state institutions, contradicts the constitution, which he is sworn to uphold. People get really worked up over this, but I just don’t see how it compares even remotely to the political crisis that enveloped the country in 2016 and 2017, when the opposition was publicizing wiretaps that demonstrated abuse of power. I’m betting Macedonia’s citizens and politicians will figure out how to get the constitutional court to decide who is right. That would be an institutional solution appropriate to the challenge. Not so bad.
The second problem is a congenital one. From the moment of independence, Athens challenged Skopje’s right to use “Macedonia” and has refused to accept Macedonia into NATO either as the Republic of Macedonia (its constitutional name) or as The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (The FYROM), the appellation Greece agreed in 1995 would apply to membership in international organizations.
This is the moral equivalent of the United States objecting to Mexico’s official name (Estados Unidos Mexicanos), or the Mexicans objecting to “New Mexico.” As in the rest of the Balkans, the real issues are territory and identity, not the name. Here too there are lots of solutions and an ongoing negotiation that appears to be making progress. Current betting is on “Republic of Upper Macedonia,” but precisely when and where that would be used is still uncertain. Any solution will have to pass muster in parliament and get approved in a referendum: again, institutional solutions.
Kosovo has also been through a rough patch, with two issues that created disorder in both the streets and parliament: demarcation of the border with Montenegro and creation of an Association of Serb Municipalities (ASM).
The former verged on silly, since only a few hundred hectares were involved and the agreement had already been concluded as well as ratified in Montenegro before it became controversial in Kosovo. It is now solved and the waters have calmed.
The ASM is still a problem, as it is part of the plan that got Kosovo its independence 10 years ago but risks making Kosovo like Bosnia, which is to say so ethnically divided as to be dysfunctional. The constitutional court has made clear within what parameters the issue should be solved, but some think it will be necessary to go further. That is going to be difficult, especially as the situation in Bosnia is worsening because the leader of its Serb 49% “entity” is using its power-sharing arrangements to block effective governance at the state level. Kosovo Albanians are right to want to avoid that kind of trouble.
Another recent incident has also roiled Kosovo’s waters: Turkish security officials were allowed to seize some of President Erdogan’s political opponents on Kosovo territory and deport them to Turkey, where they face a court system that is doing the President’s bidding. The proper court proceedings were not followed in Kosovo. A parliamentary committee has been commissioned to investigate.
The distinguishing characteristic of all these issues is that they touch on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states that are not yet consolidated, or self-confident (I’m grateful to Veton Surroi, a tough critic of Kosovo’s state-building process so far, for this realization). The result is a level of political (and occasionally physical) conflict that challenges weak institutions.
America’s own early republic had quite a few such challenges to sovereignty (look up Whiskey Rebellion and Marbury v Madison) that had to be decided in the courts, and we are still capable of creating new ones. It would be a mistake to conclude from their existence that the state-building process in the Balkans is a failure. The citizens’ preference for institutional solutions in both Macedonia and Kosovo is clear, even if the politicians don’t always abide by it.
Sovereignty is not yet complete, and territorial integrity not yet ensured. Reassurance on those scores is critical. In the 21st century Balkans, the US and EU need to continue to play their vital roles in ensuring that borders are not moved, minorities are treated in ways that make loyalty to the states in which they live appealing, and governance is not only fair but also functional and effective in producing services and prosperity.
I would guess Kosovo and Macedonia are a lot more than midway between independence and EU membership. Completing that trajectory is the shortest distance to regional peace and stability. We and they should stay the course.
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