Day: December 30, 2018
Make Plan A work
I’ve had several requests from Balkan publications for my end-of-year views on the situation in the region. I’ve so far passed them up, but a few words here seem appropriate.
The Balkans are at peace and far more prosperous than they were in the early 1990s, when war ripped apart former Yugoslavia. Now European Union members, Slovenia and Croatia were then fighting for survival as Serbia tried by force to hold the Federation together, or at least hold on to territory it regarded as “Serb.” Bosnia suffered three and a half years of war, ethnic cleansing, and eventually genocide. Kosovo endured less, but only because NATO was prepared to intervene sooner. Macedonia and Montenegro mostly escaped war, but only with difficulty and international help.
Things are much better now. Per capita income is markedly higher. Ethnic nationalism barks a lot but seldom bites. No army in the Balkans is capable of sustained warfare and no public would support it. All the region’s citizens except Kosovo’s can travel visa-free throughout the European Union. All the remaining non-members of the EU have been promised an opportunity to join the EU. All have signed agreements with Brussels that provide many of the trade and financial benefits of membership, along with ample pre-accession funding.
People in the Balkans are nevertheless dissatisfied. Resurgent ethnic nationalism plagues Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. Economic growth is slow, corruption is endemic, and the prospect of European Union accession distant. Big issues remain unresolved. Approval of Macedonia’s far-reaching Prespa agreement with Greece is uncertain. Kosovo and Serbia are far from normalization of their relations, despite years of negotiations. Governance in Bosnia and Herzegovina is increasingly dysfunctional, due to a peace settlement that is difficult to change. Complaints rather than satisfaction are dominant 25 years after the Dayton peace agreements began to bring an end to the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
I think it is wrong to be discouraged. The post-war Balkans region is uniquely advantaged. Its proximity to Europe brought it far more attention and assistance than is typical after conflict. Think of Syria, which will get precious little Western help after far more destructive wars than anyone in the Balkans suffered. Each of the Balkan countries emerged from the 1990s with the prospect of democratic, even if illiberal and imperfect, governance. Only one of the Arab Spring countries, Tunisia, comes even close to that. Except for Iraq and Israel–each imperfect and illiberal in its own way–none of the Middle East can come even close to the freedom of expression and association Balkan citizens today enjoy.
So my message, argued at length in From War to Peace in the Balkans, the Middle East, and Ukraine, is that Plan A is far better than any conceivable Plan B.
The path into EU and NATO for those who want it is getting steeper. But neither has closed its doors. I can well understand those in Kosovo who are discouraged because Brussels has delayed giving the country visa-free status, even though it met all the manifold requirements. But 2020, when the EU says it will be ready to proceed, is just around the corner. It would be a colossal error not to stay on track. Montenegro, already in NATO, seems to understand that and is likely to qualify next for EU membership. Serbia needs to clean up its courts and free up its media, in addition to meeting the technical requirements of the acquis communautaire and normalizing its relations with Kosovo. Skopje and Athens need to maintain their agreement, even if it faces a setback in one of their parliaments. Bosnia and Herzegovina will be the last piece of the Balkans puzzle to find its proper place, but it will do so if it focuses on making the Sarajevo government capable of negotiating and implementing the acquis.
There is nothing insoluble in the Balkans. 2019 should be devoted to making Plan A work. There is no better Plan B.
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Risk rises
2019 has a particular significance: it is the year Republicans need to decide whether they will go into the 2020 presidential election with Donald Trump as their candidate, or not.
There is no serious possibility of a primary challenge or an internal party coup. Trump has demonstrated complete command of the party apparatus, including its major funders. He has given them enough of what Republicans traditionally want: judges who can be relied upon to protect property, law enforcement, and fetuses as well as tax cuts for the very wealthy and white nationalism (aka supremacy) for the hoi polloi. It’s a powerful combination because it finds support in less populated states and rural areas that are overweight in the Electoral College.
There are two other possibilities:
Amendment 25* of the constitution, which allows the vice president to lead an effort to remove a president for inability to carry out the functions of the office, provided the effort can win support from half the cabinet and a 2/3 vote in each house of Congress. Trump is dottering: unable to walk the 250 yards from the White House to Blair House across Pennsylvania Avenue, inarticulate to the point of incoherence, and obviously overweight and unhealthy.
But Trump’s cabinet is loyalist, especially with the departure of Secretary of Defense Mattis (and the earlier departure of Secretary of State Tillerson). Ben Carson would join a risky rebellion in the cabinet? Matthew Whitaker, the unqualified acting Attorney General who couldn’t tell the truth about his college academic achievements? Mike Pompeo, who has pledged he’ll keep fighting for conservative social issues until the Rapture?
Impeachment and conviction isn’t much more likely. The new House majority will be Democratic and might easily find the votes to impeach (accuse) Trump of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” But the Senate, where a 2/3 majority would be required to convict, remains solidly in Republican hands. Impeachment without conviction and removal from office is not a winning wicket. The Republicans tried that with Bill Clinton and found themselves with the short end of the stick.
But there is an added factor in 2019: Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation. We don’t know what it will eventually produce, or when, but we do know what it has produced already: five Trump aides, including his first National Security Adviser, have struck plea deals and a couple of dozen Russian operatives have been indicted, in addition to the conviction of Trump’s campaign chair on non-campaign related financial charges. Some will try to deflect attention from the guilty pleas by saying they are “only” for lying to the FBI. That’s silly. We all know it is a crime to lie to the FBI. If someone does, it means he is willing to risk years in jail to avoid telling the truth. Lying to the FBI suggests an underlying felony.
The role of the president in all this is still unclear, and in any event Justice Department guidance does not permit indictment of a president in office. But that does not mean Mueller can’t recommend indictment in the report he is expected to file. The indictment won’t go forward–Whitaker or his replacement is there to stop it–but the recommendation itself would have a dramatic political impact. Even a strong conclusion could do likewise. New York State’s attorney general has already concluded that the Trump Foundation demonstrated “a shocking pattern of illegality.” What if it turns out his campaign was likewise a criminal enterprise, one that allowed or even encouraged a foreign power to subvert the 2016 election?
So I’m thinking we don’t really know what 2019 will bring. The government shutdown is already scrambling the political scene. Trump is sending distress signals and looking for a deal, by lowering the definition of a border wall as well as how much money he needs for it. The Democrats aren’t biting, yet. Nor are the Chinese, whose retaliation against Trump’s tariff war is devastating soybean and other farmers who supported Trump in 2016. Faced with pressure from Trump not to raise rates, the Fed has asserted its independence and proceeded. The stock market is “in correction” and highly volatile. The economy looks like it is heading for the end of the slow but steady Obama boom.
January will bring the launch of multiple House investigations into the Administration’s malfeasance as well as the 2016 campaign. A quick pullout of US troops from Syria this winter could lead to a major clash there between Turkey and Syria, with Arab and Kurdish paramilitaries allies respectively. The proposed drawdown of troops from Afghanistan could embolden the Taliban and wreck the prospects for a negotiated end to its 17-year war. Continuation of the trade wars will raise prices to American consumers and lower US exports, slowing an economy already towards the end of the business cycle.
I dare not go past that to the spring. While the US remains safer and more prosperous than ever before, the uncertainties Trump generates are also greater than ever before. 2019 looks to be a year of rising risk.
*I originally said “Article.” Apologies for the error. There’s a reason I’m not a lawyer.
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