Day: October 6, 2019
A vote for change
Kosovo voted for a new parliament today. The results are striking: the two parties that formed most of the majority in the last parliament came in third and fourth. Two opposition parties came in first and second. The PDK (Democratic Party of Kosovo), which has been in government since independence, has declared it will go into opposition. The electoral mechanism seems to have functioned well, but official assessments won’t be available for a couple of days.
The leaders were the LDK (Democratic League of Kosovo), which led the non-violent protest movement before the 1999 war and has participated in government coalitions in the past, and VV (Self-Determination), which is a post-war movement that has never been in the government. At this writing, VV is claiming to have won. The cautious and moderate Isa Mustafa, a former prime minister, leads the LDK. The sometimes unruly and charismatic Albin Kurti leads VV. Many have thought they might govern together in the next coalition, but that was before they won virtually equal shares of yesterday’s vote. There are now presumably other arithmetic possibilities, so an intense negotiation is likely, taking weeks if not months unless the LDK and VV agree quickly on a prime minister and a government program.
Yesterday’s result was foreshadowed in National Democratic Institute polling from March, which concluded:
The research shows that citizens desire reforms that will foster social cohesion, economic opportunity, and the rule of law. Tackling corruption cuts across all of these areas and remains at the forefront of citizen priorities. On dialogue with Serbia to normalize post-war relations, citizens seek greater transparency and are not in favor of border changes to bring about a resolution. Generally, citizens seek greater efforts of political leaders to foster consensus to bring policy changes that will improve their lives.
The citizens wanted change and voted for it. Those who think the US and Europe are determined to maintain “stabilocracy” take note: Washington and Brussels will not be unhappy to see alternation in power.
The governing challenge will be a big one. Complaints about corruption in Kosovo in my experience focus on two levels:
- Grand corruption by political leaders and their families, who are known to control assets far larger than their salaries can have provided;
- More or less petty corruption via nepotism, especially in hiring for government positions.
I hope the new government, whoever enters it, will launch a major effort to document and prosecute grand corruption. Nepotism is going to be harder: Kosovo is a society in which extended family ties are still strong. Hiring your cousin is a familial obligation that many see as corrup only when others do it.
The dialogue with Serbia will be another priority, as both Brussels and Washington are pressing for complete normalization of relations between Pristina and Belgrade. But they are pressing for different solutions: Washington is looking for a land swap that its newly appointed Special Envoy will no doubt press; Brussels is looking for a solution that maintains Kosovo’s territorial integrity even if it compromises its sovereignty over Serb communities. This kind of split between the EU and the US is not a good omen.
Nor is the impending Serbian election, due by April next year. President Vucic is a skilled manipulator of Western thinking, even if he has presided over a years-long slide of Serbia in Russia’s direction. He will argue that Serbia has to “get something” in the negotiations with Kosovo because he needs a parliament that will have to ratify the outcome. In order to get a good deal, Pristina will need to be ready to walk away from a bad one, but that will be difficult if Brussels and Washington decide to back it.
One unfortunate wrinkle in the election results: over 90% of Serbs voted for a list controlled by Belgrade. Vucic regards this as a triumph. I regard it as betraying the unfortunate autocratic control Belgrade exercises among the Serbs of Kosovo. Maybe it is also evidence that Serbia can agree to just about anything on Kosovo without Vucic getting something.
Any government that wants to please the citizens of Kosovo will want to deliver economic results. Kosovo has not done all that badly in recent years:
That’s 2000 on the lower left and 2018 on the upper right. The World Bank appropriately puts this performance in perspective:
Kosovo is a lower-middle-income country which has experienced solid economic growth over the last decade. Kosovo is one of only four countries in Europe to experience growth in every year since the onset of the global financial crisis in 2008.
Like it or not, Kosovo’s economy is heavily dependent on the Balkans region, which in turn is heavily dependent on Europe. Growth at higher rates than in the recent past (about 4%) will require that the EU grow faster, but the next Kosovo government would do well to prepare for that day by increasing transparency and reducing grand corruption. That’s what change should mean on the economic front.
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Time to spill the beans
Yes, I do know both Bill Taylor and Kurt Volker. Bill and I worked together at USIP for several years. We were good colleagues, not personal friends. Kurt I know less well, but he was for a while a colleague at SAIS in the Center for Transatlantic Relations. Both are bright, devoted, distinguished professional diplomats, but like all of us they have their distinct personalities and foibles. Bill is more moderate and cautious, Kurt more daring and political, in the sense of making known his Republican affiliation. I have no idea what party Bill prefers.
That is the rule among Foreign Service officers: they keep their professional interactions apolitical, even if many of us have strong preferences. I have been a registered Democrat since my last years in the State Department in the 1990s, but I rarely mentioned that while in the Service and I never asked anyone else about political affiliation.
Bill’s contribution in the now-public text messages exchanged among US officials concerned with Ukraine is clear: he questioned whether the effort to squeeze Ukraine into conducting a judicial investigation of former Vice President and now presidential hopeful Biden by denying military assistance was proper. To the even modestly practiced eye, it looks like the use of public office for private gain, which is the definition of corrupt abuse of power. It might have been legitimate had the Trump Administration provided any credible evidence of wrongdoing by Biden, or asked through judicial channels, but they didn’t. This was what President Trump often accuses his opposition of doing: a witch hunt intended to knock the strongest candidate (at least in current polling) out of the race.
My guess is that Bill’s days in Kiev, where he is serving as an interim ambassador in a post he occupied from 2006 to 2009, are numbered. Trump will want to be rid of him as soon as possible but may hesitate for a while fearing what testimony Bill will give in Congress once he is freed from government service. I can’t imagine Bill will want to stay, though his devotion to Ukraine might weigh in that direction. In any event, he won’t have much influence after questioning the President’s corrupt attempt to get a Ukrainian judicial investigation going by leveraging US military assistance.
Kurt is already out of government service and was deposed Friday behind closed doors in the House, which saw fit to make public some of the unclassified text messages. His situation requires a bit more explication.
Kurt was an unpaid Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations. In my view, he has done good things in that role most notably getting the State Department to declare that the US would not recognize the Russian annexation of Crimea, which Moscow seized by force from Kiev in 2014. He has also advocated successfully for the US to ship lethal, even if defensive, weapons to Kiev’s forces, which are still battling an insurgency Russia supports in southeastern Ukraine.
So when President Trump held up on Congressionally authorized arms shipments to Ukraine, Kurt would have been understandably anxious to get them moving. That was what he was trying to do when he engaged with the Ukrainians and the President’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. There is nothing inherently wrong with Kurt having helped Giuliani. Diplomats often help Americans and American companies to do things that are consistent with US policy. The problem here is not his making an appointment or arranging a phone call, per se, but rather what the President’s personal lawyer was up to: he was using the arms shipments to get the Ukrainians to do what Trump wanted for his campaign. Kurt clearly understood this and might have objected, but let’s remember: he wanted the arms shipments to restart. The President’s purpose he might well have considered above his pay grade.
There is one other wrinkle in Kurt’s story: while unpaid in his government role, he continued to be affiliated with a consulting firm that had business with the Ukrainian government. He is reported to have “recused” himself from contact with that aspect of the business. I don’t know whether his dual role violated the law, and there have been no allegations of wrongdoing of which I am aware. But it doesn’t pass my smell test, which also dislikes Hunter Biden’s roles in China and Ukraine, even if there was no wrongdoing. Appearances matter. Kurt might have known better.
Whatever foibles Kurt and Bill may display, the bigger picture is clear: the President of the United States thinks he has the right to demand foreign investigations of his political opponents, which amount to illegal foreign assistance to his campaign. He did it with Russia, which he encouraged to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails. Now he is doing it again with Ukraine and China. He said so yesterday:
The lesson here is clear: even consummate professionals end up getting sullied if they serve with this Administration. It is time for those who can afford to do so to leave, spilling the beans to Congress as well as the press and helping to liberate from Trump’s grip the 20 Republican Senators needed to remove this President from office after he is impeached in the House.
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