Month: July 2020
Stevenson’s army, July 29
– SFRC Democrats blast Pompeo for hurting State. Their report.
– Former DHS head Chertoff says agency has been “hijacked” for political purposes. New Yorker has close look at DHS budget.
-US cooperates with Japan on East China Sea
-Jim Steinberg co-authors critique of China policy.
-James Palmer offers Asian war metaphors to supplant Thucydides.
–CNAS has new proposals for 5G.
– Army War College prof defends strategy of “not losing.”
– Retiring Army officer says retired 4 stars shouldn’t make political endorsements.
– Dean Cohen urges us to memorize poems.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Peace Picks | July 27 – July 31
Notice: Due to recent public health concerns, upcoming events are only available via live stream.
- From Peoples Into Nations: A History of Eastern Europe | July 27, 2020 | 4:00 – 5:30 PM EST | Wilson Center | Register Here
Eastern Europe has produced more history than any region on earth, for bad and for good. But where is it? And how does a critical historian write its history? Nationalists argue that nations are eternal, Connelly argues that they formed recently: in the 1780s, when the Habsburgs attempted to make their subjects German, thereby causing a panic among Hungarians and Czechs that they might disappear from history. The region’s boundaries are the boundaries of a certain painful knowledge: that nations come and go, and urgently require protection.
Speakers:
John Connelly: Sidney Hellman Ehrman Professor of History and Director of Institute for East European, Eurasian, & Slavic Studies at University of California (Berkeley)
Christian F. Ostermann: Director, History & Public Policy Program, Cold War International History Project, North Korea Documentation Project, Nuclear Proliferation International History Project, Wilson Center
Eric Arnesen: Fellow, the George Washington University - Crisis in Northern Mozambique | July 28, 2020 | 10:00 – 10:45 AM EST | Center for Strategic & International Studies | Register Here
The recent escalation of violence in the Cabo Delgado province threatens the overall security of the region and has caused a substantial increase in humanitarian needs. Since 2017, the conflict in northern Mozambique has displaced nearly 250,000 people and killed 1,000 others, with violence escalating rapidly in 2020. The Islamic State has tried to capitalize on the chaos, and the Government of Mozambique has struggled to combat armed actors while also navigating climate shocks and the response to Covid-19.
Please join us for a discussion on the conflict in Mozambique’s northern provinces, the implications for regional security, and steps the international community can take to respond to the humanitarian needs.
Speakers:
Mamadou Sou: Head of Delegation, Southern Africa, International Committee of the Red Cross
Emilia Columbo: Non-Resident Senior Associate, Africa Program, CSIS
Jacob Kurzter: Interim Director & Senior Fellow, Humanitarian Agenda, CSIS - Western Balkans Partnership Summit | July 29, 2020 | 10:15 – 11:30 AM EST | Atlantic Council | Register Here
The Atlantic Council will host a Summit of leaders from the Western Balkans Six—Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia—as they agree on bold, practical actions to advance regional economic cooperation. These significant steps will help the region emerge from the devastating impact of COVID-19 with greater economic development opportunities.
The expected economic and social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Balkans demand urgent regional action to avoid sustained economic stagnation and the potential instability that comes with it. This agreement will demonstrate leaders’ commitment to foster economic growth by pursuing the free movement of goods, persons, and services across the region’s borders. The measure will also set in motion a significant plan for attracting foreign investment and accelerating the effective deployment of COVID-19 recovery funds.
Building on its efforts and extensive networks in Southeastern Europe, the Atlantic Council convenes this Western Balkans Partnership Summit to facilitate and promote concrete steps among the leaders toward regional economic integration that can stimulate post-COVID-19 economic recovery, boost the region’s long-term competitiveness, and strengthen its attractiveness for investors. Tangible measures agreed at the Summit—linked to and embedded in existing regional initiatives and dialogues—will send an important political message about the Western Balkans’ Euro-Atlantic future at a time of heightened uncertainty.
Speakers:
Damon M. Wilson (Moderator): Vice President, Atlantic Council
H.E. Stevo Pendarovski: President of the Republic of North Macedonia
H.E. Aleksandar Vučić: President of the Republic of Serbia
H.E. Avdullah Hoti: Prime Minister of the Republic of Kosovo
H.E. Edi Rama: Prime Minister of the Republic of Albania
H.E. Zoran Tegeltija: Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina
H.E. Dragica Sekulić: Minister of Economy of Montenegro - Re-Orienting National Security for the AI Era | July 29, 2020 | 2:30 – 3:30 PM EST | Brookings Institution | Register Here
Artificial intelligence technology has already begun and will continue to transform the economy, education, people’s daily lives, and national security. The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) is an independent federal commission established to examine the state of the AI-national security landscape and determine what policies will maintain U.S. leadership in AI research, improve international cooperation, and advance shared principles for ethical and responsible use of AI. On July 22, NSCAI submitted their second quarter recommendations to Congress and the executive branch.
On July 29, Brookings will host a conversation with NSCAI Chair Dr. Eric Schmidt and Vice Chair Mr. Robert Work on the current state of artificial intelligence in the national security environment, and the commission’s latest recommendations to spur progress on the responsible development and deployment of AI technologies.
Speakers:
John R. Allen (Moderator): President, Brookings Institution
Eric Schmidt: Chair, National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence
Robert O. Work: Vice Chair, National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence - The Future of Trust & Sense-Making | July 30, 2020 | 12:30 PM EST | Atlantic Council | Register Here
Trust – between people, between populations, and between human and machine – is an increasingly challenging convention as we navigate the “post-truth” era and the unprecedentedly complex information age. The concept of trust is arguably humanity’s most empowering trait, enabling cooperation between people on a grand scale and in pursuit of our most complicated endeavors. Our ability to build trust with machines has accelerated our exploration and will push the bounds of human cognition as we learn to augment our thinking with computers. In an unfathomably vast information environment, humans will be repeatedly forced to preserve trust in our observations against a deluge of data. We will have to learn to trust computers to make sense of it all.
How will we negotiate these situations given the challenges posed by misinformation, disinformation, and technically enabled deceptions like deep fake images, video, and audio? Will our predilection for conflict, power, and force projection disrupt this journey? Will we successfully graduate from our present trials by nurturing the concept of trust as we develop new methods to preserve ideals of objectivity, truth, and cooperation?
What might we witness in the coming years with respect to trust in devices, people, and institutions? What is the future of trust, and what are its implications for sense-making? What do all these things imply about our future digital lives?
Speakers:
Dr. David Bray (Moderator): Director, GeoTech Center, Atlantic Council
John Marx: Liaison Officer, Air Force Research Laboratory
Stephen Rodriguez: Non-Resident Senior Fellow & Senior Adviser, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security
Alex Ruiz: Founder, Phaedrus Engineering
Dr. Tara Kirk Sell: Senior Scholar, Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security
Sara-Jayne Terp: Co-Founder, CogSec Collaboration - From Dissent to Democracy: The Promise & Perils of Civil Resistance Traditions | July 31, 2020 | 9:30 – 10:45 AM EST | United States Institute of Peace | Register Here
Nonviolent protest has proven to be a strong driver for democratization, and recent years have shown a rise in protest movements globally—from Hong Kong to Algeria to Sudan. Yet, popular uprisings don’t always lead to democratic transitions, as seen in the Arab Spring revolutions in Egypt or Yemen. Why do some transitions driven by movements end in democracy while others do not?
In his new book, “From Dissent to Democracy,” Jonathan Pinckney systematically examines transitions initiated by nonviolent resistance campaigns and argues that two key factors explain whether or not democracy will follow such efforts. First, a movement must sustain high levels of social mobilization. Second, it must direct that mobilization away from revolutionary “maximalist” goals and tactics and towards support for new institutions.
Join USIP as we host activists and scholars of nonviolent resistance for a discussion of the book’s broader lessons on how to support democratization efforts around the world. The conversation will explore new insights into the intersection of democratization and nonviolent resistance, as well as actionable recommendations for activists and policymakers working toward democratic transitions.
Speakers:
Maria Stephan (Moderator): Director, Nonviolent Action, U.S. Institute of Peace
Erica Chenoweth: Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights & International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School
Zachariah Mampilly: Marxe Chair of International Affairs, City University of New York
Hardy Merriman: President & CEO, International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Jonathan Pinckney: Program Officer, Nonviolent Action, U.S. Institute of Peace
Huda Shafig: Program Director, Karama
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Stevenson’s army, July 28
– House Democrats target SecState Pompeo for leadership failures at State.
– Richard Haass of CFR blasts his China speech.
-Trump wants top send “renegade colonel” to Germany.
-Meanwhile, ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine.
– I have a piece in National Interest on the militarization of American foreign policy, including the effect of the NDAA.
-Adam Tooze reviews several books on China and the new world order
-Lawfare has a good piece explaining the congressional notification process for arms sales.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Geopolitics in the Balkans
I prepared this lecture for a presentation earlier in the summer, but circumstances conspired to prevent me from giving it. So I’m letting it sit here, for anyone who might be interested:
It is a pleasure to be with you remotely, even if I do wish we were all in Dubrovnik. It was not a stop on my many flights into Sarajevo during the war in Bosnia. I was lucky even to see Split, where my UN flight landed once when the Serbs were making it impossible to do so in Sarajevo.
- The world has changed dramatically since then. So have the Western Balkans.
- Let me start there. You will hear from many people who live in the Western Balkans, especially in Bosnia and Serbia, that nothing has changed.
- This reflects their disappointment in what has happened in the last 25 years. I share that disappointment. I would like to have seen far more progress.
- But it is not objectively true that things haven’t changed. Per capita GDP is on average at least twice as high as it was before the 1990s wars. Apart from Covid-19, it is safe to travel throughout former Yugoslavia, regardless of ethnic identity or national origins. You can say pretty much whatever you want in all the former Yugoslav republics and in Albania, even if organizing politically and publishing are still not entirely free in several countries. Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and Muslims worship freely, often in renovated churches and mosques.
- The question is how this progress was achieved, and why does it appear to have come to a halt sometime in the middle of the first decade of this millennium.
- The 1990s, we know now, were truly the unipolar moment, when the US had no rivals and together with Europe could do what it wanted in the Balkans and much of the rest of the world.
- With a lot of help from Croatia, NATO used force to end the Bosnian war and compel Serbia’s withdrawal from Kosovo in 1999. The US and EU also negotiated the end of an Albanian rebellion in Macedonia in 2001, with NATO backing.
- Washington and Brussels then together invested massive financial and personnel resources in Bosnia and Kosovo. The former was eventually run by a European with US support and the latter became a UN protectorate run by Europeans with American deputies. Their mandate in Bosnia was to install a sovereign, democratic government. In Kosovo, it was to build self-governing democratic institutions, with a view to eventually solving the sovereignty question.
- Macedonia remained self-governing, but with European and American monitoring and sometimes financing of its 2001 Ohrid agreement.
- The unipolar moment began to end with the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 and the US responses in Afghanistan and Iraq, which the Balkan successes encouraged.
- But the joint US/EU state-building processes in Bosnia and Kosovo had significant momentum and continued. So too did the peace implementation in Macedonia.
- The process stalled in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2006, when the parliament failed to approve by the required two-thirds constitutional changes the Americans and Europeans wanted.
- In Kosovo, the UN first imposed a program of “standards before status” and “later standards with status,” leading eventually to supervised independence in 2007, after which progress slowed.
- In Macedonia, political and economic reform lasted a bit longer, perhaps through 2008, but the financial crisis that hit Europe and the US hard in that year made the going much slower.
- The Balkans have not had an easy time of it since. All the Balkan states are heavily dependent on EU economic growth. The Greek financial crisis and economic collapse, the flood of immigrants after 2011 from the greater Middle East, and the Brexit referendum in 2016 gave Europe more urgent and higher priority problems than the Balkans.
- These developments also made Europe more cautious about the prospects for enlargement.
- Brussels began to slow roll accession, which in turn slowed the necessary economic and political reforms. Would-be autocrats faced much less challenge than they would have in the 1990s.
- In Bosnia, some politicians returned to the virulent ethnic nationalist rhetoric of wartime, with little constraint imposed by Washington or Brussels. The country is now stalled in its own constitutional contradictions, imposed by Washington and Brussels.
- In Kosovo, the economy has done relatively well, after an initial spurt the authorities managed to limit Islamist radicalization, the courts began to prosecute some high-level corruption cases, interethnic crime dropped dramatically, the army is now getting support from NATO, and there have been several peaceful, if sometimes turbulent, transfers of power.
- Kosovo now faces its greatest post-independence challenge: the pending indictment at the Specialist Chambers in The Hague, a nominally Kosovo court run by the Americans and Europeans, of the President, the head of the political party he founded, and eight other still unnamed Kosovo Liberation Army fighters.
- In Macedonia, a one-time economic reformer unable to deliver reform after 2008 or so gave the country a political nightmare that was finally dispelled with help from U.S. and European muscle, leading eventually to an agreement with Greece to change its name to North Macedonia and allow it to become a candidate for EU accession as well as a member of NATO.
- In the meanwhile, Croatia, became a member of the EU, Serbia began to normalize its relations with Kosovo, and Montenegro managed to get into NATO and put itself in pole position for EU membership.
- In short, things are a lot better in the Balkans than they were in the 1990s, even if progress is slow and serious trouble spots remain.
- Today’s world is however dramatically different from the one that existed in the 1990s.
- While still globally dominant, the US faces regional challenges from China, Russia, Iran and even North Korea that take priority in Washington over the Balkans.
- The Balkans in general, and Bosnia and Kosovo in particular, were the objects of top-tier attention in the 1990s. They now get much lower priority.
- That is true in Europe as well, where Brexit, Ukraine, Syria, Libya, and illegal immigration are issues that, each in its own way, cast a shadow over Balkan aspirations to join Europe.
- At the same time, Moscow and Beijing are paying more attention than ever before to the Balkans.
- The Russians are interfering blatantly by both violent and nonviolent means in the region: assassination, media manipulation, renting crowds, and financing political parties are all being used to slow if not halt Balkan progress towards NATO and the EU.
- The Chinese are using their financial strength to loan, build and buy. Caveat emptor of course, though Beijing’s behavior is a lot more salubrious than Moscow’s and likely to produce some positive results for those Balkan countries and companies that know how to do business.
- It comes however with political strings attached: the Chinese will expect those who get their money to toe the line on Taiwan, Hong Kong, Uighurs, and Covid-19.
- Turkey—also a strong force in the Balkans for historical, geographic, and cultural reasons—has taken a dramatic turn in a more Islamist and autocratic direction.
- The secular Turkey that contributed well-trained forces to NATO interventions in the 1990s has all but vanished. Erdogan’s Turkey is building mosques, capturing Gulenists, and encouraging political Islam while still trying to maintain its previous good relations with non-Muslim countries in the Balkans.
- How does all this affect the Balkan countries?
- The Turkish influence is direct and palpable.
- In Bosnia, it is exercised mainly through Bakir Izetbegovic, now head of the leading Islamist political party.
- Though still largely secular in orientation, Kosovo is far more Islamic than it once was and has cooperated with the capture and rendering of Gulenists. President Thaci treasures his relationship with President Erdogan.
- China has focused its attention mainly on Serbia and Montenegro, the former by buying assets and the latter by building an important highway.
- Most Kosovars might welcome more interest in investment from Beijing. I wouldn’t fault them for that but only urge caution about the financial and political conditions, which can be onerous.
- But Beijing doesn’t like break-away provinces. Perhaps because of that, Japan is showing some interest in Kosovo and should be able to provide far better deals.
- Russia is still far more politically important to Serbia than China, because it holds the veto in the Security Council over Kosovo membership in the UN. Belgrade has tried to continue its non-aligned hedging between the West and East, even though it claims the ambition of joining the EU. It buys arms from Moscow but trains more with NATO.
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Stevenson’s army, July 27
– A group of former members of Congress are due to release a report suggesting reforms of Congress. So far, only this article.
– Looks like the US Ambassador to UK needs to change some of his ways, too.
-And things could be a mess after the election, several scenarios show.
– WaPo’s Dan Balz says US global standing is poor.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Police riots
There is a connection between what is happening these days in Portland and what happened on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama in 1965. In both places, the police rioted. They used force unnecessarily to try to frighten demonstrators from exercising their constitutional rights.
There is more method in this madness. Donald Trump needs to prove that his deployment of Customs and Border Protection officers is justified. There is no better way than to use those officers in ways that are likely to arouse a violent reaction, or at least generate lots of video showing chaos.
There is a difference between Selma and Portland: John Lewis and the other civil rights demonstrators were far more disciplined about nonviolence than the demonstrators in Portland have been. When attacked, they ran. They knew the police had at their disposal overwhelming force. They also knew their cause would benefit from the police violence.
Sadly, the demonstrators in Portland have been unable to restrain the relatively few of their number who are determined to meet violence with violence. The result is an ambiguous signal to the rest of the country. Those who want to believe the deployment of Federal forces is justified get enough evidence to make them feel comfortable with that opinion.
The Portland demonstrators have had it right when they deployed mothers and veterans in the first line confronting the police. Those are clever moves, but as the evenings wear on that discipline seems to break down. It is of course possible there are agents provocateurs among the demonstrators, placed there for the specific purpose of generating the violence the Federal agents want. But it is also possible, even likely, that there are a few radicals who think violence will generate support.
It will not. People don’t come out in the same numbers for violent demonstrations as for nonviolent ones. Nor is sympathy for demonstrations as strong if they are violent. This one Navy veteran, who stood up nonviolently to rioting Federal agents in Portland, has generated more sympathy for the demonstrators than dozens throwing projectiles:
Anyone who doubts whether the police rioted in Selma is welcome to watch this:
It is hard not to feel fury when seeing these videos, which will have been shown worldwide.
But the Pettus Bridge is already remembered more for what John Lewis did there than anything Pettus, who was a racist rebel against the United States, accomplished. President Trump will likewise be forgotten except for the corruption and lies that mark his singularly undistinguished time in the White House.
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” The trick is to make sure we stay in a moral universe, not the immoral one that Trump and his minions prefer. John Lewis, who will be remembered for courage and conviction, crossed the bridge in Selma for the last time today. Let’s keep the faith with him, not with Pettus and Trump.
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