Month: October 2020
If you can lie like this, why tell the truth?
Even in Trump’s world of lies, this is a whopper. The irrelevant agreement signed on separate pieces of paper at the White House in September has done nothing to prevent or cure violence between Serbs and Albanians, because there has been very little for the past 15 years. Any professor of social science can nominate someone for a Nobel Peace Prize (and yes, I have, the Syrian White Helmets), along with lots of other people. President Trump has no serious claim to one and will never get one. His nomination for the Serbia/Kosovo agreement came from an extreme right-wing Norwegian parliamentarian. I can’t imagine who might have suggested he do it.
But this whopper tells us something about Trump and his supporters. Neither knows anything or cares to know anything. Ignorance allows creation of a self-image unlinked to reality. Trump and his supporters are living in their own utopia, where immigrants are a mortal threat, discrimination against minorities is not a problem, left-wing socialists are threatening God and country, the Mexicans paid for the wall and the Chinese pay the tariffs, and the President has done everything possible to bring Covid-19 under control. No wonder he can also sell them the idea he merits a Nobel Prize.
Something like 40% of Americans are suckers for this crap. Trump has been entertaining them since his recovery from the virus at mostly unmasked and crowded rallies in states he should be reasonably sure of winning. This is not a viable strategy for winning the election, but it is a viable strategy for assembling a critical mass to protest its outcome if he loses. He famously told the Proud Boys to “stand by.” He is laying the foundation for calling them and their like to arms on November 4 if it looks as if he may have won on election night. He will then try to stop the counting of absentee/mail-in ballots, which are thought to come mainly from Democrats. The Supreme Court, with a 6 to 3 Republican majority, will assist in this effort.
Even if Trump accepts election defeat, there are lots of ways he can use the “lame duck” period until January 20 to feather his own nest and make problems for Biden (and the country), capably outlined by Politico. America is in for a rough ride: violence by right-wing armed gangs, abuse of power, Covid-19 rampaging, the economy and stock market in free fall until President Biden can steady the ship of state and begin the process of restoring sanity and confidence.
Stay tuned. This isn’t over yet. The 40% who believe the lies will want their final moments in power.
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Stevenson’s army, October 28
Dean Cohen warns about the consequences if Trump is reelected.
NYT speculates on a Biden policy toward Latin America.
Some China hands say the China hawks are overreaching.
Politico speculates about what a lame duck Trump might do.
Political interference with VOA feared.
Beef exports to China muddle Montana Senate race
New Yorker has good ideas on how crisis leadership should work.
Review of recent books on proxy wars.
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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Stevenson’s army, October 27
Vice says US troops in Africa are in danger.
Daily Beast says FBI is sitting on its white supremacy threat report.
Why is the NSA going to shipyards and explaining Navy programs?
Maybe because, Dan Drezner argues, the foreign policy leadership is totally politicized.
Biden aides, however, aren’t allowed to talk to foreigners.
Phil Zelikow has a short list of needed State Dept reforms.
Sorry, folks, NYT health writer says marijuana has heart health risks.
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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What use is disarmament of the disarmed?
Pantelis Ikonomou, retired IAEA nuclear inspector, writes:
For decades, international civil society has advocated for a treaty that specifically commits to comprehensive nuclear disarmament and the total abolition of nuclear weapons. The nuclear weapon states, based on non-binding provisions of the international nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and shortcomings in the global disarmament regime, have kept dissociating themselves from this global aspiration for nuclear disarmament. Even worse, all of them keep developing new and more effective nuclear weapons through expensive projects of “nuclear modernization.”
In this gloomy global climate, a new international treaty – the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) – is soon entering into force. After its endorsement by a special UN conference in July 2017, the Treaty reached last Friday the required minimum of 50 ratifications triggering entry into force in 90 days thereafter, about the time of the presidential inauguration in the US. TPNW bans the development, production, testing, stockpiling, stationing, transferring, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons.
TPNW would be a catalytic nuclear disarmament advancement if it did not have a critical shortcoming. It is binding only on those states that are party to it. Notably, all nuclear weapon states and NATO allies did not participate at the TPNW conference, saying they remain committed to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Of 193 UN member states, only 124 participated, of which 122 voted “in favor,” one “against” and one “abstention”.
Ultimately, the realization of nuclear disarmament will still rest on the goodwill of the nuclear weapon holders. If nuclear weapon holders decide to join the TPNW, it provides for a time-bound framework for negotiations leading to the verified and irreversible elimination of their nuclear weapons programs. If not, Article VI of the NPT will continue demarcating their responsibility: “… to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament….”
The questions that arise from the current development include:
a) Is the TPNW practically another manifestation of the “disarmament of the disarmed”?
b) What is the practical value of this Treaty?
To which I respond:
- It is undoubtedly a strong political statement, both a protest and an invitation by the international community to the nuclear weapon holders.
- It carries moral weight and opens the way to eliminating double standards linked to geopolitics or moral relativism of the nuclear powers.
- It stigmatizes development and use of nuclear weapons, with potential to influence international public opinion and countries that have not yet signed up to change their stance.
As long as the five nuclear superpowers keep ignoring their nuclear disarmament responsibility under the NPT and evade the TPNW invitation, their behavior will provoke frustration, awkwardness, and anger in the rest of the international community. But that may not continue forever, because use of nuclear weapons can occur at any moment–by accident, mistake, or intentionally.
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Biden and the Kosovo Serbs
Colleague Michael Haltzel, Senior Fellow at the SAIS Foreign Policy Institute, writes at Medium:
In westernmost Kosovo stands the 14th century Serbian Orthodox Visoki Decani Monastery, whose fresco-adorned main cathedral is the largest medieval church in the Balkans. The magnificent monastery is listed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List, but it would likely be in ruins today had it not been for the behind-the-scenes intervention of Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate for President.
On one of his many trips to Southeastern Europe, then-Senator Biden and I visited Visoki Decani in the winter of 2001. It was a tiny, isolated Serb enclave in ethnic Albanian territory. Armored personnel carriers of Italy’s KFOR contingent were parked up against the low stone wall ringing the monastery.
The well-known ‘’cyber priest’’ Father Sava Janjic described how in 1998–99 the monks had sheltered Serbs and Albanians alike during the vicious ethnic cleansing of Slobodan Milosevic’s troops and the warfare between Serbia and the Kosovo Liberation Army. The monastery, he said, continued to receive threats — this time from ethnic Albanian extremists — but until then had not been attacked.
A few days later we had meetings with all the leading Kosovar Albanian political figures, including Ramush Haradinaj, the former guerilla commander in the Decani region. Haradinaj impressed us with his understanding that a modicum of ethnic reconciliation was a precondition for Kosovo to attain independence. (Haradinaj, who subsequently was twice acquitted by the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, served as independent Kosovo’s prime minister from 2017 until February 2020.)
When Biden returned to Washington, he pondered what could be done to help protect Visoki Decani, the only Serbian Orthodox monastery in Kosovo over whose security we might have some influence. He decided to send a private letter to Haradinaj, in which he wrote: ‘’I know that you have particularly great influence in the Decani region, and I would regard it as a personal favor if you would do all you can to guarantee the safety of the Visoki Decani Monastery and its monks.’’
A few weeks later we received word from Haradinaj that he would, indeed, see that the monastery and its monks were protected.
On March 17, 2004, violent pogroms against Serbs across Kosovo resulted in several deaths and dozens of Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries burned to the ground, despite the presence of KFOR international peacekeeping troops. A singular exception was Visoki Decani, which was spared by the mobs.
In August 2004, I returned to Kosovo for meetings with Albanian and Serb politicians. When Haradinaj entered the room, his first words to me were: ‘’Tell Senator Biden that I kept my promise.’’
Kosovo gained its independence in 2008. A diplomatic dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia, brokered by the European Union and the U.S., has yet to yield major accomplishments. Inter-communal violence in Kosovo has lessened, but tensions remain, including around Visoki Decani. Biden, who as Vice President made two visits to Kosovo, has made clear to the government that it must uphold its commitment to protect the lives of Kosovo Serbs and their remaining churches and monasteries.
No other American political figure has Joe Biden’s credibility on Balkan affairs. As President, working with our EU allies, he would be in a unique position to reinvigorate the dialogue between Serbia and Kosovo and to strengthen efforts to bridge the remaining divide between Kosovo’s Serb and Albanian communities. In doing so Biden would be serving America’s vital interest in a peaceful Balkan region, where we twice went to war in the 1990’s.
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Peacefare is 10 years old!
When I left the United States Institute of Peace in late September 2010, I knew I wanted to work on a book (that emerged three years later as Righting the Balance, to your right). I knew nothing about blogging and less about tweeting. I got a bit of encouragement from son Adam, who had begun his sterling journalistic career at Media Matters. I also had some quick technology advice from USIP’s tech chief, who said “use WordPress.” I had no idea what he meant or where this would end.
And of course it hasn’t. I continue to blog and tweet, along with dozens of dedicated research assistants and some superb occasional contributors from within and beyond DC. Collectively, we’ve produced going on 4000 posts, more than an average of one per day for a decade. I’ve tweeted too much and too often repeated myself in the blog posts, but both the blog and the tweeting have gained a significant following, including lots of editors, journalists, decisionmakers, government officials, activists, scholars, students and who knows who else. About half the followers are Americans and half not.
Peacefare has given me a good deal of satisfaction, but there have also been disappointments. I would have liked to get more contributions from others and to stimulate more discussion and comments. Unfortunately, the most frequent comments come from racists and anti-Semites. I used to publish those, and they did excite a good deal of commentary. But I decided to stop: racists and anti-Semites have lots of outlets elsewhere. I don’t need to waste my cyber real estate on them, but I will always welcome commentary from others.
Looking forward, I really don’t know in which direction to point peacefare.net. I suppose it depends in part on the outcome of this ferocious election campaign. If Trump is re-elected, it will be hard for me not to remain engaged in the effort to burst the second term lies, though that is the last thing I really want to be doing in my dotage. If Biden is elected, I may also be tempted to criticize, though I am more likely to be on board with things he will do and not do. But the question is, to what end result?
In the Balkans, I have the sense people are listening, though lots of them disagree or don’t like what they hear. In the Middle East, that is far less true. Those are the two parts of the world peacefare.net publishes on the most. The posts gain resonance when they are republished or quoted in the foreign press. Middle Easterners are far less interested than Balkanites in what Americans have to say, and my connections to the Middle East are less rooted than my connections to the Balkans.
In the US, I fear I am preaching mainly to the converted, that is to people with internationalist inclinations and foreign policy experience. Nothing wrong with that, though they have many other fonts of wisdom and foolishness to entertain them. I’ve become increasingly interested in the domestic ramifications of foreign policy, but I confess I haven’t been very successful at writing about them. Mainly I find myself warning non-Americans that Americans are not really very interested in foreign policy or foreign problems. They are far more preoccupied with their own health and welfare. President Obama did Syrians no favor when he hesitated to intervene there, but he reflected the real sentiments of both Congress and most of the US.
That is of course as it should be. I am no America firster, but I have always reminded myself that whatever I do abroad the American taxpayer foots the bill, one way or another. We need one way or another to demonstrate the benefits of international engagement , which brings with it enormous responsibilities and costs. I am convinced the benefits of the Balkan engagement have been worthwhile, partly because the costs were far lower than the later interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. That is what From War to Peace, the other book to the right is about.
The Middle East has not yielded to those who wanted it to find more democratic ways of governing itself. In some places, its citizens continue to seek representation and voice: Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, and even Syria have not quite managed to snuff out the spirit of the Arab Spring, which their citizens maintain at terrifying cost. But violence has overwhelmed them in Yemen and Libya, while the Gulf has combined repression with payoffs to keep its autocracies in place, now with help from Israel.
There isn’t a lot America is going to be able to do about that, though I do believe if Biden is elected Washington will return to a preference for more open and accountable governance, both at home and abroad. Perhaps that is the point. The American example has been far more cost effective than American arms in exporting democratic ideals. A lot of what I did as an American diplomat was intended to illustrate what it meant to live, work, and govern in an open and accountable society that treated others with respect. Maybe illustrating that through rational discourse is not a bad goal for the future of peacefare.net as well.
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