Mushroom clouds over the Middle East
Former IAEA inspector Pantelis Ikonomou writes:
After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear deterrence became the strongest parameter in projecting geopolitical power. Nuclear weapons could eventually be decisive in the Middle East.
Israel and Iran are now in direct confrontation
Safeguarding state security and regional dominance are the fundamental aims of the main protagonists, Israel and Iran. Since spring, they have been confronting each other directly. Two exchanges of missiles have resulted. Further escalation seems irreversible.
Serious questions need serious answers. Where is this dynamic leading? What is next? Is there hope for an end to the escalation after next week’s presidential elections in the US? Is the global superpower willing or even capable of rerouting the war dynamics towards a peaceful direction?
The next American President
Candidate Donald Trump in 2018 withdrew the US unilaterally from the Iran nuclear deal. A few days ago Trump urged Israel to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. Doing that would force Iran to end its doctrine of strategic patience. Iran would exit the NPT, develop the military dimension of its nuclear program, and construct nuclear warheads. Iranian parliamentarians are already proposing this course of action.
The other candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, was an important voice in Washington as the current Middle East crisis developed. President Biden has struggled to prevent the escalatory spiral. His effort slowed but not stopped it.
The consequences are dire
Continuation of this situation could force Israel to abandon its doctrine of nuclear opacity. It neither confirms nor denies its nuclear weapons. Prime Minister Meir considered using nuclear weapons during the 1973 Yom Kippur war to respond to Egyptian army advances. Prime Minister Netanyahu could also be forced to consider or threaten their use.
An Iranian decision to pursue nuclear weapons or Israeli confirmation of its nuclear capability would change the situation dramatically. Either or both would challenge the credibility of the Non Proliferation Treaty, the IAEA, and the UN Security Council. Adding Iran to the non-NPT states (India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel) could undermine the global security architecture. Mushroom clouds would loom over the Middle East.
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Georgia in contrast: red and blue
I spent yesterday afternoon monitoring opening and scanning of paper absentee, overseas, and military ballots in Hall County, Georgia. Hall is just north of Fulton (Atlanta), where I spent the last two weeks as a roving (outside) poll watcher. Hall is a deep red county, whereas Fulton is deep blue.
The process is good
I did not get to talk with many voters in Hall. The process I observed there started with slitting open the envelopes containing paper ballots, their removal from the “secrecy” sleeves, tearing off of the tabs that contain inventory numbers connected to particular voters, shuffling so that ballots cannot be traced to individuals, and scanning into the election system computer. Some ballots can’t be scanned and are separated out for later human scrutiny. Friday I’ll be on a panel adjudicating what to do those. Some ballots are not clearly marked, contain write-ins, or are printed on plain paper. Military units can send in the those on plain paper. The last are received from military units.
Throughout, the election workers keep careful track of the number of ballots and envelopes. Discrepancies happen. Sometimes two ballots arrive in the same envelope, or none. They don’t open the envelopes until the day they process them. Three workers oversee the scanning. They process all the ballots from opened envelopes the same day.
It would be hard to find fault with the process. Or with the attitude of the election workers. They seek to make cheating impossible.
So why is Hall County red?
Of course I don’t really know why Hall County is red. My few interactions with people there were entirely friendly. The folks at the Waffle House made me a fine steak and bacon sandwich. There were a few very large Trump signs and American flags. Some signs promised a Trump victory would lower taxes. I doubt anyone in Hall County is rich enough to gain from the tax cuts Trump will try to make. The main industry in Hall is chickens. Many of the workers are immigrants.
I asked one Harris-supporting resident about why people in Hall County support Trump. She thought it was crime. A few spectacular murders, especially the first at the University of Georgia since 1983, have generated fear. An undocumented immigrant is on trial for that one.
There is little a President can do about crime. Local authorities run most police forces, courts, and prisons. But Trump’s conflation of crime with immigration has gained traction. Never mind that immigrants don’t commit more crimes than native born Americans. Or that Hall County was red well before the February University of Georgia murder.
It’s about identity
My own conclusion is that people vote Trump more because of identity than policy. Hall County will gain little if Trump wins and deports immigrants. To the contrary, it will wreck the county’s chicken industry. The fear of immigrant crime is not based in the facts. It is based in the feeling that immigrants are not like us. They speak a different language, have different customs, and likely vote for Harris. That’s enough to make white men like a four-flushing liar. Go figure.
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What happens if Trump wins?
In many parts of the world, the answer is obvious. Trump has said he would strike a deal with Putin on Ukraine. That means surrender of at least Ukrainian territory Russia already controls. In the Middle East, Trump backs Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu 100%. That means Palestinians will be restricted to even smaller areas of the West Bank and Gaza. The prospects for a Palestinian state will be reduced to nil. In Asia, Trump has encouraged Japan and South Korea to get their own nuclear weapons. That, he hopes, will enable US withdrawal. Taiwan will be surrendered, sooner or later, to China.
But what about the Balkans? The region won’t be a priority for either a President Trump or a President Harris. She has said nothing so far as I know about the Balkans. But she is a vigorous rule of law defender of human rights. Trump has also said little about the Balkans, but we know what he did last time. We should expect more of the same.
President Harris: human rights and rule of law
Balkan policy under Harris will hopefully be consistent with her commitment to human rights and rule of law.
That implies keeping NATO and EU membership open, protecting individual rights, and fighting corruption. Consistency would require that American diplomacy return to opposing ethnic nationalism and promoting liberal democracy. Appeasement of President Vucic should decline, as should tolerance for the current Bosnia HiRep. He has backed ethnonationalists and opposed the pending European Court of Human Rights decision that undermines their hold on Bosnia. Interest in extending Kosovo’s sovereignty and countering corruption in Serbia and Albania should increase.
President Trump: partition and profits
In Trump’s first term, his Balkan envoy Ric Grenell favored partition of Kosovo. I am not among those who believe that he can become Secretary of State. But he could take Jim O’Brien’s place as Assistant Secretary for Europe. As soon as the partition option is opened again, it will spread. First to southern Serbia but then to Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, and southwestern Serbia (Sandjak). Populations will start moving. Violence will result.
Trump/Grenell will also favor the Balkan fortunes of son-in-law Jared Kushner. That means more appeasement of Serbia’s President Vucic and Albania’s Prime Minister Rama. Both of them have sought to line Trump’s pockets with real estate deals. No doubt they stand to gain as well, politically if not financially.
Sooner rather than later
I don’t think any of this will respect the diplomatic clock. If Trump wins, the changes will start quickly. Europeans will assume NATO is dead. Russia will too. In the Balkans, Vucic and Republika Srpska President Dodik will try to produce facts on the ground. They’ll leave the conference rooms for later. With NATO immobilized, Serbia could try to grab northern Kosovo and the RS can secede from Bosnia. This could all happen during the lame duck presidency, before the January 20 inauguration, or very soon thereafter.
The Biden Administration needs to prevent disaster on its own watch, if Trump is elected. The State and Defense Departments should be preparing now and forewarning the Balkanites, even before the election. EUFOR and KFOR should be prepared to counter partition moves in Kosovo and Bosnia. Plans for reinforcement should be ready. Even now, it would be a good idea to move more troops to Brcko, in northeastern Bosnia. Without Brcko, RS secession is improbable.
Later rather than sooner
If Harris wins, all of the above could still happen. But later rather than sooner, if she fails to correct the mistakes of the Biden Administration. A thorough review of Balkans policy is long overdue. It won’t be hard to discern why Biden couldn’t get anything more than ammunition for Ukraine from appeasing Serbia. Vucic is not embracing the West and won’t. Russia has infested his security services. His own ambition for a Serbian world is analogous to Putin’s Russian world.
The harder part will be correcting course. The EU and US need to lower ambitions for the Dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade. They need to raise the pressure on Belgrade and counter Russia’s malign influence there and in Montenegro. And Washington and Brussels need to strengthen the sovereignty and territorial integrity of both Bosnia and Kosovo.
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Complaint department, North Macedonia
I received today this letter from Ali Ahmeti, the President of the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI). It is the leading Albanian opposition party in North Macedonia. The letter’s aim is to generate action by the US and EU:
I am writing to you today with deep concern about recent political and constitutional developments in North Macedonia that threaten the historic achievements of the Ohrid Agreement, as well as the fundamental principles of equality and peace in our multiethnic state, particularly for the Albanian community in North Macedonia.
It is troubling that plans, surprisingly announced by the government itself, indicate that the Constitutional Court intends to annul key provisions of the Law on the Use of Languages, which established the Albanian language as an equal official language under Amendment 5 of the Constitution. This poses a severe blow to the Ohrid Agreement, interethnic harmony, and stability in the country, potentially taking us back to the pre-2001 conditions that led to crisis and conflict.
Furthermore, the Constitutional Court’s decision to prohibit the identification of citizens’ ethnic affiliation within state institutions undermines the principle of collective rights of ethnic communities and nullifies the core balancing mechanisms and the Badinter principle, which are central to the Ohrid Agreement.
These mechanisms were established to guarantee the collective rights of ethnic communities based on demographic reality, thereby providing essential protection against any form of domination. By eliminating the declaration of ethnic affiliation, the Constitutional Court is breaching the Constitution itself, whose fundamental value is fair and adequate representation, effectively reverting us to pre-Ohrid conditions.
Lastly, following the recent elections, the fundamental principle of the Ohrid Agreement, which requires the formation of a political majority based on fair representation of ethnic communities, has been severely violated.
This action is not merely an issue for the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI), but affects the principle of fair representation guaranteed by Amendment 6 of North Macedonia’s Constitution, serving as a safeguard against majority dominance over minorities.
These three significant setbacks to the foundations of the Ohrid Agreement pose a serious threat to peace, stability, interethnic harmony, and multiethnic democracy in North Macedonia.
These are not merely internal political matters but carry severe regional implications for overall stability. These interventions threaten to dismantle the key elements of peace and equality, taking us back to a period of crisis and conflict.
At this critical juncture, I urge for joint and decisive action to protect the achievements of the Ohrid Agreement and the guaranteed rights of the Albanian community. Your engagement in raising international awareness and mobilizing relevant institutions regarding this constitutional and political crisis is essential.
Thank you for your tireless efforts to promote peace, stability, and European integration in the Western Balkans.
Regular readers may imagine that I have ambivalent feelings about some of the issues raised in this letter.
Language
Not, however, about the language question. The Ohrid agreement is crystal clear on this subject. It requires that any language spoken by more than 20% of the population should be co-official with Macedonian.
I don’t see how you bring that obligation into question without creating more problems than North Macedonia already has. It was an important part of the 2001 peace settlement. Maintaining it is important.
Ethnic identification of government employees
The second issue concerns ethnic identification of government employees. Of course I prefer a system that is color blind and based on merit. But not specifying ethnic identification of government employees will not make government employment color blind. Names pretty much tell you who is Albanian and who is Macedonian. I suspect the intention of this proposition is to continue the current predominance of Macedonians in senior government positions.
Faking color blindness won’t work. Macedonia needs to diversify its public sector employees to more fully reflect the population’s diversity. I’m not a fan of quotas. But affirmative action with priority given to qualifications is a process that can yield reasonable results. Many Albanians have a qualification most Macedonians lack: they speak both languages. Government hiring should take that into account.
Fair representation in government
The third issue of fair representation is not fully specified. I imagine it refers to the positions given to ethnic Albanians in the current government. That is is more a political complaint than a juridical or constitutional one. One of the main Macedonian complaints about the previous government was the preponderance of Albanians in key positions. The winners of the last election sought to weaken the Albanian presence because they won the election.
DUI’s Albanian rivals negotiated the current coalition deal. If they did it badly, that is an issue for the next election. American and European diplomats can point that out to the Prime Minister, but it is not really an international issue.
Bottom lines
So my responses are
- Yes to Ali Ahmeti on the language issue,
- No to the government on the ethnic identification issue, and
- Let the voters decide on the fair representation issue.
But what difference does it make what I think? Fundamentally, these are issues that Macedonia’s citizens need to decide.
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All good, until it’s not, in Atlanta
I am now past my second week of outside poll watching in Atlanta (Fulton County). Minus three days off for a jaunt to Boston to give a talk at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. By my count, I’ve now spot-checked 21 of the 34 early voting centers in the county. I’ve been to a couple more than once.
No wait no mess
I’m delighted to report that I have continued to find nothing to complain about. The early voting centers are adequately staffed and equipped. I haven’t found more than a 15-minute line anywhere. All the polling center managers say they haven’t had a longer line since early voting started.
That’s despite the record numbers of people voting. More than half of the number of people who voted in Georgia in 2020 have already voted. Most people exiting report that voting took no more than 5 minutes. None have registered complaints with me.
The Georgia Democratic Party has been concerned that polling centers post notices citing the disqualification of two candidates. All the polling centers I’ve visited display the notices prominently, along with the ballot, both inside and outside.
Four of the polling centers have had individual police officers stationed discreetly outside. I saw no indication voters felt intimidated or inhibited from voting. None of the police officers reported any incidents.
It would be hard not to conclude that Fulton County knows what it is doing and has done it well.
A long way to go
Of course there is a long way ahead. Early voting continues through November 1. Vote review panels are starting this week. Those are the panels that decide on a voter’s intention if it is not clear on the ballot. They also supervise duplication of ballots that can’t be machine read. I’ll have my first opportunity to contribute to those processes Friday, in Hall County north of Atlanta.
I am expecting an assignment to poll watch inside a polling center, also in Hall County, for election day. I am also expecting for this week assignments to ballot count monitoring. That is likely to continue for a few days after November 5.
The controversies to come
The process so far looks good to me. But that of course doesn’t mean that there aren’t problems. And even if there aren’t problems, some people will want to invent some. No one should imagine that Donald Trump is going to take a loss in Georgia without protest. He no doubt has both his mouth and his lawyers ready to complain about fraud if he loses. If he wins, he’ll extol the process.
The people voting so far in Georgia are disproportionately women. This spells trouble for the Republicans, joy for the Democrats. But of course the percentage could be reversed this week or on election day. And you really can’t tell how people vote when you ask them how the process went. Nor are there enough lawn signs or other indicators to tell you anything meaningful.
The Georgia state election board is still resolving quite a few issues, some in court. That is due to a MAGA takeover, which has put election deniers in charge. They are still trying to change the process. That is outrageous while the voting is taking place and so close to Election Day. When the courts refuse their proposals, they will no doubt complain that the election wasn’t fair.
It’s all good, until it’s not.
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Four more bad reasons to vote Trump
I somehow managed yesterday in citing ten reasons to vote for Trump to skip an obvious one: immigration. It merited mention, not least because it a very bad reason to be voting for Trump.
We need the labor
The United States needs more immigrants, not fewer. The tight labor market is driving up wages and productivity. That is welcome after many years that they lagged the increase in returns to capital. Incomes have been rising faster than prices since the epidemic. But there are limits. The US fertility rate (average number of children per woman over a lifetime) is down to 1.6. This is insufficient to sustain a stable population size. The resulting aging of the population increases the demands on Social Security and Medicare while decreasing their revenue streams.
Immigration can help to alleviate these problems. Immigrants to the US are younger on average and have more children than people born in the US. They help to pay the bills of those reaching retirement age, also relieving labor market pressure.
We need the entrepreneurs and executives
Immigrants are also disproportionately entrepreneurs. They do not on the whole take jobs from native-born Americans but create jobs for everyone:
…immigrants act more as “job creators” than “job takers” and play outsized roles in US high-growth entrepreneurship.
This is important, as US economic growth depends heavily on new, small companies. And small companies grow. Immigrants founded nearly 45% of the Fortune 500.
It is of course also true that immigrants play important roles in managing major corporations. The tech sector is rife with immigrant executives. Eighty per cent of privately held billion dollar companies have immigrants in a senior role. The American economy today depends on immigrant managers.
Getting rid of them isn’t possible
The Obama and Biden Administrations focused deportation on people who posed security risks. The Trump Administration did not have clear priorities. Biden has removed (often by expulsion rather than deportation) many more immigrants than Trump did.
That doesn’t mean Trump isn’t going to try to do what he said he would do. He has pledged to round up and expel millions. Trump’s effort would cost many billions and involve hiring ten thousand new immigration officials.
Even beginning that process will unleash chaos in the American economy, further tighten the labor market. It will also discourage immigration that we need for the purposes cited above. Trump’s election will slam down an economy that is landing softly.
There is a bipartisan solution already drafted that Trump won’t support
Republicans and Democrats have already agreed to a bipartisan immigration bill. Trump blocked its approval in the Congress. But the new Congress can revive the plan and pass it. Harris has pledged to sign it.
If elected, Trump will need to insist on something “better.” He is unlikely to get it if the Democrats control one of the Houses. Only Harris guarantees that immigration will be dealt with quickly on a bipartisan basis in the new Congress.
I could go on. World population growth is also slowing markedly. There soon won’t be as many people wanting to immigrate anywhere than there once were. Trump’s anti-immigrant efforts will encourage people to go elsewhere. That will not be good for a country that depends heavily on immigrant labor, entrepreneurs, and executives. We’d be well-advised to forget Trump’s grandiose plans and grab the bipartisan solution.
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