Category: Daniel Serwer
It’s not only about Ukraine
Negotiations with Russia went nowhere in this first week. The US, NATO, and the OSCE failed to budge Putin from his insistence on rolling back the NATO presence in Europe and blocking forever NATO membership for Ukraine. The Russians failed to budge NATO from its insistence that the door to membership be kept open (even if both NATO and the Russians know that Ukrainian membership is not in the cards for now). The odds of war, already high, have likely gone up, not down. What now?
Unity is strength
Above all, the US and European members of NATO need to strengthen Ukraine’s military capacity. Training and equipping should continue and expand. Stefano Graziosi and James Carafano are correct to argue that
Putin fears and respects strength. He exploits weakness. Europe must cease its dithering and give him what he fears, not what he wants.
Just today the Russians apparently launched a cyberattack on Ukraine. There are also indications they are planning a false flag operation as a pretext for invasion. Europe and the US made a pretty good show this week of unity in support of Ukraine. Let’s hope that show is backed up with real weapons and training.
Russia is vulnerable
There is still much more to be done. The Russians are more active today worldwide than the Soviets, who focused less on international presence and more on the strategic standoff with the US. In some of these places, Moscow is vulnerable. Witness what happened to the Wagner proxies in Libya, where Turkish drones forced them out of Tripoli. Some of these vulnerabilities are in Russian satellites. Witness what happened in Belarus and Kazakhstan, both of which had to rely on Moscow to protect their autocrats. And there are vulnerabilities inside the Russian Federation, where the economy is stagnant. The West needs to exploit these vulnerabilities when good opportunities present themselves.
Any Russian intervention will be limited
We also need to think realistically about what Putin is likely to do. An invasion aiming at taking all of Ukraine is unlikely. The 100,000 troops Russia has already massed are not adequate. Moscow would need to increase them by fourfold or more for that purpose. Ukraine has more and far better equipped and trained forces than when Russia first invaded in 2014. Turkey has provided its cheap but effective attack drones.
Kiev has also gained popular support. This report from Kharkiv, close to the Russian border, is telling:
The Russian Army cannot expect to be welcomed in most of a country where the Soviet-imposed Holodomor famine of 1932-33 is remembered as genocidal.
Putin presumably knows this and will keep any military intervention to limited objectives commensurate with the size of his forces. One of my more knowledgeable colleagues suggests this might be the canal that supplies water from the Dnipr to Crimea, or some expansion of the insurrectionist-controlled area in Donbas.
The US will need to lead the Western reaction
That kind of limited intervention will pose a problem for the US and Europe. Should they react with the full force of the financial and technological sanctions and military assistance to Ukrainian resistance fighters that they have threatened? Even those may not be effective. Some in NATO will want to modulate downwards to match the magnitude of any limited Russian intervention. Others will argue that a disproportionate response is appropriate, to deter further offensive efforts on Russia’s part.
The US will need to play the leadership role, whatever the Russians do. The Europeans are too fragmented and compromised to reach quick decisions and implement them with rigor. President Biden has spent a year building up credibility with NATO. He will need to draw down on those credits, especially if he reverses his own decision not to continue objecting to operation of the now completed Nordstream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany. The Germans have paused their own decision on the pipeline’s operation, but high gas prices in Europe are bringing pressure to go ahead.
Of course it would be best if Moscow backed off and accepted some of the face-saving propositions NATO is offering: limits on military exercises, missile deployments, and other classic OSCE-style confidence building measures. But hope is not a policy. The Americans need to continue to keep the Europeans in line and the Russians concerned about what an invasion of Ukraine might portend, not only in Ukraine but elsewhere as well.
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Make Putin watch his back
Alexander Vindman is the former National Security Council official who gave vital incriminating testimony in Trump’s first impeachment. He blew the whistle on the President’s phone call with President Zelensky of Ukraine, in which Trump sought dirt on then candidate Joe Biden. Now a doctoral student at SAIS, Vindman has interesting, if discouraging, things to say about Russian intentions with respect to Ukraine:
Not a lot of good options in Ukraine
Vindman believes Russia is likely to invade Ukraine, with the aim of keeping Ukraine in its sphere of influence and making it a failed state, one that cannot offer a democratic model for those who want to escape Moscow’s tentacles. Sanctions he thinks won’t have much more impact than in the past, because Russia has hardened its economy against them. In addition, Putin controls a $620 billion sovereign wealth fund, and China will help cushion the blow.
The best military hope lies in NATO countries. The US could station more troops in NATO countries near Ukraine. They, especially those on the eastern front that Russia threatens, could in turn train the Ukrainians and perhaps deploy troops and equipment to help the Ukrainian army defend against attack.
But Putin is vulnerable elsewhere
Vindman ignores Putin’s vulnerabilities beyond Ukraine. One of these was dramatically apparent in Kazakhstan over the last few days, when protesters challenged President Tokayev. The protests quickly turned violent. Tokayev sought Russian help to protect vital installations and ordered his forces to shoot to kill.
The Russians did not send a big force–supposedly only 2500 troops–but Putin is also saddled with defending his annexation of Crimea, besieged Belarusan President Lukashenko, secessionist provinces in Georgia, and the homicidal Syrian President Assad, not to mention maintaining Russian forces in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. The Russians are also active through proxy forces in Libya and the Central African Republic. They are building bases in half a dozen African countries. Russian empire-building is reaching further than even Moscow’s Soviet-era ambitions.
A crisis in any one of these places could bring a halt to Putin’s ambitions in Ukraine.
Including at home
Putin is also vulnerable at home. While he has acquired de facto autocratic powers, he is less popular than once he was. Corruption is his Achilles heel. The Kremlin has murdered one potential rival and poisoned, then imprisoned, another. A free and fair election could well do Putin in, so he won’t allow that. He also faces local ethnic and religious minority resistance to his increasingly nationalist and chauvinist rule.
If the Americans want to protect Ukraine, they will need not only to beef up its defenses and undermine Russia’s economy, but also figure out how to exploit Putin’s political and military vulnerabilities beyond Ukraine.
Make Putin watch his back.
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It’s not a secret, it’s overt
Denaid Basic of Raport.ba asked questions last week. I replied:
Q. A few days ago, the United States induct [sic] sanctions on Milorad Dodik, a member of the BiH Presidency. How do you think these sanctions will affect Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also Milorad Dodik?
A: Dodik will pretend he doesn’t care, and the sanctions may not affect him much personally. Whatever corrupt gains he has will be carefully hidden and not in international cash transactions that the US can block.
BUT: the sanctions are a warning to his supporters. They should assume that if they support de facto secession, in the RS parliament for example, that they will also be sanctioned. It is also a warning to other corrupt political leaders in the Balkans and elsewhere: the US is prepared to sanction even those in high office.
Q: Are these sanctions sufficient to defuse tensions in BiH? Do you think that the political situation can calm down?
A: No, I don’t think the sanctions will have a calming effect. Dodik will press ahead until he recognizes that the effort is costing him political support.
Q: Does the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, had an influence on tensions in BiH? Why is the situation in BiH making worse, as this was not the case even after the war?
A: Vucic has made clear his support for the “Serbian world,” that is Greater Serbia. That is an important factor in encouraging Dodik and destabilizing Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Q: What is your opinion on that the EU needs to follow the example of the USA in terms of sanctions? Do you think this is possible at the moment when in EU there is dissagrement within the Union over the sanctions?
A: I doubt the EU per se will do what the US has done, but if key member states and the UK levy sanctions that would be good.
Q: How do you see the situation in region? Is the closeness of Edi Rama and Aleksandar Vučić too sudden? Is this some secret plan of Vučić?
A: Albania and Serbia picture themselves as leaders in the region. The plan isn’t secret–it is overt. Vucic wants through Open Balkans to share hegemony in the region with Rama. Kosovo and so far Montenegro are resisting. Only if they can join on a fully equal and sovereign basis with Serbia and Albania should they begin to consider the proposition. The same should be true for Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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Hatred against Bosniaks in the Serbian world
The Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia writes:
Due to a series of new incidents glorifying genocide and war criminals with songs and graffiti, and threatening Bosniaks with a new massacre, tensions and fear in Priboj and among Bosniaks in Sandžak are growing. Even on Christmas Eve, dozens of young men shouted disturbing threats with torches in front of the mosque, “It’s Christmas, it’s Christmas, shoot the mosques.” The intensive campaign – which has been going on for months and whose threatening slogans include “From Priboj to The Hague, everyone stands with General Ratko, “Ratko Mladic – Hero”, murals depicting Ratko Mladic, and messages of hatred on social networks – has created an intolerant atmosphere in which Bosniaks are not welcome in that territory and in Serbia.
The state’s reaction to these incidents is mild or more often non-existent, particularly to those committed by police officers.
Various theories stigmatizing Sandžak are circulating across government-controlled media, because it is perceived as a disputed territory that could be the cause of new instabilities. Sandžak is considered an important point on the so-called “green transversal” and as a path for terrorists, which was the foundation of propaganda for the preparation of war and crimes against Bosniaks. Incidents have become more frequent in Sandžak, because it is being treated as the last offensive against the “green transversal” and represents an attempt to finalize ethnic cleansing.
The escalation of Serbian nationalism in both Serbia and the Republika Srpska is reviving Bosniak fears and uncertainty regarding their future. The growth of Islamophobia and the constant fixation on Islamic extremism serves to justify the demands for the secession of the Republika Srpska and the increased pressure on Bosniaks and their marginalization in Sandžak.
Despite the state’s obvious neglect of this region, Bosniaks have in previous decades invested a considerable level of good will in maintaining good neighborly relations between Serbs and Bosniaks.
The Helsinki Committee and the Sandžak Committee for Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms believe that the state is obliged to take concrete steps to ensure the security of all citizens equally, and that it has an obligation to engage in establishing the trust of Bosniaks in competent state bodies.
The Helsinki and Sandžak human rights committees also expect international actors to pay attention to the events in Sandžak before it is too late, because an intensive implementation of the “Serbian World” project is currently underway.
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This is the Bosnia we should support
I have added my name to this appeal, published today:
We are writing to you on behalf of the friends of Bosnia and Herzegovina who have gathered on 10 January 2022 in Brussels, London, Ottawa, Toronto, Geneva, Oslo, Rome, Stockholm, Gothenburg, Vienna, Sarajevo and many other cities all around the world to express our utmost concern about the current political and security crisis in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In October 2021 the ruling coalition in the Bosnian and Herzegovinian entity of Republika Srpska (RS) adopted a plan to create what it called “an independent RS within the Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina.” A seven-page long document laid out concrete steps for unilateral, illegal and unconstitutional takeover of state-level competences in fiscal, judicial, defence, security and many other areas. This plan is available in public and among other points, foresees use of force against any state-level institution that would try to defend the constitutional order of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The implementation of the plan will cause collapse of the constitutional and institutional architecture of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It will result in terrible political, economic and security consequences. With several concrete steps already taken, the ruling coalition in the RS has made it clear that it intends to implement its plan.
On 10 December 2021 the RS Assembly adopted four conclusions on the so-called “transfer of authorities” and one so-called “declaration on constitutional principles” by which the RS legislative body has de facto and de jure decided to remove this entity from the state constitutional and legal system of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the sectors of judiciary, defense and security and indirect taxation. Moreover, the RS assembly has tasked and empowered the RS government to draft new entity laws on: the RS army, RS intelligence service, RS indirect taxation system and RS high judicial and prosecutor council as well as more than 130 other laws and necessary regulations in various sectors by which RS will abolish and replace the respected state laws and regulation with entity ones.
As neither the state or RS entity constitution, nor state or entity laws allow any possibility for the entity institutions to issue legally valid decisions or laws on matters which are already imposed and regulated by state constitution or laws, the above-mentioned actions and decisions of RS assembly from 10 December 2021 are an illegal usurpation of state power and a criminal act against state constitutional and legal order.
By October 2021 the RS adopted and published in Official Gazette the unconstitutional entity law, which abolished the validation of the state-level law prohibiting genocide denial in the scope of RS. On 28 December 2021, another unconstitutional law was published in the Official Gazette. This Law on the RS Agency for medicinal products and devices could, as the European Commission noted in its recent letter to the RS authorities, lead to a collapse of the medicinal market and deprive citizens of basic medicine.
This crisis in Bosnia and Herzegovina has nothing to do with inter-ethnic relations; it is an artificial crisis provoked by corrupt nationalists and their partners. They do not have the support of the opposition in the RS Assembly, nor of the majority of the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, including those living in the RS.
The country has now been drawn into a political crisis that threatens peace and a meaningful, robust and coordinated response by the High Representative of the International Community, Christian Schmidt himself, United Nations, United States, the European Union and its NATO allies is required.
A lack of such response so far has only served to embolden Mr. Dodik’s and his ruling coalition’s ambitions. Particularly worrying are statements by government officials in Serbia, who have expressed their support for the plan of ruling coalition in RS. Alongside this, the RS secessionists enjoy the bolstering support of Russia, China and even some EU member states such as Hungary whose open nationalism, xenophobia and anti-Muslim sentiment is very much rampant.
Instead of pushing back, some in international community are only encouraging Mr. Dodik’s aspirations for secession and desire to undermine and eventually destroy Bosnia and Herzegovina as a sovereign state. However, there are very serious reasons why Bosnia and Herzegovina needs not only to be preserved as a sovereign state but also further strengthened.
Bosnia and Herzegovina is a specific cultural entity that has existed for more than 1000 years, where citizens of different ethnic origins and religious traditions have lived together for centuries.
Even today, despite the war in the 1990s, a large number of citizens accept the existence and legitimacy of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The 2019 European Values Study showed that 74 per cent of the population is proud of having Bosnian and Herzegovinian citizenship. This sentiment is the strongest in the Brcko District (88 per cent), while in RS 66 percent share this view.
Neither the peace agreement nor the constitution provide for the right of secession. It would be a disastrous historic precedent if the ‘entity’ whose political and military leaders (as well as its army and police) have been convicted for severe war crimes and genocide, with over one million people expelled, were ‘granted’ independence.
In the past 26 years, the EU and its Member States, the USA and other countries of the world, and many international organizations have invested a lot of political, diplomatic, human and financial resources in effort in maintaining peace and rebuilding the country. Bosnia and Herzegovina’s citizens, Croats, Bosniaks, Serbs, Jews, Romas, and all those Bosnians who do not identify themselves with a specific ethnic group, want to live in peace and harmony, nurtured by democracy.
On 10 January 2022, Bosnians and Herzegovinians of all ethnicities and religions, atheists and agnostics, together with their friends from all around the world will gather in Brussels, Geneva, London, Vienna, Oslo, Ottawa, Toronto, Rome, Stockholm, Sarajevo and many other cities across the world to stand for united Bosnia and Herzegovina, for its pluralism, coexistence and preservation and to issue following demands to the High Representative of the International Community, Christian Schmidt, as well as to the European Commission and the governments of the United States, United Kingdom, European Union Member States and NATO allies:
- The plan adopted and currently implemented by the ruling coalition in the Bosnian and Herzegovinian entity of Republika Srpska should be recognised as an attack on the long-lasting peace, constitutional order, sovereignty, territorial integrity and 30-year independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina and as a threat to peace, stability and security in the Western Balkans and Europe.
- A meaningful, robust and coordinated response should be developed and implemented as a matter of priority with a primary focus on deterring the local forces of destabilization and foreign mentors, and then focusing on constructive and reformative approaches. This response should include a mix of interventions, starting with sanctions and strengthening of the NATO/EUFOR military presence as a clear political signal.
- Support domestic institutions in their response to the attack on the constitutional order of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Foremost, by providing full support to the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina to review the two laws already passed, and all other that might be passed by the RS Assembly. Furthermore, by providing political and technical support for the state-level judiciary to investigate the attack on the constitutional order of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
- Recent statements and activities by high-ranking officials of the government of Republic of Serbia are violating the principle of good neighbourly relations, which are at the heart of the EU accession talks and a violation of the Stabilisation and Association Agreement between the EU and Serbia. EU Member States should consider suspension of accession talks with Serbia unless its government changes its position towards Bosnia and Herzegovina, including that related to the 1990’s war crimes and genocide.
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Stevenson’s army, January 8
[FYI, I’ll be away for a few days]
-SecState Blinken says US has two new security arrangements with Japan. There was more in his Friday news conference.
-WH denies report of troop cuts in Europe.
– Bloomberg reports on bureaucratic fights over cyber.
– Vox reports on former Trump officials.
– Atlantic Council has several reports on 2022 foreign policy issues.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I 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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