Category: Daniel Serwer
Eurovision needs better singers
A few quick comments on yesterday’s Eurovision song contest, which was won by an Italian heavy metal band. Some may think this out of my lane, but the event all too clearly reflected current international realities. San Marino and Australia are represented, but not Kosovo? Israel but not Palestine? No Turkey but Greece and Cyprus voting for each other? No Bosnia, because they haven’t paid their bills? It all sounds very familiar to me.
Then there was language. The hosts said “good evening” in the languages of many countries, but everyone spoke English except, of course, a French presenter. The accents were more American than British. That is understandable in the music world. The Europe Union communicates well in a language that is not native to any of its current members! Like much of the rest of the world.
What isn’t so understandable is how a heavy metal band wins in 2021. During ten years living in Italy I never once listened to heavy metal, which in any case strikes me as a throwback. Did today’s young Europeans really sit at home during the epidemic refining their taste for rock and roll in that direction?
I heard a lot of wonderful music in the 1970s, 80s and 90s in Rome, from Roberto Murolo to Luciano Pavarotti. If you don’t know who Murolo was, here is a sample:
If you don’t know who Pavarotti was, try this:
Neither would have had half a chance at Eurovision, but I guess that is beside the point.
Eurovision isn’t meant to be high art, either folk or operatic. We used to call its category “camp.” I suppose some will hear “Ziiti e Bouni” as “artifice, frivolity, naïve middle-class pretentiousness, and shocking excess,” which Wikipedia tells me is Susan Sontag’s definition of camp:
But it sounds more “noisy and terrible” to me. “Rock and roll will never die” the lead singer shouted when given the award. Or is it already dead?
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Stevenson’s army, May 22
– FT says China snubs SecDef Austin’s requests for mil-to-mil talks.
– NYT says Congress is disagreeing with the generals
– DefenseOne reports fights over what belongs in the Space Force.
– Defense experts say Congress should get more budget details.
– Rose Gottemoeller tells how hard it is for a woman to negotiate with the Russians.
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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One state, two states, three states, four are all possible
Friends ask: what does the latest Gaza war portend for the two-state solution? Is it dead? Is a one-state solution now inevitable? Are there other possibilities?
It is clearer than ever that Prime Minister Netanyahu is an opponent of the two-state solution. The West Bank settlements and related infrastructure, evictions of Palestinians in East Jerusalem, and unequal treatment of Palestinian citizens of Israel make his preference clear: one state with more rights for Jews than for Arabs. Some call this “apartheid,” which was the more formalized South African system of segregation. Call it what you will, it is not democratic. The days when Israel could be regarded as the only democracy in the Middle East are long gone.
One state with equal rights is conceivable, but in practice impossible. Arabs and Jews are already pretty much equal in numbers between Jordan and the Mediterranean. Even secular Israeli Jews want their state to be Jewish. It can’t be Jewish if there is only one state. Nor are the Palestinians likely to afford Jews equal rights in a one-state Palestine after having been deprived of them for 75 years in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza.
There is another version of the one-state solution that Netanyahu and other Israeli Jewish leaders like. They would be happy to see Egypt take Gaza back and Jordan take the West Bank back. The problem is neither Cairo nor Amman wants the Palestinians or the territory they occupy. Egypt has enough trouble in the Sinai peninsula with Islamist extremists. It has no interest in hosting Hamas, which originates in the Muslim Brotherhood. The Jordanian monarchy figures it already has enough Palestinians, who make up about 50% of the population. Governing the Palestinians in their enclaves on the West Bank would be an enormous challenge for Amman.
There is of course the possibility of a three state solution: Gaza, Israel, and the West Bank. Gaza’s political development for more than a decade has been independent of the Palestinian Authority, whose writ is largely limited to the West Bank. The two Palestinian proto-states are very different: Gaza is a contiguous, crowded, territory without Israeli on-the-ground presence while the West Bank is a Swiss cheese of Palestinian communities surrounded by armed Israeli settlements and the Israeli army. The current situation is close to this model, which in many respects is difficult to distinguish from the one-state solution with unequal rights.
Four states? That would be Gaza, Jewish Israel and West Bank, Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, and West Bank Palestinians. This, too, bears some resemblance to the current situation, because Palestinians with Israeli citizenship are not afforded equal rights or benefits, but they lack their own governing structures. Creating such structures with executive and legislative authority would be a gigantic problem for Israel, but it is the natural course of action now that the latest Gaza war has awakened the political consciousness of Palestinians who live in Israel proper. Judging from my conversations over the years with them, they would not accept governance by Hamas or the Palestinian Authority.
Anyone can have their preferences among these options, and there may be more. I favor the simpler of solutions over the more complicated ones, because life is already complicated. Equal rights is a simple solution. One state won’t work. That makes me conclude two states with equal rights for Jews and Palestinians in both. But I admit it is getting harder than ever to picture the route to this outcome.
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Stevenson’s army, May 21
– The administration seems to be trying to take a victory lap with the cease-fire in Gaza. Insiders are giving partial tick-tocks to AP and Politico. AP also notes the Biden pattern of public support for Israel and private scolds. NYT says Biden wants to give US aid to Gaza.
In other news, WaPo reports Russian and Iranian rivalry for influence in Syria.
FP says Philippine basing deal coming.
DOD says China wants a base on west coast of Africa.
Senate Foreign Relations and Banking are fighting over CFIUS role in foreign grants to US universities.
And look at this: new searchable data base of LBJ phone calls.
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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The path to ending the Kosovo conundrum
With apologies for the delay and thanks to Adam DuBard for getting it done, I am posting the report my students presented on Zoom Tuesday: Ending the Kosovo Conundrum (it is also now available on the SAIS website here). While our SAISers offered lots of interesting ideas about ways in which the EU-sponsored Belgrade/Pristina dialogue could be improved, they are not optimistic about the kind of comprehensive solution that the EU says is the objective of its Belgrade/Pristina dialogue. There is a stalemate, but it is hurting Kosovo more than Serbia, which is prepared to postpone–maybe forever–recognition of Kosovo as a sovereign and independent state.
This is understandable. Serbian President Vucic does not welcome the kind of rule of law and uncorrupt government the EU is demanding ever more insistently from potential new member states. Serbia got everything it asked for from Kosovo in the UN’s Ahtisaari Plan, which was intended as a prelude to Kosovo’s independence. Belgrade pocketed the concessions but refused recognition, even after the International Court of Justice advised that Kosovo’s declaration of independence did not violate international law. Without the EU “carrot,” which Vucic is now disdaining, there is little hope of his changing his mind. Good neighborly relations are not going to be written on Vucic’s epitaph.
This leaves Kosovo in limbo, but not without a course of action: NATO membership is the key next step. This will require convincing four of the five EU countries that do not recognize Kosovo at least to accept it into the Alliance. Greece, Slovakia, Romania, and Spain are the holdouts, more or less in ascending order of difficulty. Cyprus is not a NATO member but cannot be entirely ignored because of its influence on Greece. That is the tail wagging the dog and will require a courageous Greek Prime Minister to get it to stop, but Greece already maintains an ambassadorial-level representative in Pristina and an office that is an embassy in all but name.
Kosovo is slated to complete the transformation of its security forces, a few of which have already deployed to Kuwait with the Iowa National Guard, into an army by 2027, with assistance from the US and UK. So there is ample time for the US and UK to convince the non-recognizing allies to accept Kosovo, even if they do not formally recognize it. NATO membership will require in addition that Kosovo meet the Alliance’s criteria:
a functioning democratic political system based on a market economy; fair treatment of minority
populations; a commitment to resolve conflicts peacefully; an ability and willingness to make a military
contribution to NATO operations; and a commitment to democratic civil-military relations and institutions.
These criteria are entirely compatible with EU membership, which is further off because Kosovo will have to in addition adopt and implement the acquis communautaire, an elaborate and extensive set of legal requirements.
This then is the strategy I would propose for the Kosovo government:
- focus on preparation for NATO membership, including resolution of conflicts with Serbia on issues like missing people and financial settlements but without expecting recognition anytime soon;
- improve relations with the Kosovo Serb community, whose interests are not identical with Belgrade’s, throughout Kosovo, including by providing it with access to the dialogue with Serbia for those who are not tied to Belgrade, better economic opportunities, protection of property rights, and continued efforts to recruit Serbs for the Kosovo armed forces;
- disavow any prospect of union with Albania, because it is incompatible with NATO membership, as Ed Joseph suggests;
- build capable state institutions, including a Defense Ministry committed to civilian control;
- protect media freedom, continue cooperation with civil society, and ensure an independent judiciary;
- begin to examine objectively the pre-independence fight for liberation from Serbian rule.
Many Kosovo Albanians are disappointed in the fruits of their efforts since declaring independence in 2008. But the distance ahead to NATO membership is far shorter than the time since independence. The government now has what should be a stable majority. Sovereignty depends on governing capacity. It is time to intensify efforts to build a worthy state, leaving the question of Serbian recognition to the day there is leadership in Belgrade that really cares about EU membership and realizes its own European future depends on it. Because it does.
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Stevenson’s army, May 19
-WH is letting it be known that Biden was tougher in call to Netanyahu than he has been in public. NYT says this is a Biden pattern. Politico says US officials claim they blocked ground invasion.
-Axios says Biden will waive NordStream 2 sanctions.
– European Parliament is freezing investment deal with China.
– Lobbyist’s delight: NYT says bipartisan bill for science investments to counter China is becoming vehicle for grabbag of special projects.
-Newsweek says US has 60,000-person force of undercover operators doing “signature reduction.”
-Reports: CFR has new study of major power rivalry in Africa. Georgetown group says AI can power disinformation operations.
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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