Category: Daniel Serwer
The snowball starts rolling
NATO has sent Montenegro its much-coveted invitation to join the Alliance, most likely at the Warsaw Summit July 8-9 next year. This is in many ways a small matter: Montenegro is a country of 620,000 people with a military force of fewer than 2000. It is no threat to anyone, least of all Russia, and no big addition to NATO capacities.
It is nevertheless significant. First because Russia saw fit to oppose NATO membership for Montenegro, first through bribery and later through support for unruly anti-government demonstrations. These efforts to block Montenegro’s NATO accession will continue, making it a test of will between Moscow and the West. If Moscow loses, Western spirits will be raised.
Those raised spirits will include people in other Balkans states who want their countries to join NATO. Moscow fears that Montenegrin accession will be a step onto a slippery slope that will lead to Macedonia, Kosovo, Serbia and Bosnia all joining the Alliance. The Russians are correct, which makes the Montenegro decision a key one for the region.
Macedonia, though now stalled by its internal problems and long blocked by Greece, has already sent its troops to fight in Afghanistan integrated with US forces. It has recently decided to send a few more. Its eventual accession to NATO is inevitable. Ditto Kosovo, which still lacks a fully fledged security force and faces the hurdle of four non-recognizing NATO members. But Kosovo’s citizens are all but unanimous in wanting membership in a club that saved it from Serbian attacks.
Serbia and Bosnia are less obvious cases. Resentment of NATO bombing among Serbs in both countries is still strong. But sooner or later Belgrade and Banja Luka will come around the way Germans, Italians, Japanese and others bombed and even occupied by the United States have. Surrounded by NATO members, it will make little geopolitical sense for Bosnia and Serbia to align themselves with Russia or even to remain “neutral.” The Serbian chief of staff told me a decade or so ago that his country’s military, which already participates in NATO’s Partnership for Peace, would adapt itself to Alliance standards. Bosnia’s now unified army has been built from scratch with assistance from the US and NATO. The most secure place for Bosnia and Serbia will be inside the Alliance, not outside it.
None of this threatens Russia. Even taken all together the Balkans armies pose no serious challenge to Moscow. What Balkans NATO membership threatens are Russia’s efforts to divide and weaken Balkans states and limit Western influence in southeastern Europe. That for me is a good thing. Montenegro has started the snowball rolling. Dobrodošla, Crna Goro!*
*I’ve corrected a grammatical error made in the original posting. Apologies!
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Princeton’s problem isn’t just Wilson
Woodrow Wilson was a key president in Princeton’s rise as a serious university, a reformist and progressive Governor of New Jersey, and an internationalist President of the United States, one who led the country into a successful intervention in World War I and championed self-determination of oppressed peoples as well as making the world safe for democracy. He was also an unrepentant racist and white supremacist, one who refused to speak out against lynching of black people, segregated US government workers and excused the behavior of the Ku Klux Klan.
Princeton has long deified Wilson, whose name graces one of its major dorms as well as its school of public and international affairs. When I was a doctoral student there (yes, I got my PhD at Princeton), the head of my program made it clear that Wilson was an ideal to which we all needed to aspire, even if our lowly beings could never hope to achieve such perfection. I knew nothing of Wilson at the time. His lofty status being far above my dreams, I ignored the paragon. It was the Vietnam war era. Princeton’s then motto, “in the nation’s service,” sounded more like a threat than a virtue.
Now Princeton’s motto is “in the nation’s service and in the service of all nations.” That change should have made Wilson’s racism harder to ignore. But the reexamination has awaited instead the protests of some of its current black students, who are asking for his name to be removed from its most privileged perches.
I have to confess that opinion in my family is divided. Its three African American members (remember the one-drop rule, increasingly outmoded but still appropriate when discussing racism) are for keeping his name where it is. One thinks the students unjustified in wanting it removed because it is part of the hostile environment Princeton presents to black students. Just wait, he says, until they get to the real world, when things will be worse. Better to prepare for the hostility at Princeton, as Michelle Obama did.
Another thinks the Wilson name should hang around Princeton’s neck like an albatross, one it will have to explain to every incoming freshman. Why make life easy for an institution that was always known as the ivy closest to the south? The third doubts the wisdom of cleansing our history of its hypocrites. What will become of “greats” like Jefferson, who wrote that all men are created equal with inalienable rights but still kept slaves (and only freed the ones he had sired upon his death).
My own feeling is that fifty odd years is long enough for a racist and white supremacist to grace the lintels of one of America’s greatest academic institutions. He was a product of his times. Let him retire and give way to someone more worthy according to the standards of our times. Of course that will not be a governor or a president. Princeton will just turn around and sell the naming rights to the highest bidder. If you’ve ever read a Princeton alumni publication, you know that could involve a very large quantity of money. Or maybe a free mash up would do: the Woodrow Wilson/Louis Farrakhan school of public and international policy? After all, Farrakhan did a lot of good in America’s prisons I am reminded, despite his anti-Semitic racism. Let that hang around Princeton’s neck to balance out Wilson.
I suppose that’s the problem: I can think of a lot worse names than the existing one. The way the world works, Princeton is likely to get one of those. There isn’t likely to be a “good” solution. But I suppose the conversation, as we like to say these days, will be a useful one. After all, the issue really isn’t Wilson, it is the history of race in America.
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Real with consequences
This week’s Paris meeting on climate change will move a lot of electrons heralding action on climate change. But the outcome is guaranteed to be disappointing if you are worried about the consequences of continuing to burn fossil fuels. The national pledges (known in the trade as “intended nationally determined contributions” or INDCs) will fail to stop global warming short of the 2 degrees (centigrade) that would be required to avoid a substantial increase in sea levels and worsening of the storms and heat extremes that have already become all too common. Some will say this is a good start, as it will stop global warming at perhaps 3 degrees.
I’m less patient. I was a United Nations young staffer in 1972 at the first UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm. The “greenhouse effect” and global warming were already well-known then. So too were the difficulties of coming to grips with an issue that threatens global economic growth and pits already wealthy fossil fuel burning countries against aspirants from what we then termed the Third World. Who would bear the burden of cutting back on greenhouse gases? Would it be those who have already benefited from fossil fuels, or those who would like to do so in the future? And how will efforts to cut back on emissions affect prospects for economic growth worldwide?
The issue has gotten worse since then: China, not a “rich” country, has become a major contributor to the global load of carbon dioxide, overtaking the US in 2005. Its pledge in Paris will entail peaking emissions by 2030, or perhaps few years earlier. Still very poor India’s will continue rising to 2030, possibly making it a bigger contributor to global emissions than either China or the US. While the US has contributed a great deal to the problem to date, its emissions are already declining. Washington aims for a 28% reduction from 2005 levels by 2025.
But none of this will enable the world to escape the consequences of global warming. They are not all bad. Nor are they necessarily all induced by human activity. But a lot of them will require major adjustments, especially for land areas lying close to sea level. I won’t be investing in beach-front property for my grandson. It could well be submerged, or the beach carried off by storms, well before he inherits. More seriously: Bangladesh, Mauritius and other poor, vulnerable countries may well find themselves without the land they cherish, or suffering far worse consequences from tsunamis than they did in the past.
Nor are rich countries immune: remember Hurricane Sandy’s impact on New York City? Not necessarily caused by global warming, but still a clear harbinger of what is becoming more likely in the future, including in China’s prosperous coastal cities. Climate change is already costing the US Federal government over $20 billion per year. States and local governments are spending billions more to prevent the worst consequences.
No doubt the White House staff is busily working on making the Paris meeting a successful one for President Obama, who is wisely attending for two days at the opening (as invited by President Hollande). The main diplomatic drama will occur behind the scenes at the end of the 12-day affair. No one there will have forgotten the clamorous failure of negotiations in Copenhagen in 2009, where the President was personally embarrassed. The obvious answer to the equity issues global warming raises is money. The President has pledged $3 billion to a Green Climate Fund for developing countries that has already topped $10 billion. That’s not small change, but it barely scratches the surface of the total financial requirements, as the Indians are quick to point out.
A key issue in Paris will be whether the voluntary national commitments already made will be legally binding. That’s what the French, and I imagine the Europeans more generally, want. It’s hard to picture, at least with respect to the emissions targets or financial commitments. Making them legally binding would virtually guarantee non-approval of any international legal instrument in the US Senate, where there is still a lot of skepticism about global warming. Some marginal, procedural changes to the Framework Convention on Climate Change, negotiated parallel to the UN Conference on Environment and Development (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), may still be possible. The big procedural issue is when the next review of INDCs will take place: the US wants it in five years, to keep the pressure on, while developing countries prefer ten.
Somehow the White House will make the President’s two days in Paris sound like a resounding success. But no one should be fooled: global warming is not only real, it will also continue far beyond the point at which most reputable scientists believe it will cause catastrophic effects.
PS: a SAIS climate change guru read this critically, which inspired me to make some changes in the original. The changes are in bold.
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Precious little Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is when Americans, who constitute only about half peacefare’s readers, join with family and friends to acknowledge their many blessings. This year that means relative prosperity across much of the country, a parade of giant balloons in New York City, and a lot of good food and cheer–plus a bit of intra-family political controversy–at the single serious meal most of us indulge in today.
But the world is not in good shape and we all know it. Civil war rages in Syria, Libya and Yemen, three former dictatorships that failed to make the transition to democracy after political upheavals in 2011. Islamic State and Al Qaeda-linked terrorists have attacked in Beirut, Sinai, Bamako, Paris and elsewhere. Syrians, Afghans and Africans from many sub-Saharan countries are flowing into Europe, driving politics to the nationalist/nativist right and raising difficult security questions, with echoes in the US.
The Turkish downing of a Russian warplane has upped the ante. I don’t doubt that the Russians violated Turkish airspace or that the Turks warned the Russian pilots. It would be impossible to bomb along that portion of the Syrian/Turkish border without crossing into Turkish territory. But those are not the only reasons Turkey acted. The Russians were bombing Turkmen rebels fighting Bashar al Assad’s forces. Erdogan was making Obama’s rhetorical point with bombs: Russia is welcome to fight the Islamic State, but not to fight relatively moderate rebels opposing the dictatorship.
The escalation is nevertheless dangerous. The Syrian civil war is already a proxy war between Shia Iran and Sunni Arab Gulf states plus Turkey. The Turkish move risks engaging NATO and the US, which are understandably loathe to come to blows directly with Russia. I’d anticipate increasing pressure to produce results at peace talks to be convened early in January. But impending peace talks will also provide an incentive for the warring parties inside Syria to grab as much territory as possible, before a ceasefire freezes them in place.
The situation in Libya, Yemen and Iraq is no more promising. The Islamic State is using the impasse in Libya to deepen and expand its footprint, especially in and around Qaddafi’s hometown of Sirte. In Yemen the fighting continues, with Houthi rebels only slowly yielding ground to Saudi- and UAE-supported ground forces (reportedly including Colombian mercenaries) while Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula deepens and expands its footprint in more desolate parts of the country. Iraqi forces are making gradual but agonizingly slow progress against the Islamic State in Anbar, but Mosul and much of western Iraq remain out of Baghdad’s control.
Little of these Middle Eastern dramas are reflected directly in the United States. The numbers of refugees President Obama wants to take in are small even compared to what the Europeans are accepting, who in turn are less than 25% of the total who have already left Syria. The West is unwilling to throw its doors open to desperate Syrians, especially the Muslim ones, fearing that there may be terrorists hiding among them and neglecting to notice how refusal to admit refugees will help Islamic State and other extremist recruitment efforts. John Oliver captured the irony well with this:
There was only one time in American history when the fear of refugees wiping everyone out did actually come true, and we’ll all be sitting around a table celebrating it on Thursday.
I hope Americans will remember this bit of irony and try to spare some sympathy not only for the natives we displaced but also for the Middle Easterners who have so little to celebrate this year.
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Dayton plus 20, again
Here are the conclusions I offered at the Dayton Peace Accords at 20 Conference in Dayton, Ohio, which ended yesterday:
- Context matters. Dayton was not just about Bosnia but represented a test of the West’s effort to achieve a Europe whole and free at the start of the post-Cold War era. That’s one reason it got the attention it did.
- US leadership was critical, but so too were the local, European and Russian contributions. Even when it leads, the US needs partners and has to work with whoever is available.
- Getting both the civilian and military elements of US power pointed towards a clear goal is extraordinarily difficult. Dick Holbrooke excelled at it.
- Negotiating with your own people and lining things up can be the hardest part of a negotiation. A lot was agreed before Dayton, both within the US government and within the international contact group, that was crucial to the ultimate agreement.
- Two subjects are often neglected, including at Dayton: economics and rule of law. They should not be left aside, the first because resources are always an issue and the second because it is vital and takes so long to establish.
- Dayton worked because it provided opportunities for powersharing and local autonomy.
- It is these vital characteristics of 1995 that are causing problems twenty years later.
- Inclusivity matters in ending a war, even if it makes statebuilding more difficult.
- Clear, shared goals are important, but so too is the process for getting to them.
- Timing is particularly important. It is not clear, for example, that Syria is ripe for a negotiated settlement. Bosnia was, largely due to the Federation offensive and Milosevic’s need for an end to the war.
The war did end but the ethnoterritorial conflict continues even today. Bosnia remains far from the ideals its young people, several of whom spoke at Dayton, cherish: tolerance, respect, equality and cooperation. The ways forward are clear, but precisely how to achieve them is not:
- The Reform Agenda the EU, IMF and IBRD are pursuing is part of the solution, in particular if privatization is conducted in transparent ways that prevent state assets falling into the hands of crony capitalists.
- Corruption is a major issue, but how to get it under control is not clear.
- An independent judiciary is vital to accountability. The referendum proposed in Republika Srpska would undermine the state judiciary and weaken prospects for accountability.
- Political reforms that go beyond the Reform Agenda will be necessary. This should include changes to the electoral system that encourage more accountability, like single-member electoral constituencies.
- Separate ethnic education is an unfortunate and persistent consequence of the war. Integrated education in magnet schools (offering, for example, science, technology, engineering and mathematics or education in English) is one possible path towards a solution.
- Increased respect for human rights–both of individuals and groups–is important for all.
While these needs are clear, the balance between international and Bosnian efforts is not. Some think the international community has to be more forceful than it has been in the last decade. Others think responsibility now lies principally with the Bosnians, who should get international support, principally through the European Union.
While progress in recent years has been slow and serious obstacles remain, I believe that 20 years from now Bosnia and Herzegovina will be an established member in good standing of both NATO and the European Union. That is a worthy objective that should motivate both the Bosnians and the international community.
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Reform without institutional change
The Center for Transatlantic Relations conference on Twenty Years after Dayton: Prospects for Progress in Reforms in Bosnia and Herzegovina wrapped up yesterday. Here are ten of my main takeaways:
- The Reform Agenda the Europeans, the IMF and the World Bank are pursuing contains lots of good initiatives that Bosnian politicians of all stripes warmly welcome, hoping they will generate the prosperity so sorely lacking since the financial crisis of 2007/8 (or at least a large flow of IFI and EU funding).
- Focus on the Reform Agenda has driven political and institutional reform, without which it is hard to picture much improvement in the functionality of government in Bosnia, off the agenda, at least for the moment.
- The leadership of the two Bosnian sub-state entities, Republika Srpska (RS) and the Federation, are happy with this, as it blocks any effort to strengthen the state and empowers them to collaborate in fulfilling the demands for policy reform from the EU and the international financial institutions in ways that don’t endanger the powers that be.
- Policy collaboration between the entities is frequent and substantial but unlikely to bring about any serious institutional change.
- Republika Srpska continues to try to use the threat of holding a vague and tendentious referendum on the High Representative and the state judiciary to extract concessions from the Europeans in the “structured dialogue” on the judiciary.
- Serbs (even within the RS) are however not united in supporting the referendum, though I imagine it will pass overwhelmingly if held (since many of those opposed won’t vote).
- The lure of eventual EU membership is unlikely to be strong enough to prevent the referendum from being held; RS President Dodik is aiming to neuter the Bosnian state judiciary, not to enter the EU.
- If the referendum passes, the Americans would want to respond with some vigor, but it is not clear the EU would join in.
- Referendum or not, the RS is progressing towards its goal of accumulating all the sovereign power it thinks itself entitled to under the Dayton constitution.
- The state government could end up lacking the authority required to negotiate and implement the acquis communitaire, making the EU accession of Bosnia and Herzegovina highly unlikely unless there is a serious effort at institutional reform and strengthening state competences, including the authority of its judiciary throughout the country.
Oh, how I wish I am wrong. But that’s how I see the situation.
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