Category: Daniel Serwer
Bully is as bully does
Chuck Sudetic is at it again: he published the original allegations of murder and organ trafficking by Kosovar leaders with Carla Del Ponte in her memoir. He reiterated the allegations in the Washington Post in 2011, neglecting to mention the lack of forensic evidence dutifully noted in the Council of Europe report on which he relied heavily. Now he has gotten lots of former diplomats to make anonymous allegations against Kosovar “bullies,” though many of their allegations appear to be about corruption rather than murder and organ trafficking. It is about time someone worried who the bully really is.
Let me be clear: I have no idea whether there are Kosovar leaders guilty of the crimes alleged. I certainly won’t be surprised if some of them are corrupt. But I don’t even know if the alleged organ-trafficking and murder occurred.
I have been hearing the allegations since the early 2000s, when the journalist who discovered the story recounted it to me. He never published it because he thought he had insufficient evidence to meet journalistic standards, but he turned over what evidence he had to the EU rule of law authorities in Kosovo. They were unable to make a case and turned over what they had to ICTY, which allegedly lost whatever it was given, ironically during Carla Del Ponte’s time as chief prosecutor.
The Council of Europe and Dick Marty chimed in in 2010, with a report full of dramatic allegations but no forensic evidence and a sentence, never mentioned by Chuck, saying that no pronouncements of guilt are justified. Let me cite the precise language (para 175):
Our task was not to conduct an criminal investigation – we are not empowered to do so, and above all we lack the necessary resources – let alone to pronounce judgments of guilt or innocence.
The contradiction is not my invention; it is in the original document.
Now we’ve got Chuck piping up again with a piece in which he admits Hashim Thaci spoke forcefully and publicly in the Kosovo parliament in favor of a special tribunal to examine the allegations, but instead of praising him for his courage and wondering if he might in fact be innocent Chuck smears as much mud as he can, using anonymously sourced statements from present and former diplomats.
Hmmm. I’m a former diplomat and pleased to be quoted by name whenever I am pretty sure I’m correct.
Is Hashim capable of saying one thing publicly while maneuvering to do another behind the Americans’ and Europeans’ backs? Any Balkans politician worth his salt can do that, but I’d like to see better evidence of it than Chuck puts forward.
I’m on record in favor of the special court that the Americans and Europeans are pushing on Kosovo to receive indictments and try cases arising from the allegations against Kosovo leaders. The Kosovo court system has not been prepared or willing to take on these cases. The juridical difficulties and likelihood of initimidation in tiny Kosovo justify a court that sits outside the country staffed by internationals. But the kind of bullying Chuck is doing is hardly conducive to getting the politicians of a newly independent (and not yet fully sovereign) country to swallow this bitter pill.
Accountability is important. So is responsibility. Serious allegations based on anonymous sources without corroborating evidence is irresponsible.
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Legacy
We all worry about our legacy. President Obama must too. But unlike most of us he has a lot of people telling the world what his will be.
The current favorite is the Iran nuclear deal. I doubt that. Does anyone even remember that it was Bill Clinton who made a nuclear deal with North Korea? It fell apart in George W’s administration. Even that is not remembered, I suppose because the list of his failures is long.
If the Iran nuclear deal falls apart soon, sure it will tarnish the Obama brand. But let’s assume the implementation of the Iranian nuclear deal goes reasonably well. If 10 or 15 years from now Iran makes a dash for a nuclear weapon, will anyone blame Barack Obama, or will they understandably blame his successor’s successor? And credit him with delaying what was inevitable.
There have been lots of “legacy” proposals these past six months. The two most prominent, quite rightly focused on domestic policy, have been
- Obamacare, which survived its test in the Supreme Court;
- gay marriage, another Supreme Court win.
They will no doubt be counted as important milestones on the way towards a more just society, but really not legacy-defining.
A far stronger candidate in my view is this:
source: tradingeconomics.com
That’s a rapid recovery from the 2008 economic implosion, followed by six years of relatively steady if modest growth, likely to be extended to eight years while much of the rest of the world continues to stagnate. Simultaneously, US government debt has leveled off:
source: tradingeconomics.com
This good economic news is important for American foreign policy. Without it, there would be little hope that Washington could muster the resources needed to engage–even to the extent it has–on major issues like Moscow’s military challenge in Ukraine and Beijing’s somewhat less military challenge in the South China Sea.
In addition, there is the good news about US energy production:
source: tradingeconomics.com
Combined with the decline in global energy prices, this dramatic shift is denying resources to some of our adversaries and providing a serious boost to the American economy.
All that good economic news–rarely credited today but likely to be all to obvious in the future–should not however obscure the very real bad news from the Middle East. Apart from the failure of the Administration’s efforts to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict, we’ve got a civil war in Syria that has killed upwards of 300,000 people and displaced close to half the country’s population, sending 4 million abroad as refugees. We’ve also got a civil war in Libya, allowed to flourish in the aftermath of a successful intervention. And another in Yemen, where Washington is half-heartedly supporting a Saudi intervention that appears to be making things worse.
Just as important: the war against Islamist extremists that began in 2001 in Afghanistan has been notably unsuccessful. Fourteen years later, a few thousand extremists in two countries have metastasized to tens of thousands in more than a dozen countries, despite hundreds of drone strikes and air attacks.
Neither our military might nor our propaganda capabilities have succeeded in stemming the tide. They have arguably made things worse. The American non-governmental organizations are rightly protesting continuation of an approach that simply has not worked.
When it comes to foreign policy, these failures in the Middle East and in the fight against Islamist extremists are likely to be a bigger part of President Obama’s legacy than the nuclear deal. If he wants to worry about something, he should put these things at the top of his list. A serious effort now to enable Syrian moderates to begin governing inside Syria, coupled with a serious European effort to make sure the UN’s Libyan mediation unifies that country’s rival governments and parliaments, would do a great deal to fix the broken Middle East. These are largely diplomatic challenges, not military ones.
We would still be facing terrorist challenges elsewhere. If we want to deal with them, it is clear enough that military means will not suffice. We need a much stronger civilian mobilization, in partnership with other countries and international organizations. More on how to make that part of Barack Obama’s legacy in a later post.
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Netanyahu v Hammond
This is about as good an exchange as you are going to find on the Iran nuclear deal:
From my point of view, it is telling that Netanyahu says absolutely nothing about how multilateral sanctions, international inspections and technological constraints on Iran’s nuclear program would be maintained in the absence of a deal. He simply repeats that he wants maintenance of sanctions and a better deal, one that somehow ends burning of Israeli flags in Tehran as well as other odious Iranian behavior. I’d like a pony too.
Note also: Netanyahu suggests North Korea developed its nuclear weapons while under IAEA monitoring. That is not really true. Pyongyang ejected the inspectors and withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 2003. It first tested a nuclear weapon in 2006. Of course Iran could also withdraw from the NPT, but the agreement reached this week includes the following sentence:
Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons.
You can believe it or not, but it certainly goes beyond previous commitments Iran has made in writing.
I’d score this bout a win for Hammond, but admittedly that is the direction in which I lean. There simply is no good alternative to an agreement. Whether this one is the best we could get or not, it is now the only one available. Netanyahu and other opponents will soon be screeching about the need to implement it to the letter and complaining about every conceivable Iranian deviation.
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Good news shouldn’t obscure deep problems
I try not to pay too much attention to the Balkans these days, as there are much more important things going on in the world. But today’s news that the European Union has brokered an agreement that will allow Macedonia to hold early elections by April 24 next year crossed my desk at about the same time as an IRI Poll illustrating all too clearly why European mediation was necessary.
Prime Minister Gruevski, who won big in April 2014 parliamentary elections, has seen his popularity evaporate quickly. Disapproval has reached 55%. Almost half of the citizens now think the country is moving in the wrong direction (compared to fewer than one-quarter who think it is moving in the wrong direction). The single most popular solution is resignation of the prime minister. Most think the government has no plan to solve the country’s economic problems and relatively few think it is even trying to deal with corruption.
One big cause of Gruevski’s decline is the wire-tapping scandal that has bedeviled the country this year. This has generated enormous distrust in the government and Gruevski’s political party. Forty-two per cent of the population believes one or the other paid or engaged armed Albanians to stage a rebellion in May. That notion may be ridiculous, but it certainly demonstrates the level of distrust Gruevski has engendered.
The prime minister will now be required to resign so that a new government, with a different prime minister chosen by his party, can be sworn in 100 days before the election. Even before then new Interior and Labor/Social Affairs ministers chosen by the main Macedonian opposition party will enter the government, along with deputy ministers in key ministries and a new Special Prosecutor. The opposition has committed to returning to parliament. Resignation of the government 100 days before elections is supposed to become a permanent feature of the political landscape.
The cherry on this cake will be a meeting of the EU’s heretofore moribund High-Level Accession Dialogue in September.
All of this makes eminently good sense, but none of it will mean much unless the real causes of Macedonia’s malaise are identified and resolved. I would count these as
- A government and governing parties used to doing as they please with a minimum of transparency or accountability.
- Media and civil society that suffer constant harassment and threats.
- Interethnic relations that encourage Macedonians and Albanians to live more apart than together.
- A judicial system under the thumb of politicians and unable to conduct proper investigations of corruption and other malfeasance at high levels.
- An EU accession process stalled by Greek refusal to accept Macedonia’s constitutional name.
Getting rid of Gruevski and holding new elections does little to respond to these issues. He may even do well in next year’s election, despite current polling. Nor do I have a magic wand that will solve these problems, but the EU needs to recognize that a bit of reshuffling of government positions won’t cure the diseases that plague Skopje.
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Some people are serious, others aren’t
I’ve read two critiques of the Iran nuclear deal this morning: Rob Satloff’s published in the Daily News and Israeli Ambassador Dermer’s in the Washington Post. Rob’s is mostly serious. Dermer’s is not.
Dermer first then. Ambassadors merit precedence. He complains that the deal leaves Iran with a “vast” nuclear infrastructure and neglects to mention that it will be much reduced from its current state. He also complains that the record of international inspections is bad. That just isn’t true. No country has ever developed a nuclear weapon in a program safeguarded by the International Atomic Energy Agency. It is true that Iran has not answered the questions about “possible military dimensions,” but the first milestone in implementation of this agreement is their answers (by October 15). Dermer forgot to mention that.
Dermer doesn’t like the fact that some of the restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program last only 10 years. But isn’t 10 years better than none? The ambassador characterizes this as “paving” Iran’s way to the bomb. But without the restrictions there wouldn’t be any barrier at all and no need for paving. Why does he prefer that?
An arms race in the region is the ambassador’s next concern. But that too is more likely if there is no agreement than if there is one. Iran is already within two or three months of producing the material for a single nuclear weapon. Why hasn’t that precipitated a nuclear arms race? And why wouldn’t failure to roll Iran back be even more likely to precipitate one?
Dermer’s final concern is the only real one: the deal puts a lot of money in Tehran’s pocket. Iran is likely to do bad things with it. That is the basic trade-off here. Iran gets money owed to it and we get restrictions on its nuclear program. Reasonable people can disagree on whether that is a good deal.
But in order to believe it is a bad one you have to argue that the multilateral sanctions could have been sustained in the absence of a deal. That is hardly likely: Europe and China want the commerce with Iran that the lifting of sanctions will bring. Had the US walked away from this deal, we’d have been left with no restrictions on the Iranian nuclear program, no inspections and no sanctions.
Rob Satloff is more serious. He worries about the possible delay in getting inspectors to nuclear sites (he thinks the delay might be 24 days given the procedures in the agreement; I think it might be longer). But efforts to “clean up” nuclear sites are notoriously difficult and usually unsuccessful. They would also likely be observable by satellite.
Rob also complains that the “snapback” of sanction is the only consequence of cheating, making smaller violations immune, and Iran says snapback would free it of its obligations. Those are problems, but they are not arguments against the deal. With no deal, the Iranians would also be free of any obligations, allowing it to do whatever it wanted while we struggle to keep the multilateral sanctions in place.
Snapback would not apply to contracts already in place. This is the most serious of Rob’s arguments. He is correct that states and companies will rush to put in place umbrella agreements that can be used to protect future business with Iran. I don’t have an answer for this one. Maybe one of you does?
Also serious is Rob’s argument that the US might be constrained from imposing sanctions for non-nuclear reasons. I don’t read the agreement that way, but I’ll be interested to hear the Administration’s response on that issue.
In the end, Rob argues that the agreement represents a departure from traditional US policy:
It marks a potential turning point in America’s engagement in the Middle East, a pivot from building regional security on a team of longtime allies who were themselves former adversaries of each other — Israel and the Sunni Arab states — in favor of a balance between those allies and our own longtime nemesis, Iran.
But that imposes on history a coherence that just isn’t true to the facts. US intervention against (Sunni) dictator Saddam Hussein in Iraq on the false premise of weapons of mass destruction is not explicable in this theoretical construct. Nor is the failure to intervene in Syria in favor of a largely Sunni rebellion against an Iranian-supported dictator.
The nuclear deal does not represent a monumental and premeditated shift of US policy in Iran’s favor. It does open the door to a return of Tehran to a more normal status within the international community. That’s the price we pay for 10-15 years of serious contraints on Iran’s nuclear program. Satloff and Dermer haven’t convinced me that price is too high.
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Big surprise is no surprise
The Middle East Institute published my piece this evening:
The Iran nuclear deal has only one big surprise: it is consistent with the April 2 “parameters” that preceded it and contains no surprises. No one caved. Nothing got walked back.
But there are some interesting additions. One is this: “Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons.” This is a written confirmation of the Supreme Leader’s controversial “fatwa” against nuclear weapons. It was not so long ago that Iran’s critics in the United States were complaining that the fatwa was only oral and not written. I have not noticed anyone welcoming the written version.
The “reaffirmation” wouldn’t be worth the paper it is printed on except for the detailed limits and intrusive inspections that the agreement provides. No softie on Iran, Dennis Ross confirms that these fulfill previous Iranian commitments to limit centrifuges, enrichment, and enriched uranium; end all plans for separating plutonium; and no longer engage in any research and development related to a nuclear explosive device. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitoring will be more comprehensive and intrusive than for other countries. While no system is foolproof, nuclear weapons have never been developed within an IAEA safeguarded program.
That leaves the possibility of a clandestine nuclear program outside the purview of the IAEA. There is reason to believe that Tehran had such a program until 2003, when it was allegedly stopped. Iran, which previously stonewalled IAEA inquiries on this subject, has now committed in the nuclear deal to clarifying its past nuclear activities with “possible military dimensions” by October 15, with a final assessment due from the IAEA on December 15. This will be an important early milestone in implementation (or not) of the nuclear deal. It is not the first time the Iranians have promised clarification. Beyond that date, the IAEA can request access to locations of concern. Iranian objections can be overridden by five of eight members of a joint commission overseeing implementation of the agreement. That joint commission includes five Western members (the United States, the UK, France, Germany, and the EU) as well as Russia, China, and Iran.
The agreement provides for sanctions to be lifted once Iran implements its obligations or passes certain time limits in compliance with the agreement. No sanctions get lifted without implementation, and some—like the arms embargo—remain in place for five or eight years (depending on the weapons involved). While most restrictions are lifted within 15 years, some remain in place in perpetuity, including strict IAEA safeguards and the prohibition on nuclear weapons research and development.
The question is what happens if one or another obligation is breached. There is an elaborate, but quick-paced (I count 35 days), dispute resolution mechanism. At that point, UN Security Council sanctions would be reinstated, unless the Council votes within 30 days to continue lifting them. This is a “snapback” mechanism, unprecedented so far as I know in the Security Council. It would give the United States (and other permanent members) a veto over sanctions lifting. Iran has stated that it would treat reinstatement of sanctions as grounds to cease performing its commitments.
So, is this agreement a good thing or a bad thing?
It depends on what you think the alternative might be. At worst, it would be no constraints on the Iranian nuclear program, no IAEA monitoring, and no multilateral sanctions, as the EU and China are champing at the bit to do business with a cash, oil, and gas-rich Iran. At best we might in the absence of an agreement be able to sustain the sanctions for a while but not likely the IAEA monitoring and technological constraints, giving others in the region reason to initiate their own programs to produce weapons-grade uranium or plutonium. War might set back the Iranian nuclear program for a few years, but it would also give them incentive to finish the job and unleash even more chaos than the region is currently enduring.
Relief from sanctions will unquestionably provide the Iranians with resources. Tehran is owed upward of $100 billion that will flow into its coffers, in addition to whatever its renewed exports will bring in today’s bearish oil market, likely to go down further because of Iran’s reentry into it. The Islamic Republic is a profoundly anti-Western regime that even without much available cash has managed to contribute to instability in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. Its anti-Americanism may sound hollow after this agreement, which engages Iran in a continuing process involving the United States and three of its allies as well as the European Union, but unless there is a dramatic and unexpected change of heart at the top in Tehran we can anticipate more trouble from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and its proxies in the region and even beyond.
America’s friends in the Gulf will therefore be nervous about the implications of this agreement, though the United Arab Emirates was quick to say it welcomed it. Israel denounced it even before the ink was on the page. But soon enough both the Gulf states and Israel will become keen about insisting on fulfilling its every letter, as they have with the interim agreement currently in effect.
The debate in Congress will be vigorous. Most Republicans and a good number of Democrats will oppose the deal on the grounds that it licenses Iran to become a nuclear threshold state, ignoring the Obama administration’s conviction that this would happen faster and with fewer controls in the absence of an agreement. But the opponents are unlikely to muster the two-thirds majority in both houses required to override a presidential veto. The Supreme Leader is thought to have given the green light for this deal, but he has not yet pronounced on it. Assuming he says a dramatically reluctant “yes,” the Iranian Majlis will not block it.
The saga of implementation has not yet begun. It will last 10-15 years. If the agreement holds and prevents Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, it will have made an enormous contribution to peace and stability. If it fails, we will have to deal with the ugly consequences: war or a nuclearized Middle East.
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