Category: Daniel Serwer
Drums don’t win wars
A president who was trying to extract America from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is now preparing to escalate the war in Ukraine and the campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Yesterday, his nominee for Defense Secretary made it clear he supports sending lethal armaments to the Ukrainian government to fight off Russian aggression, a position also advocated by former officials. The White House is also preparing to send Congress a request for an authorization to use military force (AUMF in Washington parlance) against ISIS, something the administration is already doing.
Both these moves fall in the inevitable category. We’ve pretty much run out of alternatives.
ISIS is universally regarded as not only a threat to vital interests but also one with which it is impossible to negotiate. They seem intent on proving that with the immolation a month ago of a Jordanian pilot whom they then feigned being prepared to exchange for an Al Qaeda terrorist. If we are going to fight ISIS whenever and wherever, it is certainly proper that there be a Congressional authorization. Hawks will want it broad. Doves will want it narrow. But both will want it, even though it will make little difference to what the US actually is doing.
In Ukraine, the government is losing control of the southeastern Donbas region and could lose control of even more of its territory to insurgents fully backed by Russia’s substantial military might. I’ll leave to military experts assessment of whether American assistance with lethal but defensive weapons will have a serious impact at this point. It could take a year or more before any significant materiel and training is deployed on the battlefield. In the meanwhile, Moscow will use any American decision to arm the Ukrainians as an excuse to redouble its own efforts.
So neither of these noisy headline issues is likely to have any quick impact. Drums don’t win wars. And these two wars are not only conventional force-on-force clashes between organized military forces, even if they involve some battles of that sort. Both involve counter insurgency, the kind of war (known in the Pentagon as COIN) the US loves to forget.
I’ll leave to the COINistas the analysis and policy prescriptions on the military side. The important point for me is that COIN necessarily involves an important civilian component. You win the war against insurgency by protecting the civilian population. You have to win the peace over a decade or more by ensuring a continued safe and secure environment, establishing the rule of law, ensuring stable governance, growing the economy and meeting social needs. If you fail to do those things in the aftermath of war, you end up with Libya: a weak state that has collapsed now into civil war, leaving breeding grounds for extremists.
The civilian efforts required are in the first instance the responsibility of the governments involved. But their capabilities are at best limited and at worst nonexistent. In Ukraine, even a government victory would likely require peacekeepers to ensure stability in Donbas and avoid reignition of conflict. In Iraq, it is hard to picture the Baghdad government’s security forces welcomed in Anbar and Ninewa provinces. Some kind of local governance with its own security forces (the proposed National Guard?) will be needed. In Syria, Bashar al Asad has shown no sign of willingness to govern fairly or effectively in areas the government retakes. There too some kind of local governance will be needed.
The international capacity to contribute to these efforts is also limited. The State Department has shrunk its civilian conflict and stability operations capability, which was never substantial. The European Union has grown weary and leery of deploying its much more substantial capacity. The UN is stretched thin. OSCE is doing a yeoman job of observing the much-violated ceasefire in Ukraine, but it is a giant step from that to peacekeepers and monitoring implementation of a peace agreement.
We are embarking on another long period of war. We should be strengthening not only our military capacities, but also our civilian ones.
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Why pay attention to Kosovo?
If you stick around international affairs long enough, some of the people you met in the earlier years are likely to turn up in high places later on. I first met the still youthful Hashim Thaci, a two-term prime minister who is now foreign minister, in 1999, when the US Institute of Peace hosted a post-war meeting of Kosovo Albanians at Lansdowne in Virginia.
The issue at the time was not so much conflict between Serbs and Albanians. With notable exceptions, NATO brought large scale interethnic violence to a fairly quick end after the war, until rioting in 2004 unsettled things again. At Lansdowne we were concerned with Albanian on Albanian violence, as different factions vied for post-war dominance. The dialogue and the Lansdowne Declaration they agreed on that occasion are often credited with ending an incipient civil war and turning both the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and its more peaceful rivals in the direction of political rather than military competition.
Hashim Thaci was a key figure at Lansdowne, representing an important faction of the KLA that had fought the Serbs from the mid 1990s until the war ended in June 1999. His role was mainly a political one. He had also been a key figure at the failed Rambouillet negotiations that preceded the war and played a role in the UN administration of Kosovo, though he remained out of power until he was elected prime minister in 2007. He presided over independence in 2008 and governed until this year, when his party won a plurality in parliament but failed to be able to put together a majority without giving up the prime ministry.
His talk here today focused on Kosovo’s post-war transition, its increasing role in the region, Russian efforts to influence the Balkans, Kosovo’s efforts to counter violent extremism, and the importance of keeping the country on its democratic and European trajectory. He is looking for American help to keep the doors to NATO and the EU open, as well as private sector American investment.
I asked the foreign minister about the firing yesterday of a Serb minister from the government. He underlined that the minister was fired for inappropriate remarks he had made, not because he is a Serb. That’s the right thing to say, even if it is a bit of distinction without a difference in this circumstance. No Albanian would have made the same comments. I also asked about the special tribunal Kosovo is supposed to create to prosecute in The Hague crimes committed during and after the NATO/Yugoslavia war. He said he thought there was no need for it to convene in The Hague, but the legislation will pass and the court will be created, enabling EULEX to proceed with indictments.
Thaci pledges cooperation in countering the flow of extremists to Iraq and Syria and the influence of Russia, both of which are inimical to Kosovo as well as the US. Moscow is now more active than in many years in Serbia, Bosnia’s Republika Srpska, Macedonia and even Montenegro, which has rejected the Russian overtures. The number of Kosovar “foreign fighters” is not huge–hundreds rather than thousands–but it represents an important qualitative shift in a country that has generally not taken religion too seriously. The government is now cracking down and has arrested more than 130 returnees.
Washington has a hard time even remembering that it once saved Kosovo from a Serbian onslaught that made half the Albanian population refugees. With threats throughout the Middle East and in Ukraine, few care much about Kosovo. But it behooves us to remember that a bit of diplomatic dynamism to help Kosovo to get into the EU’s visa waiver program and to sign a Stabilization and Association Agreement as well as enter NATO’s Partnership for Peace could go a long way to preventing further radicalization and ensuring that Kosovo becomes the consolidated European democracy it aspires to be.
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Couphobia
Fear of coups (couphobia?) has broken out in all too many places. Turkey’s President Erdogan is cracking down on the Gulen movement members for fear they are plotting against him. Russia’s President Putin has done the same with foreign funding of nongovernmental organizations. Egypt’s President Sisi fears the Muslim Brotherhood will do to him what he has done to their (former) President Morsi, who languishes in prison.
Even in Macedonia, an EU candidate country, the Prime Minister says the opposition was plotting to oust him. Then again, the United States is said to be orchestrating an anti-Victor Orbán coup d’état in EU member Hungary.
I can’t be sure all these claims are as baseless as that last one. Washington just doesn’t care enough about Hungary to engineer a coup there. My guess is that Sisi has plenty to worry about, as he has vastly overdone the repression, creating a growing reservoir of resentment that might fuel an effort to oust him one day, though Egyptians are so tired of disorder (and the army so satiated) that it is unlikely a coup there would be popular. Erdogan and Putin are likewise doing their best to fulfill their own prophecies by making life hard for their legitimate opponents, whose natural reaction will be to think about their options. A coup might be one of them.
Then there are the guys–and they are guys–who really should fear a coup. Syria’s President Asad has destroyed his country in order to prevent anyone else from challenging his hold on power. North Korea’s Kim Jong Un presumably thinks he protected himself, but who knows which uncle or cousin still alive might make the attempt?
Yemen’s President Hadi is facing a coup in everything but name. The Houthi rebels who have him trapped don’t want to displace him, partly for fear that would end military assistance against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula from the Americans the Houthis love to hate. Libya can’t have a coup because it is unclear who has power. It is having a civil war instead.
All the couphobiacs should remember Nouri al Maliki. He was so afraid of a coup that he appointed cronies to command his army and grabbed as much direct control over the other institutions of the state as he could. The result was collapse of the Iraqi Security Forces when faced with the Islamic State and his removal from power because even the Iranians and his own Dawa party turned against him. It doesn’t always work that way, but the example should serve to illustrate the perils of concentrating power too much.
The couphobiacs are unlikely to be chastened however. Once they start down the road of repression, it is hard to turn around or back out. They fear removal from power means they lose their lives as well. What Erdogan, Putin and Sisi need more than anything else is assurance that they can retire gracefully and live out their natural lives. Not everyone can afford to keep autocrats in power well into senility, as the Saudis do. But countries that want their autocrats to retire need to follow the Vatican’s lead and provide funding and protection (before they start committing war crimes and crimes against humanity). Come to think of it, that’s America’s solution too.
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The war may be over, crime persists
Sergio Guzmán Escobar, a SAIS master’s student, reports from Friday’s conversation with Juan Carlos Pinzón, Colombia’s Minister of Defense, at the Inter-American dialogue. Video of the event is available here.
With the Colombian peace talks between the Government and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionaras de Colombia (FARC) – the world’s longest lasting Marxist-Leninist insurgency – reaching what analysts call a “point of no return” the Colombian Minister of Defense, Juan Carlos Pinzón, discussed the country’s security outlook. The minister arrived from Davos, Switzerland where he reassured international investors about the continuity of Colombia’s security policies in a post-agreement scenario.
Moreover, he reviewed the country’s current security threats and outlined them as:
1. Armed Insurgent Groups – Communist insurgencies groups like the FARC and the Ejercito de Liberación Nacional (ELN), who engage in terrorist activities, drug trafficking, extortion, child recruitment and illegal mining.
2. Organized Crime – Remnants of the former right-wing paramilitary organization Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) and groups of organized gangs that engage in drug-related violence in both urban and rural contexts.
3. Citizen Security – street crime and urban gangs who are responsible for the palpable insecurity in the cities, including muggings and house burglary.
The fact that the negotiations come to a successful end will not necessarily mean that the country’s security outlook will improve overnight. The nature of the threats will change and the armed forces and the police will have to respond accordingly. The minister noted that Colombia has already undergone four different Demobilization, Disarmament and Reintegration (DDR) processes and will be able to see the process through in collaboration with multiple government agencies that have experience in this field, especially the National Agency for Reintegration.
As a result of the negotiations, rumors have emerged about the future of the Colombian military possibly downsizing as part of the agreements with the FARC. The minister was emphatic that the armed forces are not going to be downsized regardless of budgetary pressures. The size of the armed forces in the next 5-10 years will remain constant. But there will be a greater mix of military police activities (the Colombian police is a under the Ministry of Defense and is a separate branch of the Armed Forces), to enable the armed forces to engage threats resulting from the peace process. “An agreement will not banish crime.”
Responding to allegations that a new rural police force would include demobilized members of the FARC, the minster remarked “No.”
A pending issue the minister failed to signal in his remarks arises from Venezuela. As the peace agreements are close to being finalized, Colombia is no longer dependent on Venezuela’s “good offices” to keep the FARC at the negotiating table. If oil prices remain low, Caracas’s economic situation will be dire. Scarcity of basic goods will cause President Maduro’s political support among the population to wane. Turbulence in Colombia’s neighbor may represent a real security threat.
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Macedonia in Europe
The Conflict Management Program
and
The Center for Transatlantic Relations
Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies
present
Macedonia: Can It Join Europe?
Presenter:
Fatmir Besimi
Deputy Prime Minister of Macedonia for European Affairs
Introduction and Moderator:
Daniel Serwer
Professor, Conflict Management
Senior Fellow, Center for Transatlantic Relations
SAIS
Rome 806
1619 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Tuesday February 3rd
3-4 PM
RSVP: itlong@jhu.edu
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Thaçi at SAIS
The Conflict Management Program
and
The Center for Transatlantic Relations
Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies
present
Kosovo: From importer of security to a stabilizing factor of South East Europe
Presenter:
HE Hashim Thaçi
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs
Republic of Kosovo
Introduction and Moderator:
Daniel Serwer
Professor, Conflict Management
Senior Fellow, Center for Transatlantic Relations
SAIS
Rome Auditorium
1619 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Wednesday February 4
10 AM
RSVP: itlong@jhu.edu
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