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Putin’s Petard

I participated last night in SAIS’s Central Asia-Caucasus Forum, which convened a panel on “Putin’s Kosovo Card: its Meaning to Eastern Europe, Caucasus, and Central Asia” that included Kurt Volker and Mamuka Tsereteli with the skillful moderation of Fred Starr. These are my speaking notes:

• Vladimir Putin has persistently and insistently claimed that what the US did in Kosovo sets a precedent for what Russia has done in Ukraine.
• He has conveniently forgotten that Russia argued in 1999 that only the UN Security Council could authorize bombing of Yugoslavia, so if Kosovo is a precedent it is one Russia should not be following in Ukraine without UN approval.
• Putin has also conveniently forgotten that Russia played a critical role in urging Slobodan Milosevic to yield control of Kosovo to NATO.
• I have no doubt that in his mind what he is doing in Ukraine is in part retaliation for what the US did in Kosovo, over Russian objections. But that is quite different from claiming Kosovo constitutes a precedent.
• The claim it is a precedent is based on a bizarre and false analogy with no serious validity. Let me count the things that are wrong with it:
1. NATO intervened against Serbia to protect Kosovo Albanians from a concerted campaign of ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and crimes against humanity by the Serbian government. There have been human rights violations, but no comparable campaign of mass atrocity and expulsion by the Ukrainian government against Russian-speaking Ukrainians either in Crimea or in Donbas.
2. Russia intervened overtly in Crimea, taking territory by military force and annexing it. The US never sought to annex Kosovo’s territory, or to attach it to any other country, something its internationally imposed constitution now prohibits.
3. The UNSC voted an end to the Kosovo war in June 1999 with resolution 1244, which confirmed the outcome and made the issue of its legality moot. There is no such resolution for Crimea or eastern Ukraine. I hope there will never be one unless Russia agrees to withdraw and yield sovereignty back to Ukraine.
4. The UN established a protectorate in Kosovo and governed it until 2008, ensuring that it transitioned to democracy and implemented all the requirements of the UN-sponsored Ahtisaari plan, including in particular protection for the Serb population in Kosovo. Russia has blocked any international engagement in Crimea to protect non-Russians. There is no sign that Crimea or any Russian-controlled part of Ukraine is headed for democracy, and ethnic cleansing of both Ukrainians and Tatars is ongoing.
5. Kosovo is now recognized de jure as sovereign by more than 100 other states and accepted de facto by many more. The Russian annexation of Crimea and the supposed independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia have obtained few international acknowledgements.
6. Russia has also intervened covertly in eastern Ukraine, constantly denying its official presence and prevaricating about its military aid to the Russia-sponsored insurgents. It is currently launching an offensive against Mariupol, which has a large Russian-speaking population (44.4% in 2002, 48.7% Ukrainian). There was no such covert intervention in Kosovo, where the NATO air campaign, its preparations for a ground offensive and even its support for the Kosovo Liberation Army were well-known at the time.
• If there is a Kosovo precedent for what Russia is doing in Ukraine, it is not NATO’s protection of the Albanians but rather Russia’s own attempt to grab the Pristina airport by force in June 1999 as prelude to the arrival of Russian forces by air and occupation of northern Kosovo.
• An even more significant precedent is Slobodan Milosevic in the early 1990s, who claimed to be protecting his co-national Serbs from mistreatment while expelling Croats and Bosniaks from territory the Yugoslav National Army seized in Croatia and Bosnia.
• The pattern is a familiar one: exaggerated reports of mistreatment, organization of militias to protect against largely fictional mistreatment, provocation by those militias against legitimate state forces, then intervention to protect co-nationals from any efforts to restore law and order.
• Russia has repeatedly engaged in this pattern of creating problems in order to control territory with Russian-speaking majorities in the former Soviet space: Transnistria, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Transnistria, it should be noted, pre-dates Kosovo.
• Moscow has gotten away with it before, so it will try again. Maybe in Kazakhstan. And it will encourage copy-cat efforts in Bosnia’s Republika Srpska and Nagorno-Karabakh, trying to ensure that the sovereign states in which those entities are located cannot exert effective control.
• This is a strategy of destabilization and control by military and paramilitary means.
• One more thing: if Putin seriously thought Kosovo was a precedent for Ukraine that he is justified in following, Moscow would accept the results of the NATO intervention and recognize Pristina. Fat chance of that.
• So as the Russian army attacks Mariupol, let’s call it what it is: naked aggression on neighboring state with the aim of grabbing territory populated in part by Russian speakers.

The discussion revolved in part around criteria for statehood and sovereignty as well as partition questions. Putin’s card is a petard, which is a small explosive device with a tendency to explode in ways that “hoist” the owner. The Russian Federation may well eventually face internal problems inspired in part by Putin’s own behavior in Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova, not to mention Syria.

Syrian opposition getting their act together

The Syrian Coalition of Revolutionary and Opposition Forces informs me that members of various factions of the Syrian opposition met in Cairo over the past few days and agreed yesterday on the attached Cairo Declaration. They also agreed to hold a national conference for all Syrian opposition factions in the coming months.

Attendees and signers included members of a broad spectrum of opposition groups, as well as national figures from various segments of Syrian society, including: Aref Dalilah, Hussein Awdat, Haitham Manaa, Ahmad Jarba, Nibras Fadel, Jamal Suleiman, Riad Naasan Agha, Saleh Muslem, Jihad Makdesi, and Samir Seifan.

I am told the signatories include a significant slice of opposition from inside Syria as well as a higher proportion of Alawites and Christians than in the Syrian Coalition itself. The Muslim Brotherhood was not present (after all, the meeting was in Cairo) but the door remains open to its participation in the spring conference.

This looks to me like the latest in a long series of efforts to unify the opposition. This time the platform is nationalist, non-sectarian, civil, and democratic, including explicit reference to gender equality. It pays due deference to decentralization but also foresees a unified Syria and withdrawal of all foreign forces. I think it doesn’t explicitly address the upcoming intra-Syrian dialogue Moscow is sponsoring, but it is possible some of the signatories may be planning to attend that meeting starting Sunday.

Good cop, bad cop

I could sign up to 90% of what the foreign ministers of France, the United Kingdom, Germany and the European Union say today in the Washington Post. They want the US Congress not to pass new sanctions on Iran, for fear that would split the P5+1 (that includes the US, Russia and China as well as the Europeans) and wreck the prospects for a nuclear deal with Iran. The Israeli intelligence establishment apparently agrees, even if Prime Minister Netanyahu does not.

Knowledgeable people who follow the talks closely also oppose additional sanctions now, but for different reasons. Some think a nuclear deal that goes beyond the current Joint Plan of Action (JPA) is unlikely. The question would then become who–the Iranians or the Americans are the prime candidates–scuppers the deal, either before it expires at the end of June or during another six-month extension. From an American perspective, it is preferable that the Iranians take on the responsibility, thus increasing the likelihood that the P5+1 would remain united and then respond with tightened sanctions.

I’ve argued that in a sense none of this matters. The overt Iranian nuclear program is not the problem. There is simply no history of anyone developing nuclear weapons using materials produced in a program monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. So why should we care about the JPA at all? It provides access and accountability for activities that are not the problem.

Access is the point. If we are going to have early warning that Iran’s covert nuclear activities are moving towards developing a nuclear weapon, we are going to need access. The JPA provides it. While there are no doubt means of knowing what is going on clandestinely in Iran that do not depend on the IAEA, its inspectors are an important source of knowledge about the Iranian program and its purposes. Had we listened to Hans Blix, the IAEA director general before the invasion of Iraq, we might have saved ourselves a lot of trouble.

This argues for continuation of the JPA, even though the target of its monitoring is likely to involve material that will never be diverted to a nuclear weapons program. The technology is a different matter. Iran is not so well-endowed with physicists and engineers that it would want, or be able, to develop enrichment or reprocessing technology from scratch, independent of its IAEA-monitored efforts. If there is a separate, clandestine activity the IAEA is likely to garner hints of it. That is precisely what we should want.

So scuppering the JPA is not a good idea for the US. But many who know Iran well believe it is necessary in order to get a nuclear deal to make it clear what will happen if there is no more permanent nuclear deal.  This is where Congress comes in. The Administration is already playing good cop, threatening to veto new sanctions. Congress can play bad cop, even without passing new legislation.

Congress could prepare a bipartisan bill (with broad support in both Houses) that imposes tough new sanctions but is put on a slow track to approval. That would constitute a clear and compelling message. Of course this would have to be carefully coordinated with other P5+1 members, and we should expect the Iranians to retaliate with a bill in the Majles that sends an equally clear and compelling message about what Tehran will do if the JPA breaks down without a new agreement in place.

The Iranians will of course understand what we are up to. But there is no need to hide it. There is only a need to anticipate, prepare to impose new sanctions if the need arises, and play the diplomatic game well. That Tehran will appreciate.