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Kosovo age 12
VoA’s Milan Nesic asked some questions on the 12th anniversary of Kosovo independence. I replied:
Q: Is Kosovo on a steady path of becoming a fully functional independent state?
A: No state’s path is steady, but Kosovo has just recently formed a democratically mandated government on the basis of free and fair election results. The media is mostly free. The Constitutional Court has demonstrated its independence repeatedly. It has a lively civil society and strong opposition. The economy has grown well, especially considering the slow growth in the EU. I don’t know many countries that have done a lot better in their first 12 years.
Q: What are the main obstacles?
A: Kosovo faces active efforts to undermine its institutions and constitution by its largest and most powerful neighbor, Serbia. Serbia’s anti-recognition campaign and its efforts to maintain political control over the Serbs who live in Kosovo are serious obstacles.
Kosovo suffers from the perception of high levels of corruption, which is a problem throughout the Balkans. Government procurement and nepotism seem to be the main problems. I expect the new government to crack down as best it can, if only to eliminate privileges that its competition established during its years in power.
Q: Is this the year in which Kosovo will become a member of the UN, Interpol, and UNESCO, or that process is still under great deal of uncertainties?
A: Still highly uncertain I would say, due to Serbia’s and Russia’s opposition. Interpol and UNESCO can be done in an hour if Serbia agrees. I think it should. The UN is a tougher goal, because quite apart from Belgrade, Moscow will try to extract a high price from the Americans, which Washington won’t want to pay.
Q: Are Kosovo and Serbia any closer to concluding an agreement by Kurti’s appointment as the prime minister?
A: Prime Minister Kurti has made it clear he will insist on reciprocity in relations with Serbia. I don’t think Belgrade is ready for that, even if I think Kurti is right to insist on it. I don’t expect any big move before the Serbian parliamentary election in April.
Q: Will Thaci be left out as a participant in the future negotiations?
A: He is trying hard to remain in the game by playing up the air transport agreement Special Envoy Grenell dreamed up, but the Constitutional Court has determined that negotiations with Belgrade are the responsibility of the Government, not the Parliament or the Presidency. Thaci is in his last year as President, with a government in power that includes his most vigorous opponents. He is not in a strong position.
PS: I should add another comment since the news this morning includes President Thaci signing transportation agreements with Serbia about which the Kosovo Prime Minister and Speaker of Parliament have declared their ignorance. This strikes me as extra-constitutional behavior that reflects poorly on both the Americans involved and the President.
This interview has also been published in Serbian, or whatever you want to call the region’s main Slavic language.
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Kinship and insurgency
Christopher Merriman, a second year student at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, writes:
At a February 12, 2020 talk hosted by the SAIS African Studies department, Assistant Professor of Political Science at George Washington University Janet Lewis proposed a theory that networks of ethnic kinship in Uganda help rebel groups expand from upstart organizations into viable groups.
Lewis’ research looks at 16 incipient rebel groups that have operated in Uganda since 1986. Her research question asks, “What factors enabled four of these groups to become ‘viable’ while the other 12 failed?” Lewis defines a rebel group as “viable” if it reaches a “minimal threshold of threatening the authority of the central government.” This threshold includes being based in the target country for more than 3 months and having at least 100 troops.
Lewis’ study found that the four rebel groups that became viable operated in ethnically homogeneous areas. Meanwhile, all of the 12 groups that failed to become viable operated in ethnically heterogeneous areas. Ethnic homogeneity is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a rebel group to become viable. Not all groups from homogeneous areas became viable but viable groups all came from homogeneous regions.
Lewis grounds her argument in the precondition that incipient rebel groups are vulnerable to civilians telling the government of their existence. Rebel groups depend on civilians to keep their secrets. They are more likely to keep quiet if they have a favorable impression of the rebel group or think that the group will likely become “viable.”
According to Lewis, kinship networks in ethnically homogeneous regions facilitate the spread of positive information about the rebel groups. Members of ethnically-based kinship networks in homogeneous societies are much more likely to pass along information than groups of different ethnicities living in heterogeneous societies. Lewis conducted a study of two villages in Uganda that found that news traveled eight times more widely in a homogeneous village than in a heterogeneous one. These kinship networks will not necessarily spread “good news” about the rebel groups. However, kinship networks are necessary in order to spread favorable views of the rebel groups that prevent civilians from reporting the rebel group to the government. Kinship networks represent a necessary but not sufficient condition for a rebel group to become viable.
Lewis also found that the grievances of rebel groups are sometimes fueled by government responses to initial violence. Local grievances are often cited as a major reason for the formation of rebel groups or insurgencies and for their subsequent success. However, Lewis finds that rebel groups sometimes initiate violence, and only then gain grievances against the government due to government reprisals. She cited this as a reason for studying all rebel groups early on in their formation, not just those who become viable to the point that they become well-known.
Lewis does not consider group ideology a major factor in her analysis. In my view, this as a shortcoming of her model. For example, she compared two groups (one that became viable and one that did not) and argued that the main difference between the two was operating in a homogeneous/heterogeneous area. However, one group was fighting to return deposed president Milton Obote to power. Surely, this affected how the local people viewed this rebel group.
There are currently no rebel groups operating in Uganda. Lewis attributed this largely to the reign of president Yoweri Museveni, who himself started as a rebel. According to Lewis, Museveni understands the importance of controlling the flow of information. As a result, he has installed a “deeply penetrative civilian intelligence network.” Every village in Uganda has a security representative. As a result, no one bothers trying to start a rebel group anymore.
Museveni has been able to maintain security in Uganda by controlling access to information to the point that he can prevent incipient rebel groups from forming in the first place. Lewis, however, noted the negative side of this penetration. Uganda is a very repressive country with few civil liberties or viable opposition parties.
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Stevenson’s army, February 8
-SAIS grad John Gans laments the “Trumpification” of the NSC staff.
– Former DHS head Jeh Johnson laments the breakdown between branches over the war power.
– Politico sees hope in Pompeo’s deputy.
-Academic notes armed groups are now hiring DC lobbyists.
– Just in case, Lawfare explains the laws about quarantines.
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. If you want to get it directly, 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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Stevenson’s army, January 27
The big Washington news today is the NYT report that John Bolton’s forthcoming memoir confirms that President Trump specifically linked Ukraine aid to investigations of the Bidens and Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Analyzing a leak is like figuring out a murder mystery. First ask cui bono — who benefits? The answer: Bolton himself, since his book was due to be published March 17; also the House Managers of the impeachment trial, though they presumably did not have access to the manuscript; and the administration officials who believe that the president should be removed from office [people like Anonymous, who has always been vaguely cited as a “senior official”]. The Times story identifies who has copies of the manuscript:
drafts of a manuscript he has circulated in recent weeks to close associates. He also sent a draft to the White House for a standard review process for some current and former administration officials who write books.
Of course the publisher also has copies. While it could have been someone in the WH, my guess is it’s more likely to be a Bolton friend who supports impeachment. And he didn’t mind that it got reported.
Curiously, the Haberman-Schmidt story has no actual quotes from the manuscript, suggesting that they relied on descriptions or agreed not to use quotes. Another curiosity is that only a second NYT story, by impeachment reporter Noah Weiland, quantifies the sourcing, saying
Multiple people described Mr. Bolton’s account. This suggests that the original recipient of the leak got others to admit that they had seen it and confirmed the account. But what’s important is that many people knew and were willing to talk.
Despite the hype, in fact Bolton merely confirms — though at first hand — what his subordinates have already testified.
This morning, Peter Baker has an analysis.
In other news, SecState Pompeo is being properly chastised for mistreating an NPR reporter — and for poor management of State.
NYT has background on the development of the administration’s Arab-Israeli “peace plan,” which will be discussed with leading Israeli politicians this week.
Fred Kaplan reports on Congress’ truncated effort to understand presidential controls over nuclear weapons.
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. If you want to get it directly, 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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Guilty as charged
The opening of the trial proceedings in the Senate has already produced an obvious result: the President has no defense against the charge that he tried to use US government aid to gain a personal political advantage over a potential rival, then obstructed Congress in its investigation. White House lawyers are not claiming he didn’t try to extort the Ukrainians to announce an investigation of Joe Biden, only that he was free to do it and to block witnesses and documents the House of Representatives requested.
This amounts to the inverse of nolo contendere, in which a defendant doesn’t admit guilt, but accepts punishment. Trump is admitting the facts, but the Republican-controlled Senate is protecting him from the penalty provided in the Constitution, removal from office. It has the power under the Constitution to do that and is exercising it with vigor, preventing even submission of documentary evidence and witness testimony to the wrongdoing.
The big question is how the country will react to a President who believes he can abuse power as much he wants and suffer no consequence. According to the first poll taken since the articles of impeachment were delivered to the Senate, a thin majority of Americans now believes he should be removed from office, a wider margin believes the charges against him are true, and two-thirds believe the proceedings in the Senate should include testimony from witnesses.
If confirmed, those results would be a substantial deviation from the trend line in recent months, which is basically flat. The partisan divide is still wide and Republicans in the Senate continue to believe that their prospects in the November election are more threatened by Trump-allied challengers in the primaries than by Democrats at the polls. None of the supposed Republican moderates in the Senate have budged from the majority on the many Democratic proposals to bring witnesses and documents into the process.
The Republicans have an option if the going gets rough. They could decide to defenestrate Trump and put Vice President Pence in his place. More genuinely conservative than Trump on social and religious issues, Pence could be relied on to appoint judges who would please the anti-abortion, pro-Christian, Republican base as well as continue the anti-immigration crusade (double meaning intended) Trump has conducted. What Pence lacks is even a rudimentary personality, never mind charisma.
The Democrats are meanwhile still engaged in the fratricidal warfare of the presidential primaries. For now the presidential hopefuls seem mostly incapable of refocusing their attacks on Trump rather than each other. That isn’t good, but the next month or two may well sort out who the candidate will be. If that doesn’t happen, the Democrats could go to the mid-July convention in Milwaukee without a candidate. A “brokered” convention would not be a good thing.
But the biggest single factor in the next election will be the economy. Trump’s bragging at Davos this week was based on falsehoods. The Obama expansion has continued, but growth is now slowing, though not dramatically yet. The Trump tax cut did little to stimulate the economy but a great deal to balloon the government deficit. The trade deal with China failed to correct most of the structural issues that have given the US such a large bilateral deficit. The trade deal with Mexico made desirable updates. Hourly wages have begun to perk up, but inequality continues its long rise.
The picture is worse on the national security front. The fights Trump has picked with North Korea, Venezuela, and Iran have produced no good results for the US. He has nothing to show for his lovefest with Russian President Putin, who still sits on a big piece of Ukraine. The Israel/Palestine peace plan is a bust. The NATO allies despise the President and are holding their breath for him to leave office. He ignores Latin America and Africa (to their benefit more than likely) while talking tough on China but doing precious little.
If there were professor who could judge the Trump Administration on its economic, social, and national security merits, it would get an F. He is not only guilty as charged, but incompetent as well.
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My Epiphany
I’m still in Addis Ababa, where Timkat (Epiphany) was observed yesterday afternoon and today, in commemoration of Christ’s baptism. It’s a scene worthy of description.
Yesterday the Arks of the Covenant, draped in embroidered cloths and shielded by a canopy, were taken from Addis’ churches in processions to a few locations.
This morning I went to Jan Meda, described as a horse race ground on Googlemaps but really a giant park so far as I could see. Tens of thousands of Ethiopians, many dressed in a spectacular variety of religious garb, assembled for an event that focused primarily on religion. The chanting was vaguely familiar (Jews chant in minor keys too) but of course incomprehensible to me. I was assured it was mostly praises to God. The MC of the religious ceremony would occasionally and helpfully say a few words of introduction in English, emphasizing the ecumenical, egalitarian, multiethnic, and international dimensions of the event.
A good number of people took advantage of the spray from a hose to get soaked and presumably baptized (or re-baptized), but there was a lot else going on. Donkey rides, face painting, cotton candy, soccer games, and a seemingly simplified version of roulette were all available. The street fair vibe was mostly out at the edges of the crowd and in the surrounding streets. There was also a distinct patriotic dimension: lots of green, yellow, and red paraphenalia hawked along with water, soft drinks, and various snacks and sweets.
A word about the crowd: I’d have been frightened if they had been Americans. Getting in and especially out of Jan Meda required funneling hundreds of people down to a narrow passage. Ethiopians may stand much closer to you than Americans, but they don’t push and shove or even get impatient. They wait patiently and move quickly to take advantage of the first opportunity. Best to watch your wallet and cell phone, but this crowd would be harder to provoke to stampede than those in many other countries. At least I hoped that was the case.
The streets outside Jan Meda can get pretty raucous. Beer is cheap here, and many Christian Ethiopians enjoy it. I am told the stimulant qat is also available, but I didn’t see any. The alcohol causes behavior to deteriorate. They may grab an arm, or cheer the passing half dozen whites, whom usually they ignore except for the occasional extra gesture of welcome. Single women, I am told, get harassed.
The police were out in force. They gave people heading for the religious event a cursory patdown, looking presumably for weapons, and held the crowd back periodically to prevent a crush. The Federal and Addis Ababa forces were armed only with batons. I didn’t see any used, though I am told they often are. The mounted police were skilled in pushing back the crowd from the procession, though dummies like me kept on trying to press forward for photos.
Bottom line: Ethiopians enjoy Timkat to the hilt. I did too.
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