peacefare.net

Counterproductive is not good strategy

2024 is starting badly. Let’s review the main acts on the stages I watch.

In the Middle East, it’s chaos all around

Israel’s war on Gaza is now approaching the three-month mark. Most of Gaza is now rubble. Its population is hungry, thirsty, cold, sick, and unhoused. The Israelis have killed perhaps 8000 Hamas fighters, along with well over twenty thousand civilians. But Hamas retains the bulk of its force and continues to launch rockets and fight back.

The Israeli right wants to transport a significant number of Palestinians to Egypt or elsewhere in Africa. Such a forced displacement would be a war crime. Nor is it clear how displacement to the Sinai, which borders Israel as much as Gaza does, would improve Israel’s security situation.

The Israelis are assassinating both Hizbollah and Hamas leaders with strikes in Lebanon, which risks expansion of the war. The Houthis in Yemen have already expanded the war to the Red Sea, where they trying to strike merchant and naval vessels. The Americans will respond if that continues.

In Iran, a terrorist bomb killed at least 100 people at a memorial event for Qasim Suleimani, the former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leader the US assassinated in 2020. ISIS claimed responsibility, but Iran as usual blames the US and Israel.

The Israeli crackdown on the West Bank continues apace, along with Jewish settler violence against Palestinians there. Palestinians talk about “from the river to the sea.” Israelis are doing it.

The Americans are still shipping weapons to Israel and vetoing most UN Security Council resolutions, but frictions with Israel over humanitarian assistance, the widening war, and the eventual political outcome in Gaza are real.

Net result: chaos all around. This serves Prime Minister Netanyahu well, as it allows him to continue the war and blocks political change at home. But it serves his country poorly, as Israel is stretched and faces increasing tension with Iran and its surrogates.

In Ukraine, a vulnerable moment

According to @k_sonin “Over the whole 2023 year Putin gained 0.01 percent of the Ukrainian territory:

Russian forces still occupy about 18% of Ukraine. But Kyiv has neutralized the Russian Navy and succeeded in protecting Ukraine’s outgoing grain shipments through the Black Sea. Ukrainians appear as unified as ever in wanting to remove Russian troops entirely from sovereign Ukrainian territory, including Crimea.

The biggest threat to Ukraine today comes from Europe and the US. Both are having trouble getting legislative approval for their latest aid packages, of $55 billion and $50 billion respectively. In the US this issue will likely be resolved, one way or the other, soon as budget deadlines loom. The situation in Europe is less clear.

Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin is proving as determined in pursuing counterproductive policies as Prime Minister Netanyahu. He has unified NATO, pushed Finland and now Sweden into the Alliance, and scared countries all around Russia’s periphery into beefing up their defenses.

The Balkans continue to deteriorate

Belgrade’s purposeful effort to establish de facto control of Serb populations in neighboring countries continues.

While President Vucic doesn’t talk “Serbian home,” he is doing it. He is unlikely to support secession of Republika Srpska. But he is openly supporting Milorad Dodik’s effort in Bosnia and Herzegovina to extract the Serb entity from the authority of the Sarajevo government and legal system. With a lot of help from the Serbian Orthodox Church, Belgrade has also succeeded in getting a pro-Serbian, pro-Russian government installed in Montenegro.

In Kosovo, Belgrade has outdone itself. It has

1. Removed Serbs from Pristina’s police, courts, and administration in the northern four municipalities with Serb majorities.
2. Sponsored a boycott of municipal elections.
3. Rented mobs to protest the election of non-Serb mayors and to attack NATO-led peacekeepers.
4. Kidnapped police from Kosovo’s territory.
5. Trained and equipped a September 24 terrorist operation intended to create the pretext for military intervention.
6. Denied the validity of agreements the US and EU claim are legally binding.
7. Run unfair and fraudulent elections and is violently repressing the resulting protests.

The EU and US reaction has been underwhelming. Washington and Brussels have done nothing to counter Serbia’s defiance. The meager result is Belgrade’s acceptance of Kosovo license plates without covering the offensive “R” for “Republic.” Unless and until there are real consequences, Serbia will continue its drift eastward into the arms of Putin, Xi, Aliyev, Lukashenko, and Orban.

The wrong directions

Israel, Russia, the EU and the US are all pursuing counterproductive strategies. You don’t get where you want to go by heading in the wrong direction.

Free, unfair, and fraudulent

Twenty-four hours has given me enough time to realize my assessment yesterday of the Serbian elections Sunday was incomplete. The national poll no doubt reflected the will of the citizens, expressed after a free but unfair campaign in which the government, especially the President, put a thumb heavily on the scale. He may not merit the absolute majority in parliament he gained, but no one else came close.

Belgrade was different

That is not true of the Belgrade city council election. The authorities assured the opposition they would accept any outcome in that poll. But Vucic and his coalition concentrated their election-day cheating budget on buying municipal votes and shipping in voters from Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as Montenegro and Kosovo. That ensured a narrow but fraudulent victory in Belgrade.

OSCE has neglected to document it, but there is ample anecdotal evidence of the municipal election fraud. Many of the people involved presumably had the right to vote. They could have done it more conveniently in Bosnia. But tens of thousands came by the busload to vote in Belgrade, where many lacked addresses. Coorindators guided them to polling places. No doubt the government paid for those buses as well as the people who organized the effort. Vucic’s relatively narrow margin of victory in Belgrade (39%/35%) has prompted protests that the government will no doubt ignore. If they grow, the police will use violence to end them.

Why it matters

Americans may find it difficult to understand the out-sized significance of municipal elections in a capital city. The Democrats have controlled Washington DC for the past 50 years of home rule. But Republicans cherish their ability to monkey with the city’s legislation, which requires approval in Congress. In many European countries, control of the capital is regarded as second in importance only to control of the national government. That is the case in Serbia. Losing Belgrade would be a big headline. Many would regard it as a bellwether for the future.

That’s not the only problem for Vucic. He controls patronage and public works in Belgrade. His approval is required for any major projects and important hires. The local police do his will. Ceding those privileges to the opposition would limit his power and undermine his authority even at the national level. Who wants to pay to play with someone who can’t deliver? No elected autocrat wants to deal with an opposition mayor in the capital.

What to do about it

First and foremost, the US and EU should be cognizant of the failure of electoral democracy in Serbia. In most of the rest of the Balkans, free, pretty fair, and honest elections are now the rule. In Montenegro, Macedonia, Kosovo, and Bosnia alternation in power is a real possibility. That is no any longer the case in Serbia. Vucic has restored something much like Milosevic’s regime, which was also an electoral autocracy. Buttressed by media control and state resources, Vucic has rendered the opposition powerless, obliterated independent institutions, and gained command of all the levers of power.

Next Brussels and Washington need to adjust their expectations accordingly. Vucic has told them he will do nothing to recognize Kosovo, even de facto. They need to believe him and give up the ambitions of a dialogue with Pristina that has proven fruitless. They also need to give up trying to win Serbia for the West. Belgrade has embraced its eastern destiny. Vucic wants to ride with Putin and Xi, as well as Orban, Lukashenko, and Aliyev. He has no interest in riding with Biden, von der Leyen, Scholz, or Sunak.

But the Americans and European should not give up on the Serbian opposition. The Serbia Against Violence coalition that won one-fourth of the parliament has tapped into serious discontent and generated large and regular demonstrations. Only a mass movement of that sort will be capable of mobilizing Serbs against someone who is claiming the mantle of Milosevic. Free, unfair, and fraudulent was his approach too.

PS: @AlexandravonNah, Deutsche Welle, is reporting:

“We should not speak about fair election. It was unfair,” Stefan Schennach, one of the heads of the OSCE election observers’ delegation to Serbia, tells us. He adds: “The victory in Belgrade was stolen from the opposition.” His teams reported that the pro-western alliance ‘Serbia against violence’ got in all polling stations here twice as many votes than the ruling party. The official results do not reflect that.

Serbia should defeat Vucic, not Kosovo

Jakub is correct. American acceptance without substantial protest of the terrorist act attempted on September 24 in northern Kosovo is incompatible with any serious shift in US policy in the Balkans. Appeasement knows few limits. The Belgrade-sponored and -trained insurrectionists were not freedom fighters. They were proxies doing the Serbian state’s will against the Kosovo state, which the US recognizes and supposedly prizes as a partner.

This is nuts

Six weeks have passed without any apparent US or EU reaction, beyond mild scolding. In the meanwhile Serbian President Vucic has snubbed the EU in favor of attending a Beijing-hosted Belt and Road Summit.

Not surprisingly, the latest EU-sponsored meeting between Vucic and Kosovo Prime Minister Kurti failed to make progress. The EU and US want Kurti to institute an Association of Serb-majority Municipalities (ASMM) without any serious quid pro quo from Vucic. He is unwilling even to see Kosovo join the UN despite a supposedly “legally binding” February agreement not to block it from international organizations. I quote from Article 4: “Serbia will not object to Kosovo’s membership in any international organisation.” Bilateral recognition, Vucic persistently says, is out of the question.

The fault lies mainly in Belgrade

Serbia is mainly at fault for the present stalemate. It has refused to abide by agreements the EU and US claim are legally binding. The backstory includes Belgrade urging Serbs not to use Kosovo license plates, to boycott Kosovo elections, and to attack Kosovo police and international peacekeepers. Belgrade does not abide even by the 2013 agreement that launched the idea of the ASMM, which provides for the Kosovo constitution to be applied in the north, with ample provisions for Serb participation.

Nevertheless the EU is sustaining its “consequences” on Kosovo. They were levied to get duly-elected but non-Serb mayors from using their offices in northern Kosovo municipal buildings and to force Kosovo to reduce its police presence there. Only one of the four mayors I am told is going to his municipal building. The Kosovo police presence has been reduced due to improved security conditions. But there is no sign of easing on the EU’s part.

The Association

The nub of the issue is the Association. The EU gave Vucic and Kurti drafts of its statutes at their last meeting. I hoped it would have leaked by now, but apparently it hasn’t. The key question is whether the proposal guarantees that the Association will operate in accordance with the Kosovo constitution and not constitute a new layer of governance like Republika Srpska in Bosnia. That has rendered Bosnia dysfunctional. Republika Srpska originated in six Serb Autonomous Regions, which united to form the larger entity. That is a precedent the US and EU should not allow.

I’ve seen no guarantee they won’t. The Americans have published an op/ed that says it won’t happen. But they aren’t willing to sign on the dotted line to prevent it. Nor are the Europeans prepared to commit. Without such a guarantee, an elaborate proposal like the one from the European Institute of Peace and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung runs the risk of laying the groundwork for partition of Kosovo and secession.

The right way forward

The Americans succeeded last week in forcing the resignation of Serbian Security Information Agency chief Aleksandar Vulin. He is a diehard advocate of the “Serbian world,” which is code for Greater Serbia and entails Kosovo partition. It would be hard to doubt that he backed the September 24 plot, providing material as well as political support. But his resignation is no substitute for a major shift in Belgrade policy, which can only come from from the mouth of President Vucic. He needs to acknowledge responsibility for the September 24 plot, apologize, and pledge nothing like it will happen again.

The odds of that are nil to zero. Vucic has called parliamentary and local elections for December 17, hoping they will shore up his flaging support. Or at least give him a renewed mandate. He won’t be apologizing to Kosovo for anything in the middle of an election campaign. Nor thereafter.

The best that can happen now is defeat of the present governing coalition. The opposition claims it has united as “Serbia Against Violence.” That is good news. Now they need to focus on getting their often young, left/liberal, environmentalist, and anti-violence voters to the polls. Serbia should defeat Vucic. Not Kosovo.

The dialogue is dead, so what’s next?

Since before 2013 the US and EU have sponsored a “political” dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia intended to “normalize” their relations. This effort recently has been based on a German-French initiative aimed at a “two Germanies”-type agreement. East and West Germany in 1972 agreed to “…develop normal good neighbourly relations with each other on the basis of equal rights.” The result for the Balkans was a Brussels agreement promulgated in February and an Ohrid implementation plan promulgated in March. Kosovo has accepted both and offered to sign on the dotted line. Serbia has rejected both and refused to sign.

Belgrade also sponsored an attempted insurrection in northern Kosovo on September 24. It was intended to precipitate a Kosovo police reaction that would justify a Serbian military intervention. Serbia has celebrated the insurrectionists, whom it armed and trained. Belgrade has not taken responsibility or apologized for the terrorist acts its agents perpetrated.

This brings to an end any serious prospect for progress in the dialogue as presently constituted. So what is next? First, a careful look at what went wrong is in order.

Misjudgments

The European and American diplomats misjudged Belgrade, which has always insisted it would not recognize Kosovo. This explicitly includes any “back door” recognition, which is what the recent “normalization” non-agreements intended. Serbia has continued instead to look for, or create, opportunities to control the four northern Kosovo municipalities with Serbian majorities. President Vucic attempted to negotiate their annexation to Serbia with former Kosovo President Thaci. He has now tried to create a pretext for annexing them by military force.

The Americans and Europeans also misjudged Pristina. They attempted to force Prime Minister Kurti to create an Association of Serb Majority Municipalities. That would provide Vucic with the control over northern Kosovo he has sought. While the Americans promised not to allow the Association to become a governing entity, they have not been willing to show how they would prevent that from happening or to guarantee it in a formal governmental agreement.

Mistaken realignment towards Serbia

The Europeans have also failed to put their own house in order. Five European Union member states do not recognize Kosovo. This split in the EU has weakened its mediator, Miroslav Lajcak. In addition, Hungary, though a recognizer, has aligned itself with Russia and Serbia against Kosovo. The result is a lowest common denominator EU policy that is more respectful of Belgrade’s interests than Pristina’s.

The Americans have also aligned themselves more with Belgrade than Pristina in recent years. This appeasement was intended to move Serbia closer to the West and away from Russia and China. That effort has blatantly failed. Serbia has repeatedly preferred its military relations with Russia and its commercial relations with China over strengthened relations with the United States or Europe.

What would work better

First the Europeans and Americans need to correct their errors. This would mean rebalancing policy towards Pristina and away from Belgrade. It also means dropping overly ambitious goals. The Association and even backdoor recognition are not feasible, the former because of concerns in Pristina and the latter because of concerns in Belgrade.

The so-called “technical” dialogue that Belgrade and Pristina pursued prior to 2013 was far more successful than the “political” dialogue that came thereafter. It produced numerous agreements intended to improve life in both Kosovo and Serbia. Some have not been fully implemented. It is high time to return to those. Some may need revision.

To ensure implementation, the Americans and Europeans could form a monitoring group like the International Civilian Office that ensured implementation of the pledges Kosovo made at the time of independence. Such a group should include, in addition to prominent European and American leaders, Kosovo and Serbian government representatives as well as nongovernmental organizations. The aim should be 100 per cent implementation of the existing technical agreements and any additional ones reached.

One of the most important missing ingredients in relations between Serbia and Kosovo is personal contact. While at the leadership level they know each other well, the societies do not. The Europeans would do well to sponsor a major citizen-to-citizen effort, like the one that improved relations between France and Germany after World War II.

Postpone the politics

Some will be concerned that postponing the “final comprehensive agreement” would be a mistake. Certainly Kosovo needs recognition and United Nations membership as soon as possible. But it is not possible with the current political leadership in Belgrade and its alignment with Moscow and Beijing. Nor is the Association of Serb Majority Municipalities possible for the current political leadership in Pristina, especially in the wake of the September 24 terrorist attack. Both these agenda items should be postponed to the end of the normalization process.

The political situation is not “ripe.” There is no “mutually enticing way out.” Nor is there European and American will to ripen the conflict or create a mutually enticing way out. Conflict management types will recognize these as the necessary conditions for a successful negotiation. But there are lots of things to do other than final status. Without political will, the technical dialogue should be prioritized.

Future trouble is Gaza’s fate

The Israelis continue to pound Gaza, two weeks after the heinous terrorist attack Hamas mounted against Israel. We don’t know how much the bombardment has hurt Hamas. Its militants presumably hide underground and among the civilian population. But it has certainly harmed ordinary Palestinians. They are suffering horribly as well from the embargo on food, water, and fuel going into Gaza.

The better option right now

Well-meaning people are calling for a ceasefire. But Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) would use a ceasefire to re-organize and re-arm. That would lengthen the conflict and prolong the agony of Gazan civilians. A ceasefire would also require international monitors. It is hard to imagine where those would come from.

A bombing pause would be a better option right now. The bombing hinders all aspects of civilian life in Gaza and will block delivery of humanitarian aid. It started to flow through the Rafah Crossing from Egypt this morning. Observers aren’t needed to monitor a bombing pause, which should apply to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad as well as Israel. Remote observation would suffice. Hamas and PIJ could try to use a bombing pause to re-arm, but Israel would be able to conduct raids to prevent that from happening.

The question of war aims

The Defense Minister told a Knesset committee yesterday that Israel’s war aims are

• destruction of Hamas’ military infrastructure;
• destruction of pockets of resistance;
• removal of Israel’s responsibility for life in Gaza and establishment of a new security reality for Israelis.

These are far more reasonable aims than I’ve seen quoted elsewhere. It makes no sense to destroy Hamas’ civilian governing infrastructure. That will be needed even during, and also after, the war to distribute humanitarian aid and health services as well as re-start education and other social services.

The ground invasion makes no sense

But the minister also appeared to promise a ground invasion: “Whoever sees Gaza from afar now, will see it from the inside.”

This makes no sense. Re-occupation of Gaza would be “fiendishly difficult,” to quote David Petraeus. The Israeli army knows that well. It has done it before. Now would be far more difficult, as Hamas is a formidable foe and well-entrenched. Israel’s cadres are largely reservists, not the professional special operations guys needed to ferret out Hamas. They will suffer many fewer casualties supporting the professionals from just outside Gaza rather than inside.

The new security reality

It is unclear what the minister meant by a new security reality. If it means higher walls and a tighter embargo, that is a formula for further radicalization in Gaza. Iran would no doubt like that and re-arm the radicals as best it could.

Israel will be tempted to try to re-implant the Palestinian Authority security forces in Gaza. But the PA has lost a lot of credibility with Palestinians. Its performance in the West Bank does not bode well. Hamas remnants would of course conduct guerilla operations against any PA presence.

I can imagine a multinational peacekeeping force in Gaza. But which countries would be prepared to lend it personnel? It would require tens of thousands of Arabic speakers. Egypt would decline, as it doesn’t take on more responsibility for Gaza. The Gulf would be uninterested. The North Africans likewise. Conditions at home would prevent Sudan, Yemen, Syria, or Iraq from lending a hand. Jordan would be skittish.

A wicked problem

Gaza poses wicked problems for which we don’t appear to have answers. Any attempt to solve one creates many others. Israelis are understandably less inclined to compromise than before the October 7 Hamas attack, even as Arabs understandably move towards more sympathy with Palestinians. That could mean trouble for a long time into the future.