A Balkans agenda for the lame duck
We are entering the final stretch before the US election. That means a lame duck period for lower priority parts of the world like the Balkans until January 20. Neither Kamala Harris nor Donald Trump is likely to say anything about the region before November 5. Even after Inauguration Day it will be some time before the new administration focuses on the Balkans.
We can guess their views
Harris’ views on the Balkans are unknown. But she has spent a career prosecuting criminals and defending equal rights. That likely tells you something about her attitude toward corruption and ethnonationalism. Trump is a corrupt white supremacist who tried to partition Kosovo while in the White House. If elected, he will no doubt empower Ric Grenell or his doppelganger to try again in Kosovo and Bosnia. Serbia has leverage on Trump. Jared Kushner has been looking for investment opportunities there.
What should the people at the State Department and in the White House do in this lame duck period? They should seek to correct the mistakes of the last three years, which have produced mainly diplomatic failure in the Balkans. The Biden Administration mistakenly focused on creating a statutory Association of Serb Majority Municipalities in Kosovo. In Bosnia, it rightly sought to disempower ethnonationalist politicians, but it succeeded mainly with Bosniaks. Those priorities condemned Biden’s Balkan policies to strategic defeat. They also alienated Kosovars and Bosniaks, America’s best friends in the region.
Here are a few ideas to correct course. Assuming that Harris will be elected, as I fondly hope, these thoughts aim to reduce the sway of ethnic nationalism. They would also increase the functionality of governance in still-fragile Kosovo as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Some ideas
- Consult with Kosovo Prime Minister Kurti on a joint plan to establish beyond doubt his country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. This should include an end to Belgrade intimidation of Serbs who join Kosovo security institutions and wider international recognition.
- Adopt as the official US stance conditional support for a nongovernmental Association of Serb Majority Municipalities. The municipalities themselves should form this Association consistent with the Kosovo constitution. The conditions should include Belgrade fulfillment of its obligations under the agreement in which Pristina agreed to the Association.
- Tell Belgrade publicly that it needs to produce accountability for the Serbian government malfeasance of last year. That includes the kidnapping of Kosovo police, rioting against KFOR, and the Banjska terrorist plot.
- Stop the bad-mouthing of Serbian environmentalists who oppose the Rio Tinto lithium plant. Start publicly criticizing corruption and growing autocracy in Belgrade.
- End the Bosnia High Representative’s intervention to reverse the European Court of Human Rights ruling in the Kovacevic case. The ECHR ruling promises a big step in reducing ethnic nationalist control of state institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
- Develop criminal charges in the US against the leading Serb and Croat advocates (Milorad Dodik and Dragan Covic) of ethnonational division in Bosnia.
There are some tall orders in this list. But the failure of three years of misguided US and EU diplomatic efforts suggests a dramatic turn is needed.
The resistance will be strong
Serbia’s President Vucic is committed to the “Serbian world” goal of governing Serbs in neighboring countries. He has succeeded in Montenegro. The government in Podgorica is under Serbia’s thumb. In Bosnia and Kosovo, only de facto partition can deliver success to Serbia. Belgrade will resist all the above moves, as will their proxies in the neighboring countries.
Belgrade is at risk of falling irreversibly under the influence of Russia and China. The US needs to counter that influence with sticks as well as carrots. The carrots only appeasement approach has failed. Here is the result:
The Americans will be far more effective at all of this if the EU and UK will act in tandem. The UK will likely follow a strong US lead. The EU may not follow right away, That makes another task for the lame duck interval: getting Brussels on board.
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The war Netanyahu wanted is at hand
Prime Minister Netanyahu has spent the 31 years since the Oslo accords seeking two principal foreign policy goals: preventing establishment of a Palestinian state and destroying the Islamic Republic of Iran. He is on the verge of getting a chance to achieve both. In the process, he is ending Israeli democracy, earning the enmity of much of the Arab street, and drawing the US into another Middle East war. I don’t like the result, but he is definitely stalwart.
Obliterating the idea of a Palestinian state
I recall in the mid-1990s a discussion at a mutual friend’s house with the then National Security Advisor to Vice President Gore. Leon Fuerth believed that Netanyahu would eventually come around to accepting a Palestinian state. I had my doubts. I still think I was right.
Netanyahu spent many years thereafter pumping up the idea that Israel was under siege, both by the Palestinians and the Iranians. The Second Intifada and the wall Israel built to isolate itself, successfully, from the West Bank boosted his credibility. Once Hamas took over Gaza from the Palestinian Authority in 2006/7, he worked hard to keep the two governing bodies separate. Dividing the Palestinians was one way to make sure they couldn’t get what they wanted.
Defeating Iran
Hezbollah is Iran’s most important ally/proxy in the region. Israel has now destroyed perhaps 50% of its rocket and missile supplies and killed an even greater proportion of Hezbollah’s leaders. The pager/walkie-talkie attack two weeks ago maimed thousands of its cadres. Israeli troops are now on the ground in southern Lebanon seeking to push Hezbollah forces north of the Litani River.
Netanyahu is imagining that regime in Iran is imminent:
He will be content with the results of yesterday’s 180-missile Iranian attack. Israel appears to have suffered little damage and no known strategic losses. Many of the missiles were destroyed before hitting their targets by US, Israeli, and other unnamed defenses.
Retaliation is nevertheless all but certain. Netanyahu has been looking for an opportunity to hit Iran for decades. The Israelis will likely aim for nuclear and oil production facilities. The nuclear facilities will be difficult to destroy, as vital ones are ensconced well under ground. The best the IDF can hope for is to block some of the access routes. The oil facilities are more vulnerable. Oil and natural gas are Iran’s major exports. If they don’t flow, the economy will deflate.
Restraint is not in the cards
The Americans and Europeans will be urging restraint on Israel. They don’t want a regional war. Netanyahu isn’t listening. His own political future depends on continuing the fighting and achieving a spectacular military success. Hamas has denied him that in Gaza. So far, Hezbollah has proven an easier target. Netanyahu knows President Biden will do nothing to Israel’s block arms supplies. And he wants to boost Trump’s chances of winning the presidency. So he has no reason to restrain an attack he has wanted to launch for decades.
Netanyahu’s governing coalition has only a thin majority in the Knesset. But his allies and his own Likud political party have given him a blank check in pursuing a regional war. The Arab states are protesting the war in Gaza but doing little to prevent Israel from attacking Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran. All of them are anathema to the Gulf monarchies. The Arab street is still sympathetic to the Palestinians, but it has little say. Restraint is not in the cards.
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Decent v indecent: you know what I mean
The choice in the American presidential election is a simple one. One candidate is decent. The other is indecent. This is true in many areas.
The economy
Trump mismanaged the COVID-19 epidemic and tanked the economy. Biden revived it. It is now growing more strongly than the pre-COVID rate.
The US economy is outpacing other countries:
Trump gave tax cuts to the rich that were expensive and did not deliver on his promises.
Biden has been really good for manufacturing:
If those aren’t enough reasons to vote for Harris, here’s another one for those in red states. Your economies depend far more on government programs than those of blue states:
Trump aims to cut those programs, give more tax breaks to the wealthy, and pay for them with tariffs the poor will shoulder more than the rich:
Immigration
Comparison of Trump’s and Biden’s immigration policies is complicated. But the numbers of illegal crossings surged during the Biden Administration as the COVID-19 pandemic receded:
The percentage of the US population that is immigrant is close to the earlier peak in 1890:
But deportations under Biden have been higher than under Trump:
More important: the US needs workers and entrepreneurs. Those immigrants Trump wants to deport open about a quarter of the new businesses in the US each year. The US has had more job openings than unemployed workers since 2018, except for the period of the pandemic:
Massive deportation would make the shortage of workers worse, reigniting inflation (along with the Trump tariffs). Immigrants have had lower crime rates than the US-born for at least 150 years. There is simply no moral, economic, or law enforcement reason for mass deportations, which would be violent and expensive.
Social issues
I can understand people who don’t like the idea of abortion. I don’t like it either. But that is not the issue. The issue is who should decide whether to end a pregnancy. I can’t imagine anyone more appropriate to do that that the pregnant woman herself, particularly if it is done before the fetus can survive. That was what Roe v Wade allowed. It should be allowed again, in all states. Anything less than that is bound to lead to confusion and strife. Governments should have a strictly limited role.
I don’t worry too much about the movement to ban books in libraries, even though the number of challenges is rising sharply:
I’m sure banning will guarantee books are read more rather than less.
But I do worry about the efforts to limit what schools teach, particularly about slavery and racism. Slavery was an abominable institution that tortured millions of people and killed many of them. No one should graduate from an American high school without that understanding. Students should also understand that enslavement of Africans was vital to America’s–and the world’s–economy for several hundred years before it was abolished. The wealth it produced is still in the hands of descendants of those who did not produce it. I’m not sure what we can do about that, but we should all appreciate the facts.
Foreign policy
The main foreign policy differences are all too apparent. Trump will back Israel to the hilt and surrender Ukraine (or part of it) to Russia. Harris will back Ukraine so long as the Ukrainians want to fight and try to restrain Israel. It is unclear what Trump would do about Taiwan. If he follows his own lead from Ukraine, he would hand it to China. Harris would likely follow Biden’s backing for the status quo against Chinese encroachments. On China, belligerence is bipartisan. Not much daylight between them.
More generally, Harris will back US NATO and Asian allies. Trump will try to wriggle free of alliance commitments.
In the past he has threatened NATO allies with letting them be attacked if they don’t ante up to 2% of GDP spent on defense by 2024. Today that means mainly Italy (where significant numbers of US troops are based), Spain, Portugal, Belgium (where NATO headquarters are located), Slovenia, and Croatia. The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine pushed the laggards over the 2% mark.
Trump has also suggested that Asian allies (South Korea and Japan) get their own nuclear weapons so that US forces can withdraw. That is a really bad idea.
Identity
Important as the issues above are, I suspect this election will come down to identity. The aging but wealthy heir Trump and the untested, fake hillbilly Vance are unabashed liars and fraudsters. They have tapped into a deep vein of white, especially male, supremacist feeling in the American population. It was always there, but they have allowed it to surface. Harris and Walz represent the opposite. The Vice President is an accomplished, well-educated Black woman running with an experienced white male as her second.
Many Americans won’t worry about the policy issues. They will vote on identity. Democrat v Republican, young v old, urban v suburban v rural, liberal v conservative, minority v majority, rich v poor. I hope they will also consider another dimension: decent v indecent. You know what I mean.
Please register and vote!
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It’s about Iran as well as the Palestinians
Israel is now conducting a different war in Lebanon than the one it has conducted in Gaza. As Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib (@afalkhatib) has noted, “Gaza is a war of revenge, not precision.” So far, the war in Lebanon has been far more precise and targeted, though of course it has also killed hundreds of innocent civilians.
The “precision” war
This is likely to continue. The Israelis know most Sunnis, Christians, and Druze in Lebanon do not trust Shia Hezbollah. There is no point in hitting them. Support for President Assad’s war against the (mainly Sunni) Syrian opposition and involvement in Lebanon’s corrupt sectarian politics have blotted Hezbollah’s copybook. Leveling communities that don’t like Hezbollah would make no sense.
Hezbollah opposes the existence of Israel, but it has done little for the approximately 200,000 Palestinians who live in Lebanon. The Israelis are letting it be known that they are contemplating a ground invasion, but that is likely to be unrewarding. The Israel Defense Force will prefer to continue to destroy Hezbollah large rocket and missile inventory from the air. Any ground incursion is likely to be limited to the south.
The Arab openness
The Jordanian Foreign Minister yesterday made the Arab and Muslim position clear:
This is not new for the Jordanians, who protect Israel’s security every day, in return for Israeli help with internal security. But “all of us are willing to right now guarantee the security of Israel” is a bold formula, even with the traditional conditions that follow. He was apparently speaking after a meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, whose 57 members include the non-Arab Muslim states.
There is more Muslim and Arab acceptance today of Israel’s existence than at any other time since 1948. But Israel isn’t paying any attention. Why not?
Two reasons
The first reason is the one Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi cites. Netanyahu wants to prevent the formation of a Palestinian state. He has devoted the last 30 years to that cause. He is not going to give it up now.
Just as important: for him, the fight with Hamas and Hezbollah is about Iran, not only Palestine. The IDF is well on its way to destroying Tehran’s best deterrent, which was Lebanese Hezbollah’s stock of rockets and missiles. Tehran’s Syrian deterrent is already in tatters. Hamas isn’t destroyed but will need time to recover. So Netanyahu is clearing the way for an Israeli attack on Iran, focused on its nuclear facilities. I find it hard to understand how Iran would use a nuclear weapon against a place as small as Israel without killing a lot of Muslims. But Israeli prime ministers have been willing to do some frightening things to prevent neighbors from getting nukes.
The consequences
With its deterrent gone and at risk of losing its nuclear assets, Tehran will likely amp up its nuclear program. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps will no doubt see production of nuclear weapons as a necessary deterrent against an Israeli attack. An Iranian sprint for nuclear weapons will ignite Turkiye and Saudi Arabia rivalry. That would make four nuclear or near nuclear powers in the Middle East, with many complicated relations among them. It is hard to see how that will serve Israeli or American interests.
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Not only wider, but higher
Israel yesterday bombed Hezbollah headquarters in Dahiyeh, south of Beirut’s center, and killed its leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Israelis are celebrating:
So are anti-Assad Syrians in Idlib:
Decapitation ups the ante
This Israeli move signals that Prime Minister Netanyahu wants not only to widen the war from Gaza to Lebanon but also wants to up the ante. The assassination of an enemy leader forecloses negotiations and makes it harder to manage the conflict. Israel’s successful cell phone/walkie-talkie attack less than two weeks ago had already infuriated and discombobulated Hezbollah’s militants. The loss of its leader of more than three decades will cause further confusion and distrust in their ranks.
The impact of decapitation on insurgencies is a subject of debate. There is evidence that decapitation can shorten anti-terrorist campaigns, increase the odds of insurgent defeat, and decrease conflict intensity. Others think decapitation has greater chances of success in countering insurgency “when conducted by local forces against a centralized opponent in conjunction with larger counterinsurgency operations.” Those conditions were not fulfilled in yesterday’s raid. Local forces did not conduct it, Hezbollah is a networked opponent, and there was no “larger” counterinsurgency operation.
That said, Hezbollah will need time to regroup. The Israelis likely also killed some of Nasrallah’s lieutenants. A leadership strike of this sort requires inside intelligence. Somehow Israel knew where the Hezbollah leaders were at a specific time. Hezbollah depends a great deal on personal trust among its adherents. The choice of a new leader and the search for a culprit will disrupt that network for some time to come. That may not prevent retaliation in the form of rocket attacks, but those have been militarily ineffective.
Mixed reaction in Lebanon and the Arab world
Lebanese will have a mixed reaction: horror at the civilian lives lost in buildings in the capital, but also some Schadenfreude. Hezbollah has lost its heroic mettle for many Lebanese, both because it went to war against the Syrian opposition and because it is now part of a corrupt, self-perpetuating elite in Lebanon that has delivered little in recent years to its citizens. Even before the Beirut port explosion in 2020, the Lebanese economy’s wheels were coming off. The Lebanese pound has lost well over 90% of its value. Most of the population is impoverished, frustrated, and desperate.
The
The Arab world will likewise have a mixed reaction. Most Arab elites are allergic to Islamist movements like Hamas and Hezbollah. Before today’s event, they were protesting mistreatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank but doing little about it and nothing to defend Hamas and Hezbollah, which are Iranian allies. However, most Arab streets are sympathetic to the Palestinians and want the Gaza war to end (as do most Israelis). That was Hezbollah’s declared aim. It was rocketing Israel since October 8 of last year, it said, to get Israel to end the Gaza war.
It will be interesting to see now whether the Arab street gets agitated enough to change the Arab world’s relative quiescence (relative, that is, to its past military attacks on Israel). The Syrian exception (see video above) is due to Hezbollah’s fighting the opposition on behalf of President Assad.
The West won’t cry crocodile tears but needs to worry
The West won’t mourn Nasrallah, but many in Europe and the US will worry that his death will incentivize a major Hezbollah retaliation. While its rockets have so far caused little strategic damage in Israel, the Israelis would likely respond with further escalation. That will heighten the hostilities. Neither the US nor Europe wants a the wider war heightened.
The West will also need to worry about Hezbollah operations beyond Israel. Hezbollah has terrorist cells in many countries, including the US, which presumably supplied the large bombs that leveled Hezbollah headquarters. US embassies and government offices in Washington could become targets.
Iran is in a bind
Tehran has been trying to avoid war with Israel, which has demonstrated it could bomb Iran’s nuclear sites. Now two of its key allies have suffered a great deal of damage. Israel has not destroyed Hamas, but Iran needs to be concerned how long it will take for Hamas to regain its former military strength. Now Israel has decapitated Lebanese Hezbollah, killed other leaders, and injured thousands of its militants in addition to destroying a significant percentage of the rockets and missiles Iran has supplied.
Asking Tehran to continue to show restraint may be asking too much. Advocates of Iran’s nuclear program in Tehran will be emboldened. They will argue that Israel is looking for war with Iran and that only acquiring nuclear weapons will prevent an Israeli attack. That in turn could create incentives for Turkey and Saudi Arabia to get nukes. Their leaders have both said they will match Iran’s nuclear capabilities. The Middle East with four nuclear weapons states will not be a safe place.
There is another way out. Tehran could tell Hezbollah to withdraw north of the Litani River, as required by the UN Security Council, and end the rocket attacks. This would enable Israelis to return to their homes along the border with Lebanon. It would also give the US leverage in pressing Israel for a ceasefire and prisoner/hostage exchange in Gaza. The war there would be unlikely to end entirely, as Netanyahu needs the war to continue until he can declare unequivocal victory. But relative calm could allow far more humanitarian aid and early reconstruction assistance to flow.
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Israel has chosen the wider war
Israeli warplanes are today striking more than a thousand targets in Lebanon. This ratcheting up of the conflict comes after Lebanese Hizbollah had launched hundreds of rockets in recent days against Israeli targets, including near Haifa and settlements in the West Bank.
There is always something the enemy did yesterday to justify what you are doing today. Israel is driving the escalation to pre-empt what it expects would be a major Hizbollah missile attack in response to the cell phone and pager explosions that last week killed and maimed thousands of its militants. Lebanese view the warnings to civilians as an effort to get them to flee.
The prospects are grim
Hizbollah has ample reason to try to duck the escalation. It is losing a lot of rockets to Israeli attacks. The President of Iran, Hizbollah’s sponsor, has indicated a willingness to de-escalate. Many non-Hizbollah Lebanese–while resenting Hizbollah–are not pleased with suffering the brunt of the Israeli attacks.* The air attacks have killed about 500 today alone. Many thousands of civilians are fleeing. But there is no sign that Hizbollah is willing to comply with Israeli demands that it move away from the border to north of the Litani River or stop the rocket attacks.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have reportedly not yet deployed sufficient ground forces for an invasion. The 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon did not go well. Israel will try to avoid a repeat. Its stated objective is to enable Israelis who have had to evacuate from near the northern border to return to their homes. A ground invasion would not serve that objective well, but it is still a possibility.
The regional situation
Israel is now at war with Hamas in Gaza, with the Houthis in Yemen, with Hizbollah in Lebanon, and with Syria, which actively supports Hizbollah. Military experts would not have advised opening a multi-front war.
But this serves Prime Minister Netanyahu’s political interests. So long as the country is at war, he can avoid an election. He is hoping that military success will erase resentment of his many defects and enable him to stay in power. Israelis have not forgotten the October 7 intelligence failure, his corrupt practices, or his extremist coalition partners. But so far postponement has worked, even if it is hard to see how it can work forever.
That said, the Arab countries of the region and Turkey object strongly to what Israel has done in Gaza. They will also protest what they are doing in Lebanon. The sympathies of the Arab and Turkish streets remain with the Palestinians. But the governing elites are happy to see Hamas and Hizbollah get their comeuppance. Both are Islamist movements, albeit one Sunna and the other Shia, that serve Iranian interests and are not welcome in most states in the region.
Implications for the US
The wider war means no negotiated end to the war in Gaza before the US election. This is fine with Netanyahu, who supports Trump’s re-election despite President Biden’s full-throated support for Israel.
Trump hasn’t been outspoken on the Middle East. That is because he would lose Arab American votes in Michigan and Wisconsin if he said he wants Israel to win and win quickly and big. But that is precisely what his Netanyahu-aligned advisors and supporters want. He would avoid the handwringing about civilian casualties Biden has evinced or the appreciation for Palestinian rights that Vice President Kamala Harris has voiced.
American restraint on Israel isn’t happening before the November 5 election. Netanyahu knows that. Expect him to use the next six weeks to continue to do as much damage as he can to Hamas and Hizbollah, no matter the harm to Arab civilians.
*Apologies: this sentence did not say what I meant in the original posting.
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