This is pandering, not diplomacy
The US and Europe have now teamed up to applaud the mining of lithium–needed mainly for electric vehicle batteries–in Serbia. The enthusiasm is over the top. German Chancellor Scholz was in Belgrade for the July signing of a Serbia/EU “strategic partnership” on sustainable raw materials, battery value chains, and electric vehicles. The US has likewise signed an agreement on US-Serbia strategic cooperation in the field of energy in Serbia.
Brussels and Washington intend these agreements to encourage commercial exploitation of Serbia’s lithium deposits, under a contract with the British-Australian firm, Rio Tinto. Institutional investors (that is mutual funds, banks, pension and hedge funds) control 58% of Rio Tinto. The single biggest shareholder (11% Google AI tells me) is the Aluminum Corporation of China.
Not quite right
That is the first hint that something is not right. Washington and Brussels do not usually support British or Australian firms, or firms whose single largest shareholder is Chinese. But both the EU and US appear to have decided that Serbia’s lithium deposits are a top priority for electric car batteries.
But are they? Here is one picture of known lithium resources around the world:
Serbia’s lithium deposits amount to 1.3% of the global total. The resources are distributed widely around the world, most in the Western Hemisphere. Lithium is a commodity traded in a worldwide market, like oil. Serbia’s production has no great significance in this global picture.
Nor is the future market for lithium a sure thing. Other technologies are in the research and development pipeline. Five or ten years from now lithium is unlikely to be the only economically viable technology.
Why then?
Why then are European and American officials tripping over themselves to encourage the development of the Serbian lithium deposits? Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kasanof has even suggested the lithium project could block the rise of ethnic nationalism in the Balkans. Meanwhile,
Here is a hint of what is really going on: US Ambassador Chris Hill told a debate in Belgrade on political options for the Western Balkans that many of the people protesting against plans to mine lithium in western Serbia support Russia.
Those protests are the most serious opposition movement still extant in Serbia today. Red-baiting (if we can still label Moscow as “red”) the demonstrators aims to undermine their impact. That is not the usual US position on environmental concerns. But the Rio Tinto project is a top priority for President Vucic. We can only imagine why. He has no doubt told the local diplomats that he will greatly appreciate their help in squelching the protests.
Let me be clear: I have no objection in principle to economic cooperation with Serbia, or to environmentally and financially sound production of lithium in Serbia or elsewhere. But I do object to European and American officials trying to squelch environmental and financial concerns to please an increasingly autocratic president.
Appeasement is the policy
The diplomatic pandering is part of a broader effort to appease Serbia, provide it with economic goodies, and convince it to turn westward. Let’s skip whether redbaiting legitimate environmental criticism reflects Western ideals. The bigger issue is whether this approach has any chance of working.
It is notable that in neither the European nor in the American agreements cited above does Serbia undertake to conduct its mining in an environmentally sound or financially transparent way. The State Department made it clear the US wants financial probity. The European agreement does likewise. But Belgrade didn’t commit to it in either agreement.
Serbia has aligned itself militarily and politically with Russia and China since Vucic became President, the recent purchase of French Rafale warplanes notwithstanding. Belgrade has also undertaken repeated efforts to destabilize northern Kosovo and to undermine the independence of Montenegro as well as the territorial integrity of Bosnia. The idea that Belgrade can be convinced to embrace the West is dumb. Vucic will take EU money and American political pressure on his environmental opponents, but neither will make him give up his affection for like-minded autocrats with irredentist ambitions.
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Register now and vote when you choose!
I’ve been doing my thing with the Georgia Justice Project and VoteRidersGA for the past 10 days or so. Writing notes to people encouraging them to register and vote. Georgia, it turns out, has lots of people convicted of felonies who have either completed probation or can get off it. They can vote without paying fines or jumping through other hoops.
Of course I’ll never know what impact this will have, if any. But given the extensive efforts to limit voting, I’m willing to pitch in to encourage it. This is a non-partisan effort, even if I am a registered Democrat (who sometimes has voted Republican).
The question of course is what motivates people to limit voting. If you ask, they will tell you they want to limit voting fraud, not voting. But there is no evidence in any of the 50 states of significant voter fraud. And the “anti-fraud” efforts are concentrated in Black and other minorities areas as well as college campuses. That tells you all you need to know about the real purpose. Their efforts are counterproductive when it comes to fraud. Those challenging voter registrations are tying up election officials in mountains of paperwork, making it difficult to maintain the quality of elections in battleground states.
Nevertheless, there has been some progress in opening up the election process to encourage broader participation, partly due to the COVID-19 epidemic. The National Council of State Legislatures lists a number of states that permit “vote by mail”:
- Eight states—California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont and Washington and the District of Columbia—allow all elections to be conducted entirely by mail.
- Two states—Nebraska and North Dakota—permit counties to opt into conducting elections by mail.
- Nine states—Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Kansas, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico and Wyoming—allow specific small elections to be conducted by mail.
- Four states—Idaho, Minnesota, New Jersey and New Mexico—permit mostly-mail elections for certain small jurisdictions.
Forty-seven states offer some sort of “early” voting before Election Day.
Polls can make inaccurate projections for many reasons. But one of the more difficult factors to take into account is turnout. At this point in the campaign, that is the main objective of both the Democrats and the Republicans. Convincing the few remaining undecided voters is far more difficult and labor intensive than getting your own cadres to the polls. So register, or check your registration, and vote when you can!
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US policy reset in the Western Balkans
Serbia’s Deputy Prime Minister pledging allegiance to Putin
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/75021
Friday, Serbia President Vucic announced measures intended to reverse Kosovo independence. He is no longer content to refuse to recognize Kosovo but wants instead to take at least part of it. Meanwhile, the American Embassy in Belgrade continues to profess confidence that he is moving Serbia toward the West.
Jasmin Mujanovic tweeted week before last:
US policy in the Western Balkans is clear as mud. The US supports Vucic despite his pro-Russian associations, whereas it opposes Kurti despite his pro-Western positions. In Bosnia, the US opposes Vucic’s proxies, whose counterparts in Montenegro it helped depose a pro-NATO govt.
All this is true. The State Department has lost the bubble. It is time to find it again.
Long-term objectives
US objectives in the Balkans should be clear, not confused. They should apply separately to all the states of the region, while recognizing that interactions among them may affect progress. Let me offer these longer-term goals for those countries that want a good relationship with the US:
- Democratic governance based on equal rights, with reasonable guarantees for minorities;
- Secure sovereignty and territorial integrity without use or threat of force.
These goals are consistent with NATO and EU membership for any state that wants to join those institutions.
Where we stand now: Bosnia and Serbia
Things are headed in the wrong direction.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serb and Croat nationalists are reversing the progress made in the first decade after the 1995 Dayton accords. “Dayton” ended the war but left the warring parties in power. For a decade thereafter, bold international intervention forced ethnic nationalists to accept reforms that pointed towards sovereignty and territorial integrity as well as equal rights.
Since 2006 however ethnic nationalists have been unraveling the prior progress. The Americans this year pushed the leading Bosniak party out of power, claiming it inimical to statebuilding. Ironically, that party supported democratic governance and territorial integrity. The main Croat and Serb opponents of Bosnia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity are still waging their fight from position of power.
In Serbia, President Vucic has taken over a weak democratic regime and turned it into a de facto semi-autocracy. He holds a majority in parliament but more importantly has concentrated power in the presidency. From there, Vucic wields the police and other security forces against a weak and fragmented opposition. He has also aligned Serbia with Russia on Ukraine sanctions and bent over backwards to attract Chinese investment in sensitive areas like telecommunications and security technology. He buys off Western criticism by supplying ammunition to Ukraine, purchasing French warplanes, and selling lithium to Germany.
Where we stand now: Kosovo, Montenegro, and Macedonia
Kosovo, where alternation in power has occurred several times, has a popular prime minister who exerts sovereign authority in Serb-majority northern Kosovo in ways that give the Americans and European qualms. They want him to consult and get permission for anything he does that might upset either the Kosovo Serbs or Belgrade. He hasn’t been willing to do that. But Prime Minister Kurti nevertheless aligns unequivocally with the West. He has no alternative.
Friends of Putin now run Montenegro, which became a NATO member in 2017. NATO-member Macedonia, to its credit, peacefully alternated political parties in power earlier this year. Some in the current majority lean towards Russia, but the Albanian partners in the coalition are more reliably Western-oriented. That however is no guarantee, so Macedonia requires careful watching.
The threat
None of these places is top priority in a world where Russia has invaded Ukraine, China is threatening Taiwan, and Iran and its proxies are at war with Israel. But if something goes wrong in the Balkans, it will spread rapidly to other places.
The biggest threat is Belgrade’s increasing devotion to what it terms “the Serbian world.” This is Greater Serbia, de facto if not de jure. Vucic wants to control the Serbs of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Montenegro. His security services pursue this goal actively and aggressively, with support from Moscow. He has been successful de facto in Montenegro. In Kosovo, many Serbs are not devoted to Vucic, who has demonstrated little concern for their welfare. But he maintains control through finance and intimidation. In Bosnia, Vucic has gradually gained more leverage on the main Serb leader, Milorad Dodik, who is sanctioned by Washington and has driven his 49% of the country into arrears with Moscow while espousing secessionist intentions.
Partition of Bosnia and Kosovo would serve Vucic’s irredentist goals. That would greatly cheer Moscow and revivify its ambitions in Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia, if not also Kazakhstan. The sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Western Balkan states stands as a counter to what Putin is seeking elsewhere. That has encouraged him to use Serbia as a proxy. Last year, Belgrade kidnapped two Kosovo policemen, rented a riot against NATO peacekeepers, and sponsored a terrorist incident in northern Kosovo. Serbia intended for that incident to give Belgrade an excuse to move its military into the north. That would have cheered Moscow and encouraged its efforts to take all of Donetsk.
The current approach isn’t working
The Biden Administration has tried to appease Serbia to prevent Belgrade from acting on its irredentist goals and to win it over to the West. It has lavished praise and money on Vucic while withholding both from Kurti and denouncing and sanctioning Dodik. This is incoherent. Vucic and Dodik are aligned with Moscow and share the goal of Greater Serbia. Kurti’s commitment to Kosovo’s sovereignty and territorial integrity is a main barrier against their ambitions.
Jim O’Brien, the State Department’s Assistant Secretary for Europe, has recognized that northern Kosovo and Dodik’s secessionist threats are the main security threats in the Balkans. But he looks to the peacekeeping forces in both places to meet them.
That has proven a temporary expedient, but the European force (EUFOR) in Bosnia is weak and deployed in ways that would prevent it from reacting in a timely way to a determined secessionist move. The NATO-led force in Kosovo is stronger and better positioned, but would it be able or willing to prevent Serbian armor from rolling in to take northern Kosovo? It is 25 years since the NATO war that liberated Kosovo from Serbian rule. It is high time Kosovo–like any other sovereign state–be able to defend its own territorial integrity.
The reset needed
Appeasement of Serbia isn’t working. Chastising Kosovo isn’t working either. Montenegro is lost for now. Bosnia and Macedonia are at risk.
Washington needs to reset its Balkans policy in more coherent directions:
- It should support Pristina’s efforts to govern in equitably in northern Kosovo and help plan the next moves in that direction.
- It should end appeasement of Serbia, publicly criticize Vucic’s irredentist and anti-democratic intentions, and end the lavishing of praise and money on Belgrade.
- The US should encourage the redeployment of EUFOR to the northeastern Bosnian town of Brcko, where it would represent a serious deterrent to secessionism.
- Washington should insist that Bosnia implement the European Court of Human Rights decisions that would end the country’s ethnic-based politics.
- Washington should lead an effort to isolate Montenegro’s russophiles from sensitive NATO information.
- It should also warn Macedonia that it will be next if the russophiles there remain in power.
Kamala Harris is as clear as she can be about Putin’s perfidy in Ukraine:
Countering Putin in the Balkans by diplomatic means would not be nearly as costly or hard. Doing so would weaken Moscow and strengthen NATO at relatively low cost. The time has come to do it.
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Harris should stop the ethnic cleansing
It is easy to quarrel with B’tselem’s picture of what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank. Many will want to cite Hamas’ behavior as the cause. Some will want Israel to continue the fight until Hamas is routed. Others will doubt that the policy is coherent and concerted, as Ms Novak claims.
Results
But it is hard to quarrel with the results she anticipates. Re-occupation of Gaza may not be the intention. But it is hard to see how Israel can accomplish its announced goals, demilitarization and deradicalization, without imposing a draconian military regime there.
Absorption of the West Bank into Greater Israel is the explicit goal of the settlers and their supporters. Netanyahu’s maps already show the West Bank as part of Israel. He is doing “from the river to the sea” while Palestinians and their supporters are only chanting about it.
The future of Israel and Palestine
These results condemn Israel to a one-state future of unequal rights. Call it apartheid if you like, though that South African regime had its own unique characteristics. It will certainly be a regime of Jewish supremacy.
A situation that was in the past regarded as temporary will be recognized as permanent. Gaza will become what some claimed it was in the past: a giant prison. Jewish settlements will riddle the West Bank. Israel will prevent the two Palestinian territories from uniting in a single state.
Inside Israel proper (that is the 1967 lines), Palestinians will continue to be better off than their compatriots in Gaza and the West Bank. But their communities will get less money than Jewish communities from the Israeli government, the police and army will treat them as second class citizens, and they will continue to suffer inhumane treatment, including dispossession and displacement. These are not incidents occurring in a fair and just system. They are consequences of a system that priorities Jews and Jewish property, a system in other words of Jewish supremacy.
Is Jewish supremacy necessary?
Jewish supremacy is not necessary to preserve the Jewish-dominated state within its 1967 borders. It is however necessary if you want the Jewish state to occupy all of the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean (Greater Israel), since the numbers of Jews and Arabs in that territory are more or less equal. And the Arabs have higher birth rates. That is one of many reasons why a two-state solution is desirable. It would preserve the Jewish state while creating a Palestinian one.
Many Israelis and Palestinians no longer support a two-state solution. But their one-state objectives are different. Israelis want Palestinians to either go away or accept second-class citizenship, or no citizenship at all. The Palestinians want a one person/one vote system of equal rights. With higher demographic growth among Arabs than Jews, this would ensure Arab dominance. I wouldn’t expect Israelis to like that.
So Jewish supremacy is necessary in a Greater Israel, not in the 1967 one. Netanyahu’s continued pursuit of the Gaza war as well as his government’s mistreatment of Palestinians on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem aim, among other things, at reducing the Palestinian population. In other words, ethnic cleansing.
The United States should not be tolerating it. I hope President Harris won’t.
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Trump is out of gas but keeps farting
Donald Trump’s performance last Tuesday night in the debate with Kamala Harris was pitiful. He has been griping ever since about the moderators, but most of the country knows the truth. Trump was unable to hold his own while Harris established her credentials as a worthy contestant for the presidency. Whether you agree with her policy proposals or not, she looked, acted, and spoke like a president. He did not.
It isn’t over yet
But there are still more than seven weeks to the election. Battered, Trump will now fight back harder and dirtier than ever. The Republican Party will do everything it can in the battleground states to limit voting by minorities, citizens born in other countries, and younger people. It will try to hinder vote counting in big cities and cast doubt on the outcome in any state that produces only a narrow margin for Harris.
The Democrats are prepared for this onslaught and will counter the Republicans in court, both before and after the election. Both parties seem to be hard at work registering new voters. But just the confusion of claims and counterclaims will create problems, including a media frenzy.
Some of this could work against Trump. Even the Republican governor has said the claims about illegal immigrants eating pet cats and dogs in an Ohio town are untrue:
But Trump and Vance are not saying things like this because they think them true. Vance has admitted he is prepared to “create” stories he thinks represent the interests of his constituents:
What Vance and Trump are trying to do is attract attention and subtract from Harris’ momentum, using racist tropes. That is having some success. Half of America is now thinking about immigration rather than Trump’s felony convictions or Harris’ economic proposals.
Harris is proving wise
Harris did challenge the pets story, but she does not challenge all of Trump’s falsehoods or defend the Biden Administration at every opportunity. According to CNN, he told 33 lies (“false claims”) during the less than 45 minutes he spoke during the debate. It would have been impossible to take them all on. If she had, it would have looked as if he set the agenda, not her.
I regretted that she did not counter his assertion that immigrants are committing a lot of crimes, though she no doubt knows they commit fewer per capita than people born in the US. I also regret that she failed to respond to the first question in the debate: are Americans better off than four years ago? She should have. Unemployment, growth, energy exports and many other parameters are dramatically improved since January 2021.
Harris’ virtues
But Harris is persistent and tireless in claiming to serve the American people. That is what some of us want to hear. We don’t hear it from Trump. He disowns responsibility for any failures, even claiming he did nothing to encourage the January 6 attack on The Capitol that he spent weeks inciting. Trump claims to be the best president ever and that Biden is the worst. He claims he can fix everything and Biden could fix nothing. Anyone even vaguely familiar with the Biden legislative accomplishments compared to Trump’s knows that isn’t true. Harris certainly does.
I attended a Harris fundraiser Saturday here in DC. She seemed to me, at a distance of 150 feet or so, to be genuine and sincere.
She is animated, vigorous, and coherent. I can’t say that about her opponent. Trump played golf a lot while president. He is still doing it during the campaign. He offers little more than tariffs on everything, replacing the Federal civil service with his cronies, and concessions to Putin and other dictators. Trump is out of gas but still farting.
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Hopeful v hopeless: guess who won
Last night’s presidential debate between former President Trump and Vice President Harris conformed to expectations. An ill-tempered Trump lied, rambled, and indulged in conspiracy theories. A smiling and bemused Harris projected herself as an agent of change and optimism. She was amiable and hopeful. He was threatening and hopeless. That’s what really counts.
Policy doesn’t count, but it is still worth considering
The economy: advantage Harris
On the economy, Trump promises little more than steep tariffs on everything, which a president can impose without Congressional approval, and extension of the tax cuts passed in 2017 for the (very) rich. Neither proposition should be attractive to 90% of Americans. He continues to insist that other countries will pay the tariffs, but they will also raise prices whenever they can to recoup whatever they pay. In addition, they will retaliate against US exports. So MAGA means higher prices and loss of market share abroad. Little to celebrate there.
Harris is flogging tax breaks for small business, families, and home construction. Not all of what she proposes makes good sense, and she has not said how she will pay for them. But her proposals respond to what most Americans are concerned about. All of what she wants would have to pass in Congress, which means there is at least a chance to get it right. Even if the Democrats were to gain control of both Houses, it would be difficult to hold together their majorities for proposals that don’t make sense.
Immigration: advantage Harris
This is Trump’s strong suit, but he played his hand poorly. He repeatedly claimed that immigrants are increasing the crime rate in the US. He even claimed that crime is down in Venezuela and other countries because all the criminals are being sent to the US. Harris didn’t respond forcefully on these points. I suppose she was wary of championing immigration. But crime is down in the US and it is not down in Venezuela and other migrant-exporting countries.
Harris hit a solid note with her response. She rightfully claimed Trump had blocked a bipartisan immigration bill that would have sharply increased the number of agents on the border. She did not say what a lot of us know: America needs immigrants. The labor market is tight and immigrants are prolific entrepreneurs who found a large number of new, small companies.
Foreign policy: advantage Harris
Trump was at pains to claim that he got NATO countries to ante up and that the world loves him. But America’s allies have been increasing military expenditures at least as fast under Biden. Trump repeated his claim that he would end the Ukraine war by negotiation before he even took office. The only way he could do that is by signaling lack of support for Ukraine. Trump was only able to cite Hungary’s would-be dictator, Viktor Orban, as a leader who appreciates him. Of course Putin, Xi, and Kim are also in that camp, but they are even less to Trump’s credit.
Harris cited Trump’s love affairs with those miscreants, as well as with the Taliban, as evidence of his failure to align the US with its democratic friends and allies. Even more important is that he failed to get anything worthwhile from his dreadful friends. Harris was effective in parrying Trump’s criticism of the Afghanistan withdrawal, which he had negotiated before Biden won the 2020 election.
Next
I expect the polls to show a visible jump for Harris in the next couple of weeks. She demonstrated at the debate a demeanor, temperament, and acuity that contrasted sharply with Trump’s. He looked and played the part of a tired incumbent. His ideas, insofar as he had any, were stale. Taylor Swift got it right. Kamala Harris will be the next President. That will give the Republicans time to end their romance with a crooked flim-flam man.
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