Kerry still running
Even for the chair of Senate Foreign Relations, this is an unusually frenetic trip to important places.
The envoy: Kerry in Turkey, Israel, West Bank – Laura Rozen – POLITICO.com.
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Walt v. Bush
A healthy reminder of where we’ve been, but then it is hard to credit Walt’s remark that Obama’s “foreign policy…looks surprising[ly] like George W. Bush’s.”
Delusion Points – By Stephen M. Walt | Foreign Policy.
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Hizbollah to fight zombie?
Marc Lynch thinks the Special (“Zombie”) Tribunal for Lebanon lacks credibility, so why give it $10 million? But the more important question is this: how will Hizbollah react if the indictments finger it? Can Lebanon, an already weak state, survive the blowback?
The Zombie Tribunal for Lebanon | Marc Lynch.
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Tell me the Senator isn’t running for SecState
Laura Rozen reviews Senator Kerry’s visits to Khartoum, Beirut and Damascus. Clearly well-coordinated with State, but also clearly calculated to keep the Senator in the running. No harm in that–Hillary Clinton can’t stay on forever.
Laura Rozen: on foreign policy – POLITICO.com.
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Getting up to date on Iran
The place to start these days on Iran is Robin Wright’s The Iran Primer. The many short pieces therein are an economical way of getting up to date, especially the pieces listed under “policy options.”
The bottom line is no surprise: there aren’t any really good options. Ken Pollack describes “containment” as the default U.S. policy mode, and Dov Zakheim thinks covert action might be better than an overt military attack against the nuclear program. Abbas Milani worries that war would kill the opposition Green Movement, which however is equivocal about the nuclear program.
No options look particularly good. No wonder Obama is sticking with diplomacy, at least for the moment. It’s cheap, and no one is objecting too strongly. Recent American overtures include welcoming Iran to a meeting on Afghanistan last month and declaring the Iranian Baloch group Jundullah a terrorist organization, see Laura Rozen’s U.S. designates Jundullah as terrorist group – Laura Rozen – POLITICO.com.
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Bosnia votes for unity and division
I’ll be speaking twice this week about Bosnia, once this afternoon via Skype to the conference in Dayton commemorating the 15th anniversary of the accords that ended the war but have failed to build the peace. Then at Johns Hopkins with Mike Haltzel, Kemal Kurspahic and Vedran Dzihic (2:30 pm Nov 10 in room 500 at 1717 MA, see http://transatlantic.sais-jhu.edu/bin/s/q/11.10.10Bosnia.pdf).
What is there to say about the October 3 election results? There was a big vote (participation up from 55% in 2006 to 57% this time, 274,000 more people voted), most of which went to leaders and parties who favor a more united Bosnia: Social Democrat Zlatko Lagumdzija and moderate nationalist Bakir Izetbegovic among the Bosniaks (“Muslims” to the American press), with provocative nationalist Haris Silajdzic the big loser.
But in Republika Srpska (RS), the Serb-dominated 49% of the country, Milorad Dodik’s increasingly nationalist party won the presidency (as well as the Serb seat in the state presidency in Sarajevo, by a small margin) and lost only four seats in the RS parliament. Dodik has made no secret of his desire to divide Bosnia by making the RS independent.
This puts Zlatko in the driver’s seat, with Milorad riding the brake. Since Dodik wants to prove that the Sarajevo government is dysfunctional and useless, all he has to do is spoil. Lagumdzija needs to fill his tank to the majority (23) with a motley assemblage of Bosniak, Croat and Serb parties.
And he has to somehow get that assemblage to agree on a serious program of constitutional reform, including elimination of discriminatory provisions denounced by the European Court of Human Rights and adoption of a strong “EU clause” that gives the Sarajevo government all the authority it needs to negotiate NATO and EU membership.
This is going to require strong support from the EU and the US, which need to worry what happens if Dodik succeeds in spoiling formation of the Sarajevo government. Especially troubling is the EU’s penchant for traipsing off to Banja Luka, the RS capital, to see Dodik. If the Commission starts a de facto negotiation of EU accession with Dodik, Bosnia will come apart, and it isn’t likely to be peaceful.
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