Tag: Balkans
Here’s what to do about US Balkans policy
Chris Hill, America’s Ambassador to Serbia, gave an interview last week to VOA:
What’s wrong with this picture
Here we have an American ambassador to one country casting aspersions on the Prime Minister of a neighboring country. That alone makes me recoil. It is not only unprofessional. It also makes the job of his colleague in Pristina harder. The last time American officials trashed Prime Minister Kurti and even organized his fall from power, he returned after elections with a renewed mandate and an enlarged majority. He has hinted recently he might call a snap election, presumably hoping thereby to show the Americans that he has the unequivocal support of most of Kosovo.
Hill also praises the President of Serbia, the country to which he is accredited, even though Vucic has mobilized troops and sent them to the Kosovo border. There they confronted NATO-led forces, including Americans, who are responsible for Kosovo’s external defense. This is a clear violation of the February normalization agreement between Belgrade and Pristina that the Americans say is legally binding. It prohibits the threat or use of force (Article 3).
Instead of denouncing this violation, Hill mentions that Kosovo Serbs have been playing friendly games with the NATO forces. That’s not surprising. Kosovo Serbs know that NATO today protects them as well as the Albanians south of the Ibar River. It was primarily Serb gangs President Vucic sent from Belgrade who did the dirty work of attacking NATO soldiers. About that, Ambassador Hill says nothing.
Let’s see if Vucic buys
He presses however for the Association of Serb-majority Municipalities inside Kosovo. This proposition was agreed in 2013. The quid pro quo was extension of the rule of law under its constitution to the entire territory of Kosovo. Belgrade, however, has not allowed that extension. It has resisted Pristina’s efforts to get Serbs in northern Kosovo use Kosovo license plates, withdrawn officials from Kosovo institutions in the north, supported and enforced the Serb boycott of elections in northern Kosovo, and maintained clandestine Serbian security forces there, who cooperate with the rioters sent from Belgrade. Not everyone sympathetic to Serb complaints is as blind as the Ambassador to what is going on in the north.
Under current conditions, there is little doubt that creation of the ASMM would formalize Belgrade’s control over northern Kosovo. Nevertheless, I think Pristina should put forward its own proposition for the ASMM. Prime Minister Kurti has mentioned the Serb National Council in Croatia as a possible model. He should spell out that or his own proposition in a written proposal fully consistent with the Kosovo constitution, as the Americans have guaranteed any ASMM has to be. Let’s see if the good Vucic buys. Even if he does, the American guarantee should be in writing with a commitment to monitor implementation on a regular basis.
What now?
Public complaints about current American policy in the Balkans are rife. No one in the State Department is listening. There are, however, lots of government officials at State who are uncomfortable with the blindness towards Serbia’s misdeeds and America’s Kosovo-bashing. It is time for them to get together to submit a dissent channel message that tells Secretary Blinken what he needs to know. His Balkan leadership is making serious mistakes. He should order a speedy reevaluation and course correction.
PS: Even for the State Department, Hill’s comments about Kurti were too much. So Gabe Escobar had to correct them, I think yesterday:
PPS: Vucic shows (recently) how he merits American approval:
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Fewer sticks, more carrots
Distinguished members of the Albanian American community have sent a stern letter to Secretary of State Blinken. It criticizes the Biden Administration’s one-sided approach to current disputes between Kosovo and Serbia. The US (and EU) have generally sided with Belgrade. They have also threatened Pristina with sanctions if it doesn’t quickly comply with Washington and Brussels demands.
A justified protest…
The protest letter is in my view fully justified. Serbia is aiming to demonstrate and maintain control over the Serb-majority communities in northern Kosovo. This was its goal in over-reacting to Kosovo’s effort to insist on Kosovo license plates in the north. It was the goal in instructing northern Kosovo officials to resign their positions. And it was the goal in getting the Serb population to boycott the elections called to replace them. It is also Belgrade’s goal in pursuing, with strong EU and US support, an Association of Serb Majority Municipalities (ASMM) with executive powers.
Washington and Brussels have backed Serbia hoping to get Belgrade to reorient itself towards the West and away from Moscow. Belgrade’s allowing shipment of arms to Ukraine has reinforced this hope. But there is no sign that President Vucic is prepared to weaken his ties to Moscow and Beijing. To the contrary, he has continued to refuse to align with EU sanctions on Russia (and with many other aspects of EU foreign policy). He maintains an open door for military cooperation with Russia as well as Chinese security technology and investment.
…but more is needed
Kosovo is a sincere friend of the US and EU, not only because of the 1999 NATO intervention that saved its population from ethnic cleansing and war crimes but also because it is a serious democracy. Pristina has no option to turn to Russia or China. Prime Minister Kurti has refused EU and US demands he believes would limit the country’s sovereignty and threaten its territorial integrity. But he needs Western support for Kosovo to survive and thrive.
He also needs greater acceptance by the Serbs in northern Kosovo. He has been relatively successful, building on accomplishments of his predecessors, in getting acceptance by the Serbs who live south of the Ibar river. But in the north, which is contiguous with Serbia, Belgrade’s security services and their allied organized crime networks still prevail. Kurti has been trying to break their control by enforcing Kosovo law in the north, but so far his efforts do not appear to have succeeded.
Fewer sticks, more carrots
The US and EU are threatening sanctions against Kosovo. Kurti is using the police to try to seat mayors elected despite a Serb boycott. These sticks are working. They appear to have stiffened resistance.
Kurti, the US, and the EU should all try a few more carrots.
The Prime Minister needs to show the Serbs in northern Kosovo what they can gain either by allowing the mayors to take their rightful places or by holding new elections. He should propose a statute for the ASM, without executive powers. The US and EU need to show Kurti what he can gain by beginning negotiations on the ASMM. I imagine, for example, that a sincere apology for the Milosevic regime’s homicidal repression in the 1990s and an offer to negotiate compensation, especially for the women raped by Serbian security forces, would go a long way.
Less appeasement
Brussels and Washington have used only carrots with Belgrade. They incongruously praise him as someone who has turned Serbia westward. They avoid any criticism of high-level corruption and autocratic behavior in Serbia. The US only whispers opposition to his mobilization and deployment of the Serbian army on the border with Kosovo, resorts to inappropriately citing “both sides” in criticizing Serb rioters against KFOR troops, and provides ample political and economic support. Vucic pockets the carrots and continues his courtships with Moscow and Beijing. It is high time for appeasement to end.
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End threats to use military force!
Genc Pollo, former minister and member of parliament in Albania, writes from Tirana:
For the third time in the last two years Serbia last week put her armed forces on alert and has deployed them to the border with Kosovo. Apart from infantry and armor, fighter jets have been flying along Kosovo’s airspace.
Belgrade the arsonist
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has verbosely explained on each occasion that his military was ready to intervene in neighboring Kosovo to prevent the suffering of the Serbian community there. In the first two instances, the Kosovo authorities were attempting to get Kosovo Serbs in the north to use Kosovo plates rather than Serbian ones.
In the third and current instance, the Kosovo police were escorting four newly elected mayors into their offices. The Serb majority in the northern municipalities had boycotted the mayoral elections so the elected mayors had a different ethnic background. Furthermore the election was caused by the resignations of the incumbent mayors last December. Both the resignations and the election boycott happened at the behest of Belgrade.
The real problem is the threat to use military force
Such local crises are not a threat to Serbia. Nor are they a violation of Serb rights that should elicit a such a military response by Kosovo’s northern neighbor. The real problem is that the Serbian President threatens his smaller neighbor with the use of military force.
The 1945 UN Charter signatories vowed to “suppress aggression” and to “refrain…from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”. Stronger and more detailed language permeates the OSCE agreements of which Serbia is also a party.
The EU and US make it worse
Perhaps the most alarming development isn’t Vucic’s bravado but the Western response to it. The EU and the US, who are facilitating a “normalization process” between the two Balkan states, have not condemned in clear terms this breach of international law. Instead they have spoken softly of concern while simultaneously chastising Kosovo for the deployment of her police force on her own territory. According to press reports, US and European officials have quietly asked Vucic to withdraw his units.
Some are tempted to say that Serbia is merely gesticulating for domestic consumption. Belgrade knows it cannot match KFOR, the NATO-led troops stationed in Kosovo. That might be true. But this didn’t hinder Belgrade from instigating riot in northern Kosovo to violently attack deployed KFOR units, including with firearms. Dozens of hospitalized soldiers, some in critical condition, were the consequence. NATO had to send in reinforcements.
End appeasement
History teaches us that many past wars were deemed impossible until they broke out, in some cases unintentionally.
It would be in the West’s best interest to end appeasement of the would-be aggressor and to ensure that the threat of using military force is unacceptable, especially by states claiming to want to join the European Union.
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Something is stirring in Belgrade
Saturday’s fifth mass protest against Serbia’s President Vucic was the largest so far. People are “fed up.” Triggered by two mass shootings, the protests have widened their aim and now focus on getting rid of Vucic, freeing the media from government control, and ending a culture of violence.
They’ve got my sympathies, but…
I can’t help but be sympathetic with the peaceful protesters. Serbia re-elected Vucic with 60% of the vote just 14 months ago in a free but far from fair election. But it has been clear for some time that a large slice of Serbian society is displeased with his increasingly authoritarian rule, use of violence, and insensitivity to environmental concerns. While his political opposition is fragmented and ineffective, the protests are proving united and sustained so far.
The question is whether they are powerful enough to lead to his ouster. I doubt it. While it is common to cite the October 2000 ouster of Slobodan Milosevic, it is too often forgotten that those massive demonstrations were in support of election results. Milosevic had lost an election he had called early, thinking himself invulnerable. Vucic has talked about a Sepember election, but he hasn’t called it yet. Before doing so, he will want to be certain he will win it. He is good at using state resources and jobs to ensure political support.
…Vucic still has cards to play
Vucic also knows well how to play the other usual cards of Serbian politics. He staged his own rent-a-crowd demonstration last weekend featuring ethnonationalist tirades. He at the same time provoked clashes in Kosovo intended to distract attention. These gave him an excuse to mobilize the Serbian Army and deploy units to the border/boundary with Kosovo, claiming he needed to protect Kosovo Serbs. Never mind that they were in danger because they attacked Kosovo police protecting non-Serb mayors elected in polls that the Serbs, under Vucic’s instructions, boycotted.
Vucic no doubt has other cards to play. He can arrest and harass protest organizers. He can stage clashes inside Serbia requiring the police to intervene. The Serbian media, which mostly ignores the protests, can sing his praises louder and longer. They can also amplify alleged threats to Serbs in Kosovo. Vucic can rely on his now well-established allies in Washington and Brussels to worry about what would happen if he were to fall, leaving the way open for an even more ethnonationalist right-winger to take power. Beijing’s surveillance technology and Moscow’s assistance to the Serbian security services will do what they can to protect him. Many Serbs already blame the American embassy for propping up Vucic.
Something is stirring that the Americans could help
All that said, something is stirring in Serbia that may prove in the long run stronger than Vucic and the hand he still has to play. To be successful, it will need somehow to undermine pillars that keep the Vucic elected autocracy in place: his own political party, the army and security services, the Church, and support from Washington, Brussels, Moscow and Beijing. There would need to be a split in the ruling elite that is not visible today. Still more courageous citizens and politicians would need to challenge the powers that be, likely with a popular political program as well as protests.
Of course the Americans could help if they would hold Vucic accountable, the way they have Kosovo Prime Minister Kurti for not yielding to State Department diktats. But Washington still wants to delude itself that Vucic will bring Serbia westward. American diplomats appreciate his willingness to allow Serbian arms to reach Ukraine. Appeasement is their preferred approach. The chimera of Vucic choosing the West still has a strong hold on the State Deparment.
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Maybe it would work the other way around
I haven’t been able to make this video of the US Ambassador in Pristina to play, but the audio works.
Vesna Pusic, former Foreign and European Minister of Croatia,* tweeted today:
Let me get this straight: US is sanctioning Kosovo because:
1. The Serbian List political coalition, which by their own admission is completely loyal to Serbian President Vučić and follows all his instructions, has boycotted local elections in the north of Kosovo.
2. Because of that ethnic Albanians were elected mayors of the 4 municipalities with majority Serb populations in the north of Kosovo
3. The mayors tried to take the posts to which they have been elected
4. Kosovo state authorities attempted to secure the process
5. Ethnic Serb demonstrators attacked Kosovo state authorities
6. KFOR, NATO peacekeeping force in Kosovo came in to prevent further escalation of violence
7. KFOR was attacked by Serb demonstrators and cca 30 peacekeepers were injured. All amply video documented
8. The tensions & violence in Kosovo coincided with mass antigovernment demonstrations in Belgrade triggered by 2 mass shootings & killings in Serbia
9. Kosovo is sanctioned by the US & reprimanded by NATO Secretary General
10. Please explain @JoeBiden @ABlinken @jensstoltenberg
The bad bet
The short explanation is that the US and EU have doubled down on a bad bet. By appeasing Belgrade, they hope to get President Vucic to abandon his growing links to Russia and China.
He isn’t going to do that. Vucic may send some ammunition to Ukraine and vote for a UN General Assembly resolution denouncing Russia’s invasion. But he is now an elected autocrat who sees his future in the East, with other autocrats. Money from China and security support from Russia are his current interests. The EU is a much larger funder and investor, but the Union’s failure to effectively condition its assistance on maintaining democracy has allowed Vucic to talk the talk without walking the walk. The Americans have been tweeting his embrace of democracy without ever insisting on it.
And pressure your friends
Instead, the State Department has decided to try to pressure Kosovo Prime Minister Kurti. His small, manifestly democratic, country has been perhaps the most pro-American on earth. It really has little alternative but to “bandwagon” with the US. The Americans know it. Ambassador Hovenier’s admirably calm but tough talk (above) aims to get Kurti to agree that the mayors won’t try to return to their offices and that the Kosovo police will not try to enforce the law in northern Kosovo. The diplomatic sanctions pinch but do not yet bite hard, as the Kosovo Security Forces have other things to do and the Americans haven’t done much lately for Kosovo’s membership in international organizations.
The illogic is blatant. The Americans mouthed support for the election but don’t want to implement the results. They support rule of law but don’t want the Kosovo police to enforce it. They want Kosovo to be sovereign but aren’t willing to see its institutions operate from the mayoral offices there. Secretary of State Blinken criticizes both sides when Belgrade-sponsored thugs attack and injure KFOR soldiers. The US said not a word about the heightened alert and deployment of the Serbian Army to the country’s border/boundary with Kosovo.
This isn’t really about the mayors
What’s worse is that this isn’t really a conflict over the mayors. The first issue is Belgrade’s determination to maintain its control of northern Kosovo. That’s why it required the election boycott and why it sent the thugs who attacked KFOR. Vucic fears that loss of control over the north will make real problems for him in Belgrade, both with the right-wing ethnonationalists who constitute his main opposition and with the security services that enjoy their no doubt lucrative role in keeping northern Kosovo a law-free zone.
A second issue is the domestic political situation. Vucic is facing massive street demonstrations against his increasingly authoritarian rule. Shifting the focus to Kosovo and appearing to defend Kosovo Serbs is a tried and true technique for distracting attention from domestic discontent. So too is calling an early parliamentary election, quickly enough that the liberal opposition will not have a chance to organize. Vucic knows that well, as he served Slobodan Milosevic in his heyday. He won’t be calling an early presidential election–that’s what brought Milosevic down.
Reevaluation is needed
In their effort to win Serbia for the West, the Americans have wrapped themselves in contradictions. It won’t be easy to break out. But it is high time that they re-evaluated, just as they are asking Kurti to do. Neither is getting what they want. Even if they bend Kurti with sticks, they won’t have bent Vucic with carrots. Maybe it would work better the other way around?
*My original identification was wrong, because I was thinking “Vesna Pesic.” That was my error. I know them both and should not have made it, even in haste! Apologies to them and to readers,
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Pristina, we’ve got a problem
These were the talking points I used this morning in a remote appearance at the Kosovo Leadership Conference in Pristina:
- Let me begin by telling you how much I regret I am not with you there in Pristina. I haven’t had the pleasure of a stroll in Mother Teresa Street in more than three years. My recent illness made the trip inadvisable even now, but I am glad to report that I am well on my way to full recovery.
- The bad news is that the Balkan region is not recovering. There is plenty of blame to go around but let me start with people outside the Balkans.
- There is no more important factor in determining what happens in the next few years in Pristina, Sarajevo, and Podgorica than the outcome of the war in Ukraine.
- It isn’t fair, but your fate depends on whether Ukraine is able to restore its sovereignty and territorial integrity, including Donbas and Crimea.
- If Russia is successful in getting a settlement that recognizes the annexation of any part of Ukraine, you can expect Serbia to redouble its efforts to create the “Serbian world.”
- This is well understood in Belgrade and Banja Luka.
- Aleksandar Vulin and Milorad Dodik were in Moscow just last week no doubt cheering on the Russian army and getting their own marching orders for continuing to disrupt the Balkans and block any more Western success in the region.
- President Vucic’s rent-a-crowd rally in Belgrade Friday manifested that Serbia is seriously pursuing “all Serbs in one country,” in cooperation with Dodik and allies in Montenegro.
- Belgrade’s reaction to the installation of elected Albanian mayors in northern Kosovo also demonstrated its hegemonic territorial ambitions.
- The “Serbian World” and the “Russian World” are the same idea meant to signal that no Serb or Russian should be subject to a liberal democratic order in which non-Serbs are able to gain a majority. Ethnic autocracy in a defined, unified territory is Russia and Serbia’s common goal.
- That is incompatible with existing state structures in the Balkans and Ukraine, which include ample protection for numerical minorities.
- That said, I am supposed to tell you what the US and EU can do about counteracting the Russian and Serbian efforts to deprive their neighbors of sovereignty and territorial integrity.
- The first thing they can do is declaratory. That much they have done: Washington and Brussels have been clear enough about their rhetorical support for not moving borders in the Balkans.
- The EU commitment, however, is tainted. The five EU member states that do not recognize Kosovo weaken the Union’s effectiveness in the Balkans.
- Nothing would strengthen EU Special Envoy Lajcak’s hand more than a few more recognitions.
- The EU could also make itself more effective by levying sanctions on Dodik and his coterie in Republika Srpska. And both the US and EU should prepare sanctions on political forces in Montenegro if they continue to head in the Russian direction.
- I don’t like to say it, but the American commitment to sovereignty and territorial integrity in the Balkans is also clouded.
- On Friday Washington supported the Serbian challenge to the elected mayors, condemned Prime Minister Kurti’s decision to have them take their rightful places, and failed to denounce the Serb violence and deployment of the Serbian armed forces to the border.
- Pristina, we’ve got a problem.
- I understand Prime Minister Kurti’s desire to proceed with implementation of the election results and to ignore ethnic differences. He wants to exercise Kosovo’s sovereignty in its whole territory and believes in equal rights for all citizens.
- I am sympathetic with those goals. But has he got a plan for how to proceed now that Belgrade has mobilized its rioters to resist?
- The ethnicity of the mayors is not the problem. The problem is capability, in two senses: installing the mayors needed both international and local acceptance.
- As public figures in Pristina as well as the Council of Albanian Ambassadors have said, Kosovo needs its US and EU friends. It doesn’t have them on its side on this issue.
- The Kosovo police seem to have done reasonably well on Friday, but things got out of hand yesterday as Serbs attacked KFOR. My sympathies are with the Italians, Hungarians, Moldovans, and any others who were injured.
- I won’t however presume to tell Albin that he made a mistake. That will depend on how things evolve.
- But I would like to know what his plan is now? How will the mayors be kept safe? How will they be able to conduct their business in these circumstances?
- And I ask that we identify clearly what the problem is. The problem is Serb resistance. There are no substitutes for a modicum of local acceptance if you want the mayors to be effective.
- Belgrade’s objectives are clear: it wants to partition Kosovo and Bosnia, de facto if not de jure, as well as swallow Montenegro whole. Russia backs those objectives, which would weaken NATO and the EU.
- Pristina’s objectives should be just as clear: to assert its sovereignty and territorial integrity and bring the whole country into NATO and the EU as soon as possible.
- Those are also Ukraine’s objectives, which I believe they will achieve, sooner and easier than many expect, with US and EU assistance as well as broad local support, including among Russian speakers. Military victory is not guaranteed, but it is within sight.
- I am hoping Kosovo will do as well on its nonmilitary battlefield. But I repeat: Pristina, you’ve got a problem. You can’t get there without US and EU support as well as local acceptance.
- Reconstructing both will now need to be major objectives for Kosovo’s leadership.
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