Tag: Balkans
What Montenegro needs
Marija Jovićević of Montenegrin daily Pobjeda asked questions. I answered:
Q: Adoption of new law about property of religious community in Montenegro caused great tensions between Podgorica and Belgrade, protest all around Montenegro and violence in Montenegrin parliament. Lots of fake news and propaganda from Serbia is making situation more complicated because they want to keep ownership of Montenegrin churches and monasteries. Cyber experts think that Moscow also is using this tension to destabilize Balkan again. Your comment?
A: Issues of church property are often difficult. They need to be solved by Montenegrins in their democratic institutions and independent judiciary. Nonviolent protest is everyone’s right. Violence is no one’s right.
Q: Can Montenegro be a member of EU until 2025? Is that even possible?
A: I do think it possible, but really you have to ask the EU Council. Montenegro, if it is fully qualified, will be no burden on the EU, and accession would help to keep the European perspective alive for other countries.
Q: Do You think that EU is aware that Montenegro is target of hybrid war from Moscow?
A: I don’t know how they could miss it.
Let me add: Montenegro needs a pro-EU, pro-NATO, pro-democracy opposition. The constant diversion of opposition sentiment into pro-Russian, pro-Serbian channels is ensuring that alternation in power is difficult if not impossible. It is time for a serious, responsible opposition to emerge. There is no guarantee it will come to power, but democracy requires it.
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Trump’s other diplomatic initiative
Veljko Nestorović of ALO! asked questions. I replied (the Serbian version is here):
Q: Following the agreement on the establishment of an airline between Belgrade and Pristina, and the announcement of the establishment and a railway line, does this indicate that the dialogue will be resumed soon?
A. I don’t see how the dialogue can resume before government formation in Pristina. It may be delayed longer than that, because Serbian elections are coming by May. I doubt it is in Kosovo’s interest to negotiate during an election campaign in Serbia.
Q: Who has first to give up, Pristina or Belgrade, to abolish taxes or stop the campaign to withdraw Kosovo’s recognition?
A: Those moves will have to be simultaneous.
Q: Have you changed your mind when it comes to Richard Grenell or have you maintained that his appointment as Special Envoy is bizarre?
A: I’m glad progress has been made on the air link and railroad, despite the limits on use of the air link by people like me who arrive in Kosovo without coming from Serbia. I still think the appointment strange, but I’m glad to give credit where it is due.
Q: In your opinion, is territorial exchange something that is definitely no longer on the table now?
A: It is a zombie idea that wanders the earth, seeking someone who will revive it. I won’t be surprised if it finds someone, but I don’t think it is a good or feasible idea. The main barrier is a fundamental diplomatic principle: reciprocity. Whatever Serbia gets in the north it will need to give the equivalent in the south, and vice versa for Kosovo. I don’t think either capital is ready for that.
Q: Do you think President Trump is anxious to find a quick solution for the Kosovo because of the November election, or does the US election not affect the Pristina-Belgrade dialogue?
A: There is no doubt the President is looking for any kind of success internationally that distracts attention from his impeachment and the trial in the Senate. There are few countries where domestic politics don’t have an impact on foreign policy.
Q: In your opinion, can Belgrade and Pristina come to an agreement, and in your opinion, what should it entail?
A: Yes, I do think an agreement is possible. It will have to entail Serbia’s acceptance in some form of Kosovo’s sovereignty and territorial integrity as well as exchange of diplomatic representatives at the ambassadorial level. It will also need ample provisions for protection of minorities and Serbian cultural and religious sites in Kosovo, with equivalent protection for minorities (including Albanians) in Serbia.
I should have added that there will need to be sweeteners from the international community: progress on EU membership for Serbia, at the very least the visa waiver and I hope candidacy for Kosovo, as well as a substantial economic aid package for both.
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Stevenson’s army, January 9
Iran and the US seem to be backing down the escalation ladder. Good. But enormous risks and opportunities for miscalculation remain. Prof. Edelman says maybe the US attacks have helped restore deterrence.
No one should be surprised if I find fault with many of Pres. Trump’s policies. But his behavior on Wednesday was deeply offensive. It has long been said that in war, truth is the first casualty. But on Wednesday the president decided to make a formal speech to the American people on a mater of great gravity, truly a matter of war and peace. He surrounded himself with senior national security officials, including many uniformed officers. And he lied and dissembled and misled us,the American people. His remarks were so far from honest and accurate that both the Washington Post and New York Times had “fact checker” articles pointing out the flaws. Over the years I’ve known several White House speech writers from both parties. All told me how hard they worked to guarantee that anything the president said in a formal address was carefully fact-checked and defensible. That’s obviously not the case in the Trump White House. It’s especially bad to use senior military officers as political props — enough to spark a backlash in the Pentagon
Two can play this game: Iran’s parliament has designated the US military as terrorists.
On other matters, WSJ says US is outmaneuvering Russia in the Balkans.
An the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, long a source of studies and recommendations critical of the PRC, has issued its latest annual report.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Geopolitics in the Balkans
These are the notes that used in making remarks via Skype to the Geoffrey Nice Foundation Conference on “Transitional, Post-Transitional and Strategic Narratives about the Yugoslav Wars: from Wars and Search for Justice to Geo-Political Power Games” in Pristina today.
1. It is a pleasure to be with you remotely, even if I do wish my schedule would have permitted me to join you in Pristina.
2. The world has changed dramatically since the breakup of former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.
3. That was, we know now, truly the unipolar moment, when the US had no rivals and together with Europe could do what it wanted in the Balkans and much of the rest of the world.
4. With a lot of help from Croatia, NATO ended the Bosnian war at Dayton in 1995 and forced Serbia’s withdrawal from Kosovo in 1999.
5. Europe and the US together invested massive financial and personnel resources in Kosovo as a UN protectorate mandated to build self-governing democratic institutions.
6. The unipolar moment ended with the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 and the US responses in Afghanistan and Iraq.
7. But the state-building process in Kosovo had significant momentum and continued, first with standards before status and later standards with status, leading eventually to supervised and unsupervised independence.
8. You have not had an easy time of it, but I think your young state has risen to at least some challenges quite well: the economy has grown, after an initial spurt you managed to limit Islamist radicalization, your courts have begun to prosecute high-level corruption cases, your army is incubating with nurture from NATO, and you have managed several power transitions in accordance with election outcomes.
9. Today’s world is however dramatically different from the one that existed in 2001 or at independence in 2008.
10. While still globally dominant, the US faces regional challenges from China, Russia, Iran and even North Korea that take priority in Washington over the Balkans.
11. Bosnia and Kosovo, the object of top-tier attention in the 1990s, now get much lower priority.
12. That is true in Europe as well, where Brexit, Ukraine, and illegal immigration are issues that, each in its own way, cast a shadow over Balkan aspirations to join Europe.
13. At the same time, Moscow and Beijing are paying more attention than ever before to the Balkans.
14. The Russians are interfering blatantly by both violent and nonviolent means in the Balkans: assassination, media manipulation, renting crowds and financing political parties are all being used to slow if not halt Balkan progress towards NATO and the EU.
15. The Chinese are using their financial strength to build and buy. Caveat emptor of course, though my own view is that Beijing’s behavior is a lot more salubrious than Moscow’s and likely to produce some positive results for those Balkan countries and companies that know how to do business.
16. Turkey—also a strong force in the Balkans for historical, geographic, and cultural reasons—has taken a dramatic turn in a more Islamist and autocratic direction. The secular Turkey that contributed forces to NATO interventions in the 1990s is moribund. Erdogan’s Turkey is building mosques, capturing Gulenists, and encouraging political Islam while trying to maintain its previous good relations with non-Muslim countries in the Balkans.
17. How does all this affect Kosovo?
18. The Turkish influence is direct and palpable: though still largely secular in orientation, Kosovo is far Islamic than it once was and has cooperated with the capture and rendering of Gulenists in ways that don’t seem right to me.
19. As for the Chinese, most Kosovars might welcome more interest in investment from Beijing. I wouldn’t fault you for that but only urge caution about the financial and political conditions, which can be onerous.
20. The Russians have no purchase on the Kosovo Albanians, but their weight with the Kosovo and Serbian Serbs is certainly felt here. Moscow is a strong advocate of land swaps and of course blocks Kosovo entry into the UN and opposes its entry into other international organizations.
21. How Moscow will be brought around to accepting Kosovo’s UN membership is still a mystery, even to those of us who think Kosovo independence and sovereignty is permanent.
22. Washington continues to have enormous influence in Kosovo, but it is not the same Washington as even three years ago. Today’s Washington has an ethnic nationalist, not a liberal democratic, administration. Trump and some of his closest advisors are self-avowed “nationalists” who do not believe in equal rights.
23. That in my view is why they were open to the failed land swap idea, which may have died in Kosovo but still survives in Washington.
24. As for Europe, it’s failure of nerve is all too evident to everyone in the Balkans: the French and Dutch vetoes on opening accession negotiations with Albania and North Macedonia—negotiations that might take a decade—was tragic. So too is the failure to provide the visa waiver to Kosovo.
25. The Western, liberal democratic influence in the Balkans has declined. The Eastern, autocratic and ethno-nationalist influence—if I can use that umbrella term to refer to the very different roles of Russia, China, and Turkey—has grown.
26. Bottom line: responsibility for keeping the Western aspiration alive now rests more than in the past with you: the government, citizens, and society of Kosovo. The Europeans have already disappointed you. The Americans may do likewise. The Chinese and Turks will try to lure you in bad directions while the Russians will give aid and comfort to your antagonists.
27. But you showed how unified and good Kosovo can be to the English soccer fans. I hope you will harness that spirit to the cause of maintaining a liberal democracy that treats all its citizens equally!
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Yes, the Balkans can accede
This French non-paper is roiling the Balkans: while promising eventual accession for all the countries of the region, it proposes tightening up on conditionality and allowing for reversibility.
That is good, not bad. Sharply criticized for blocking the opening of negotiations with Albania and Macedonia, Paris is taking a major step in the right direction by reaffirming that the goal is full membership and specifying precisely what President Macron wants to re-initiate the accession process.
The criticism of this move comes from two directions.
Some see the non-paper as an effort to postpone re-initiation of the process with Macedonia and Albania even further. I suppose that is a likely effect, since it will take time for the European Union to sort out what it wants to do with the French proposal, but there is nothing to prevent Skopje and Tirana from using the time to adopt and implement as many parts of the acquis communautaire as they can. The “negotiations” are not really much more than verification of progress in achieving implementation. All candidate countries know what they need to do to qualify for the EU. The faster they get on with it, the quicker they will get there.
Others say there are aspects of the French proposal that fail to take into account what is already being done. I imagine that might be true. I am not in a position to judge the details. It will certainly take some time for the other member states to evaluate and propose revisions to what the French have put forward. But if the result is a clearer and stricter set of conditions for EU membership, I see no reason not to applaud. Backsliding is all too apparent in the Balkans, including in current member Croatia. Scholarship has revealed interesting reasons for this, including the way the EU is currently conducting the accession process. Straightening that out might not accelerate accession, but it would improve performance in the candidate states.
I am a fan of strict conditionality: there is no reason for current EU member states to invite as a new member any state that is unwilling to meet the requirements of membership. But how it is achieved–path dependency in political science terms–is important. Natasha Wunsch and Solveig Richter propose this:
If thorough democratic transformation still remains the EU’s goal in the region, conditionality needs to be complemented with a more comprehensive and deliberate empowerment of national parliaments and civil society actors as a counterweight to dominant executives. Favouring domestic deliberation rather than incentive-driven compliance should go a long way in ensuring the sustainability of rule of law and democratic reforms even once the Western Balkan countries have eventually become EU members.
I’m not sure this empowerment of civil society and national parliaments will be sufficient, but it seems to me a reasonable experiment to embark on. I think it also important to train up an independent civil service that remains in place with changing governments and to protect the independence of the judiciary and the media. The trouble with conditionality as currently pursued, as I read Richter and Wunsch, is that it strengthens executive power. Balancing that with constraining institutions is the right way to go.
In any event, those in the Balkans who want to see real reform should welcome the French proposal and hope the EU will get on expeditiously with whatever changes it wants to make in the accession process. And in the meanwhile, those serious about accession will be working hard implementing the acquis as swiftly as possible, to be ready when the political window to the EU opens once again.
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Two Americas
I won’t claim to have watched all of this, but some of you may want to see what integrity and dignity look like, since it has not been common in American public life lately:
I would say the same about George Kent* and Bill Taylor’s testimony from earlier in the week:
You don’t really need to watch much to understand that these are honest, sincere, knowledgeable, and capable people committed to serving America’s interests abroad. They respond cautiously but clearly to questions and project a coherent and compelling picture of American foreign policy in Ukraine.
The contrast with Donald Trump and his minions, who lie habitually and don’t hesitate to offer illogical and incoherent arguments, couldn’t be more dramatic. No matter how much the Republicans deny it, it is clear Trump sought to serve his own personal political interests by getting Ukraine to open an investigation of Joe Biden and his son, at the cost of weakening Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression. If you can’t see the contrast, it’s time for a talk with your conscience.
The impeachment inquiry is revealing two America’s: one in which unrestrained pursuit of self-interest is paramount and another in which the nation’s interests and values come first. The real charge against Trump is inability even to conceive of the latter as he pursues the former.
But that is not how the indictment will read. More likely it will be something like the following:
- Corrupt abuse of power by trying to bribe Ukraine to open an investigation of a political opponent using military assistance appropriated by Congress.
- Illegally welcoming and accepting assistance from Russia in the 2016 presidential campaign.
- Obstructing justice during the Mueller investigation, intimidating witnesses with threatening tweets, and blocking Congressional oversight by ordering officials not to respond to subpoenas.
These are much more serious charges than against Bill Clinton, who lied to a grand jury about an affair with a White House intern. It is also arguably worse than the charges against Richard Nixon, which concerned a burglary and his attempts to cover up his role in ordering it.
As if to confirm his amorality, Trump yesterday pardoned three American soldiers accused of war crimes, over the objection of the Pentagon. The pardon power is unconstrained, so he will likely use it again in the cases of his seven campaign and administration officials already tried and convicted, including one of his best friends found guilty yesterday on seven criminal charges.
Clinton barely survived the vote in the Senate. Nixon resigned rather than allow that vote to seal his fate. Trump may survive and won’t resign. His only protection from financial and legal ruin is remaining in office. Removing him would require 20 honest Republicans to join with the Senate Democrats in finding him guilty as charged. There is no sign there are that many in the Senate. But if Trump loses a simple majority in the Senate, it would be a clear signal that his prospects in the 2020 election are fading. If ever the Republicans in Congress think they are going down with Trump, they may finally abandon him.
The rest of the world will need patience. The America of Yovanovitch, Packer, and Taylor is down but not out. Everywhere I go these days–mainly to talk with people from the Balkans, the European Union, and the Middle East–colleagues are longing for an America committed to democracy, human rights, integrity, and accountability. They can hardly believe it no longer exists in the White House. It does however exist and will return to power, I hope sooner rather than later.
*Apologies: I originally had “Packer” here. I’m reading that George’s bio of Holbrooke, so I plead crossed synapses.
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