Tag: Balkans
This is not the October surprise
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump apologized yesterday for NATO’s 1999 bombing of Serbia:
The bombing of Serbs, who were our allies in both world wars, was a big mistake…Serbians are very good people. Unfortunately, the Clinton administration caused them a lot of harm, but also throughout the Balkans, which they made a mess out of.
For someone who has found it difficult to apologize for anything, even his avowed practice of sexually assaulting women, this is pretty rich. Why would he do it?
First and foremost is that the bombing was carried out pursuant to orders from Bill Clinton. Trump is trying hard to run against the former president, one more clear sign of his disdain for women. There are days Trump concentrates his fire far more on Bill than on Hillary, or on Hillary only to claim that she was an enabler of Bill’s affairs. Women who feel themselves victims of their husbands’ misbehavior aren’t likely to appreciate that, but Trump could care less.
Just as important is the Serb presence in mid-western states, especially Ohio. Trump has been slipping in the polls there and no doubt figures Serb voters, who have already lined up in his favor, will appreciate his latest foray into the Balkans. Trump seems to have an insatiable appetite for appealing to people already slated to vote for him, rather than reaching out to independent or undecided voters, never mind women and minorities. All the above are abandoning him in droves. The Albanians and Bosniaks likely to be offended by the apology are concentrated in states already regarded as “safe”: Albanians in solidly Democratic New York and Bosniaks in mostly Republican Missouri.
Some have suggested that the apology is one more bit of evidence of Russian influence. It might be so. But I think the first two explanations are more than sufficient.
No doubt this apology will be heavily covered in the Balkans and please some people no end, while infuriating others. But both factions should understand that it will attract precious little attention in the United States, where the Balkan interventions of the 1990s are largely forgotten, and no serious effect on the outcome of the election, which if held tomorrow has a 90% chance of deciding in favor of Hillary Clinton. If there is to be an October surprise that affects the outcome, other than the several we have already survived, it isn’t going to be this.
PS: The Trump campaign has denied the interview (in which the apology was supposed issued) was ever made.
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No seal of approval
I’ve taken some flak for meeting with former Macedonian Prime Minister Gruevski on his visit to Washington last week. Here is a sample:
I would like to ask you something, please don’t give a chance together anymore to politicians like Gruevski to seat with you. They will again and again misuse you for their purpose. And if you go and read some newspapers this night you will find he already did it. Milosevic had done it so many times using meetings with west politicians on TV to show the people that ‘he is in line with the western politicians’ and that he was the one they like to speak with….You who have been our hope that it can be better future for our people back home. At least please do not do that ahead of so significant elections that may happen in Macedonia. Just figure out how many people will read what you wrote and how many people will see the picture of you and Gruevski on how many TV all under the cup of the corrupted government.Yet it is up to us aways not to you to bring him down, out of power. I admit I may ask to much from you.
You do ask too much, but let me explain why.
I am a university professor, no longer a government official. When a foreign politician comes to the US and asks to talk with me, I rarely say “no.” Mine is a society based on the free exchange of ideas. I treasure that exchange, even with people with whom I disagree or criticize. Meeting with me is no endorsement. It is only an acknowledgement that you exist and have something to say that I might want to hear. I even happily provide opportunities for people I disagree with to speak at SAIS, where they will be intelligently and politely challenged on all fronts.
Of course I know that in their home countries some of these politicians will try to exploit a meeting with me or other American academics to burnish their reputations at home, even claiming at times that I have given a good democracy seal of approval. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am blunt and forthright in telling politicians what I think. I also try to publish material that informs the inquiring public what my attitude on the main issues is, while maintaining the confidentiality of the actual conversations, which is only polite.
I may of course make mistakes. If I am smart enough to realize what they are, I try to publish something that corrects them. I am confident that these corrections are read by the politicians in question, even if no one else pays them mind.
Let there be no doubt about my attitude towards other politicians, from Macedonia or elsewhere. They are welcome at SAIS, so long as the US government will give them visas to visit. Opposition leader Zaev, whom I don’t know, or parliamentary leader Sekerinska, whom I do know, would be just as welcome as Gruevski and his colleagues. I don’t play favorites, even if I might have them.
My personal preference will always be for politicians seriously committed to democracy and rule of law. That includes free and fair elections, an independent judiciary, transparent, accountable, and inclusionary governance. But I am only too well aware that few will meet that standard in every respect. Talking to them about how they can move in the right direction is for me an obligation, not a seal of approval.
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Filling my gaps
A number of readers have pointed out gaps in the piece I published yesterday on Macedonia. So here are my feeble attempts to fill the lacunae.
Yes, Martin Naunov (who commented on yesterday’s post), judicial accountability is also important. I should have mentioned the special prosecutor and the need to support her fully. But beyond that I don’t usually comment on judicial matters. People should be presumed innocent and tried in court, not in public opinion, no matter who they are or what positions they hold or may have held in the past. Elections should be no shield from judicial accountability. The special prosecutor last month indicted more than a dozen people, but their names are not yet known. They will have to defend themselves in court.
One Twitter critic denounced me for ignoring the Albanians in Macedonia, who he said have suffered from former Prime Minister Gruevski’s Macedonian nationalism. But my piece focused on what I perceive to be the major issues that most concern Washington, not those of most concern to Albanians and Macedonians. Ethnic tension would concern Washington. The wire tapping scandal and its ramifications have not however on the whole generated ethnic tension but rather ethnic cooperation in protests (and to some degree protection from them). Another critic suggested that I should have focused negative attention on Ali Ahmeti, who leads the Albanian political party that was in Gruevski’s coalition. I don’t see how that would have helped me to explain what is of most concern to Washington.
Another critic questioned why Macedonia should want to become a member of NATO, since it is already surrounded by NATO members. That’s not literally true, since neither Kosovo nor Serbia is a NATO member, but it is also irrelevant, as Macedonia really faces no threat from a neighboring state. It has faced serious threats from Albanian extremists, in part exported from Kosovo, but well below the threshold for triggering NATO obligations.
Macedonian citizens give many varied reasons for wanting NATO membership. Some think it is an elite, democratic club that represents an important way station on the path to the European Union. Others believe that the military reforms Skopje has undertaken and the performance of its troops in Afghanistan merit recognition through NATO membership. Albanians in Macedonia tell me they regard NATO membership as an important guarantee of the country’s multiethnic democracy and maintenance of its constitutional protection.
It is all of those things, and more. But for the US, the key is this: Macedonian army soldiers have fought integrated with the Vermont National Guard in Afghanistan. That’s enough for me to think that the Alliance would gain something from Macedonian membership. If its citizens also think there is something to be gained, let’s make a deal.
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What I’m thinking about Macedonia
With former Prime Minister Gruevski in DC and I gather a photo published of the dinner a few colleagues and I had with him last night, I’m finding people interested in my views on Macedonia. For what they are worth, here they are.
Gruevski came to power in 2006 as an economic reformer and has a very good record in that department. Macedonia has dramatically improved its business climate, generating small and medium enterprise and attracting foreign investment. Only the European recession has clouded the picture. I’ll leave it to Gruevski’s minions to provide the facts and figures.
He has two problems in Washington:
1) a wire tapping scandal that has revealed what reasonable people believe to be wide-ranging abuse of power during his last mandate as prime minister;
2) his failure to make significant progress with Greece in resolving the “name” issue (Athens objects to the name Macedonia, claiming it should be exclusively Greek).
Gruevski has a long way to go to convince people here that the abuses of power we’ve seen revealed in the last couple of years are finished and that a new era of transparency and accountability is starting. That will have to begin with an impeccable election in December, one that provides both Macedonian citizens and the internationals who count (that’s the US and EU) with an outcome that is widely recognized as legitimate.
Transparency and accountability will require big changes in the way the Macedonian government operates and in its relationship to the press. In a way, that has already started: the local media covered the wire tapping scandal in detail and at length. Future Macedonian governments need to learn to live with the kind of sharp and constant criticism that characterizes democratic societies. They will also need to operate far more cleanly than in the past.
On the “name” issue, some in Washington still think a compromise solution can be found. They urge Skopje and Athens to come up with something that Washington, Berlin and Brussels will find worthy enough to push as part of a broader package of reviving Balkans ambitions to become part of Europe.
My own view is skeptical of that approach. I wouldn’t put all my eggs in that basket. It is certainly difficult for Gruevski to compromise because his political constituency may not accept it, which could lead to a defeat of the necessary referendum. It is difficult for Athens to compromise because it is already feeling humiliated. Berlin and Brussels don’t really want to ask Athens to do anything more than meet the requirements of its various financial bail outs. In weakness there is strength.
Linking Macedonia’s problems with Bosnia’s and Kosovo’s risks compounding the difficulty and making a solution less likely. Nothing will be agreed until everything is agreed, which may be never.
The alternative is NATO membership as The FYROM (The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, the term used in the United Nations). Both an interim agreement and an International Court of Justice decision weigh in favor of that ugly solution. But it requires getting the issue back up to the President of the United States (in the next administration, not this one). That is extraordinarily difficult. President Bush tried hard at the NATO Bucharest Summit in 2008 to force a solution. The Greeks balked. He failed. Who in the US government wants to tell a new president to put her prestige on the line for something that has a good probability of failure? You can forget about the issue completely if Trump is elected.
Macedonians detest the appellation “The FYROM,” but most tell me they are willing to swallow it, sometimes adding that it also needs to lead to EU membership. That in my view is a bridge too far. Greece will insist on a real solution before Skopje accedes to the EU. I don’t think there is any way out of that vise, in which Athens has a great deal of leverage.
Even getting NATO membership as “The FYROM” will require a significant reduction in Greece’s resistance. The next Macedonian prime minister needs to think about what he can do to reduce the impression among Greeks that calling Macedonia Macedonia threatens their identity. I don’t know what that is, though I can think of a lot of options. How to find out which one the Greeks will value? Ask them, in private, what they would appreciate.
The notion that Macedonia’s problems merit high priority in a Washington consumed with an election campaign, the war against the Islamic State, the roguish challenge from Russia, the economic and military rise of China and dozens of other issues is not convincing. Macedonians need to look for a solution they and the Greeks can bring to Washington for a blessing, without much heavy lifting from the Americans. I hope they do that, early in Hillary Clinton’s presidency.
PS: So here is what I get in response to this post:
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Balkan extremism: how big a threat?
The Conflict Management Program and the
Center for Transatlantic Relations
are pleased to invite you to a panel discussion on
Tuesday October 4, at 10:30 AM
1717 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20036
Room 500
Balkan Extremism: How Big a Threat?
with
Spencer Boyer
National Intelligence Council Officer for Europe
Adrian Shtuni
Principal Consultant/CEO Shtuni Consulting LLC
Dragan Stavljanin
Broadcaster, Balkan Service, Radio Free Europe
Edward P. Joseph
Executive Director, Institute of Current World Affairs
Daniel Serwer
Moderator
SAIS Conflict Management Program Director and
Senior Fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations
The press in both the US and the Balkans has sometimes portrayed the region as a cauldron brewing a serious Islamist extremist threat. How big is the threat, what drives its cadres to war in Syria and Iraq, and what has already been done about? What more needs to be done?
RSVP: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/extremism-in-the-balkans-tickets-27948449565
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Dodik’s folly
American University Professor Ulas Doga Uralp asked last night whether I had written anything about the Bosnian Serb referendum, which passed Sunday with over 99% voting “yes.” Turnout was modest: somewhere around 55%. The issue on the ballot was whether Republika Srpska’s national day should be celebrated January 9. I won’t bother to explain why that is important to some people. Nor do I regret not having written something about it, though I believe I wasted a few breaths on it in an interview.
The substance of the referendum deserves to be ignored. The significant thing was that it was held at all, after the Bosnian constitutional court ruled it unconstitutional, rightly or wrongly. If the referendum is allowed to stand, Dodik intends to move ahead with an independence referendum in 2018. For some in Bosnia and Herzegovina, that would be a casus belli, just as it was in 1992.
I don’t really expect real war to ensue, though the risk of violence needs to be taken seriously. Many approved independence referendums don’t result in widely recognized sovereignty, most notably Russian-inspired referendums in Transnistria, South Ossetia, Luhansk, Donetsk, and Crimea. Don’t know all those places? That’s because they are under normal circumstances obscure provinces, now converted into poor, backwater satellites of Moscow with no prospect of wide international recognition. Their main function is to destabilize and retard the countries that continue to claim them, in service to Moscow’s anti-Western, anti-NATO and anti-EU ambitions.
That’s the best Republika Srpska can hope for if it proceeds with its current course: to become a poor, unrecognized, backwater satellite of a country whose GDP is now less than that of Spain and still decreasing. Russia is a declining regional power with little to offer even a strategically important place like Crimea. Republika Srpska as a self-declared independent state will get little recognition and even less money, since it doesn’t happen to sit on significant real estate. Dodik will no doubt have increased opportunities to line his pockets if RS declares independence, but the population is guaranteed to lose access to World Bank funds as well as American and European assistance.
I don’t expect it to come to that. It would be far better if Bosnia’s courts would handle the issue, declaring the referendum null and void and doing what they can to hold Dodik accountable for conducting it in spite of a constitutional court decision. This is Bosnia’s Marbury v Madison moment, when the court’s authority to review legislation and executive decisions requires affirmation. If the Americans and Europeans have any interest left in Bosnia, they need to make sure that happens.
Of course they might have just used the “Bonn powers” of the High Representative, who has said the referendum violates the Dayton agreements. They can no longer readily do that because they have somehow allowed Moscow to acquire a de facto veto over their use, and they fear they have no way of implementing the HiRep’s decisions. Putin’s Russia is happy to use the veto and ostentatiously provided support to Dodik with a visit to Moscow just before the referendum.
But none of that changes reality: Republika Srpska won’t become a widely recognized independent state but may well join half a dozen other Moscow-sponsored backwaters in serving Moscow’s commitment to destabilization. The EU and NATO may not be perfect, but they offer a lot better future than Russia does. That’s Dodik’s folly.
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