Tag: Democracy and Rule of Law
A serious nomination that doesn’t guarantee success
The Biden Administration has announced its intention to nominate Chris Hill as ambassador in Belgrade. This is a clear break with other recent appointments, which have put career officers still in service in Pristina and Sarajevo. Chris is a career officer who retired more than a decade ago, but he is also someone well-known to President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken from his service as ambassador in Iraq, South Korea, and Poland, if not also Macedonia. Chris is a heavy, that is more akin to a personal or political friend of the President and Secretary of State than all the other ambassadors serving in the Balkans currently or Gabriel Escobar, the recently named Deputy Assistant Secretary for the region. If anything, Belgrade is a step down for Chris from his previous positions.
This nomination signals a serious intention on the part of the Administration to try to resolve the remaining war and peace issues in the Balkans, which I would define as the still not universally recognized sovereignty of Kosovo and the dysfunctionality of governance in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Both quandaries will require Belgrade’s positive contributions.
This won’t be easy. Today’s clash betweeen Serbia and Kosovo at the UN Security Council was awful. The two countries are pointed in different directions.
Serbian Foreign Minister Selakovic repeatedly accused Kosovo President Osmani of lying, claimed she represented no one but herself, and asserted she was somehow affiliated with World War II Albanian Fascists. Serbia has in recent years aligned itself far more with Russia and China than with the US and Europe, including through economic cooperation, arms purchases, increased powers for its president, and reduced space for free media, an independent judiciary, and anything but an ethnic nationalist opposition.
The 39-year-old Osmani displayed a map of Albanian mass graves in Serbia and demanded an apology for the Milosevic-era depradations against Kosovo, during which she was displaced and fled to Montenegro before getting degrees from the University of Pittsburgh. Kosovo has a new Prime Minister, Albin Kurti, committed to cleaning up corruption and maintaining the relatively free media and increasingly independent judiciary that he inherited. Kosovo aligns itself entirely with the US and Europe.
The situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina is even worse, as the division splits the country internally. The leader of its Serb entity and member of the tripartite Presdency Milorad Dodik is freezing his loyalists’ participation in the country’s institution, trying to nullify its national laws, and threatening to take command of the Serb soldiers in its army. With Russian and Serbian support, he is inching towards the independence he has declared as his goal, hoping not to provoke an effective American or European reaction before the process is irreversible. He remembers what most Americans have forgotten: even during the unipolar moment, it took NATO 3.5 years to intervene in Bosnia and Herzegoina. The international community High Representative in Bosnia, German Christian Schmidt, is doing nothing visible to fulfill his mandate to protect the Dayton accords.
Neither situation is propitious.
But an ambassador who arrives in Belgrade with ready access to the President and Secretary of State has advantages. He can more effectively claim to speak for his bosses. He can far more easily mobilize all the resources of the US government and even the private sector than less weighty appointees. Chris was a protege’ of Dick Holbrooke, who was particularly effective at pulling all the levers of American power in the same direction at the same time. Chris is also well-known in Europe, which can bring far greater civilian resources to bear than the US. And he will have enormous leverage with Kosovo, for which he served as Special Envoy in 1998 and 1999, when the Rambouillet negotiations failed and NATO attacked Serbia.
I’m not predicting success. Chris knows as well as anyone that failure is a real possibility, as he has experienced it not only in the Rambouillet negotiations but also in negotiations with North Korea while he was an Assistant Secretary of State. His tenure in Iraq during a difficult period was not crowned with glory. But if he is able to solve either the Kosovo/Serbia conundrum or the Bosnia and Herzegovina Rubik’s cube, there will be good reason to applaud. Solving both would mean a standing ovation.
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Syria: no attractive propositions, so Biden is staying the course
Secretary of State Blinken at a press conference with the Israeli and UAE foreign ministers today said more about Syria than I remember since the beginning of the Biden Administration, in response to a question about normalization that other countries are indulging in:
…let me talk about Syria first and then come to the second part of the – the first part of the question second.
First, to put this in focus, these initial nine months of the administration we have been focused on a few things when it comes to Syria: Expanding humanitarian access for people who desperately need that assistance, and we had some success, as you know, with renewing the critical corridor in northwestern Syria to do that; sustaining the campaign that we have with the coalition against ISIS and al-Qaida in Syria; making clear our commitment, our ongoing commitment to demand accountability from the Assad regime and the preservation of basic international norms like promoting human rights and nonproliferation through the imposition of targeted sanctions; and sustaining local ceasefires, which are in place in different parts of the country. So this has been the focus of our action for these last nine months.
As we’re moving forward, in the time ahead, keeping violence down; increasing humanitarian assistance and focusing our military efforts on any terrorist groups that pose a threat to us or to our partners, with the intent and capacity to do that. These are going to be the critical areas of focus for us, and they’re also, I think, important to advancing a broader political settlement to the Syrian conflict consistent with UN Security Council Resolution 2254.
What we have not done and what we do not intend to do is to express any support for efforts to normalize relations or rehabilitate Mr. Assad, or lifted [sic] a single sanction on Syria or changed [sic] our position to oppose the reconstruction of Syria until there is irreversible progress toward a political solution, which we believe is necessary and vital.
https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-and-israeli-alternate-prime-minister-and-foreign-minister-yair-lapid-and-united-arab-emirates-foreign-minister-sheikh-abdullah-bin-zayed-al-nahyan-at-a-joint-press-availab/
This is a restatement of well-established US priorities: humanitarian assistance, reduction in violence, counter-terrorism, and irreversible progress toward a political solution before reconstruction or normalization.
So nothing new. What’s missing? should always be the next question.
Tony fails to deal with the threat of a serious military clash between NATO ally Turkey and the Kurdish-led forces that are conducting the campaign against both terrorists and the regime in northeastern Syria, with American support. He is silent on concerns about Iran using Syrian territory to threaten Israel. Nor does he indicate that the United States opposes normalization by others, in particular Jordan and the UAE. And he is silent on brutality-laced Russian and Iranian support for the Syrian regime, which in due course may become capable of challenging the Kurdish presence in the northeast and the Turkish presence inside Syria’s northern border. So yes, continuity of a policy that is silent on important issues and has so far failed to produce substantial results.
Is there a better approach? We could certainly tighten sanctions so that jet-setting scions of the Syrian elite don’t roam Los Angeles in Ferraris, but that won’t change anything in Syria. We could help the Germans mount a “universal jurisdiction” case against President Assad himself, in absentia, but that would set a legal precedent that might boomerang on prominent Americans. We could try harder to mediate some sort of accommodation between the Syrian Kurds and Turkey, as we did once with a modicum of success between the Iraqi Kurds and Turkey. Or we could try to negotiate autonomous status for the Kurds within Syria in return for US withdrawal, though the regime would be no more likely than the Taliban to stick to the terms of a withdrawal agreement. The Kurds would likely revert to attacking inside Turkey as well as Turkish-controlled Syria in order to curry favor with Assad. It suits the Kurds and Turkey to have the Americans remain in Syria.
I won’t even bother with military options against the Russians or the regime. The Americans take some shots against the Iranians and their proxies in Syria, but they aren’t going to risk war with Russia or the civilian casualties that taking on the regime would entail.
So no, there are not a lot of attractive propositions in Syria. Especially after the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Administration can ill afford a comparable mess in Syria, never mind an influx into the US of tens of thousands Syrian Kurds and Arabs who helped the US during the past decade and have legitimate claims to asylum. No wonder Biden is staying the course.
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Stevenson’s army, October 9
– Two noted lawyers, one D and one R, urge Congress to reclaim its powers.
– At FP, 2 writers debate Taiwan commitment.
– Eliot Cohen worries about American democracy.
-Ezra Klein finds a political analyst who expects Democrats to lose power for a decade.
– CBO has given Congress 3 options for cutting defense spending.
– CFR now has a global trade tracker.
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. 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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So far so good, but we’ll need to wait and see
I’ve gotten more praise than criticism for yesterday’s piece on Serbia under President Vuvic, but my friend Ylber Hysa, Kosovo’s former ambassador in Macedonia and Montenegro, is super talented at posing questions. Here go my answers:
1. Do you see the EU really ready and open for any enlargement soon towards the Balkans?
No, I don’t, but I don’t see any aspirant that will be ready any time soon, especially given the tightened criteria. Under its previous government, Montengro might have been ready before the end of this decade. Kosovo has the legislation mostly right, but not the implementation. Macedonia is better, but also suffers from a lag in implementation. Bosnia and Herzegovina can’t get it right because its constitutional system is faulty. Albania is making progress, even if it has not yet opened accession negotiations, but it isn’t quick or easy.
2. With Merkel gone, and Macron with a tough election ahead, is there any leadership there for “Europe One and Free”?
No, but entry of Western Balkan states into the EU and NATO should not depend on that. Enlargement should now be seen in the context of strengthening the European counterweight to Russia and China. There too leadership has been lacking and it is not clear Biden will be able to mobilize Europe to the kind of efforts required.
3. Do you believe that Trans-Atlantic unity is better with this administration, or much better than we all hoped for…?
It’s better, as illustrated in the agreement between Serbia and Kosovo on license plates. The Americans and Europeans acted in unison and got a reasonable result. Now they need to extend that practice to bigger issues. Gabriel Escobar and Miroslav Lajcak need to be joined at the hip.
4. Do you really see the Biden Administration seriously engaged in the Balkans after Afganistan?
The Biden Administration has the right approach to the Balkans: strengthening the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and democratic legitimacy of all the states. But it has not yet developed detailed plans for how to do that. That requires hard work and serious engagement that they are now pursuing. I wish them success.
I didn’t see the Biden Administration engaged at a high level in the Balkans before the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Certainly the messy withdrawal has made pulling US troops out of Kosovo less likely. What is needed now is a clearer program that will advance the European perspective.
5. Do you see any progressive, liberal and serious opposition in Serbia?
No, and that’s what I said in the piece. I know lots of individual progressive liberals who are in opposition, but they have failed to construct a viable alternative to Vucic with mass appeal. We should be helping them do that, but the time before next year’s Serbian election is short. I expect Vucic will win another 5-year mandate as a committed ethnic nationalist and friend of Russia and China.
6. Do you believe that in the last “licence plates war” in Northern Kosovo Kurti demonstrated any strategic thinking (or that he picked the right time for war games)?
I can’t say I saw strategic thinking, but Albin applied the principle of reciprocity and got a reasonable outcome that I hope will lead to a satisfactory final agreement on license plates. That’s not strategic, but it’s not a bad start in the right direction.
Now he needs to show some of the same grit inside the dialogue and produce results he can vaunt. Doing that will give him what he needs to get the Europeans to give Kosovo the visa waiver. That would be closer to strategic: opening Europe to young Kosovars without a visa would put his country on a far clearer European path. So too will asking for Kosovo membership in NATO’s Partnership for Peace and ensuring that the Kosovo army is fully functional by 2027, which will open the question of NATO membership.
7. Do you really believe that Kurti is a real liberal, democratic and visionary leader?
Albin has at least for now what a good prime minister needs: strong support in the population, which is tired of the nepotism, ineffectiveness, and corruption of the more established governing parties. In my experience, he is a vigorous proponent of individual human rights and an opponent of the group rights dear to ethnic nationalists, including Kosovo’s Serbs. But he also enjoys strong support among Albanian ethnic nationalists, many of whom want union with Albania. That’s a vision, but it is not a liberal democratic one or even a Kosovo patriotic one.
We’ll just need to wait and see whether Vetevendosje sticks with liberal democratic ideals or falls victim to the temptations of power and the Balkan tendency towards default ethnic nationalism.
PS: Ylber asks in addition:
8. Do you believe regional initiatives can substitute for EU Enlargement: Open Balkans, Berlin Process, Partition and border changes i.e “Jansa nonapaper” etc.
I am dead set against border changes, which will lead to mass displacement and likely death and destruction. We know this from the experience of the 1990s when Milosevic tried to change the borders of Serbia. I see no reason to believe the consequences would not be bad also today, not only for Kosovo and Bosnia but also for Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia, all of which have minorities who will want union with a neighbor. Not to mention the negative consequences for Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine, where border changes in the Balkans would be regarded as a license for Russia to annex more territory.
The Berlin Process in my way of thinking is part of the process of preparing the Western Balkans for EU membership, in particular by encouraging neighborly relations. Open Balkans is not clearly defined for me yet, but if it can remove non-tariff and tariff barriers to trade that would be a good thing, provided it is done on a reciprocal and equal basis. Certainly a more prosperous Western Balkans would have a greater stake in peace and stability. But the devil is in the details, and I haven’t seen a lot of details.
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Stevenson’s army, September 18
– NYT has story about Israel’s killing of an Iranian nuclear scientist.
– NYT has more on secret diplomacy leading to AUKUS.
– And fascinating NYT story on how Russia manipulates its elections.
– FP says US wants regular bases in Australia.
-WaPo says Milley actions tend to politicize US military.
– Early examples of redistricting games.
– Good advice for writing policy memos and op-eds from Todd Rogers of Harvard:
1. Make it shorter.
2. Simplify the language.
3. Use formatting to direct attention.
4. Make key information obvious to skimmers.
5. Make the response as easy as possible.
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. 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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Sanctioning Syria might work, but not the way it’s done now
The Assad regime and the Syrian economy at large have been under Western sanctions for years, but they have yet to lead to serious concessions. This has caused some analysts and policy makers to favor lifting most sanctions altogether, fearing that their only effect currently is to harm the Syrian civilian population. However, concessions from the Assad regime remain elusive, making this option difficult to realize. In response to these issues and considerations, the Middle East Institute’s Wael Alalwani and Karam Shaar published a paper reviewing US and EU sanctions on Syria earlier this month. On August 24, MEI convened a panel to discuss the report and the issue in general. The discussants agreed that the West lacks focus on the Syrian conflict. Western sanctions regimes lack thought and dedication, causing them to fail at bringing about regime change, while disproportionately harming the Syrian civilian population. Sanctions have a definite function in the fight against injustice in Syria, but their types and application need to be seriously reviewed for them to fulfil it efficiently.
The speakers were:
Natasha Hall
Senior Fellow, Middle East Program
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Jomana Qaddour
Nonresident Senior Fellow & Head of Syria
Atlantic Council
Member
Syrian Constitutional Committee
Karam Shaar
Research Director,
Operations Policy Center (OPC)
Nonresident Scholar,
MEI
Senior Lecturer
Massey University
Andrew Tabler
Matin J. Gross Fellow, Geduld Program on Arab Politics
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
former Senior Advisor to the U.S. Special Envoy for Syria Engagement
Charles Lister (moderator)
Senior Fellow and Director, Syria and Countering Terrorism and Extremism programs
MEI
The report
Karam Shaar summarized the findings of the report:
- Lift certain sanctions and rely more on others. All country or sector-wide sanctions should be lifted, as they hurt civilians the most and can’t be maintained in the long run. These should be lifted in exchange for concessions as soon as possible. On the other hand, targeted sanctions such as travel bans, asset freezes and secondary sanctions should be expanded.
- Implement a more proactive, all-of-Syria policy and focus on it. The current policy lacks focus and dedication.
- Pursue Syrian officials by using universal jurisdiction legislation in Western countries. Only small steps have been taken in this direction.
- Improve the effectiveness of sanctions. This can be done by targeting the deep cadres of the regime, not the tip of the iceberg (e.g. target known security chiefs who aren’t currently sanctioned, rather than a cabinet minister with little actual importance to the regime). The US and EU should also expand their use of secondary sanctions that target third parties who cooperate with or aid sanctioned individuals, even in activities that aren’t technically under sanctions.
- Make realistic demands. It is completely unrealistic for Assad to agree to the current demand, namely a political transition which will inevitably lead to his downfall and possibly even his death. Regime allies will also never favor this option. If this is the aim, far more pressure would be necessary than is currently applied.
Shaar considers the current sanctions policy a lazy attempt by the US and EU to feign an interest in the fate of the Syrian people, while allowing the situation to fester.
In response, Tabler, who was part of designing Syrian sanctions in the US government until recently, emphasized that mistakes are inevitable. However, it is also important to remember that certain decisions might be made based on classified information that the public isn’t privy to. He also considered scrapping all sector-based sanctions unrealistic. Certain sectors must remain sanctioned, although he does admit that there are sanctions that disproportionately harm citizens.
Bypassing sanctions
Natasha Hall turned the panel’s attention to regime efforts to bypass sanctions. North Korea’s ‘Room 39’ works on ways to access hard currency for Pyongyang through drug trafficking, ransomware, etc. The Assad regime’s ‘Room 39’ activities are perhaps more advanced than that already. It gains currency through the expropriation of IDP assets, as well as UN food aid. Qaddour added that the Syrian regime has become a major exporter of the illegal drug Captagon. The value of only the seized Captagon in the Gulf in 2020 was five times that of the legitimate exports of Syria.
Tabler described sanctions as good for the long haul. The threat of military action has a limited shelf life and diminishing deterrent value. However, when challenged by Shaar and Hall, he acknowledged that sanctions are a cat-and-mouse game. They must continuously be updated as those under sanctions discover loopholes to avoid them. Shaar criticized the Biden administration’s decision not to review and update sanctions, but rather continue to implement the Trump administration’s existing package. This has allowed such loopholes to expand.
The UN has also become a threat to the effectiveness of sanctions. Hall mentioned that the UN doesn’t have to adhere to US or EU sanctions and does work with regime insiders to deliver aid. Qaddour pointed out that this year’s UNSC discussion on aid provision led to the inclusion of early recovery assistance for the first time. Such efforts need to be viewed skeptically. If we can ensure strong conditions and follow-up for where this aid goes, it can benefit ordinary Syrians through the reconstruction of hospitals and schools. Otherwise, it is likely to flow into the pockets of companies owned by regime insiders.
Civilian wellbeing
Qaddour emphasized the need to balance the regime and the welfare of normal Syrians. We shouldn’t maintain a philosophy of ‘down with Assad or we burn the country’. Hall also warned that a failure to engage in sanctions as part of a broader strategy would lead to a North Korea on the Mediterranean: a heavily sanctioned regime that perseveres while its population suffers.
However, Qaddour thinks that Syrian citizens opposed to Assad are aware of the good intentions behind the current sanctions. This is particularly true for the Kurdish-held areas, which don’t bear the brunt of the sanctions and where Assad’s propaganda isn’t a factor. Also in regime areas, people tend to have a nuanced perspective. They can see firsthand that whatever wealth does enter the country flows to those in the regime. Their suffering is starkly contrasted with the wealth of regime insiders.
Re-engaging the West
The panel was unanimous in thinking that the West isn’t engaged enough with the Syrian conflict and that its actions reflect that. Hall made clear that there is much more at stake for the West than humanitarian considerations. The war and the Syrian regime cause arms trafficking, drug (Captagon) smuggling, and potentially the trafficking of foreign fighters. Especially if the regime captures Kurdish-held areas, thousands of foreign fighters would come under its jurisdiction. Tabler also feared that the West underprioritizes Syria.
There are those in Washington who favor ending sanctions. Not for love of the Assad regime, but for fear of the effects. Particularly the experience of Iraq in the 1990s and the suffering caused by US sanctions without tangible results inform this idea, according to Hall and Tabler. However, Qaddour pointed out that lifting sanctions without receiving concessions is impossible. It would devastate US and EU credibility in the future, and vindicate authoritarians claiming that the West will lose interest after a while.
Hall also indicated that ending sanctions won’t solve the suffering of the Syrian people. They would still be under the stress of the demographic engineering the Assad regime is engaging in. The expropriations of IDP and regime opponents property while investing reconstruction efforts in loyal areas that aren’t the most in need makes it impossible for many refugees to return to the country. Under these conditions reconstruction won’t succeed: it will lack the human capital that must also be rebuilt. If we lift sanctions now, we would just allow the entrenchment of a system of injustice. Shaar suggested there is no reason at all to lift targeted personal sanctions such as asset freezes. These don’t hurt Syrian civilians.
The panel came to a number of immediate recommendations:
- They agreed that establishing a high-ranking special envoy for Syria would serve to signal US seriousness and allow the sanctions system to be applied in earnest.
- Hall also recommended a comprehensive review of the effects and effectiveness of our current sanctions regimes.
- Shaar was pessimistic about the prospect of enticing European or American governments to take a genuine interest. He believed the best bet is to focus on what Syrians and those that do care about Syrian interests can do without their help.
Watch the recording of the event below:
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