Tag: Democracy and Rule of Law
Good ideas
State-building, the function American presidents love to hate, is the unavoidable foreign policy burden of our times. Without it, the war against the Islamic State and other extremists will last forever. Only when Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and Egypt are better governed will they be immune to the extremist infection that has roiled the Middle East.
Fortunately, I’ve got colleagues around DC who not only agree with this proposition but also are thinking hard what to do about it. I prefer not to spend my time and whatever intellectual energies I’ve got left thinking about reforming the US government, which has resisted most such efforts for well over 200 years. But I’m glad others are willing to engage.
Max Boot and Mike Mikclaucic want to reconfigure the US Agency for International Development into a state building agency, giving up most of its programs to international governmental and nongovernmental organizations better suited to the tasks and often better funded. They would toss out “poverty alleviation, global health, biodiversity, women’s empowerment, education, sanitation, and economic and agriculture development.” They want the US agency to focus on ungoverned or inadequately governed spaces, seeking to provide them with security forces, courts, professional civil services, and accountable financial mechanisms. In other words: the essential functions of sovereignty.
They also want AID–or maybe it would be called the US Agency for State Building–to focus on fewer countries, mainly but not exclusively in what some of us think of as the Greater Middle East (Morocco to Pakistan, more or less), plus countries at risk from Russian and Chinese expansionism, with a few Latin American countries thrown in for counternarcotics purposes. The point is to choose them based on their strategic importance to US national security.
John Norris, arguing that our current practices favor rewarding failed states with lots of money and attention, takes what he terms a”better” approach to fragile states. He proposes that willing and able fragile states–not the utterly failed ones–be invited to enter into repeatable 5-year, USAID-administered Inclusion, Growth and Peace compacts, with the aim of developing effective and legitimate institutions over a decade and more. While not proposing a definitive list, he suggests:
Niger, Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Lebanon, Uganda, Myanmar, Cameroon, Egypt, Mali, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Timor-Leste, Nepal, and Rwanda all stand out as countries where a mixture of host country commitment, effective diplomacy, positive leverage, and sound assistance strategies could help move them more permanently out of the fragility category.
Adding Tunisia and Mali for good measure, Norris says the pay-off from focusing more attention on these not-yet-basket cases could be particularly high.
This approach is analogous to one the Millennium Challenge Corporation uses, usually for more consolidated states. Greater flexibility would be required for fragile states, and the money would be focused on improving legitimacy, which is something the host country naturally wants. But it would have to make specific, transparent and accountable commitments in exchange.
Implicitly, the array of current AID objectives that Miclaucic and Boot cite would be at least partly dropped in Norris’ approach as well, though of course improvement in state effectiveness would likely result in some of those objectives being met. Norris proposes specific indicators for his compacts, geared toward the problems of fragile states like return of refugees and internally displaced people, reduction of grievances and increased government effectiveness, among others. He also proposes getting rid of the parallel budgets funded as Overseas Contingency Operations, but only if equivalent amounts are re-inserted into regular appropriations of State, AID and Defense.
That’s about as much budgetese as I am capable and willing to speak. The main point for all three authors is just this: our current foreign assistance is not producing the best results because it is focused on the wrong objectives and countries and because it is spent on the wrong efforts. The stove pipes that rule the foreign assistance world are separating things that belong together, especially where fragile states are concerned. We could do much better if we re-thought the whole package strategically, from ultimate objectives to programs.
As I explained in the book advertised to your upper right, I doubt that can be done with existing institutions, which have proven irremediable. But Norris, Boot and Miclaucic have put forward good ideas worthy of attention.
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Trump’s defeat
With Hillary Clinton clinching the Democratic nomination, it is time to consider the far more likely scenario: that she will win the November election, become the first Madame President, and return to the White House in January. What are the implications for America and its foreign policy?
Trump’s defeat, the third in a row for Republicans, will leave the party weakened and possibly divided. It could well lose control of the Senate if not the House. Blame for this will be heaped on those who backed Trump, a blatant racist, misogynist and xenophobe. Balancing acts like this one will look ridiculous in the aftermath of an electoral defeat:
Those who did not support Trump will try to resurrect the direction the party thought it had chosen after the 2012 election: towards becoming more inclusive rather than less. That will be a hard sell once more than 70% of Hispanics (and 90% of African Americans), similar percentages of gas and lesbians, and a majority of women have chosen Clinton. Some of the defeated will try to launch a new party or join the Libertarians. Diehard Trumpies will head off into the white supremacist/neo-Nazi corner of American politics.
The Democrats will seek to exploit their moment of triumph. I imagine top of their priorities will be “comprehensive” immigration reform, including a pathway to citizenship for undocumented people. This would solidify their Hispanic support. I doubt Clinton will reverse her position on the Transpacific Trade Partnership (TTP), but she might well quietly encourage Barack Obama to get it done in the lame duck Congress, before she is sworn in, with some improvements. I hope she will back the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which raises fewer hackles that TTP.
Clinton will want to reassure America’s allies in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. She will look for ways to sound and act tougher on the Islamic State, Al Qaeda, Russia, Iran and China, which have each taken advantage of Obama’s retrenchment from the over-extension of the Bush 43 presidency to press the envelope on what Washington will tolerate. She will maintain the nuclear deal with Iran and likely try to follow a similar model with North Korea. She opt for a no-fly zone in northern or southern Syria, hoping to stop at that.
Clinton will try to sustain Washington’s tightened relationship with India, Vietnam and other Asian powers as well as ongoing moves towards democracy and free market economies in Africa and Latin America. She’ll try to avoid sinking more men and money into Afghanistan and will try to get (and keep) Pakistan turned around in a more helpful direction. Israel/Palestine will be low on her priorities–why tred on turf where others have repeatedly failed?–unless something breaks in the positive or negative direction.
Domestic issues will take priority, including fixes for Obamacare, increased infrastructure and education funding, reductions in student loan debt, criminal justice reform, corporate tax reform and appointment of at least one Supreme Court justice (unless Merrick Garland is confirmed in the lame duck session) and many other Federal judges at lower levels. She will support modestly increased defense funding and tax cuts for the middle class, funded by increases on higher incomes. She will tack slightly to the left to accommodate Bernie Sanders’ supporters, but not so far as to lose independents.
In other words, Hillary Clinton is likely to serve Barack Obama’s third term, correcting the relatively few mistakes she thinks he has made, slowing retrenchment and adapting his pragmatic non-doctrine foreign policy to the particular circumstances and events as they occur. It will take some time for the Republicans, or whatever succeeds them as the second major party, to figure out whether they are protectionist or free traders, anti-immigrant or not, interventionist or not.
Trump’s defeat will be momentous for the Republican party, but it will leave the country on more or less the same trajectory it has followed for the past 7.5 years. If she can keep it pointed in that direction for four more, we should be thankful.
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The end of despair
Even as hope fades for peace talks, Syrian civil society gives me reason not to despair. Here is my preface to the Center for Civil Society and Democracy in Syria report Standing on the First Page of the End of Despair: Transparency in Emerging Syrian Institutions, published yesterday:
There is more to Syria than military forces and battles, though this is not immediately apparent to much of the international community, which currently seems to be focused on ISIS and the flow of refugees to Europe. Five years of conflict have seen the growth of vibrant civil society in both regime and opposition controlled areas. More than ever before in Syrian history, civilians have taken charge of their own lives, desperately trying to bring order, security, sustenance, services and shelter to their families, friends and communities. Civic associations, local councils, human rights and other legal advocates, relief organizations, food, water and service providers, media outlets, professional societies, and economic development incubators have grown like topsy in the ruins of the Assad regime, which was among the most opaque, autocratic and corrupt in the world in 2011 when the uprising in Syria began.
This growth of civil society in wartime Syria is one of the country’s saving graces. As the authors of this fascinating and path-breaking report put it, despite the humanitarian disaster Syria is standing on the first page of the end of despair, because it has generated one of the key elements of a more open and democratic society. Syrians have been ingenious in inventing the institutions that fill the vacuum collapse of the dictatorship left behind.
But it is fitting that the Center for Civil Society and Democracy (CCSD), itself a civil society organization, takes nothing for granted. It wants to know how transparent nongovernmental organizations in Syria are, both in their internal processes and in their interactions with their beneficiaries and other institutions. This extensive and perceptive report based on a survey of 280 civil society organizations—including local councils that provide de facto governance in many areas—is the result. It is intended to lay the basis for improvements in the future.
Considering the extraordinarily difficult conditions in which they operate, the results are what I would describe as good, even extremely good. The vast majority of the organizations surveyed have clear internal structures, by laws, and boards of directors. They report on and publicize their work and conduct monitoring and evaluation. Most document their expenses and consult with stakeholders, though a bit more consultation with beneficiaries would be a good idea. This performance would be remarkable and praiseworthy even in more stable environments. With civilians facing daily bombardment, Syrians have reason to hope that the civil society they have created will serve them well in the future.
That is, if it survives. The first page of the end of despair could also be the last page, if the dictatorship wins the war and re-imposes the kind of draconian and opaque rule it enjoyed before 2011. Military defeat could spell the end of the burgeoning of Syrian civil society that Americans and Europeans should be anxious and determined to preserve and nurture. Whatever the military outcome, people of good will everywhere should be thinking about how to preserve, fertilize and enhance the extraordinary array of institutions that Syrians have generated. And international governments and donors in particular will do well to pay attention to this issue amidst the cacophony of the Syrian people’s very important needs. If they hope to see a stable and secure Syria in the future, one of the building blocks will be this nascent web of interconnected civil society groups, whose legitimacy and sustainability depend upon their transparency and accountability to their communities.
Let’s try to make sure that despair leads to hope, not more despair.
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Now comes the hard part
While it is still unclear how many seats he will have in parliament, Serbian Prime Minister Vucic has won a big victory, garnering close to 50% of the vote and far outdistancing his nearest competitors, his Socialist coalition partners at over 12% and Vojislav Seselj’s Radicals at close to 8%. The uncertainty about seats, which are awarded proportionately, derives from the results at the lower end, where several parties appear to have come in close to the 5% threshold. If any of those results changes, Vucic’s Progressives could gain or lose seats.
The Prime Minister’s victory is a big vote of confidence in his pro-European stance. His more nationalist opponents are much more inclined to view Serbia’s future as closely tied to Russia. His more liberal opponents share his commitment to EU membership but suffer from splitting into personality-based groups. Vucic may want to bring one or more of these personalities into his coalition, to strengthen its pro-European stance.
These election results were widely foretold. Vucic has managed to draw both on his nationalist past and his promise of a European future for wide support. Now comes the hard part: governing.
From the domestic perspective, the key issue will be the economy, which has been sputtering, along with the rest of the Balkans and Europe. Despite some real progress on economic reform, Serbia is in recession and unemployment is high. There isn’t a lot the government can do to promote recovery in the near term. Serbia, like most of the Balkans, is highly dependent on what happens elsewhere. Prospects in the euro zone and in Russia are not good.
From an international perspective, the main issues are corruption, the legal system and media freedom. When in the West Vucic appears comfortable and open in dealing with the media, but at home he is less comfortable and all too often attacks the questioner as much as he answers the question. He is widely believed to control appointment of editors, even in privately owned media. The courts are slow, disorganized and lack real independence, which Vucic acknowledges.
Looming on the horizon are difficult choices for Serbia with respect to Kosovo. Vucic has been vital to the progress made in years of talks with his Kosovar counterpart. Serbia has accepted the validity of the Kosovo constitution on its entire territory (including the Serb-majority north) and has acknowledged that Kosovo will qualify for EU membership separately and at its own pace. It seems to me a short step to mutual recognition and exchange of ambassadors, but that short step is still regarded as a yawning chasm in Serbia, one its politicians all seek to avoid.
Fixing these things isn’t easy. Nor is it likely to garner a lot of votes unless the economy also recovers. But Vucic now has four years in which to deliver. If he does, Serbia will make serious progress in negotiating EU membership, though I doubt it can meet expectations that it complete the process before the next election. Failure could mean a turn backwards towards the nationalists who were Vucic’s closest competitors, albeit lagging far behind. Brussels and Washington will want to avoid that turn and encourage Vucic to proceed in the pro-European direction he campaigned on.
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This doesn’t make sense
US Ambassador to NATO Lute said Friday:
I think Russia plays an important part in the strategic environment…[which] will put a break on NATO expansion. If you accept the premises…about Russia’s internal weakness and perhaps steady decline, it may not make sense to push further now and maybe accelerate or destabilize the decline.
I am assured that this statement represents no departure from Article 10 of the NATO treaty, which provides for the membership to unanimously “invite any other European State in a position to further the principles of this Treaty.” Montenegro has already received such an invitation and will be admitted to membership at the July 8/9 NATO Summit in Warsaw.
What doesn’t make sense to me is Washington accommodating Moscow’s aggressiveness internationally in order to avoid destabilizing it internally. Quite to the contrary: pushing back on Moscow’s increasingly aggressive stance against NATO expansion would provide incentive and opportunity for Russia to refocus its energies on its internal problems, which lower oil prices and Ukraine-induced sanctions are aggravating.
This is particularly true for NATO expansion into the Balkans, a region not contiguous with Russian territory. NATO expansion to tiny and distant Montenegro can in no way be reasonably perceived as a threat to Russia, no matter how often Russian diplomats repeat that refrain. The same is true of Slovenia, Albania and Croatia, all of which became NATO members with little or no comment from Moscow. Even if all of the remaining Balkans countries join–that’s Kosovo, Macedonia, Bosnia and Serbia–Russia is in no way militarily at risk.
That makes the Balkans different from Georgia and Ukraine. Location matters.
This hasn’t prevented Moscow from mounting aggressive campaigns in all but pro-American Kosovo against Alliance membership, as well as a rearguard action against Montenegrin accession. Moscow uses its diplomats to speak out crudely against NATO membership, its money to fund anti-NATO protests, and its commercial influence to turn local politicians against the Alliance. Russia has even planted a proto-base (allegedly for humanitarian rather than military purposes) in southern Serbia, hoping this will inoculate Belgrade from catching the NATO flu.
Russia’s anti-NATO efforts threaten to destabilize the Balkans, where the prospect of NATO membership is an important factor in promoting democratization and reducing inter-ethnic tensions. This is especially true in Macedonia, where much of the Albanian population regards the prospect of NATO membership as vital to its own security. It is of course also true in Kosovo, where NATO troops have been vital to maintaining a safe and secure environment since the NATO/Yugoslavia war in 2001. Bosnia and Serbia are more ambivalent towards NATO, though Serbia’s prime minister recently noted (in the runup to a parliamentary election) that NATO troops in Kosovo protect the Serb population there.
So Ambassador Lute’s comments–even if not meant to qualify Article 10–will be read in the Balkans as discouraging hopes for NATO membership and in Moscow as a green light for Russian efforts to undermine the generally positive trend the region has taken for the past 20 years. It would be good now for the American Administration to reiterate that Washington still wants a Europe “whole and free,” including in particular the Balkans and even Russia if it so chooses. Anything less than that gives Moscow further incentive to muck in what it increasingly considers its sphere of influence, which could set back decades of democratization and run the real risk of destabilization.
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The arguments are worse than the verdict
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) today acquitted Serbian politician Vojislav Selselj of all charges against him, by an overwhelming majority. Instead Judge Antonetti convicted the ICTY prosecution of confusion and incompetence.
Those disappointed in the outcome should read at least the trial judgement summary, which says the prosecution failed to prove that the political effort to create Greater Serbia constituted a “joint criminal enterprise” or that Seselj was in charge of those who committed crimes pursuing that goal. Even fighters called “followers of Seselj,” the Tribunal says, were arguably under the control of the Yugoslav National Army and the Serb armies in Croatia and Bosnia.
This should be little comfort to the Belgrade government, which has been anxious to avoid any hint of responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Croatia and Bosnia. Seselj’s acquittal can be read as a forceful indictment of the three Serb armies and governments, including the one led at the time by Slobodan Milosevic, and might raise again the question of compensation or reparations.
Essentially ICTY is saying a guy who inspired, recruited and deployed volunteers to go fight in the war was not responsible for any crimes those volunteers committed, because he was not in the chain of command. This certainly implies that the Yugsolav National Army, which at the time controlled the Serb forces in both Croatia and Bosnia, was responsible.
But the acquittal will be read by Serb nationalists as vindication, because it clears their Greater Serbia political program of responsibility. Rather than being inherently discriminatory, it is judged to be just one more political proposition, morally no worse than Croatian and Bosnian secession from Yugoslavia, whose fulfillment would not necessarily have violated anyone’s rights. Nor are many of the means chosen to fulfill that program found to be criminal, though the Tribunal finds that some crimes were committed, for which it held Seselj had not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt to be responsible.
At times the Tribunal indicts itself in making its case against the prosecutors. It suggests there was no widespread Serb attack on civilians in Bosnia and Croatia and says:
…the majority cannot dismiss the Defence’s argument–amply supported by some of the testimonies–according to which these civilians had fled the combat zones to take refuge in villages inhabited by members of the same ethnic or religious group; that the buses that were provided for this purpose did not constitute operations to forcibly transfer the population, but were in fact provided on humanitarian grounds to assist the non-combatants fleeing combat zones in which they no longer felt safe….the SRS pursued the objective of a Greater Serbia which was to include all the Serbs, whether they were of the Orthodox, Catholic or Muslim faith….There is a reasonable possibility that the sending of volunteers was aimed at protecting the Serbs.
… were made in a context of conflict and were meant to boost the morale of the troops of his camp, rather than calling upon them to spare no one.
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