Tag: Ukraine
Booooogus
The Administration and its surrogates are trying hard to assure all concerned that its pivot to the Asia Pacific will not reduce attention to the Middle East. They are also trying to minimize the impact of Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine maneuvers. Meanwhile Bashar al Asad intends to hold an “election” June 3 and photographs have confirmed the Russian origin of supposed pro-Russian demonstrators in Ukraine. Presidents may try to set their own agenda, but circumstances in the world don’t always comply.
The prospect of an election in Syria under current circumstances is bozotic. While Asad will no doubt find some supposed “opposition” figure to contest him, the whole thing will be what the car guys call “booooogus.” A good part of the Syrian population is living in areas outside government control, one-third or more of the population is displaced or refugees, violence threatens even more, and election observation is impossible. Unfree and unfair is the best that could be said about an election occurring under these conditions.
The protesters taking over government buildings in eastern and southern Ukraine are no less bogus. Russia inspires, equips and leads them to disrupt Kiev’s efforts to exert control. Most may be Ukrainians, but that makes little difference. For the Russian foreign minister to complain about Kiev’s failure to rein them in adds insult to injury. Provoking unrest and then complaining about is downright evil.
The question is what the United States can and should do about such reprobate behavior.
In Syria, only an effort to rebalance the battlefield will have a serious impact at this point. That is apparently happening, with the shipment of anti-tank weapons to a selected few trained members of the opposition. Hesitancy and reluctance still characterize the effort more than boldness and resolution. Even with greater resolve, arming will not suffice. There are other requirements: strengthening the opposition politically by connecting the Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC) with the fighters on the ground, enabling the SOC-connected administrations to govern more effectively in liberated areas, and convincing the Iranians that their assistance to Asad is damaging to their regional ambitions.
I wouldn’t waste any more breath on the Russians, who appear to have decided to support Asad to the bitter end. Iranians I heard from recently show much more concern about the damage being done in Syria, not least because sectarian warfare and the growing strength of Sunni extremists are seen as real threats in Tehran. Asad’s use of chemical weapons and the increasingly serious attrition of Hizbollah forces also give Iran pause. Tehran has more to worry about if Asad falls without a political arrangement for what comes next than Moscow does.
In Ukraine, the United States can do little more than insist on implementation of last week’s agreement to deescalate. If this includes requiring the demonstrators in Kiev’s Maidan to disperse, as quid pro quo for an end to the occupation of government buildings in the south and east, so be it. The key thing is to create the conditions for a decent election at the end of May, or soon thereafter, to legitimize a government in Kiev with democratic blessing. The demonstrators in the east and south will try to prevent that, not least because the Russian annexation of Crimea has eliminated any chance the country’s Russophiles can win it. They will be condemned to the opposition. Their best hope for them to avoid such an election is to make Ukraine as chaotic as Syria.
Russia is relying on bogus protestors in Ukraine and a bogus election in Syria. The best response right now would be a decent election in Ukraine and more serious support to a more unified opposition in Syria. Neither will repair all the harm that has been done in both places, but the President’s prospects for convincing allies in Asia this week and next that they can rely on Washington depends on what he achieves in the places he would like to leave behind.
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Battlefield to conference room
Today’s US/EU/Russia/Ukraine Joint Diplomatic Statement aims to de-escalate a conflict that has been spiraling for weeks. The steps it proposes are straightforward:
All sides must refrain from any violence, intimidation or provocative actions. The participants strongly condemned and rejected all expressions of extremism, racism and religious intolerance, including anti-Semitism.
All illegal armed groups must be disarmed; all illegally seized buildings must be returned to legitimate owners; all illegally occupied streets, squares and other public places in Ukrainian cities and towns must be vacated.
Amnesty will be granted to protesters and to those who have left buildings and other public places and surrendered weapons, with the exception of those found guilty of capital crimes.
The Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe (OSCE) is to provide monitors, as had been hoped in Crimea (but Russia did not permit it, preferring to annex the peninsula).
Like many diplomatic statements, this one is well-intentioned but riddled with ways to wriggle out. There will always be violence, intimidation or provocation on which one side can base its own violence intimidation or provocation against the other. Disarmament of armed groups generally requires a superior force to undertake the task. Which building and other seizures are illegal is in the eye of the beholder. Where are those who allegedly committed capital crimes to be tried and by whom?
Whether the statement is a turning point will depend on political will. It is difficult for me to imagine that President Putin is ready to de-escalate. He has been on a winning wicket both in Ukraine and in Syria. Why would he want to stop now? The statement presumably forestalls further EU and US sanctions, but he knows as well as everyone in the DC and Brussels press corps that agreement on those was going to be difficult. Ukrainian military and police action to counter Russian-sponsored takeovers in the east has so far failed. I suppose Putin knows even better than this morning’s New York Times that Russia’s economy was on the rocks even before the Ukraine crisis. It will get worse, but since when did Putin or Putinism worry about the economy? Oil prices around $100/barrel are all he has needed to get Russia up off its knees. Crisis helps keep the oil price up.
So I’ll be surprised if this agreement holds, or even begins to change the perilous direction Ukraine is heading in. But the statement includes an important bit that should not be ignored:
The announced constitutional process will be inclusive, transparent and accountable. It will include the immediate establishment of a broad national dialogue, with outreach to all of Ukraine’s regions and political constituencies, and allow for the consideration of public comments and proposed amendments.
The Ukraine crisis, like the Syrian one, is fundamentally a political crisis: it is more about perceptions of legitimacy and distribution of power than about who military balance or who speaks which language. We’ve seen in Libya, Egypt and Syria the results of failure to conduct an inclusive and transparent discussion of the kind of state their people want and how its leadership will be held accountable. It is very difficult to move from violence to the negotiating table unless one side is defeated or both sides recognize they will not gain from further violence. Tunisia and Yemen have done it, but they are the exceptions, not the rule.
The odds of successfully moving from the battlefield to the conference room in Ukraine are low. But that is the challenge our diplomats now face, along with the OSCE monitors. I can only wish them success, no matter how unlikely that may be.
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Passover wandering
Like 70% of American Jews, I spent last night at a Seder, celebrating the story of liberation from pharaoh. Here are some of the thoughts that were on my mind.
Three years ago I wrote with enthusiasm about the Passover of Arab liberation. Two years ago Syria seemed already in the midst of ten plagues and ruled by a pharaoh who wouldn’t let his people go. Last year I thought things in the Middle East better than expected.
This year I’ve got to confess things are a mess, not only in the Middle East but also in Ukraine.
The war in Syria rages on. Israel/Palestine peace negotiations are stalled. Both sides are pursuing unilateral options. Egypt is restoring military autocracy. Libya is chaotic. Parts of Iraq are worse. The only whisper of good news is from Morocco, Yemen and Tunisia, where something like more or less democratic transitions are progressing, and Iran, where the Islamic Republic is pressing anxiously for a nuclear deal, albeit one that still seems far off.
In Ukraine, Russia is using surrogates and forces that don’t bother wearing insignia to take over eastern and southern cities where Russian speakers predominate. It looks as if military invasion won’t be necessary. Kiev has been reduced to asking for UN peacekeeping troops. NATO can do nothing. Strategic patience, and refusal to recognize Russian sovereignty over Crimea and any other parts of Ukraine it might absorb, seems the best of a rotten bunch of options.
This is discouraging, but no one ever promised continuous progress. Even the Israelites wandered in the desert. Everyone forgets the part about getting stuck in one lousy oasis for 38 of those years. Freedom is not a one-time thing. It requires constant effort. There are setbacks. And there are breakthroughs.
Americans face their own liberation challenges. While the past year has seen giant strides in acceptance of gay marriage, there have been setbacks to the right to vote. Money is now speech and corporations are people, according to the Supreme Court. I’ll believe that when a corporation gets sent to prison and banks start accepting what I say as a deposit. The right to bear arms continues to expand, but not my right to be safe from those who do, except by arming myself. In Kansas City Sunday a white supremacist and anti-Semite allegedly shot and killed three people at Jewish facilities, all Christians.
The plain fact is that liberation, as Moses discovered, is hard. It requires persistence. There are no guarantees of success. The only directions history takes are the ones that people compel it to take. Some of those people are genuinely good. Others are evil. Sometimes they are both, as son Adam’s piece on LBJ this week suggests. There may be a right side and a wrong side of history, but it seems difficult for many people to tell the difference.
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Putin and Putinism are not foreover
There are things that are difficult to write, even when obvious. People all too often mistake analytical statements for normative ones. They fail to recognize that I can think something is likely to happen without wanting it to happen. Let’s be clear: what I am about to write is not what I want but what I think likely if the Russian takeover of eastern Ukraine continues.
Russian speakers, in an effort coordinated by Moscow, are seizing key government and police sites. But most people in eastern and southern Ukraine before this crisis considered themselves Ukrainian, not Russian, even if they spoke Russian better than Ukrainian. Anyone even remotely attached to Ukrainian identity will take offense at what Moscow is up to. Maintaining that sense of Ukrainian identity has to be a primary objective for those who want the country to remain united. If ever Kiev gets the upper hand, those who are today supporting the Russian takeover will find themselves unwelcome.
We’ve seen this happen in the Balkans, where Milosevic sponsored supposedly local Serb takeovers in parts of Croatia and Bosnia. Both had ample backing from Belgrade, including from its army. Once the Croatians got the upper hand several years later, 180,000 or so Croatian Serbs ended up leaving and entering Serbia. In Bosnia, the 500-600,000 Serbs who lived during the war in Republika Srpska were saved from a similar fate only by the Dayton agreements. In Kosovo, many Serbs left Albanian-controlled areas south of the Ibar once Serbian troops withdrew.
Someone more erudite than I am could extend the analogy to the Sudetenland, where Hitler’s takeover ended not so many years later with expulsion of German speakers.
I am trying in what I say above to avoid the fraught question of whether people were expelled, left of their own volition, or were summoned out. More often than not, such mass movements of population have multiple origins. Having mistreated others during their time in control, some people expect, justifiably or not, similar mistreatment when power is given to their enemies. Others are expelled. Still others respond to calls from their “homeland.” The mix is different in different places, and exponents of opposing sides won’t readily agree on what happened.
But I can be pretty sure that if Kiev ever regains control of the sites Russia is now seizing that an outflux of Russian speakers will ensue. Some will justifiably fear arrest or mistreatment. Others will be expelled by hotheads on the Ukrainian side of the ethnic divide. Still others may respond to an invitation by Moscow, which no doubt will be passing out passports to those who want them, as it did in Crimea.
The only real doubt I have is whether Kiev will ever regain control. It seems unlikely. Russia will always be much stronger. Even with a well-equipped and well-trained army that would take decades to create, Ukraine is not going to be able to defeat Russia in a slugging match. So long as it is prepared to devote the resources required, Russia should be able to maintain control.
There’s the rub. Moscow has a lot of problems other than maintaining dominance in Russian-speaking Ukraine. Russia is not much different in this respect from the Soviet Union. Its internal difficulties, both economic and political, are challenging. While today Russians are enthusiastically backing the takeovers, they are likely to feel differently when the bills start coming in. Putin and Putinism are not forever.
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Peace Picks April 14 – 18
1. Terrorism, Party Politics, and the US: Expectations of the Upcoming Iraqi Elections
Monday, April 14 | 12:30 – 2pm
Room 517, SAIS (The Nitze Building), 1740 Massachusetts Ave NW
Ahmed Ali, Iraq research analyst and Iraq team lead at the Institute for the Study of War, and Judith Yaphe, adjunct professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, will discuss this topic.
For more information and to RSVP, send an email to: menaclub.sais@gmail.com
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The roles and limits of international courts
Friday morning the US Institute of Peace hosted a discussion about the role of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC). Featured panelists were Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda (ICC), Judge Joan Donoghue (ICJ), Judge Xue Hanqin (ICJ), and Judge Julia Sebutinde (ICJ). Abiodun Williams (President of the Hague Institute for Global Justice) moderated.
Judge Donoghue emphasized that it is important to distinguish the ICJ from the ICC. The ICJ, also known as “the World Court,” has been part of the UN apparatus since WWII. Its role is to decide contentious cases between two states. The court also considers whether a state has met its obligations under international law. Neither function involves making a decision about whether an individual is accountable for a specific act. The ICJ is composed of 15 judges from the major legal systems around the world. Three of the 15 judges are women. The ICJ does not automatically have jurisdiction; states must first consent. Two recent cases brought to the ICJ were the whaling dispute between Australia and Japan as well as the maritime boundary dispute between Chile and Peru.
Prosecutor Bensouda agreed that it was important to distinguish between the two courts. While the ICJ deals with disputes submitted by states, the ICC deals with individual criminal responsibility. This includes war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The ICC can only intervene in territories of state parties or over citizens of state parties that committed a crime.
Established in 2002, the ICC is not an organ of the UN. It is a treaty-based institution. Currently 122 states have signed and ratified the Rome Statue. The ICC can exercise jurisdiction when a state requests ICC intervention or the UN Security Council refers a situation to the ICC for investigation and prosecution. An ICC prosecutor can intervene if a state party is not already prosecuting and investigating. However, the primary responsibility falls on the state.
Judge Xue explained the jurisdictional issues both courts face. There are three ways for the ICJ to have jurisdiction. Article 36 of its statute makes it compulsory for states to accept ICJ jurisdiction. International agreements may also provide for jurisdiction. The third way is through agreement by two states. If states do not accept going to court, it weakens the role of the ICJ.
Bensouda added that the ICC has limitations. It operates in a political environment. There are many priorities for states. A judicial mandate is not always a top priority. The effectiveness of the ICC depends on cooperation with states. It is only through this cooperation that the ICC can function as a judicial institution.
Another limitation is a double standard. For states that are party to the Rome Statute, the ICC can intervene on behalf of victims. Non-member states are not able to subject to this intervention unless the UN Security Council refers to or accepts the ICC’s jurisdiction. For full judicial effectiveness, all countries should be parties to the Rome Statute.
Judge Sebutinde noted how both courts depend on states and the international community to enforce judgments. When states are hesitant to implement a ruling of the courts, it is easy to turn on the institutions and accuse them of ineffectiveness. But the international community should turn on itself and wonder why the institutions they created are not fully functioning.
Bensouda said that the ICC can play a preventive role. Knowledge of the existence of the institution and its application of the law can act as a deterrent and stop would-be violators from committing crimes. This has been demonstrated in empirical academic work.
Williams brought up the issues of Syria and Crimea. Neither the ICC nor the ICJ is playing a role in either matter. Does this suggest that these courts have nothing to contribute when stakes are especially high and the international community divided?
Sebutinde replied that before looking to the courts it is necessary to look at the international community and the UN Security Council. The judges as individuals may be interested in these issues. But unless a case is presented, they can only be spectators. The ICJ can only settle disputes where states allow.
Judges Donoghue and Xue agreed that it can leave a feeling of frustration when one looks at disputes and wonders why they are not in an international court. Sometimes an affected state decides that the best way to make progress is not to come to court for resolution, but to pursue other avenues.
Bensouda concluded by saying that in her opinion the ICC should intervene in Syria. But it can only intervene on territories of state parties. Neither Syria nor Ukraine are state parties. Therefore, the ICC cannot intervene. It is a matter of jurisdictional limitations.
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