Tag: United Nations
No deal, yet
There are signs Serbia has decided to reject the deal on the table for northern Kosovo and ask for continued negotiations. Deputy Prime Minister Vucic is quoted on B92.net:
“Serbia cannot accept the adding of (Albanian majority) municipalities to the four Serb municipalities (in northern Kosovo), which the Priština side said could not be recognized because of their administration, but they could be recognized when it concerned the agreement on integrated management of administrative crossings,” he noted, and added:
“Belgrade did not receive answers about the presence of security forces, nor clear answers on the issues of education, health-care and judiciary.”
According to Vučić, Belgrade is seeking “a court of appeals for Kosovska Mitrovica”.
President Nikolic is also proposing that the talks continue under the auspices of the UN, since Serbia is a member.
This amounts to a wholesale rejection of whatever the EU is proposing, which apparently includes a northern Kosovo that encompasses Albanian-majority municipalities (in addition to the 3.5 Serb-majority ones). That is presumably intended to limit the ethnic partition dimension of whatever is agreed. It would be amazing if the EU had not given an absolutely unequivocal rejection of the presence of Serbian security forces as well as any Serbian courts. Issues of education and health care are amply treated in the Ahtisaari plan. I doubt the EU has departed much from that.
It is difficult of course for either Brussels or Pristina to refuse to continue negotiations. But that is what they should do if they want to produce a satisfactory agreement. Continuing negotiations would only signal softness on the main issues: Serbian security forces and judiciary. There is no way Kosovo Prime Minister Thaci can yield on those. But the Americans and Europeans may insist, for their own sakes. Brussels and Washington are not good at poker.
I’m all in favor of a negotiated solution, which is the only option. But it can’t be one that is impossible to administer, interferes with Kosovo’s ability to implement the EU’s acquis communitaire or goes beyond what Serbia would be willing to offer to the Albanians who live in majority-Albanian communities in southern Serbia. Nor will it help the prospects for an agreement if the negotiations are moved to the UN, where the playing field is obviously uneven due to Serbian membership (not to mention the General Assembly’s vigorously nationalist Serbian president).
If Serbia follows through on today’s news reports and formally rejects what the EU is offering, Kosovo still needs to decide whether it can live with the proposal or wants to remain silent. I haven’t seen what is on offer, so it is impossible to suggest what Pristina might do. Accepting runs the risk that the Serbs may change their minds at the last minute, as they often do. Rejecting runs the risk of annoying Washington and Brussels.
My guess is that we have not heard the last of this EU effort to resolve the problems of northern Kosovo. But if in fact we are at the end of the line, Serbia should at least pay its own fare, which is no date for opening accession negotiations with the EU. Whether Kosovo can still hope for action on the visa waiver and opening of negotiations for a Stabilization and Association Agreement is not clear to me. I hope those issues can be decided on the technical merits, which seem to me increasingly in favor.
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The UN’s challenges
I’ve been in New York since Thursday, unable to tweet or blog due to inexplicable wireless router problems at the home of friends, where we were staying. My focus was naturally on the UN, where the renovation of the Secretariat building is said to be nearing completion but you wouldn’t know it from the way it looks. I hope the people who move back in are feeling more renovated than the facility.
Here’s a quick list of things I’ve learned:
- Lots of angst at the UN about its expanding role in peace enforcement operations. In Somalia, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mali, UN forces are being asked to go beyond impartiality to combat bad guys, some of whom may not be a lot worse than the folks the UN is helping. Life is complicated.
- The war in Syria is presenting enormous difficulties to the UN observers in Golan, where the UN staff is subject to threats, intimidation, kidnapping and murder. Troop contributing countries are withdrawing their soldiers, the rebels are using the neutral zone to mount operations and the Syrian army is lobbying artillery shells that occasionally land in Israel.
- Some countries are nevertheless pledging troops conditionally for post-war Syria. Lakhtar Brahimi will stay on as a personal representative of the Secretary General to help prepare contingency plans while possibly resigning his more formal mandates from the Security Council and the Arab League, which has seated the Syrian opposition coalition in Damascus’ place.
- Some folks think it would be a good idea to keep the UN out of stabilization operations altogether: it lacks understanding of local situations, imposes insensitive, standardized approaches, is opaque and unaccountable and leaves behind pathologies like prostitution and trafficking, not to mention the warlords it helps install in power and teaches the finer arts of corruption by shortcircuiting proper procurement procedures in the name of urgency.
- In any event, everyone is expecting financial stringency as a result of the American sequester. I expect the Americans, if they can overcome their ideological distaste for the UN, to load it up with more tasks, not fewer, as they do triage and and toss the lower priorities in the UN’s direction whenever the Security Council permits. It was pretty clearly a mistake not to have a beefier UN mission in Libya, for example, to help with demobilization and retintegration of the militias that are wrecking havoc with the transition, aided by a disappointing performance from the parliament elected last summer.
The UN reminds me of the High Line, New York’s elevated freight railroad spur now converted to an elongated park (where I spent an hour this morning, see the photos below). Created under different conditions for different purposes, the High Line has been repurposed and is now playing a starring role as a people magnet, attracting tourists and New Yorkers alike.
The UN was created in San Francisco to ensure post-World War II peace and security and to that end:
- to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;
- To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;
- To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and
- To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.
The circumstances were very different in 1945, but these purposes remain valid, far more so than during the Cold War. What the UN needs more than repurposing is reform to ensure that it has the knowledge, talents and resources to meet its high purposes in a 21st century environment.
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What happens if talks fail?
While I think it likely that Lady Ashton will somehow fish something she can call success out of the swirling soup of issues involved in tomorrow’s talks between Pristina and Belgrade about Serb-controlled northern Kosovo, the precise outcome will be determined in part by what the parties think their best options are in the case of failure. These options are known in the negotiations business as “BATNA”: best alternative to a negotiated agreement. Let’s have a look at them. This exercise is necessarily speculative, since we don’t really know what might be in a deal and even less about what might happen if there is no deal.
If the negotiations fail, Belgrade’s progress towards the EU “will grind to halt if dialogue fails,” according to Serbia’s deputy prime minister Rasim Ljajic. This is a bit of an exaggeration, since Serbia can continue preparing for EU membership no matter what happens with Kosovo. Accession is likely the better part of a decade off (2020 earliest, I’d guess), even in the best of all possible worlds. But Serbia won’t get a date to begin accession negotiations unless the dialogue with Pristina produces results.
“The date” is not only politically but economically important. Serbia can hope for a substantial infusion of EU funds with the fixing of the date. Belgrade needs that infusion and has few alternative sources of financing. Russia is one, but it is not clear to me that Moscow regards stepping in to save Serbia financially as any more attractive than saving Cyprus. In the end, the Russians took a haircut there, but they were none too pleased to do so. Anteing up for Serbia right now might be asking a bit much. Slavic solidarity has its limits.
If the talks fail, Pristina could lose an opportunity to negotiate a Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) with the EU. This would be unfortunate, as everyone else in the Balkans has an SAA, which provides substantial access to the EU market. Pristina could also expect the EU to continue dealing with its application for a visa waiver program in slow motion. Neither of these losses comes close to Belgrade’s loss of a date (and the related financing) for opening accession talks, and both have the disadvantage of further isolating Kosovo. Lagging progress in getting closer to the EU is a factor in Kosovo politics, where the “Self-Determination” movement would prefer to give up on the EU and seek union with Albania. That anti-constitutional, irredentist proposition is one the EU and US oppose. Stiffing Pristina on the SAA and visa waiver would be counter-productive, to say the least.
What will happen in northern Kosovo if the talks fail? I really don’t know, but let me speculate. Those Serbs who man the barricades will feel they have won and hope to reassert their resistance to Pristina’s authority. At least one Serbian official is threatening that northern Kosovo might declare independence and seek an opinion of the International Court of Justice. There is deep irony in that of course, as the court advised that Kosovo’s declaration of independence breached no international law, but there is really no fear that such a move would gain recognition. Even Serbia would not want to risk its relationship with the EU and US.
The Kosovo authorities would feel they have lost, though they may also feel vindicated if they reject a deal they judged unworthy. Hotter heads among the Albanians may want to retake the north by force, or harm Serbs in the south, both lousy options guaranteed to harm Kosovo’s interests and rouse the Americans and Europeans to high dudgeon. Cooler heads in Pristina will want to continue to try to win over the “hearts and minds” of northern Serbs but may also feel compelled to take some sort of unilateral action to show toughness.
Patience would be a great virtue in the event of failure. Belgrade is spending far too much to sustain the Serbs in northern Kosovo and will likely need to reduce those expenditures in the next few years no matter what. If Pristina is able to moderate any reactions south of the Ibar, it is likely to find it relatively easy to revive both the visa waiver and the SAA negotiation, as neither one involves EU accession. Reviving the idea of a date for accession talks for Serbia would be more difficult, as internal EU resistance to enlargement is growing and German elections loom in September.
The big unknown about the talks is what they might do for Kosovo’s efforts to gain greater international recognition and acceptance. I find it hard to credit the idea that Belgrade can have “normal” relations with Pristina, the nominal objective of the dialogue, without dropping its campaign against Kosovo’s entry into international organizations, including the United Nations. Nor is it “normal” for a neighbor to oppose recognition by third parties, something Belgrade has done worldwide with significant success. Ending Belgrade’s anti-recognition and anti-acceptance campaign should be valued in Pristina, even if some may claim Kosovo should not have to pay a price for it.
It is my hope that Lady Ashton will bring an end to that campaign even if the talks on northern Kosovo were to fail. This is the very least the EU should ask of Belgrade at this stage. Allowing Kosovo full access to international organizations would give Pristina good reason for strategic patience and confirm what Belgrade has already accepted by meeting with the Kosovo authorities at the highest levels: whatever you think Kosovo’s status is or should be, its President and Prime Minister are its democratically validated and legitimate representatives.
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Can Syria be saved?
I spoke yesterday on “Can Syria Be Saved” at the Italian Institute of International Affairs (IAI). I was honored at the last minute by Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs Staffan de Mistura, who joined the event and provided some comments. Here are the notes I used, amplified with Stefano’s comments and a bit of the Q and A:
1. The situation inside Syria
Military: The regime can clear, but less and less; the revolution can clear more and more. Neither can hold securely or build without the other being able to strike. This is the significance of air power and Scuds, which prevent consolidation of rebel control.
Civilian: The government is doing all right in areas that are loyal, but not gaining and under severe economic pressure. The revolution is unable to supply many areas outside government control and therefore unable to consolidate control and support.
2. Who is doing what outside Syria
There is no sign of the Russians or Iranians abandoning Assad, despite some change in Russian rhetoric. Russian arms supplies continue. Iranian forces are active within Syria, as is Hizbollah. Arms are flowing to the opposition, but unevenly and not always what they need.
The June 2012 Geneva communique, which provides for a fully empowered transition government approved by both the regime and the opposition, is still the only agreed diplomatic route. Brahimi is quiet, which is the best way to be until he has something definite. The Americans are exasperated but unwilling as yet to send arms. The naming of a prime minister this week should bring more civilian assistance, which is already topping $400 million from the US.
3. Why Obama hesitates to intervene more decisively, why Putin backs Assad
President Obama’s hesitation has little to do with Syria. He recognizes full well that a successful revolution there will be a blow to Iran and Hizbollah, but even an unsuccessful one is bleeding them profusely. The main issues for Obama are the Northern Distribution Network, which is vital for American withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the P5+1 nuclear negotiations with Iran. He does not want to risk alienating the Russians on either front.
For the Russians, the main issues are no longer the port and arms sales, if ever they were. Now the question is one of prestige and power. Putin is defining his Russia in explicitly anti-Western terms, all the more so since what he portrays as Western trickery during the Libya intervention.
For Iran, the issue is an existential one. Loss of Syria would disable the connection to Hizbollah and isolate Iran from the Arab world, with the important exception of Iraq. This would be a big loss to a country that thinks of itself increasingly as a regional hegemon. The Islamic Republic would regard the loss of Syria as a big blow.
4. Options for the US and Europe
Britain and France are considering supplying weapons. That is unlikely to buy much allegiance. The best that can be hoped for is to strengthen relatively secularist and pro-Western forces, but that is going to be diffficult given the good military and relief performance of the Islamists, including those the US regards as extremist and even linked to Al Qaeda.
The US hesitates about arms transfers because of “fast and furious,” a US government scheme to track weapons transferred to the Mexican cartels. One of the weapons was used to kill an American border patrol agent. If an American-supplied shoulder-fired missile were to bring down a commercial aircraft, the incident would have major domestic political repurcussions.
Washington is instead focusing on enabling the civilian side, in particularly the newly named Prime Minister Ghassan Hitto and whatever interim government he cobbles together. This should certainly include ample humanitarian assistance and operating expenses.
It might also include military intervention, since the Hitto government won’t be safe inside Syria if Assad continues to use his air force and Scuds. The idea gaining ground outside the US administration is to destroy as much of that capability as possible while it sits on the ground. No one in Washington wants a no-fly zone that requires daily patroling. This is also a possible response to chemical weapons, whose possible use was mentioned during the IAI event but the facts were still very unclear (as they still are today so far as I can tell).
5. Possible outcomes and their implications
The fall of Bashar will be a beginning, not an end. It is not clear that the state structure in this Levant will hold. Lebanon is clearly at risk. You’ve got Kurds in Syria and Iraq who want to unite, in addition to an ongoing if somewhat sporadic Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey. You’ve got Sunnis in Iraq fighting in Syria who might eventually turn around and fight again in Iraq. You’ve got Alawites, Druze, Christians and others who will want to protect their own communities, isolated from others in enclaves.
Even if the state structure holds, there are big questions about the future direction of Syria. Will Islamists triumph? Of which variety? Will secularists do as badly in a post-war transition as they have in Egypt? The opposition in Syria agrees that the state should remain intact, but will it be able to under pressure from a “stay-behind” insurgency like the one that Saddam Hussein mounted in Iraq?
I also ran quickly through the options for post-war Syria that I’ve already published.
Staffan reacted underlining the importance of continuing to talk with the Russians, who are convinced that the intervention in Libya has opened the door to Al Qaeda extremism in Mali and Syria. He also underlined the importance of the opposition forming an inclusive and cohesive government that enunciates a clear plan for how to deal with the previous regime, including an exit for Bashar al Assad, and how to provide guarantees to the Alawites. He underlined that we should be putting together an international peacekeeping force now. We should not be tricked into international intervention by allegations of chemical weapons use.
I’ll stop my account there, as I’ve already gone on too long. It was a stimulating discussion. Many thanks to my hosts at IAI!
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Mali matters
Global energy security depends on stability in North Africa, particularly Algeria. The Islamist take-over of the 2012 Tuareg coup in northern Mali directly affected these global interests, prompting French and concerted African intervention. The Center for National Policy discussion on Wednesday focused on the broad implications of Mali’s internal problems. Speakers were Alexis Arieff, Congressional Research Service; Stephanie Pezard, RAND; and Paul Sullivan, Georgetown University.
Security and politics
According to Stephanie Pezard, the French intervention in Mali runs three risks: radicalizing local populations, exacerbating ethnic tensions between the North and South, and triggering Islamist insurrections in the region. Although Mali does not pose a direct threat to the US, the Tuareg-Islamist insurgency poses several indirect threats.
The Tuareg rebellion stems from Tuareg political grievances the Malian government has failed to address since the 1960s. Long-term resolution of the issues would require internationals and the Malian government to understand Northern politics and to identify the most representative group with which to reach an agreement. Internationals should focus on reconciling the North and the South by encouraging the formation of a government more universally palatable than the one brought down in March 2012. Internationals should also encourage Bamako to deliver on its commitments to the North.
Mali poses indirect criminal and terrorist threats to US interests. In order to fund their activities, terrorist groups in the Sahel and North Africa increasingly engage in kidnappings and cocaine trafficking. Although the drugs are destined for European markets, the proceeds go toward funding terrorist activities elsewhere as well.
The economic opportunism of the Malian fighters provides internationals with an opportunity to reduce their appeal. Clan logic is a vanishing factor in enlistment of terrorists. Fighters follow the money and weapons, giving little weight to ethnic or religious affiliation. Terrorist offers of high salaries and subsidies for the fighters’ families motivate young men to join their ranks. Addressing the root issues by honoring government commitments to the North could alleviate conditions that make becoming a militant appealing.
Energy
A disruption of Algerian oil and gas flow to Europe would damage Algerian and European energy security, with repercussions for the global oil market. Algeria is the third largest natural gas provider to Europe, and in 2011 provided OECD Europe with 38.5% of its crude oil. Continued access to Algerian oil is crucial for Europe to climb out of its economic crisis. According to Georgetown professor Paul Sullivan, 12% of Italy’s liquid fuels, 9% of Spain’s, 13% of France’s, 7% of Brazil’s, and 5% of the Netherlands’ come from Algeria. Likewise, 10% of Turkey’s gas imports, 36% of Italy’s, and 32% of France’s come from Algeria. Still, the US ranks as the largest importer of Algerian oil, importing 500,000 b/d, or 4.5% of US supply.
Sullivan characterized the Islamist attack on the Ain Amenus oil field as a direct attack on the Algerian, European, and American governments and economies. Following the incident, gas pumped through a trans-Mediterranean pipeline connecting Algeria and Italy dropped by 10 million cubic meters a day.
Oil and gas provide 97% of Algeria’s export revenues, 60% of its government revenues, and 40% of GDP. Three quarters of the oil industry relies on two oil fields (Hasi Massaoud and Ourhoud). The intervention in Mali threatens to push militants into Algeria, whose destabilization would send Europe and the US reeling.
US Policy
Alexis Arieff argued that the use of counterterrorism as the lens through which the US formulates policy towards the region is inadequate for resolving the situation in Mali. Previously the US approach aimed to strengthen the security apparatus of weak Sahel states. The US lacked a strategic design with comprehensive inter-agency cooperation and effectiveness. US efforts to encourage Algerian leadership and multilateral cooperation on countering terrorism domestically and regionally suffered from distrust among the partner governments in the region.
The US faces the challenge of weighing the costs and benefits of direct versus indirect involvement in Mali. American officials disagree on the nature of the threat posed by the terrorist groups. Congressional restrictions make US military assistance to the Malian army difficult. At UN talks on Mali, the US and France have not seen eye to eye on Mali’s future. The US Administration wants the African-led International Support Mission for Mali (AFISMA) to be a fully UN funded peacekeeping mission, while implying the need for a French commitment to maintain troops on the ground as a rapid reaction force. The US role in Mali will hinge on evaluation of whether the violent extremists pose a serious threat to the US.
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Keeping an eye on Asia
Trying to catch up on my Asia reading, as things are heating up there:
- The Japanese scrambled jets last week in response to a Russian violation of airspace over the Kuril Islands.
- China has been pressuring North Korea not to conduct an announced nuclear test.
- Tokyo is complaining that Chinese radar “locked on” to Japanese ships, a step generally associated with initiating an attack, in the East China Sea (where the two countries dispute sovereignty over the Senkaku/Daioyu islands).
The smart money is still betting that China and Japan won’t go to war over uninhabited islands that Japan administers but China claims. There have been recent rumblings of a possible accord between Russia and Japan on the Kurils. It is of course welcome that China should restrain its North Korean friends from defying the UN Security Council again with another nuclear test. It is unclear whether Beijing will succeed.
The US Navy, facing budget and reducing its presence in the Middle East, has found a useful “hegemon” and bully in China. In the mist of preparations for the Quadrennial Defense Review, naval advocates would like to regain at least some of the budget momentum they lost when Mitt Romney–a strong naval advocate–was defeated for the presidency.
But that doesn’t mean the needs are not real. America’s ships are vulnerable, even to Iranian never mind Chinese cruise and other missiles. Washington has a lot of obligations in Asia: to Japan, to Taiwan, the Philippines, to South Korea. It also has some relatively new friends to oblige: Vietnam and Burma in particular. It is not going to be easy to meet all the needs in a severely constrained budget environment.
Those who complain about US inattention to Syria, Libya, Afghanistan and even the Balkans need to remember how many other commitments need to be fulfilled. Asia represents an important slice of the future of world economic growth. It also represents a serious risk of armed conflict on a scale that would have global consequences. We may not all be able to pivot to Asia, but we should keep an eye on it.
And I just realized: I am in Asia today, in Antalya, Turkey. Maybe that’s why my eyes have turned east, though the East I am writing about here lies thousands of miles away. Here’s the scenery from my hotel room:
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