Tag: United States
Pristina, we’ve got a problem
These were the talking points I used this morning in a remote appearance at the Kosovo Leadership Conference in Pristina:
- Let me begin by telling you how much I regret I am not with you there in Pristina. I haven’t had the pleasure of a stroll in Mother Teresa Street in more than three years. My recent illness made the trip inadvisable even now, but I am glad to report that I am well on my way to full recovery.
- The bad news is that the Balkan region is not recovering. There is plenty of blame to go around but let me start with people outside the Balkans.
- There is no more important factor in determining what happens in the next few years in Pristina, Sarajevo, and Podgorica than the outcome of the war in Ukraine.
- It isn’t fair, but your fate depends on whether Ukraine is able to restore its sovereignty and territorial integrity, including Donbas and Crimea.
- If Russia is successful in getting a settlement that recognizes the annexation of any part of Ukraine, you can expect Serbia to redouble its efforts to create the “Serbian world.”
- This is well understood in Belgrade and Banja Luka.
- Aleksandar Vulin and Milorad Dodik were in Moscow just last week no doubt cheering on the Russian army and getting their own marching orders for continuing to disrupt the Balkans and block any more Western success in the region.
- President Vucic’s rent-a-crowd rally in Belgrade Friday manifested that Serbia is seriously pursuing “all Serbs in one country,” in cooperation with Dodik and allies in Montenegro.
- Belgrade’s reaction to the installation of elected Albanian mayors in northern Kosovo also demonstrated its hegemonic territorial ambitions.
- The “Serbian World” and the “Russian World” are the same idea meant to signal that no Serb or Russian should be subject to a liberal democratic order in which non-Serbs are able to gain a majority. Ethnic autocracy in a defined, unified territory is Russia and Serbia’s common goal.
- That is incompatible with existing state structures in the Balkans and Ukraine, which include ample protection for numerical minorities.
- That said, I am supposed to tell you what the US and EU can do about counteracting the Russian and Serbian efforts to deprive their neighbors of sovereignty and territorial integrity.
- The first thing they can do is declaratory. That much they have done: Washington and Brussels have been clear enough about their rhetorical support for not moving borders in the Balkans.
- The EU commitment, however, is tainted. The five EU member states that do not recognize Kosovo weaken the Union’s effectiveness in the Balkans.
- Nothing would strengthen EU Special Envoy Lajcak’s hand more than a few more recognitions.
- The EU could also make itself more effective by levying sanctions on Dodik and his coterie in Republika Srpska. And both the US and EU should prepare sanctions on political forces in Montenegro if they continue to head in the Russian direction.
- I don’t like to say it, but the American commitment to sovereignty and territorial integrity in the Balkans is also clouded.
- On Friday Washington supported the Serbian challenge to the elected mayors, condemned Prime Minister Kurti’s decision to have them take their rightful places, and failed to denounce the Serb violence and deployment of the Serbian armed forces to the border.
- Pristina, we’ve got a problem.
- I understand Prime Minister Kurti’s desire to proceed with implementation of the election results and to ignore ethnic differences. He wants to exercise Kosovo’s sovereignty in its whole territory and believes in equal rights for all citizens.
- I am sympathetic with those goals. But has he got a plan for how to proceed now that Belgrade has mobilized its rioters to resist?
- The ethnicity of the mayors is not the problem. The problem is capability, in two senses: installing the mayors needed both international and local acceptance.
- As public figures in Pristina as well as the Council of Albanian Ambassadors have said, Kosovo needs its US and EU friends. It doesn’t have them on its side on this issue.
- The Kosovo police seem to have done reasonably well on Friday, but things got out of hand yesterday as Serbs attacked KFOR. My sympathies are with the Italians, Hungarians, Moldovans, and any others who were injured.
- I won’t however presume to tell Albin that he made a mistake. That will depend on how things evolve.
- But I would like to know what his plan is now? How will the mayors be kept safe? How will they be able to conduct their business in these circumstances?
- And I ask that we identify clearly what the problem is. The problem is Serb resistance. There are no substitutes for a modicum of local acceptance if you want the mayors to be effective.
- Belgrade’s objectives are clear: it wants to partition Kosovo and Bosnia, de facto if not de jure, as well as swallow Montenegro whole. Russia backs those objectives, which would weaken NATO and the EU.
- Pristina’s objectives should be just as clear: to assert its sovereignty and territorial integrity and bring the whole country into NATO and the EU as soon as possible.
- Those are also Ukraine’s objectives, which I believe they will achieve, sooner and easier than many expect, with US and EU assistance as well as broad local support, including among Russian speakers. Military victory is not guaranteed, but it is within sight.
- I am hoping Kosovo will do as well on its nonmilitary battlefield. But I repeat: Pristina, you’ve got a problem. You can’t get there without US and EU support as well as local acceptance.
- Reconstructing both will now need to be major objectives for Kosovo’s leadership.
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Washington goes full bore Belgrade
Secretary of State Blinken today tweeted:
We strongly condemn the actions by the Government of Kosovo that are escalating tensions in the north and increasing instability. We call on Prime Minister @albinkurti to immediately halt these violent measures and refocus on the EU-facilitated Dialogue.
This condemnation was in response to the Kosovo government installing elected mayors in four Serbian majority municipalities in northern Kosovo. The Serb populations almost entirely boycotted the election, under pressure from Belgrade. The Americans had backed the elections without criticizing Belgrade but then opposed the (Albanian) mayors taking office. While Senator Murphy has claimed that Kurti’s move was unexpected, the Prime Minister announced it two days ago.
No US condemnation of Serbia’s moves
Busloads of Serbs from Kosovo were being transported to Belgrade today, unobstructed, for President Vucic’s rent-a-crowd rally this evening. At the same time, Belgrade has put its armed forces on alert, in clear and unequivocal contradiction of the EU-sponsored normalization agreement it has supposedly accepted. It has also mobilized its thugs in northern Kosovo to physically obstruct the arrival of the elected mayors there.
There has been no US condemnation of Serbia’s moves, only Kosovo’s. Washington has essentially abandoned all pretense of neutrality and adopted several of Belgrade’s priorities as its own. This is not only true for the installation of the mayors, but also for the proposed Association of Serb Majority Municipalities inside Kosovo and the Open Balkans initiative Serbia is promoting to extend its control over Serbs in neighboring countries. Backing Belgrade’s “Serbian world” ethnonationalist goals has become Washington’s policy on the Balkans.
Kurti has the logic, but does he have the capability?
I am not privy to Prime Minister Kurti’s current thinking on the specific issue of the mayors. But he is a died-in-the-wool liberal democrat who believes in equal rights under the law. He is also what I would call a “sovereigntist.” Kurti believes Kosovo is, and should act like, a sovereign state. Those two characteristics make the installation of the mayors a logical move.
Logic alone cannot however cannot dictate policy. Capability also counts. It is limited in two ways: Kosovo has limited police forces available with which to deal with Serb violence against the mayors and it has obviously all too limited international support for their installation. A small country like Kosovo cannot afford to act unaware of its own limitations.
The Americans have capability but lack the logic
The Americans can make Kurti’s life difficult. But their position is lacking in logic. How do you back an election and not its legitimate results? How do you support equal rights but oppose installing elected officials because of their ethnicity? How do you condemn police action to protect elected mayors but not the rioters who attacked them? How do you claim the normalization agreement, which includes a pledge not to use military force, is legally binding but doesn’t prevent Serbian mobilization of its armed forces in response to a political conflict inside Kosovo?
The United States claims to stand for equal rights and respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all the existing states in the Balkans. It needs to draw the logical conclusions.
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Politico has background on the US decision on F16s for Ukraine.
Politico has this: BEIJING BLASTS U.S. ‘COERCIVE DIPLOMACY’: China’s foreign ministry chose the opening of the G7 meeting in Hiroshima, Japan on Friday to publish a 5,000 word screed accusing the U.S. of being the “inventor and master of coercive diplomacy.” The document lists examples ranging from the decades-long trade and economic embargo on Cuba to recent Treasury Department sanctions against China and Russia. The timing of the report’s release underscore’s Beijing’s sensitivity to the G7’s focus on countering Beijing’s economic coercion against countries that challenge Chinese policies. Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin declared the document “a good read” in a Friday press briefing.
And note that “5000 word screed.”
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. 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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– WSJ says US envisions Israel-like security guarantees for Ukraine.
– CNN says Pentagon has backed off efforts to combat extremism.
– Sinn Fein wins in Northern Ireland.
– NYT has long articles on the difficulties of adopting innovation.
– CBS says military contractor price-gouging.
– Biden predicts “thaw” in relations with China.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. 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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What the State Department forgot to say
This morning’s Chollet and Escobar pas de deux at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee demonstrated that the Senators who attended really know something about the Balkans. The questioning was pertinent and at times incisive. The responses were less so.
Of course the State Department Counselor and the Deputy Assistant Secretary with responsibility for the Balkans know what to say. They are for EU membership, democracy, sovereignty and territorial integrity. They are against Russian malfeasance, Chinese financing, corruption, and ethnonationalism.
It’s what they don’t say
It’s what they don’t say that really counts, starting from the premise: “Europe whole and free.” This 90s US foreign policy slogan is inapplicable today and for the forseeable future. Europe is not going to be whole and free any time soon. We’ll have to accept a line somewhere. That’s what the war in Ukraine is about: will Kyiv be on the Western side of the line, or will all or part of Ukraine be forced into a subserviant relationship with Russia?
While the Americans are trying to attract it with all the carrots they can think of, Belgrade has chosen definitively in recent years to move towards Moscow and Beijing. There is no sign of anything but rhetorical interest in EU membership. Progress in the EU accession process has ground to a halt. The political system in Serbia has veered towards autocracy. President Vucic and his minions, who include virtually the entire media landscape in Serbia, mouth ambitions to retake Kosovo (or part of it) and use the worst ethnic slurs available against Albanians. There really is nothing comparable happening in Kosovo.
As for the Belgrade/Pristina dialogue, Escobar claimed the February and March agreements on normalization are legally binding and being implemented, but when confronted with examples of President Vucic’s refusal to implement specific provisions he and Chollet retreated to bothsiderism. That was also their response on corruption in Belgrade as well. “We find it everywhere in the Balkans.” In recent memory, I can’t name a US official who has referred explicitly to the many and gross manifestations of organized crime and corruption in Serbia.
Chollet and Escobar were enthusiastic about the proposed Association of Serb Majority Municipalities (ASMM), claiming it would enable Serbs to integrate more into Kosovo and would have to be consistent with the Kosovo constitution. They ignored the Serb proposal for the ASMM, which is unequivocally intended to create an autonomous Serb entity, like Bosnia’s Republika Srpska, inside Kosovo, complete with executive powers. They were also enthusiastic for Serbia’s Open Balkans initiative, provided that it treats all the countries participating equally. They forgot to mention that Kosovo has not even been invited to Open Balkans because Belgrade doesn’t want to address it properly in the invitation.
Poor Bosnia
Bosnia suffered the worst from State Department amnesia. Yes, the officials said, the Bosnia constitution would need changes, in accordance with decisions by the EU and the Venice Commission. They forgot to mention that one of those decisions, by the European Court of Human Rights, was taken 14 years ago. The US gave up long ago on pressing for its implementation.
They liked the decisions of the HiRep that enabled formation of the government in the Bosnian Federation, but forgot to mention that one of them changed the way votes were counted after they were cast. The other was taken to iron out problems the first had created. The net result was to ensure that two ethnonationalist parties could rule in the Federation. Only one ethnonationalist party was dissastified with these decisions, Escobar claimed. He forgot to mention that that party and other dissenters just might represent more than a majority of the voters. Never mind the disgraceful act of changing the way votes are counted after they are cast.
The rest
I trust Macedonians won’t be too pleased to hear from Escobar that in order to join the EU they will have to change their constitution to mention their Bulgarian minority, which he failed to say numbers a few thousand (certainly less than 1% of the population). Nor will the Albanians in Serbia be pleased to hear that their numbers–almost certainly equal to or greater than the number of Serbs in northern Kosovo (and far more than the Bulgarians in Macedonia)–don’t merit mention of an Association of Albanian Majority Municipalities inside Serbia. Never mind Albanian seats in the Serbian parliament, to match the guaranteed Serb seats in the Kosovo parliament.
Escobar will be winging off to Podgorica for the Montenegrin presidential inauguration Saturday. No one bothered to mention that we owe the oderly and so far nonviolent change of power there to its current President, Milo Djukanovic, whom American and European diplomats have spent years deploring for alleged (but still unproven) corruption. The new President, Jakov Milatović, avows a pro-European stance but has more than warm relations with President Vucic in Belgrade. A lot will depend on June 11 parliamentary elections. I hope they are conducted as freely and fairly as those under Djukanovic.
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Tunisia merits pressure
Distinguished colleagues have addressed a letter to President Biden about Tunisia:
Dear Mr. President:
We write to you with growing alarm over Tunisia’s dramatic turn towards repression and authoritarian rule. During the recent Summit for Democracy, you eloquently spoke about the urgency of our current moment: “We’re at an inflection point in history, where the decisions we make today are going to affect the course of our world for the next several decades.”
Tunisia is part of this global story and struggle. At the start of your term, Tunisia was the last remaining democratic success story of the Arab uprisings. Today, its democracy is dying. What happens in Tunisia in the next critical weeks will reverberate in the region, signaling to competitors like China and Russia that the future of the Middle East aligns ever more closely with their own authoritarian vision.
The situation is dire. Since his coup in July 2021, President Kais Saied has dismantled every democratic institution in the country, pushing through a hyper-presidential system with no checks on his power. He has intensified his crackdown against dissidents, casually labeling them “cancers” and “traitors” and hauling them before military courts. He has jailed his opponents from across the political spectrum, including Ennahda leader Rached Ghannouchi, Democratic Current leader Ghazi Chaouachi, and National Salvation Front leaders Chaima Issa and Jawher ben Mbarek, among others. And he has incited violence against migrants and Black Tunisians, embracing racist conspiracies. We urge you to take practical steps to reverse these dangerous trends.
The United States should not reward such behavior with aid, loans, praise, and photo-ops. Lending our taxpayer dollars and legitimacy to Saied will only encourage other populist leaders to believe that they too can get away with dismantling democratic institutions. If the U.S. is truly serious about shoring up democracies worldwide, it must send a signal that there are real costs to democratic backsliding.
The Biden administration should immediately suspend all U.S. assistance to the Tunisian government, as it is legally bound to do after both military coups or civilian coups in which the military plays a decisive role. This has happened in Tunisia when the army shuttered the democratically-elected parliament. The U.S. should impose Magnitsky sanctions on Saied and his enablers, including the ministers of interior, defense, and justice, and not provide any funds, training, or equipment to these ministries while they persecute journalists, activists, and dissidents. The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) was correct to halt work on Tunisia’s $500 million Compact agreement, but formal suspension of the partnership by MCC’s board—chaired by Secretary of State Antony Blinken—would send an even stronger signal.
The pending $1.9 billion IMF loan—which would provide an economic lifeline to Saied’s regime—also represents an important lever. The United States should ask the IMF Executive Board to refuse a final agreement until Tunisia meets specific political conditions, including releasing political prisoners and establishing a genuinely inclusive national dialogue and political roadmap. After all, Saied’s government will be hard-pressed to follow through on its proposed economic reforms without the support of the major political parties, labor unions, and civil society organizations.
We believe such sustained pressure represents the best possible way to halt Tunisia’s authoritarian turn. The swift and universal condemnation of Saied’s racist rhetoric against migrants in February did lead his government to take some measures for their protection. Even if Saied is too dogmatic to change course, however, increased international pressure might lead those around him to stop facilitating his crackdown, limiting the damage he can do to the system. It can also signal to the opposition—as well as everyday Tunisians who are too afraid to speak out—that the U.S. is watching, and not bankrolling their repression.
Our goal should be to incentivize Tunisians across the political spectrum and across state institutions to reconsider the dangers of dictatorship, which, once entrenched, will be difficult to undo. To be sure, if Tunisia ended up defaulting on its debts, ordinary Tunisians would undoubtedly be affected. But they are already suffering under a seemingly never-ending economic crisis, which has only worsened since Saied’s presidential coup in July 2021. An economic strategy that is personalized and subject to the whims of an unpredictable leader is a recipe for continued chaos.
Some fear undue pressure from Washington could drive Tunisia into the arms of China. Such concerns are misplaced, given Beijing’s own constraints at present as well as the historic alignment of Tunisian state institutions with the West. Moreover, even with support from China, Tunisia will still need an IMF loan and U.S. assistance for its economy to recover and attract private investment. Washington must also recognize that the way we compete with China is not just to try and outspend them. Our approach must be to distinguish ourselves from China by bringing our values to the table.
The current crisis in Tunisia is emblematic of a broader trend the U.S. is likely to face going forward: new forms and manifestations of autocracy—often supported by our strategic rivals—challenging democratic values. Your administration has admirably and clearly declared which side it stands on in this debate. Today in Tunisia it has an opportunity to act on those convictions.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Amb. Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia
Amb. Jeffrey Feltman, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs
Amb. Jake Walles, former U.S. ambassador to Tunisia
Amb. Robert Ford, former U.S. ambassador to Syria, Algeria
Amb. Cynthia P. Schneider, former U.S. ambassador to The Netherlands
Elliot Abrams, former U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor
Stephanie T. Williams, former UN Senior Advisor on Libya and former US diplomat
Michele Dunne, former Director for North Africa, National Security Council (NSC)
David J. Kramer, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights & Labor
Tom Malinowski, former U.S. representative (D-NJ)
Kenneth Wollack, Chairman, National Endowment for Democracy
Matt Duss, former senior advisor to Sen. Bernie Sanders
Francis Fukuyuma, Stanford University
Larry Diamond, Stanford University
Sarah Leah Whitson, Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN)
Thomas Carothers, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Sarah Yerkes, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Shibley Telhami, University of Maryland
Courtney Freer, Emory University
Shadi Hamid, Brookings Institution
Sharan Grewal, College of William & Mary
Note: Organizational affiliations are listed for identification purposes only.
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