Month: April 2013
Peace Picks April 9th- April 12th
1. Lessons Learned from Iraq and How They Apply to North Africa
Date and Time: April 9, 10:00-11:30 am
Location: US Institute of Peace
2301 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.
Speakers: Amb. William B. Taylor, Jr., John Nagl, Manal Omar
Description: Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) Stuart Bowen on March 6 released SIGIR’s final report for Congress, ‘Learning From Iraq,’ which details the accomplishments of the U.S. reconstruction efforts in Iraq. The report provides an ‘instructive picture of what was the largest stabilization and reconstruction operation ever undertaken by the United States (until recently overtaken by Afghanistan).’ Additionally, the report outlines seven lessons that the U.S. should implement to improve its approach to future stabilization and reconstruction operations. The event will highlight SIGIR’s experience in Iraq and examine the major problems it discovered, such as America’s ‘ad hoc’ approach, the effectiveness of oversight, funding challenges, and the larger issue of nation-building. Experts will explore how lessons learned from Iraq can be applied to other American-led efforts, such as those associated with emerging democracies. Please join us on April 9, 2013 from 10:00am to 11:30M for what promises to be a relevant and timely discussion.
Register for this event here: http://www.usip.org/events/lessons-learned-iraq-and-how-they-apply-north-africa
2. How the United States and Europe Can Cooperate in the Middle East
Date and Time: April 9, 6:00-7:30 pm
Location: Johns Hopkins SAIS – Rome Building
1619 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C.
806
Speakers: Charles Ries
Description: Charles Ries, vice president, international and senior fellow at the RAND Corporation and a SAIS graduate, will discuss this topic.Note: A reception will immediately follow the event in Room 812, Rome Building.
Register for this event here: http://sais-jhu.edu/events/2013-04-09-180000-2013-04-09-193000/how-united-states-and-europe-can-cooperate-middle-east
3. Energy Developments in the Persian Gulf
Date and Time: April 10, 6:00-7:30 pm
Location: Lindner Family Commons, Room 602 1957 E Street, NW
Speakers: Bijan Khajehpour, Siamak Namazi, and Ambassador Edward Skip Gnehm (as Moderator).
Description: As Iraq reemerges as a major oil producer after years of domestic turmoil, Iran continues to develop its petroleum sector despite economic sanctions. Focusing on energy sectors in Iran and Iraq, the panelists will discuss the influence of energy developments on regional relations. They will also highlight important trends in regional oil production and consumption. Dr. Bijan Khajehpour is a managing and founding partner of Atieh International, a Vienna-based management consulting firm, and holds a Ph.D. in Business Administration from the International School of Management in Paris. Siamak Namazi is the general manager of Access Consulting Group, a Dubai-based private regional consultancy, and holds a MBA from the London Business School and a MS in Urban and Regional Planning from Rutgers University.
Register for this event here: https://docs.google.com/a/aucegypt.edu/forms/d/1rE8VLjnFI8ksIKmRARxmVyQYf_D2eQXXqjwI1f7HU5o/viewform
4. Iraq: Policy and National Security Challenges for the Future
Date and Time: April 11, 6:30-8:00 pm
Location: Mortara Center for International Affairs
Speakers: James F. Jeffrey, Kenneth Pollack, David Pollock, Mr. Ahmed Ali
Description: Ten years after the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Iraq remains a geopolitically vital state in the midst of questionable challenges of political, security, and natural resource instability. Join top Iraqi experts Dr. Kenneth Pollack, Dr. David Pollock, and Mr. Ahmed Ali and the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, James F. Jeffery, in assessing the challenges to Iraq’s future development, the challenges and opportunities Iraq continues to pose for US regional and national security interests, and exploring how Iraq fits into a broader regional picture with numerous other security challenges, from Iran to Syria.
Register for this event here: http://dc.linktank.com/event/iraq_policy_and_national_security_challenges_for_the_future#.UWLyRGBU05w
5. The Turkish American Alliance: Opportunities and Challenges
Date and Time: April 12, 9:30-11:00 am
Location: Foundation for Defense of Democracies
1726 M Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036
Suite 700
Speakers: Soner Cagaptay, Douglas J. Feith, Jonathan Schanzer, Gonul Tol
Description: How does Turkey’s Syria policy help the United States? How do Turkey’s financial ties to Iran and Hamas complicate the Turkish-American relationship? How seriously does Turkey take its counter-terror finance responsibilities? What does the recent rapprochement between Ankara and Jerusalem mean for future ties between these two US allies?
Please join FDD for a conversation with Soner Cagaptay of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Douglas Feith former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy under the Bush Administration, Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and Gönül Tol of the Middle East Institute’s Center for Turkish Studies.
Register for this event here: http://www.defenddemocracy.org/events/
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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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Painful
Johns Hopkins President Ron Daniels wrote to the university community today:
There is extremely difficult news today. A recent member of our community, Anne Smedinghoff, a 2009 graduate of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and a U.S. diplomat, has been killed in Afghanistan.
News reports say that Anne was killed Saturday in an attack by a suicide bomber as she and a group of other Americans were driving to donate textbooks for Afghan school students. She is reported to be the first U.S. diplomat killed since the attacks last year on U.S. consular facilities in Libya.
Anne, who was 25, joined the U.S. Foreign Service just after her Johns Hopkins graduation and, according to a statement released by her parents, “absolutely loved the work she was doing” in public diplomacy, engaged in direct outreach to the Afghan people. Her parents, Tom and Mary Beth, tell us that Anne “was always looking for opportunities to reach out and help to make a difference in the lives of those living in a country ravaged by war.”
What work could possibly be more important? What more could we possibly ask of a Johns Hopkins graduate than to risk everything to help those who have next to nothing?
Her selfless action for others was nothing new. One of our young trustees, Anne’s 2009 classmate Christopher Louie, says she was “a rock star.” He rode with her in an annual cross-country bicycle trip organized by Johns Hopkins students and alumni known as the 4K for Cancer. It raises money to support cancer patients and their families.
Anne majored in international studies and was a co-chair of the 2008 student-run Foreign Affairs Symposium, called “A Decade of Discussion.” It was an examination of changes and continuities in politics, economics, human rights, war and technology over the previous 10 years; one of the guest speakers was Kimberly Dozier, a CBS News correspondent wounded in Iraq.
Anne was also an active member of Kappa Alpha Theta and a founding member of the Johns Hopkins chapter of Rho Lambda, the national sorority leadership recognition society. She was also elected to the Order of Omega, a national fraternity and sorority leadership honor society.
Anne’s passing brings to mind war-related deaths of three other young Johns Hopkins community members in recent years. Political science graduate student Nicole Suveges, who was also a civilian Army contractor working in Iraq while doing research for her dissertation, was one of four Americans and seven others killed in an explosion in Baghdad in June 2008. In the spring of 2007, Lt. Colby Umbrell ’04 and Capt. Jonathan Grassbaugh ’03, both of the U.S. Army, were killed in action in Iraq.
Secretary of State John Kerry said today that he met Anne Smedinghoff about two weeks ago when he was in Afghanistan. He called her “vivacious, smart, capable, chosen often by the ambassador there to be the lead person because of her capacity.”
Let us all keep in our hearts the friends and family of the three military members and one Defense Department civilian who were killed with Anne, and with the four other State Department staff members who were injured.
Katherine Newman, dean of the Krieger School, joins me in extending our deepest sympathies, and those of the entire Johns Hopkins community, to Anne’s parents and family and to her many friends, especially her Johns Hopkins friends. May they all be consoled by their memories of her vibrant, valuable, well-lived life and by our appreciation of the absolutely vital work she was doing when she died. As Dean Newman said today, Anne represented everything we believe in as a university and gave her life in service of peace.
We at Johns Hopkins are honored to have had Anne, however briefly, in our midst.
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Hobson’s nuclear choices
No one seems overwrought that the latest nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 (that’s US, UK, France, Russia, China + Germany) ended inconclusively yesterday in Almaty, Kazakhstan. An agreement on the eve of Iran’s presidential election campaign (voting is scheduled for June 14) was not likely. Iran is looking for acknowledgement of its “right” to enrich uranium, even if it limits the extent of enrichment and the amount of enriched material. The P5+1, led by European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, are looking for strict limits on enrichment (to 5% or below, with most more highly enriched materials shipped out of the country) and tight international inspections without acknowledging Iran’s right to enrich. They are also looking for suspension of enrichment at Iran’s underground facility at Fordo and a strict accounting for past activities, which appear to have included some nuclear weapons development.
There are related non-nuclear issues on which the gaps may be greater. Iran wants sanctions relief up front as well as cooperation on Syria and Bahrain. The Western members of the P5+1 want to maintain sanctions until they have satisfactory commitments and implementation that prevent Iran from ever having a nuclear weapons program. They are not willing to soften their support for the revolution in Syria against Iran’s ally Bashar al Asad or for the Sunni minority monarchy in Bahrain, which faces a Shia protest movement that Iran supports.
The Israelis are the only ones who seem seriously perturbed:
“This failure was predictable,” Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s minister of strategic affairs, said in a statement. “Israel has already warned that the Iranians are exploiting the talks in order to play for time while making additional progress in enriching uranium for an atomic bomb.” He added, “The time has come for the world to take a more assertive stand and make it unequivocally clear to the Iranians that the negotiations games have run their course.”
But there is precious little they can do about the situation. An Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities will do relatively little damage but will end the prospect of a negotiated solution and make Tehran redouble its efforts to get nuclear weapons. President Obama is in no hurry to do the more thorough job the Americans are capable of. He seems satisfied that there is still time. The Iranians have in fact been slowing their accumulation of 20% enriched uranium by converting some of it to fuel plates for their isotope production reactor, which makes the material difficult to enrich further. The Israelis may not like it, but it looks as if everyone will hold their breath until after the Iranian election, when the question of further meetings and a possible agreement will arise again.
In the meanwhile, the Iranians will be watching North Korea closely. It has tested several nuclear weapons and presumably made more. Pyongyang is sounding committed not just to keeping them but to acquiring the missile capability to deliver them. While the press makes a great deal of Kim Jong-un’s threats against the United States, he represents a much more immediate threat to South Korea and Japan. If he manages to hold on to his nuclear weapons and thereby stabilizes his totalitarian regime, the Iranian theocrats will read it as encouragement to continue their own nuclear quest.
With the “sequester” budget cuts forcing retrenchment on many fronts, Washington is trying for negotiated solutions and hesitating to enforce its will that neither Iran nor North Korea acquire serious nuclear capabilities. It is hoping the Chinese will help with Pyongyang, which nevertheless seems increasingly committed to maintaining and expanding its nuclear capabilities. Tehran has slowed its accumulation of nuclear material but is expanding its technological capability to move rapidly if a decision is made to move ahead. President Obama could soon face a Hobson’s choice in both cases: either act militarily, despite the costs and consequences, or accept two new nuclear powers, despite the costs and consequences.
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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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Black smoke and fortitude
The EU-sponsored talks between Belgrade and Pristina concerning northern Kosovo and related issues ended last night without an agreement. The delegations returned home to consider their options. The Kosovo delegation appears reasonably satisfied with whatever is on the table, which presumably meets Prime Minister Thaci’s requirement that any agreement be consistent with the Kosovo constitution (which incorporates the Ahtisaari Comprehensive Peace Settlement).
Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Vucic offered to resign. This I suppose means that he was the stickler. This is not as surprising as some may imagine. While allowing “Socialist” Prime Minister Dacic lots of rope (to hang himself with) in the bilateral dialogue, “Progressives” President Nikolic and Vucic have been absolutely committed to maintaining Serbia’s claim to sovereignty over all of Kosovo. They will also want a deal for the Serbs in northern Kosovo that includes police and courts as well as most other things outside Pristina’s control. Why they thought they could achieve either of these goals is beyond me.
Lady Ashton, who has handled this negotiation well, now needs to wait the Serbs out. No one in Belgrade ever agreed to a deal until the very last moment, hoping to get more by holding out. Ashton does not report on progress in the talks until mid-April. Letting Nikolic and Vucic contemplate the loss (at least for a couple of years) of the opportunity to open accession negotiations with the EU is the only way to get them to move from whatever position they’ve dug themselves into.
Vucic in particular has a lot at stake. He has been riding high on anti-corruption efforts, including some that have embarrassed Dacic. It had been widely anticipated that Nikolic would call early elections, hoping to capitalize while blaming Dacic for any loss in the Kosovo negotiations. I suppose it is possible for the Progressives to do well in elections by saying that they chose Kosovo over the EU, but if they do that they will be nailing the door to EU accession shut for a good long time. It would be much better for Serbia to go to early elections with an EU date for accession talks announced.
Suzana Grubjesic, the minister in charge of EU integration, was in Brussels with the Serbian delegation. I trust she will tell her bosses how dumb it would be to pass up this opportunity. Serbia needs the funds that come with accession talks. There is also a real possibility the EU could close the political door to new members, even though Serbia has been moving relatively quickly to meet the technical requirements. The euro crisis is not yet history. If it gets worse, Serbia could find itself on the slow boat to EU membership, along with Kosovo.
A lot now depends on something the EU is often lacking: fortitude. But this is a case where the EU requirement for consensus does not necessarily lead to a lowest common denominator solution. All 27 members have to agree to open accession talks with Serbia. German Chancellor Merkel has been vital to keeping the EU dialogue on track. If she remains stalwart in insisting on dissolution of the parallel Serbian structures in northern Kosovo, we could see not only progress in normalizing relations between Kosovo and Serbia but also an EU that learns to use its diplomatic clout well.
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