I was in Kosovo last week to mark America’s 250th, along with colleagues sponsored by the Albanian American Foundation and the US Sesquicentennial Commission. Among other things, I received an honorary degree at University of Business and Technology (UBT), one of the two largest in the country. I prepared these remarks for the occasion, but I only used a fraction on that occasion. I used the rest during the week:
• It is a great pleasure to be back in Kosovo, where I have enjoyed a warm welcome many times for almost three decades.
• It is a particular pleasure to be at UBT, where I don’t really need to lecture you on the importance of quality education to building a democratic society. But I will say that I appreciate how much you are contributing and think you deserve enormous credit for investing, day in and day out, in Kosovo’s future.
• I first came to Pristina in 1998, when a Serbian Administrator was still sitting in what became the President’s office. The welcome then wasn’t so warm.
• When he told me there were no human rights abuses in Kosovo and Metohija, I invited him to visit the Council for the Defense of Human Rights and Freedoms, whose office was 200 meters or so from his.
• He refused of course. So I went on for a chat with Adem Demaci, who had a young, long-haired English-speaking assistant named Albin Kurti.
• Those were difficult times.
• Younger Albanians were going to school in basements and apartments. The Mother Teresa Society was doing its best to provide health care. The Serbian police were beating up peaceful demonstrators. And the Kosovo Liberation Army was hiding in the mountains and occasionally raiding the Serbian security forces.
• People in the Balkans like to say nothing has changed, but I’ve been around long enough to know a lot has changed.
• GDP per capita in Kosovo is up by a factor of about 6 since 1998 and has more than doubled since 2008, even considering inflation. Kosovars can travel in Europe visa-free and enjoy the use of the euro as their currency. You have your own security forces, which will be ready to join NATO by 2028.
• I hope you feel, as I do, that things are much improved. Kosovo is free and at peace. It governs itself, the Serbian MUP and army are gone, and we are doing what few in Serbia would care to do: celebrate American Independence Day.
• Those are great privileges, as is the prospect of NATO and EU membership. We’d all be happier if things moved faster, but they are moving.
• That’s the good news. I have bad news as well.
• Recently I was asked to speak in Albania on whether America is still America.
• My answer was no, America is not still the America that liberated both Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s.
• America has changed. Nor will it revert to anything like what you and I would prefer for several more years, at best.
• By the time America returns to something resembling what President Ronald Reagan called the shining city on the hill, the world will have changed.
• Let me focus first on the US, then a bit on Kosovo and its progress toward EU accession.
• The presidencies of Donald Trump have shifted American foreign policy away from its post-World War II focus on defending and expanding the democratic world.
• The America that you and I grew up with—an American committed to equal rights—is newer and less established than you think.
• It started in 1948 with integration of the Army and in 1954 with the Supreme Court decision to integrate America’s schools.
• It really took full legal form only with implementation of the Voting Rights Act of 1964, which ensured Black people in the American South could vote.
• Until then, racial discrimination throughout the country and white supremacists in Congress were still common.
• We like to forget it, but before the second World War, we had a major America First movement—yes, that is what they called themselves—that disliked immigrants and was sympathetic to the rise of fascism.
• The liberal democratic order that you are fond of was gestated during World War II and born in the early Cold War.
• I know the significance it has for Albanians in Albania and in Kosovo—I’ve seen the movie “Lamerica.” But the America of Albanian dreams is a recent invention.
• Yes, our Declaration of Independence, whose 250th anniversary we are celebrating, asserted that all men are created equal. But the men they referred to were property-owning white males.
• Only generations of political protest extended equal rights to women, the poor, minorities, and gay people.
• Our Constitution created a governing system that gave—and still gives—more weight to less populous states (because all states have two senators, no matter their population).
• That also gives less populous states an advantage in electing the President via the Electoral College.
• The original version of the Constitution even distributed representation based not on the population of voters, but on population including 3/5 of a person for each slave.
• Even today, America remains remarkably segregated de facto in housing, education, and religion.
• The conservative Republican majority on the Supreme Court has now almost completely gutted the 1964 Voting Rights Act.
• It wants a colorblind approach that will sharply reduce the number of Black representatives in Congress. And ensure white dominance in practice.
• All you have to do now is claim that the new Congressional districts you draw are based on political rather than racial criteria. That ensures that they will pass muster in the courts.
• But that is a distinction without a difference. Black voters are rendered powerless by redistricting in Republican-controlled states.
• You may well ask, when will this approach end? When can we have the America of our youth back?
• The answer of course is that I don’t know. The nice thing about American elections is that you don’t know the results in advance.
• But certainly, today President Trump is unpopular. He is underwater (that is more disapprove than approve) on virtually every important issue: the economy, prices, jobs, taxes, immigration, the Iran war, and foreign policy in general.
• I would not have qualms about predicating a Blue Wave if the election were going to be held tomorrow.
• But I won’t make any predictions for November. Between now and then the Trump Administration will be trying hard to limit Democratic success, for good reason.
• If the Democrats win at least one of the Houses of Congress, they will be able to stop some of Trumpism domestically.
• They will likely focus on curbing corruption in the sale of pardons, in the assignment of Pentagon contracts to companies his family has an interest in, and in the distribution of supposed compensation to the January 6 rioters.
• I hope they will also admit Washington DC and Puerto Rico as states, each with two senators. That would undo the bias in the Senate towards the Republicans.
• But only with control of the White House and a new majority on the Supreme Court will America reverse the worst of Trumpism. That won’t happen until January 2029, at the earliest.
• Meanwhile, we will have to live with its mistakes.
• They are glaring in foreign policy, which admittedly is not something most American voters pay attention to. But I know it matters to you.
• Some of the pro-democracy rhetoric remains. But Trump’s foreign policy has emphasized a geopolitical, “might makes right” approach that always existed.
• In the past it was deployed only when necessary. The American mantra was “Multilaterally if we can, unilaterally if we must.”
• Kosovo owes its independence to a unilateral moment, which the Europeans joined.
• The geopolitical approach is now dominant. Trump has said he follows only his own morality and his own mind. Unfortunately, neither is capable of good judgment. And he is a habitual law breaker.
• Trump is also emphasizing deals, transactions that benefit the United States. Those are in place of international community consensus, solidarity, consultation and cooperation.
• This approach has undermined NATO and left the US isolated from its Allies in going to war in the Middle East.
• In geopolitical terms, which are the ones Trump values, Russia and China are the important countries today. They consistently get the benefit of doubt from Trump.
• No one else really counts, unless they do what Trump wants.
• I can offer you lots of explanations for his softness toward Putin: personal rapport, ideology, financial benefits, kompromat, and others. But I can’t tell you which one is correct.
• All I know is that Trump can be relied on to be soft on Putin and hard on Zelensky. That’s true even when Moscow rejects his peace initiatives and targets US troops in the Middle East.
• In the Middle East, it was Binyamin Netanyahu who got the best of Trump.
• The Israeli Prime Minister has dragged the US into war against Iran not once, but twice.
• They gained something from the first war. Most of the Iranian nuclear program was destroyed.
• But the second one is ending in a demonstration of American weakness at the negotiating table. It is no less than a strategic defeat.
• Trump drove the United States into a dead end that was too narrow for a U-turn.
• The result is Iranian control over the strait of Hormuz, no international inspection of Iran’s nuclear program, giant American military and reputational costs, serious physical, reputational, and economic damage to Gulf Arab allies, worldwide increases in oil, gas, and fertilizer prices, and impending recession.
• Not to mention a windfall in oil revenues for Russia. Trump amplified that with his decision to relieve Russia of sanctions. And he gave China a close-up view of the latest American military capabilities.
• What, you might well ask, does all this mean for the Balkans, and specifically for Kosovo?
• First, the Americans have stopped caring much about multi-ethnic democracy and rule of law in the Balkans.
• This is clear in their de-sanctioning and welcoming to the White House of Milorad Dodik, who represented a serious threat to Bosnia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
• It is also clear in their response to a Congressional request for a report on security and democracy in the Western Balkans.
• What they got from the Administration was a report on Stability and Prosperity. That is a big change.
• This is not surprising. They don’t care about multiethnic democracy or rule of law in the US. Why should they care about it in Kosovo or Bosnia?
• Second, Washington’s approach has become far more transactional.
• The de-sanctioning of Dodik and support for the Bosnia gas pipeline project are both linked to Trump’s cronies.
• The connection is not an accident.
• But you may ask, why is President Vucic not getting a warm welcome?
• Maybe because of the failure of the Trump family’s proposed hotel in Belgrade? Maybe because someone convinced President Trump that Serbia had harbored hackers committed to his defeat in the 2016? Maybe because he hasn’t hired the right lobbyists, or offered good enough deals to the Trump family and friends?
• But Vucic isn’t getting much criticism either. Washington doesn’t complain about his retreat from democracy and his corruption. The Americans do nothing to support free media, an independent judiciary, or the protests in Serbia.
• And they did nothing serious in responding to the kidnapping of three Kosovo policeman, the murder of another at Banjska, and hired rioting against NATO forces.
• When I ask why not, the answer is “stability.”
• I am generally a critic of the idea of stabilocracy. Ask Gruevski, Djukanovic, or Bakir Izetbegovic whether the Europeans and Americans were prepared to help them in the name of stability.
• But Serbia is a clear case: a regime supported because it promises stability, even though it is a primary source of instability.
• Washington is afraid that Belgrade might upset the apple cart in the Balkans, causing problems the US can ill afford to solve under current world conditions.
• Some countries in the Balkans are trying to benefit from Washington’s transactional approach.
• I would put Albania and Kosovo in this category with their willingness to join the Board of Peace and offer troops for a possible stabilization force in Gaza.
• I cannot criticize Tirana and Pristina for trying to butter up Trump, even if I doubt the Stabilization Force will ever deploy.
• I hope Rama and Kurti are asking for something valuable in return. If Trump is transactional, you can be transactional in return.
• For Albania the main objective should be EU membership. For Kosovo, it is NATO membership.
• Both are problematic for the Americans.
• NATO is still standing, even if on uncertain ground. But it will not be easy to convince the Trump Administration to support membership for tiny Kosovo, which would bring marginal military capacity and some risk to the Alliance.
• Secretary of State Rubio made that clear in recent testimony in Congress.
• Realistically, Kosovo cannot hope in a Trump Administration to benefit from Article 5. Trump has weakened even its deterrent effect by casting doubt on whether he would defend anyone in Europe.
• But the Alliance can still help with planning, training, and inter-comparability, which will be vital for Kosovo’s defense.
• I hope volunteering for Gaza service will help to convince Washington that Kosovo will benefit NATO. So too will its acquisition of helicopters and other high value military hardware.
• Kosovo joining would be an important signal to the rest of the Balkans, whose democracies need to be able to defend themselves.
• On the EU, I have bad news. The Trump Administration regards the EU as a rival and seeks to weaken it.
• That’s why they supported Brexit and have levied tariffs against Brussels. That’s why the EU and enlargement are not mentioned in the State Department paper published in May.
• Trump has fought with Denmark about Greenland, Germany about Ukraine, France about Iran, and Italy about the Pope. The list is endless.
• The frontrunners, Montenegro and Albania, can expect no support for their membership in the EU from the US.
• They may even face opposition, which I hope they will defy.
• For me, the EU today is a vital proponent of liberal democracy and the rules-based world order as well as a serious counterweight to Trumpism.
• Joining it will engage Kosovo in a noble enterprise: ensuring that the ideals of the rules-based international order are preserved through the current geopolitical, “might makes right,” madness.
• The biggest challenge for both Kosovo and Albania is of course rule of law. I hope you will do everything possible to exceed the EU’s expectations.
• But there is another, less visible problem: I doubt the EU is going to be willing to admit new small members with a veto.
• I did not like the Rama/Vucic proposal, which smelled like an effort to avoid the rule of law requirements.
• But I don’t think Podgorica or Tirana—or Pristina—should resist extension of qualified majority voting to foreign policy. We all need to learn the lesson of Hungary’s invidious behavior under Orban.
• By the time you are firmly in the EU, I hope America will be returning to something like its former self, sometime before America’s 260th birthday.
• But the world will have changed. I hope the aggressors in both Ukraine and Iran will have been defeated, strategically if not militarily.
• If that happens, Russia will be in renewed decline.
• China will be facing demographic implosion. Perhaps America’s Asian allies will have realized that they will need to be able to defend themselves.
• Europe will be a stronger pole within NATO as well as a stronger economic and political force in the world.
• America will need to renegotiate its re-entry into the liberal democratic world. Maybe Kosovo will be able to help!
• I won’t comment on Kosovo’s election of a president and the government formation process except to say this: I hope you get it done quickly. Kosovo needs more than a caretaker government to make important decisions about its economy, membership in NATO, and relations with the United States and Serbia.
• I’ve made my views clear on the Specialist Chambers in The Hague: I think it was unjust to keep the indictees in prison for five years before a verdict and I don’t like the charges of criminal conspiracy against the KLA leadership. What they did to protect Kosovars was certainly a crime under Serbian law, but it should not be a crime to resist oppression under international law. I regret supporting creation of the tribunal, which I understood would focus on the false allegations of organ trafficking and associated murder charges. It did not do that.
• The natural gas pipeline issue is a difficult one. All other things being equal, of course I would like to see Kosovo using American natural gas. But all other things are not equal. There are cost and construction challenges that must be weighed carefully. I trust the next Kosovo government will do that.
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