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).
Vucic meeting the special envoy of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov: “The Russian people are our brotherly people, and centuries of history have proven this more than once. Therefore, Russian-Serbian relations cannot be destroyed under any pressure.”
I like the hat.
Washington is sending strange signals in the Balkans. It has supported a decision by the international community High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina instituting a post-election change in the way votes determine outcomes. This favors ethnonationalist political parties aligned with Moscow. The Americans are canceling Kosovo ministerial visits with US officials. Washington wants their Prime Minister to delay insisting on Kosovo license plates in the Serb-majority northern municipalities of his country, without assurance that further delay will bring compliance.
All this seems disconnected, maybe even random and unimportant. It is neither.
It’s all about Belgrade
The through line here is Belgrade. Joe Biden was a strong supporter of Kosovo’s fight for liberation from Serbia. But he long ago decided Belgrade was the heavyweight in the Balkans. I testified in the Senate more than 15 years ago in front of him. He made it clear he supported getting Serbia into the EU accession process, even though it was patently unqualified at the time. Biden believed that would constrain Belgrade to move in the European direction.
He and his White House have now delegated responsibility for the Balkans to the State Department. There key players believe Serbian President Vucic is seriously committed to the EU accession process and also seriously concerned about the welfare of Serbs in neighboring countries. Pacifying Serbia has become a US policy objective. It welcomed recently a Serbian diplomat who used the occasion for notably undiplomatic remarks about Montenegro, a recent NATO member that has endured prolonged political instability. State cheers for Vucic’s unnecessary and divisive Open Balkans Initiative. That mostly empty box pretends to do things better done in other fora.
Too bad it isn’t so
There is little evidence that Vucic is serious about the EU. Serbia has made progress in recent years in implementing the technical requirements of the acquis communautaire. That is the easy part of qualifying for EU accession. The hard part is meeting the Copenhagen criteria. Those include democratic institutions, free media, an independent judiciary, rule of law, and an open, market-based economy. Serbia has made little progress on these and marched backwards on some. It has also failed to align its foreign policy with that of the EU, especially but not only on Russia sanctions.
On Serbs living in neighboring jurisdictions, Vucic’s minions advocate what they call the “Serbian world.” Yes, that’s just like the “Russian world” slogan that led Moscow to invade Ukraine. Vucic has sought and largely achieved dominance over Serb communities in Kosovo, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. In all three, Russian “hybrid warfare” is helping Serbia push for de facto if not de jure partition. Vucic aims to limit the authority of his neighbors’ state structures and create an intermediate level of Serb-dominated governance Belgrade controls. That is what the license plate issue is really about.
The new dividing line in Europe
America after the end of the Cold War hoped for a Europe whole and free. It is not going to happen any time soon. Europe is dividing between a NATO sphere in the west and a Russian-dominated sphere in the east. Serbia is opting to remain in the Russian-dominated sphere, along with Belarus and whatever Moscow can hold onto in Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia. Belgrade is also hoping to maintain the pipeline of EU accession funds it receives from Brussels. That is supposed to finance preparation for eventual membership, but Serbia uses it to fuel a state-dominated economy.
A Serb-controlled level of governance in its neighbors will be especially useful to Moscow. It The Russians will use it to de-stabilize present and prospective NATO members. That will make further Alliance enlargement a risky affair.
Ill-conceived and poorly executed
So what’s wrong with Washington policy on the Balkans? It is ill-conceived because based on faulty assumptions about Serbia’s EU ambitions and its activities in neighboring jurisdictions. US policy is also poorly executed. There is no excuse for changing the rules of vote counting after an election or failing to recognize the “Serbian world” for the peril it presents to Serbia’s neighbors and potential US allies.
The US needs to return to a Balkan policy that would support the sovereignty and territorial integrity of each of the Balkan states, as well as respect for the human rights of their citizens. That should include their right to decide democratically, without interference from Belgrade, on which side of the new line dividing Europe they choose to be. We can hope Serbia will change its mind about alignment with Russia, but that will require strategic patience, not pacifying Belgrade.
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).
Both my internet service and I have been out of commission the last few days, so I’ve missed lots of Stevenson’s army and other things. I’ll try to keep up now:
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).
The true takeaway from the last few election cycles is that the margins are razor-thin in pivotal races. This means that even if Trump does not command the following he once his, he can take his ball and go home and GOP turnout will take enough of a hit for Republicans to get shellacked. Maybe DeSantis and GOP party elites can buy him off somehow — I could imagine a pardon deal being proffered — but Trump hates looking like a beta male and this deal would do exactly that.
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).
America came to its senses Tuesday. Not 100%, but definitively enough. It defeated lots of Trumpy election deniers, supported everyone’s right to control their own body, and reaffirmed confidence in relatively civil discourse. This was a referendum election, one the Republicans were favored to win big because that is what happens in a mid-term election when your party does not control the White House, the President’s approval rating is low, inflation is north of 8%, and the minority party has gerrymandered House districts. It was above all a referendum on Trump. He lost.
The other news
That was the good news. The bad news is that the alternatives are at least as bad, if not worse, even when less repulsive. Trump will now be losing his grip on the Republican Party. But he is losing it in part to people who sound more sane and comport themselves with more dignity. Florida Governor De Santis is the big Republican winner of the night, by about 20%. He is a vote suppressing, gun-advocating, anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ, dog-whistling racist.
But he has somehow created the appearance of distance between himself and Trump, who views De Santis as his main rival within the Republican party. Trump calls him “de sanctimonious,” which is the only five syllable word Donald has ever uttered. The Florida Governor is in fact a less repulsive version of Trump: all for lowering taxes on the rich, cracking down on non-existent crime waves, and preventing the Federal government from protecting the country from epidemics.
The last shoe has not yet fallen
The Senate is still up for grabs. There are absentee votes to be counted in close-run Nevada and Arizona. The Georgia race will be decided in a run-off. The Democrats have a pretty good chance of winning at least 2 out of the 3 of these, which would give them the majority in a 50/50 split because the Vice President can preside and vote when needed.
The House is almost surely in Republican hands, but only by a handful of votes. Particularly galling for the Democrats is the loss of 4 seats in heavily Blue New York State, where however suburbs and rural counties tend red.
A Republican House with a Democratic Senate and President won’t be able to get any of its preferred partisan legislation passed. But it doesn’t plan to. It will focus on investigations of Biden Administration officials and of his son, Hunter. They won’t find much, but remember the Benghazi hearings. They found nothing of note but damaged Hillary Clinton.
The Republican House will also hold significant power over the budget, which it will need to pass. Ukraine aid and social spending will be among their targets. The so-called “budget ceiling” (the government’s credit card limit) will be reach in 2023, at which point Republicans will threaten to close the government. It’s not a threat that has helped them electorally, but it does often shift some finances.
The American election is like Kherson
The election outcome is a bit like the Russian retreat from Kherson in southern Ukraine. The victors are clear: Biden in the former and Ukraine in the later. But the victories are far from complete. The enemy lives to fight another day, perhaps from a modestly improved position.
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