Tag: European Union
Bosnia needs to get boring
Sead Numanovic of Dnevni Avaz asked me to comment on today’s election in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Here is how I responded this morning, before results were available:
The election is important in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as it has been four years since the last one. It is widely believed that the performance of the national and entity governments has not fulfilled the voters’ expectations. But we have to wait and see how this disappointment manifests itself in the election results. It is vital that not only voting but also counting and tabulation be done in a way that inspires voter confidence. I understand there are a large number of Bosnian observers. That is a good thing.
What B/H politicians do after the election will of course depend on the results. My hope is that Bosnia can undergo the same transition that Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania and Serbia have already entered: a transition from what [Croatian Foreign Minister] Vesna Pusic calls “heroic” politics of national identity to a “boring” politics of delivering services to citizens, building up the rule of law, and preparing for European Union accession.
The problem in Bosnia is that the Dayton constitution presents barriers to this transition by rewarding politicians who represent only the interests of their own ethnic group and not the interests of Bosnia as a whole or its citizens as individuals. Changing that will require constitutional amendments as well as electoral and other reforms. I can only hope that the election results will be such as to permit those changes to be undertaken. Otherwise I fear Bosnia and Herzegovina will continue to lag other countries in the Balkans and remain at the tail end of the queue for EU accession.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Does size matter?
This week unexpectedly brought the inevitable news that China’s GNP exceeds US GNP. The sky did not fall. In fact, the crossover likely happened some time ago. No one noticed. Nor does this development make China’s the largest economy on earth. The European Union still holds that trophy, if you count its 28 member states as a single entity. You should, at least for economic purposes.
That gives us a hint of whether size matters. No one even mentions when the EU surpassed the US, because it doesn’t really matter. Europe is still a pygmy in world power rankings. Its economy is large, but for the moment not growing fast (maybe not even growing), and its military capabilities are limited and shrinking. Power is in the eye of the beholder. What the world beholds in Europe is wealth but not power. It projects an image of success but stagnation or even decline. The world admires Europe, but it does not respect it.
The US, some would say, is in danger of falling into that same category. It is important for perspective to remember the last time the US suffered a panic about the growing economic power of a potential rival. That was the 1990s, when Japan loomed large. Clyde Prestowitz’s 1993 bestseller subtitled We Are Giving Our Future to Japan and How to Reclaim It now sells for a penny. The Japanese economy as stagnated for two decades as its population ages and declines.
China matters more than Europe and Japan, because it combines rapid economic growth with expanding military and technological capability. America has little to fear in the coming decade or so, so long as our allies in Asia do not trigger a crisis over some East or South China Sea island or reef. But if China continues to grow and invest as it has in the last ten years it will be a serious rival ten, or certainly twenty, years from now. There is no lack of American commentators warning us of this, the most recent Wes Clark in this morning’s New York Times.
Even then though the US will likely still be its military superior. The US is currently spending more than three times what China spends on its military (not corrected for purchasing power), which is close to twice China’s ratio of military expenditure to GDP. China has a long way to go still if it to catch up.
Military challenge is not however the big problem China poses. China will be far more problematic if it fails to grow and prosper. The Hong Kong “occupy” movement is promising because it opens a crack in China’s one-party autocracy. But it is also a warning that chaos in China is possible. Either slowing economic growth or growth so rapid that it ignites serious inflation could lead to eventual recession and growing unrest. China’s financial institutions are in no better shape than Japan’s were when it took a dive into no growth. No capitalist economy has proven itself immune to the business cycle. Even if growth remains strong, modernization theory predicts that China will face irresistible pressures to democratize. No autocracy has proven itself permanently immune to instability and middle class aspirations.
In any event, China will not grow at 7-8% forever. It is also aging rapidly, a result of its decades of one-child policy. This means real difficulty in meeting future social security needs of its elderly, and real limitations on its future labor force. This on top of structural problems in its financial sector, inefficient state-owned enterprises and other hangovers from the past make it unlikely the world can count on a China as reliable in its growth spurt as it has been for the last decade. And economic failure at home could give an autocratic China incentives to embark on adventurism abroad.
So size does matter, because Chinese economic failure of any sort in coming decades will make a big difference. A much more negative difference from the American perspective than its success.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Where strong men rule
I spent most of last week in Moscow talking with Russian Middle East experts. It was a deeply saddening experience. Not because of the Middle East: that is a gloomy subject even in Washington DC. It was above all Ukraine, but more broadly Putin’s Russia that darkened the mood.
First, the good news: Moscow looks good, the Russians I met were friendly and helpful, and the Bolshoi Opera is once again open. Contrary to my expectations, downtown the skyline has not changed much, Lenin is still in Red Square (though it is unclear how often his mausoleum is open or whether anyone bothers to visit it), and traffic is light compared other European capitals. Skyscrapers have not been allowed in the center. I saw them only at a distance from the Foreign Ministry, near the Arbat market. Most of the older buildings in the center are renovated, some like the GUM department store beautifully. Ditto the churches.
Walking streets lined with high-end fashion as well as low-end chic lace the center. As in the Gulf petro-states, the number of customers seems inadequate to support the investment. Recently enforced parking rules have cleared the streets of double parked cars and limited the number of people interested in paying a couple of dollars per hour for a space. Drivers are surprisingly respectful of pedestrians and each other. Public spaces (Red Square, parks, walking streets) are well-groomed. Security guards, private and public, are everywhere. Order prevails, at least in the center.
The smiling Moscow I found on the street evaporated quickly in the meetings I attended. Ukraine cast a long shadow. American and Russian leaders, the Russians said, are not communicating. There is a lack of trust. The media are biased. Russia has pursued integration with the rest of the world only to find itself blocked by sanctions, even after the recent ceasefire in Ukraine. US/Russia relations are at a nadir. Is it wise to sacrifice global issues for the sake of Kiev? Fascism is reemerging in Ukraine, which the West is using as a pretext for blocking Russia. All Russia wants is for Ukraine not to join NATO, for the Black Sea not to become a NATO lake threatening to Russia, and for the Russian navy to remain in Sevastopol. Crimea did not join Ukraine voluntarily. There is no reason why it shouldn’t return to Russia.
From the American perspective, the Russians are in denial. They deny their army has anything to do with the rebellion in Ukraine. They ask Americans to understand that Ukraine for them is an emotionally searing internal question, apparently unaware that this implies that they do not recognize the independence or sovereignty of their neighbor. They deny Ukraine the right to make a free choice about joining the European Union and NATO. They fail to mention the downing of the Malaysian airliner, the deaths of Russian soldiers, or the photographic evidence of Russian army tanks and other heavy equipment crossing the border. They insist that Russia is in no way involved in Ukraine, even while trying to justify anything Moscow and its proxies might be doing there.
The Russian attitude on Ukraine is linked to broader themes. The Russians I spoke with do not regard Moscow as having lost the Cold War. It liberated itself from the Soviet Union, defeated totalitarianism and initiated a democratic transition on its own. While this was achieved under Boris Yeltsin, no one has anything good to say about him. President Putin is viewed as the best available leader, attractive because of his efforts to restore Russian power. Nostalgia for that power is palpable: even a casual conversation produces admiration for the Soviet Union. Czarist Russia is not far behind in the memory pantheon. The opposition to Putin is all more nationalist than he is, claim his defenders. Americans should view Russia as an equal, a superpower that Washington should treat with caution and respect.
It is not easy to convey what the Russians had to say about the Middle East with this static in the air. Harking back to Condoleezza Rice’s “transformational diplomacy,” we were told rigid American ideologically driven efforts to export democracy triggered the Arab uprisings, even though democracy is inappropriate for traditional societies in which family relations are predominant. The UN, the G7, the G8 and the G20 are all fronts for American ambitions, which are driven by an “energy elite” thirsting for hydrocarbons (no mention was made of America’s soaring energy production and reduced dependence on imports). Ukraine is part of the American democratization program. Ultimately, Washington aims at regime change in Moscow.
The Russians see what is happening in Syria as vindicating their support for Bashar al Assad, even as they repeat the refrain that they are not necessarily attached to him personally. The Russian port facilities at Tartous are not vital to Moscow. The Russians attribute the emergence of Islamic extremists, in particular the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to American mistakes and even to American assistance. At the root of the crisis is the American invasion of Iraq, which gave power to the Shia and incited the Sunni rebellion in both Syria and Iraq.
Fearing that it will eventually infect Russia’s Muslim population, the Russians want ISIS defeated. It will take a long time. The US should team up with Russia for the fight. Russia can be helpful in identifying and blocking foreign fighters, especially Chechnyans coming not only from Russia but also from Austria and other European countries. Bombing ISIS in Syria without permission of Damascus would be wrong and likely counter-productive. Arms sent to the opposition will end up in the hands of jihadists. Rejection of the election results in Syria while accepting them in Ukraine demonstrates America’s double standard. Assad has to play a role in the Syrian transition. Russia may prove useful in promoting intra-Syrian dialogue, though the regime has not yet accepted this idea.
My last night in Moscow was spent at a marvelous performance of Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov.” This iconic Russian opera features a guilt-ridden hero who rises to the throne by murdering the heir apparent. Guilt was not something I found in Moscow last week, but confidence in strong men was much in evidence.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Wrong lessons learned
ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple. It has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way.
Thus President Obama misdiagnosed the problem in last night’s rallying cry for a military effort to degrade and destroy the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.
ISIL is certainly an organization that uses terrorist means, but it is also more than that. It now controls and even governs a swath of territory in eastern Syria and western Iraq populated by millions of people. While it slaughters its enemies with ferocity, it is wrong to say it has no other vision. Its vision is the destruction of the states of the Iraqi and Levantine states (at the least Syria, Jordan and Lebanon, as well as Israel and Palestine), as well as the recreation of a caliphate governed under its peculiarly harsh notion of sharia.
This misdiagnosis is leading President Obama to repeat the mistakes of his predecessor, George W. Bush, in Afghanistan and Iraq, not to avoid them. The United States won the wars in it fought in those two countries in 2002 and 2003 respectively. What it lost was the post-war transitions, for which it did little to prepare.
In Afghanistan, the intention was to “kill Al Qaeda and get out,” as Republican advisor Phil Merrill told me at the time. He found ludicrous the notion that we would worry about how justice is administered after we had succeeded. Twelve years later, it is clear that the Taliban took advantage of this failure to re-establish itself, especially in the eastern and southern provinces, while Al Qaeda took refuge in Pakistan.
In Iraq, General Tommy Franks, the American military commander of the invasion, refused to plan for “rear area security,” which is the military euphemism for law and order in the areas liberated from the enemy. The planning for civilian administration, one of three pillars of the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), was weak to non-existent. ORHA floundered, then got displaced by Gerry Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority, which managed to create the conditions for the Sunni insurgency by disbanding the Iraqi army and barring many Ba’athists from senior positions.
ISIL is a direct descendant of that insurgency. It began its notorious existence as Al Qaeda in Iraq and played a major role in the Iraq civil war of 2006/7. The American counter-insurgency campaign against it was at least partially successful with the support of Sunni tribesmen, but ISIL rose from the ashes in the last few years partly due to the war in Syria and partly due to Nouri al Maliki’s exclusion of Sunnis from real power (not from positions–there were as many Sunnis or more in his governments than in the current one Secretary Kerry has labeled “inclusive”). There is no reason to believe ISIL won’t revive again, unless there are states in Syria and Iraq that have legitimacy with their Sunni populations.
The failure of the President to take into account the requirements and costs of post-war transition once ISIL is defeated in Iraq and Syria means that he is underestimating the risks of his decision to go to war. The costs need not all be American, and they don’t necessarily require American troops. But there has to be a plan for the UN, Arab League, EU and others to support state-building once the anti-ISIL war is won.
The notion that we can kill ISIL and get out, without any attention to what follows, is the same mistake George H.W. Bush made in Somalia (with the result that we are still fighting there more than 25 years later), Bill Clinton would have liked to make in Bosnia (but fortunately was convinced that he could not withdraw US troops within a year), and George W. Bush made in Afghanistan and Iraq. It won’t happen. We’ll get stuck with bills and tasks that we might have preferred to avoid, and for which we fail to prepare.
PS: I discussed some of these issues on WSJ Live this morning:
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Tailored diplomacy
My wife tells me this is a funny story, so I’ve decided to tell it outside the confines of my close friends and family.
Several years ago I was headed to Ljubljana, from which I am departing today, hoping the Slovenes will forget this story by the time I get back. Ljubljana then was the first leg of a Pristina/Sarajevo jaunt. The foreign minister had asked me to come by and talk with his Balkan folks, which I was glad to do.
Slovenia had done well for itself. It was already a NATO and European Union member. But traditionally it turned up its nose a bit at “the Balkans,” from which it had escaped. It preferred to be regarded as central European. I was happy that the Slovenes were exploring how they could be helpful to their southern neighbors.
With lots of time to prepare for departure, I closed up the small rollie that is the maximum I take anyplace, had a leisurely lunch with my wife, and headed to Dulles in good time for a flight to Frankfurt. Transiting there, I glanced down at the suitcase and wondered why it looked less chock a block full than usual. Sure enough: I had forgotten my business suits, which were still hanging in a closet in DC, so as not to get wrinkled the night before departure.
Panic set in, but not despair. I sent a quick email to my wife asking for help (T-mobile, which functions most places on earth at minimal cost, really is the provider of choice for international travelers, despite iffy service in DC). And another quick email went to Kosovar friends living in the US, to see if they knew anyone traveling to Pristina in the next day or two. Surely my network would come up with something.
No answers by the time I arrived in Ljubljana, so I decided to make shopping for a suit the afternoon’s entertainment. Ljubljana is a small town but it took me a couple of hours to case the men’s shops and try on a few candidates. One I found at the Galerija Emporium was really nice.
But it cost $1200. Euroland is not cheap for Americans. So I asked the friendly salesman whether there wasn’t a cheaper source of business suits in town. Sure, he said. Try Zara.
I’d never heard of Zara, as this cheap source of (often too) stylish clothes is kept secret from anyone over 40. But I took the advice and found an excessively fitted suit for a small fraction of $1200.
But they don’t do alterations. Yes, they recommended Maria, down the street in the underpass. But I had better hurry, as it was close to closing time. I found Maria’s shop, with difficulty, but she was only open two afternoons per week. Not my afternoon, of course.
Back to the hotel. Trusty sewing kit at the ready (don’t you carry one?). I gave up on the sleeves–they were too long, but maybe that would pass for stylish. The pants needed hemming, one way or the other. I did my best. Ran out of gray thread. Leaned on the concierge for some more. The hemming wasn’t pretty, but it was better than showing up in the foreign ministry with the pants rolled up.
The meetings went well both there and at the prime ministry. No one asked why my pants looked as if I had hemmed them myself.
Afternoon comes. Time to call my wife, who no doubt has figured something out.
Not a chance. Yes, she got the email, but it was a plea for help from someone who has never asked for help previously. She figured it was a Nigerian scam and didn’t even want to click on it. And no, the Kosovars didn’t know anyone headed for Pristina.
But they had a solution: their sister would meet me on arrival in Pristina and get me tailored right away.
Comforted, I boarded for Pristina, suited up because the Kosovars are good to me and always bring me through the VIP lounge to a ministry car, whose driver on this occasion announces that I am to go directly–do not pass Go–to the minister’s office.
No time for tailoring, I told my friends’ sister in a quick call, until after the meeting with the minister, who again seemed not to notice that my pants looked as if I’d hemmed them myself.
On my way back to the hotel, I arrange to rendez-vous with my Kosovar guardian angel. I had managed to get 45 minutes between meetings. The shop she takes me to doesn’t look like it is in Europe, but it is open and does alterations. One of the three busy people at sewing machines invites me behind a curtain that hides a back room, where I surrender my pants and jacket.
Standing in my shirtsleeves and underwear, I hear a loud rrrrrrip, as the tailor tears out my hour’s worth of hemming. Now I know the process is irreversible.
Ten minutes later I’m trying on the suit, with pants and jacket sleeves redone perfectly. I race back to the foreign ministry. No one notices that I’ve just had my suit altered.
My wife did eventually convince a colleague coming to Sarajevo to carry my suits and deliver them to me there. I never wore them. I like the Zara suit a lot.
PS: a colleague tells me he ripped open the rear seam of this pants on arrival in a foreign capital. The concierge obliged not with gray thread but with a stapler, employed with the pants still on. That makes me cringe.
PPS: one reader says I might have done worse at Zara.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Balkans regional cooperation
I moderated a panel of Balkans luminaries this week at the Bled Security Forum, an annual Slovenia-hosted gathering that this year devoted itself to the theme of “trust” (and distrust). For my panel of present and aspiring foreign ministers, the organizers posed the question of why regional cooperation in the Western Balkans (that means the six republics of what was once Yugoslavia, plus Kosovo and Albania) has generated such meager results. As Hoyt Yee, the lone American on the panel, noted, there is no lack of regional initiatives–one of his interns found upwards of 60 just searching online with Google.
Serbian deputy prime minister and foreign minister Ivica Dacic was first out of the gates with one answer that held up well during the rest of the 90-minute session, even if his Yugo-nostalgia for Tito missed the mark with the other participants. What is needed, he said, is political will and courage. Only those who have got it will be prepared to accept compromise, which involves getting half of what you don’t want along with half of what you do want. The Belgrade/Pristina dialogue, he suggested, achieved little until it was raised from the technical to the political level (which meant to him, as he was at the time prime minister). The European Union magnet is important: the EU is more popular in the Balkans aspirants than it is in the member states.
Croatian Foreign Minister Vesna Pusic suggested a different answer. Trust is not really the issue, and political will isn’t necessarily lacking. But leaders in the Balkans are still working out what their national interests really are. Only once they they get a good fix on what will serve their countries well will they be able to negotiate effectively and work with their neighbors cooperatively, which is vital for all. She underlined that she had advocated regional cooperation before it was popular to do so. But capacity to understand and enunciate priorities is still lacking.
This is particularly difficult in a country like Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ana Trisic-Babic said, because of its internal divisions. Bosnia needs new political leadership and a new social contract. Reform is vital to grow the economy and raise GDP. How long will people continue to put it off? There was more trust before the Dayton agreement than right now. Bosnia needs EU candidate status, sooner rather than later.
Senator Benedetto della Vedova assured all concerned that the Italian EU presidency will try to accelerate EU membership for all Balkans countries. It was a mistake for the EU not to have integrated Yugoslavia in the 1980s. But now integration of the Western Balkans with the EU is clearly having a big, positive impact, for example on Serbia as well as Montenegro. It should be no more than 10 years before all the Balkans countries become members.
Marko Makovec*, foreign policy adviser to the Slovenian President, noted that at one time some in Slovenia wanted to leave the Balkans behind. That is no longer the case. Now the question is what Slovenia, which has been an EU member for 10 years, can do to help its southern neighbors. The Balkans are going to need more tools than the normal accession process offers. Montenegro’s EU accession negotiator Aleksandar Andrija Pejovic confirmed that he gets a lot of help from the neighbors, who compare notes often on the EU accession process.
Macedonian Foreign Minister Poposki noted that Skopje continues to prepare for EU accession, and to behave as if it is a NATO member, but is stalled in the formal processes of accession to both organizations because of the “name” issue. There is no lack of communication on the issues, especially with Germany and Greece. But so far there has been a failure to implement shared democratic principles in resolving the name issue.
Regional Cooperation Council Secretary General Goran Svilanovic, fresh from a Berlin meeting that underlined the importance of regional infrastructure projects, noted that the Balkans states are already heavily indebted. They need highways and railroads that interconnect them more tightly, but they will not be able to borrow to fund these projects. Working together, they will need to prioritize and seek EU funding.
Yee wrapped up with a further plea for prioritization. The United States is still engaged in the Balkans and wants Bosnia’s internal difficulties and the Macedonia name issue to be resolved with a sense of urgency. Balkans citizens going to fight in the Middle East are a new and important issue. So too is energy security. It is important that solutions be based on common principles and values. We have seen how important these are in the crisis in Ukraine, where the principle of territorial integrity has been violated. Where we can get common ownership of clear principles and values, that is where we can expect success.
*PS: This did not do justice to Marko Makovec presentation, the written version of which he has kindly provided. It is attached here.
RSS - Posts
