Tag: European Union
Stevenson’s army, June 16
[You’re reading, aren’t you? Actually 2 separate topics. Clickbait 101.]
– FT says US is increasingly viewed as unreliable by its Asian allies.
– Japan drops Aegis Ashore missile defense — too expensive, too delayed.
– North Korea blows up liaison office. Some analysis from Daily Beast writer.
-Unintended consequences: Atlantic article tells how “sex” discrimination was added to civil rights act as a poison pill, a joke, that enabled textualist Justice Gorsuch to support gay rights.
– Trump said US troops would leave Germany. Are they going to Poland?
– Dems have good reasons to oppose DOD policy nominee.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. 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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Bidening their time
Ric Grenell’s today announced Belgrade/Pristina talks in Washington June 27:
Great news! I have received the commitment from the governments of Kosovo and Serbia to temporarily pause the derecognition campaign and the seeking of international memberships in order to meet in Washington, DC at the White House on June 27 for Dialogue discussions. (1/2)
If either side is unsatisfied with the June 27 discussions then they will go back to the status quo after they leave Washington. As we have consistently said, we must first make progress on growing the economies. This is the focus. I look forward to these discussions. (2/2)
If in fact Grenell sticks with mutually beneficial economic measures, I’m fine with this. But Jasmin Mujatovic put it sonorously when he tweeted:
Still, most likely scenario is just a wet-fart failure. Neither Trump nor Grenell have any kind of diplomatic credibility or acumen, it’s an elxn yr in the U.S. & Trump is in dire straits, Kosovo politics are in chaos – hard to see these characters delivering on a real deal.
By which I imagine he means a real deal on key political issues like recognition, exchange of ambassadors, and UN membership. And of course, partition, which the new Kosovo Prime Minister has ruled out of bounds but President Vucic still salivates for.
The suspension of the Serbian de-recognition campaign in exchange for Kosovo’s seeking membership in international organizations is a nothing burger with a tilt towards Belgrade. Suspension of the de-recognition campaign doesn’t mean much if Kosovo is not seeking international memberships, and both are only good to June 27 unless extended.
Notably absent is any European role. This all but guarantees failure, since both Kosovo and Serbia want European goodies for good outcomes. Grenell has terrible relations with the Europeans in general and the Germans in particular. The Americans don’t have much more than a Rose Garden ceremony in the middle of a pandemic with a failed and unpopular US president to offer.
Both Pristina and Belgrade should be wondering whether it would be better to bide their time for Biden, whose odds are looking good, including in swing states (but caveat emptor: there are no guarantees in American elections). A White House ceremony could look much better in 4.5 months.
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Bravo
Kosovo Prime Minister Hoti today presented his plans for dialogue with Belgrade at the Academy of Arts and Sciences in Pristina. I’ve been skeptical about the strength of his government due to its narrow majority and the process that led to its formation. But I’m prepared to welcome warmly what he said today:
The first principle is that the territorial integrity of the Republic of Kosovo is non-negotiable. The second principle is that the constitutional and state organization of Kosovo is non-negotiable. The third principle is that the agreement to be reached should comply with the Constitution of the Republic of Kosovo….The dialogue process is aimed at mutual recognition…any agreement not ensuring the mutual recognition is non-sense. Not provisional mutual recognition resembling the models of East Germany and West Germany or other international models mentioned in various roundtables, but mutual recognition that immediately provides us a seat in UN and also recognition from five EU countries that have not recognized Kosovo yet.
The new prime minister also commented on the process, in particular who will lead the dialogue on behalf of Kosovo.
Dialogue will be chaired by the Prime Minister of the country. There have been various discussions in the recent weeks and months. I will not compete with other persons responsible at the institutional level, because my constitutional competencies are clear as to all issues, including the dialogue process, but in particular my competencies in the dialogue process have been confirmed in the judgment of the Constitutional Court.
The previous prime minister had wrestled with President Thaci on the issue of who would lead the dialogue, so this is a welcome clarification, assuming the President agrees.
The questions are whether Thaci will really step back from his long engagement with President Vucic in the dialogue, which has been mostly unproductive since 2013, and whether an agreement along the lines Hoti outlined is possible.
The proof will be in the pudding, but it is encouraging that Hoti is reaching out to political parties that are not part of his coalition as well as to civil society. With a margin of just one vote in parliament, he will need support from more or less an additional 20 parliamentarians to ensure 2/3 support of whatever comes out of the talks with Belgrade. That is the kind of margin he will need, along with support from a similar percentage of the population.
On the substance of an agreement with Belgrade, I am not seeing in President Vucic’s current stance any reason for hope. He told RFE/RL recently:
…if it’s just – let’s Serbs recognize the independence of Kosovo, let’s finish with that story, it will certainly not go that way.
But he is in a pre-electoral period. Things may change after the June 21 parliamentary election, though his Russian and Chinese friends will try to stiffen his resolve against recognizing Kosovo, each for their own reasons.
In the end, the biggest obstacle to agreement may be relations between the United States and the European Union. They are in a tug-of-war over which should convene the dialogue. The right solution is for them to do it as a cooperative enterprise, but the American negotiator is a notorious critic of the EU in general and Germany in particular while the Europeans have fielded two negotiators from countries that don’t recognize Kosovo. It doesn’t on the face of it look like a winning combination, but maybe President Trump’s hope for a Rose Garden ceremony before the November 3 American election will generate some momentum.
There is always the possibility of an agreement to agree in the future–something to give Trump bragging rights, which is all he really wants. That could be dressed up with a few economic bells and whistles as well an agreement not to prosecute war crimes–which is something on which Belgrade and Pristina sadly seem to agree. The Rose Garden has been used for unworthy announcements, including in the recent past.
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Ill-fated
As parliament approved a new Kosovo government today, here are a few thoughts on its fate. It will be led by the LDK and command a narrow majority based on several minority parties as well as several smaller parties that have been in the opposition during the short life of the VV/LDK coalition.
The main purposes of this government are necessarily
- Get the country as safely as possible through the Covid-19 epidemic;
- Deal with the negative economic fallout;
- Respond to the Americans and Europeans, who are demanding re-initiation of the stalled dialogue with Belgrade.
This is a formidable agenda, though Kosovo appears to have escaped the worst of Covid-19. Even a strong, single-party, majority government (with the required minority participation) would have a difficult time meeting the requirements. A multi-party coalition with a thin majority led by the second-place* finisher in the last election is going to have a much harder time. VV (Self-Determination) in opposition will redouble the difficulties again, both in parliament and in the streets.
What this does is to empower the President relative to the government. His machinations with the Americans led to the vote of no-confidence in Albin Kurti’s short-lived rule. The President will now claim the lead role in the talks with Belgrade that Kurti tried to deny him–Thaci surely has no interest in leading on Covid-19 or the economy. The LDK will have promised they will not contest his leadership in the talks with Belgrade, as the price of their getting the prime ministry. The Americans will support him, because they have him over a barrel and willing to do just about anything to avoid indictment by the Special Tribunal in The Hague. Never mind that both the Constitutional Court and the parliament have said that talks with Belgrade should be the responsibility of the government, not the President.
Richard Grenell, the US envoy for the Serbia/Kosovo talks, claims he is only interested in improving economic relations between Belgrade and Pristina, not land swaps as I and others have claimed. That is not a credible smokescreen. Already slated for a role in the campaign, he wants to deliver a Rose Garden ceremony for President Trump in the runup to America’s November 3 election. No economic agreement would make the grade. He needs a land swap not only for its own sake, as it reaffirms the ethnic nationalist principles of the Trump Administration, but also because he thinks it can be sold as a big plus for peace and stability in the Balkans, settling an issue neither Clinton could resolve.
That is not true: it will settle nothing. A land swap will sooner or later result in instability in Serbia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and possibly Macedonia. It will also strengthen Russian President Putin’s hand in Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. But whatever is agreed in the Rose Garden need not last long–just until November 3. The civil aviation agreement Grenell claims to have negotiated has already evaporated, without anyone noticing. The likelihood that neither the Serbian nor the Kosovo parliament will approve a land swap, or that it will be accepted in referenda in either country, won’t matter after the US election. The damage will have been done: wherever the new borders are to be drawn, people will be moving–some voluntarily and some involuntarily–to the “right” side for their own ethnic group. Those who don’t move will be chased out.
So I see this new government–with apologies to Avdullah Hoti–as ill-fated. It will try to open the way to a deal that Kosovans, Americans, and Europeans will regret. The only winners will be Putin and his minions, as well as Serbian President Vucic. By now, even President Thaci should be having his doubts.
Here is the interview I did yesterday with RTK, before parliament approved the new government:
*This originally read “third”-place finisher. That was wrong. LDK came in second. My error. Always check should be my motto!
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Stevenson’s army, May 29
-The Lugar Center rates congressional committees on their degree of oversight. The measure is quantitative rather than qualitative, but still interesting. Notable to me is the low ratings given the foreign policy committees and the disparate rankings of the appropriations panels.
– President Trump said yesterday he would be making a major statement on China today. BOLO.
-UK might give Hong Kongers born before 1997 transfer pathway to UK citizenship.
– FT says Gazprom has won out over US sanctions on NordStream2.
-Prof. Karlin and Alice Friend of CSIS have excellent piece on how civilians should give guidance to the military.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. 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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Stevenson’s army, May 24
– NYT, which has had powerful and innovative front pages in recent weeks — like the red unemployment charts — today fills its front page with brief identifications of several hundred coronavirus victims. Broadsheets have impacts you can never have online.
– On this Memorial Day weekend, NYT lead editorial says the US Army “celebrates white supremacy” with it many bases named after Confederate officials. There was an even better article on the same theme in WOTR recently.
-The pandemic is likely to slow if not scuttle European defense plans.
-Worst-case worries: election planners wonder if Trump will accept a loss.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. 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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