Tag: European Union
Stevenson’s army, April 13
– West Coast doing better than East Coast in pandemic. Same with eastern Europe compared to western. As well as Taiwan vs. China.
– WSJ compares US-China competition over technology.
-Oh-oh, Trump retweets fire Fauci tweet.
– Boston hospitals say Chinese masks aren’t good.
– NYT has tick-tock on what happened on the TR.
– New Yorker has long profile of Mitch McConnell.
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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What they don’t say counts
The State Department issued this Joint Statement of Special Presidential Envoy Richard Grenell, Ambassador Philip Kosnett, and Special Representative for the Western Balkans Matthew Palmer on Kosovo yesterday:
The United States stands with the people of Kosovo. We commend the continued efforts of the health professionals and others who are working hard, at great risk, to reduce the progress of COVID-19 in Kosovo. In this time of uncertainty, we urge Kosovo’s leaders to follow Kosovo’s Constitution and the rule of law. We are committed to working with any government formed through the constitutional process.
In addition, we continue to urge Kosovo’s leaders to lift the tariffs completely. We believe the tariffs are harming the people of Kosovo by hindering regional cooperation against COVID-19 – including by delaying the entry into Kosovo of needed supplies – and hindering economic growth.
We want to make clear there is no secret plan for land swaps between Kosovo and Serbia, as some have speculated. Special Presidential Envoy Richard Grenell has never seen nor discussed such a plan. The U.S. Government’s focus on supporting the recent agreements to re-establish air, rail, and highway connections between Kosovo and Serbia aims to improve the economy and create economic momentum. We believe this momentum will give new energy to a dialogue process that would lead to mutual recognition.
This is at least in part a response to Shaun Byrnes’ A Bad Deal posted here two weeks ago, but it is also an attempt to justify the Trump Administration’s unfriendly policy toward Kosovo’s Albin Kurti-led government.
Let’s take it para by para:
- That phrase “stands with the people of” is a tip-off, as it is used to distinguish between the people and the government of a foreign country. It’s what the Americans say about adversaries like Iran: we stand with the Iranian people. The US embassy put out an unusual statement supporting the holding of the no-confidence vote that brought down Prime Minister Kurti’s government earlier this week. This happened in the face of European opposition to the no-confidence vote. The bottom line is clear: at a moment when the Kosovo government was confronting the Covid-19 challenge, the Trump Administration decided nevertheless to push for the government to fall.
- Urging the complete unilateral lifting of the tariffs ignores a basic principle of diplomacy: reciprocity. The Trump Administration is asking Kosovo to meet a Serbian demand without anything in return. What Pristina has sought is suspension of the de-recognition campaign that Serbia has conducted worldwide. Is it really too much to ask that a country that wants Kosovo to buy its goods to stop trying to get other countries to reverse their recognition of Kosovo? In any event, Kurti did lift some of the tariffs unilaterally and indicated a willingness to go further, without the slightest sign of reciprocity on Serbia’s part. Where is the pressure on Serbia to reciprocate?
- The notion that Grenell has never seen a plan is not credible. Several, of uncertain origins, have been published. Presidents Thaci and Vucic have both referred to land swap discussions. Even if the US was not involved in those (which is unlikely), US intelligence will have reported on them, including any maps that were exchanged. Grenell is the acting Director of National Intelligence. It is notable that Kosnett and Palmer are not associated with this denial of having seen a plan. It suggests they have.
Like many government statements, this one tells us more by what it omits than by what it includes, but there is one important inclusion: the line at the end referring to mutual recognition. Note there too is an omission. If land/people swaps are off the table, it should have read “mutual recognition within their current borders” or “mutual recognition of sovereignty and territorial integrity.” What they don’t say counts.
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Bosnia needs Biden
Ismet Fatih Čančar, who holds a BA in Economics from Sarajevo School of Science and Technology and University of Buckingham and an MA in International Political Economy from King’s College London (where he studies under the Chevening scholarship program awarded by the United Kingdom), writes:
The results of last week’s primary confirmed the heavy frontrunner. Winning four out of six states that voted, Joe Biden has completed a turnaround rarely seen in American politics. Barring a political scandal, Biden is the preemptive candidate to secure the nomination of the Democratic party. When he faces Trump in November, it will be a clash of two opposing ideologies. However, some 5000 miles away, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a small country in the Balkans, Biden’s win could mean salvation.
The history and present
Biden’s history with Bosnia goes back to the 1990s. During his Senate Foreign Affairs Committee tenure, he was a staunch supporter of American intervention to stop ethnic cleansing and genocide of Muslims in Bosnia. Following Joe Lieberman’s and Bob Dole’s lead, he was also one of the first to support lifting the arms embargo on Bosnian Muslims and advocated for “lift and strike” – a NATO air power mission. Through those murky times, Biden’s passionate speeches in the Senate drew the sympathies of Bosnians as a rare, genuine friend.
The last visit of a high-level US official to Bosnia was in 2009 – and it was Joe Biden. During his stay he urged the political elites to turn the page from nationalistic politics and focus on real reforms that would pave the way for EU and NATO accession. Little has changed since he last set foot in Sarajevo. On the contrary, the country has regressed on its Euro-Atlantic road.
The recent political crisis, whose chief architect is Milorad Dodik, has once again put the country in crisis. Calling actively for secession from the Bosnian state, the nationalist Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) has a history of threatening peace in Bosnia. While Dodik is already under sanctions by the US, the failure of the EU to follow this course of action has led to lukewarm results.
Additionally, the Kosovo-Serbia issue has regained momentum with US engagement. According to this report, redrawing borders along ethnic lines is back on the menu. Such a solution bears catastrophic consequences. Dodik has been abundantly clear he intends to use this partition in pursuing the independence of Republika Srpska. But more so, politics of this kind move us further away from what the US goal for the region was in the first place – the establishment of liberal democracies and the integration of the Balkans into the modern Western world.
Restoring US credibility
In his platform published in Foreign Policy, Joe Biden has put strengthening democracy at the helm of his global agenda. He has committed to making the United States prepared to lead again “not just with the example of our power but also with the power of our example”. The challenge the United States will face under Biden is restoring its credibility as a world beacon of democracy that entails an integral respect for human rights and opposition to authoritarianism and nationalism. Bosnia and Herzegovina could be a good starting point.
Biden’s reengagement could shift the focus of the American administration to help solve the structural issues in the country. It could safeguard Bosnia by countering the breakthrough of Russian interference through Dayton’s Peace Accords – which Holbrooke himself said would need upgrading. Being a sui generis state with two entities and three constituent people, Bosnia is damned to be dysfunctional. The solution is chartering a new constitution of a civil (citizen) character on the basis of the civil constitutions many modern European countries possess. This is a condition Bosnia has to fulfill if it is ever to see the entrance doors of NATO and EU.
Handling such a complex issue would again grow America’s reputation in the world as a credible and trustworthy factor that can effectively address crises around the globe. However, the challenge also implies a risk of failure; the inability to gather partners along the way, primarily in right-wing Europe which is increasingly displaying a more xenophobic character. Bringing the EU along with US lead is mandatory for the region. I wrote earlier about the United Kingdom initiative in taking a more active role with its allies in Bosnia. Together, the Anglo-American partnership could establish a new leadership format. Biden’s personal experience in solving similar issues can lead the way.
For this to work, American pressure has to fall on Serbia to give up the Greater Serbian ideology, the same ideology that was responsible for the genocide of Muslims in Bosnia during the war. Until Serbia and Republika Srpska acknowledge what has been done under Milosevic’s and Karadzic’s rule – both in Bosnia and Kosovo – and stop the revisionism of settled historical records, no relationship will be prudent or friendly in the future. Furthermore, redrawing borders should be an absolute red line. Biden knows this. He experienced the consequences of Serbian ethno-national exclusivism first-hand and has understood that staying silent to nationalist ideologies is not an option. It instead leads to new conflicts in the Balkans.
If Biden really is as he says ready to “champion liberty and democracy, reclaim our credibility, and look with unrelenting optimism and determination toward our future” then keeping the status quo in Bosnia is counter-productive. The worst possible solution for Biden’s US, as the face of a democratic administration, is doing nothing. That would not only betray everything that was successfully done during the Clinton administration, which is deliberately undermined by the current Trump administration, but would also surrender Bosnia and the Balkans to growing Russian hegemony.
Making America great by making America good again
America cannot be made great again through Trump’s selfish and xenophobic media tirades that are music for right-wing ears all over the world. America can only be great if it establishes the far-reaching political vision that is occasionally seen in Biden’s election campaign. Freedom, peace and a sense of responsibility for the global good seeks the support of democratically-minded men and women all across the US, and especially Bosnian Americans who have found their second homeland in the United States.
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Dear Hashim,
Kosovo President Thaci responded to Shaun Byrnes’ post on peacefare.net from Saturday with these tweets:
Hashim Thaçi@HashimThaciRKS· Mar 13 Disappointed to see friends of Kosovo & mine @DanielSerwer & Byrnes being deceived by fake news. There is no secret deal or whatever btw Kosovo & Serbia. One can be achieved through a transparent process w/ US leadership & I invite u to help. @RichardGrenell is doing a great job
Hashim Thaçi@HashimThaciRKS·Mar 13 Washington has full attention on Kosovo-Serbia dialogue. It is the burden of our generation to end the conflict & open path for Euro-Atlantic integration & economic prosperity. We need support for this process, not obstacles, nor opposition. It’s about our children.
This is my response to the President, whom I have known since his first, post-war visit to the US in 1999:
Dear Hashim,
I’m entirely sympathetic to the Euro-Atlantic ambitions of Kosovo and have repeatedly lent my efforts to that cause. But it is not wise to believe that Washington pays “full attention” to the Kosovo-Serbia dialogue, which has been an entirely opaque process. Few in Washington even know it is happening, and fewer care. This inattention has given Belgrade-hired lobbyists the opportunity to influence an Administration that cares little about the Balkans and not at all about Kosovo, which it regards as a product of the despised Clinton Administration.
Worse than American inattention and pro-Serb bias is that the people of Kosovo and Serbia know nothing about what is being discussed in your repeated meetings with President Vucic. Your citizens have been demanding transparency. I have asked more than once for an update. Nothing is forthcoming. That leaves you open to rumors, which aren’t necessarily accurate. Only the transparency you promise can fix that problem.
Richard Grenell is a man who has failed as Ambassador to Germany and is failing as a temporary Director of National Intelligence. He is however doing a great snow job in the Balkans, flaunting minor transportation agreements as big steps forward. He is also working hard to pressure Prime Minister Kurti with threats of withdrawing US troops and aid. Albin has bent but not yet broken to the US demand that he end the tariffs on Serbian goods. Grenell’s ultimate objective is the land/people swap the Trump Administration has been pushing and you have indicated you might accept. A majority of your population, including the Serbs south of the Ibar, are opposed to this ignoble idea, which would make Kosovo a source of instability throughout the Balkans and beyond.
You can of course prove me wrong in thinking you are ready to trade slices of Serb-populated Kosovo for slices of Albanian-populated Serbia: give the Kosovo parliament a full and honest account of the talks with Vucic. This should include the agendas, any drafts or proposals from either side, and a full transcript of the dialogue at the highest level and in any working groups. Then turn over responsibility for the dialogue to the government, as the Constitutional Court decided is correct and the parliament has now confirmed. Making Albin the lead will take the heat off you and put the Serbs in a difficult position, since their prime minister–a protégé of the president–cannot pretend to have the kind of popular mandate Albin has.
You are no doubt disappointed in the results election that brought Albin to power, as they left your party in third place. But working with the second place finishers to bring down the Prime Minister will do Kosovo no good at all. It risks igniting a storm that will end any prospect of suspending the tariffs or moving ahead even incrementally with the dialogue with Serbia.
To a Kosovo patriot, and I hope I am right in assuming you would like to be considered one, speed should not be the priority. There is no advantage in pursuing an agreement before Serbia’s April 26 election. President Vucic will be freer to make concessions to Kosovo after the election than before. Kosovo would be wise to wait even longer: until after the Americans go to the polls November 3.
If there is then a President Biden–a true friend of Kosovo–you can expect him to empower a serious envoy to collaborate with Europe, something Grenell can never do because had and President Trump loathe the European Union, in reaching serious agreements between Kosovo and Serbia. Joint US/EU action is a prerequisite for bringing irresistible pressure to bear on Belgrade. Grenell isn’t even trying. If Trump is re-elected, whoever is in power in Kosovo will have to hunker down again to shield your country from the onslaught of bad partition ideas the likes of Grenell will continue to generate.
Most of your citizens want a deal with Serbia that recognizes the Kosovo state as sovereign and independent within its current borders and enables it to enter the United Nations. That isn’t on offer yet. Kosovo needs to be ready to walk away from a bad deal in order to get a good one, in the right time and with the help of both the US and EU. Until then, incremental improvements are all that can be hoped for. Successful statecraft requires that you encourage your citizens to be patient. Good things come to those who can wait.
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Dump Trump
Here is the President last night making a hash of his measures to meet the corona virus challenge:
He managed to get three things wrong in a short address, read haltingly from a teleprompter. Only a slovenly White House would allow such mistakes.
More important: he said nothing that even begins to repair the damage his Administration’s failure to test Americans from early on has done to prospects for containing the contagion. We basically have no idea how many people have been infected. Instead, Trump focused on economic measures intended to rescue the rise in the stock market that he likes to brag about. Most of that rise–83% as of tonight–is already gone.
There is no sign the slide is yet at the bottom, and the flood of news about school and business closings suggests it is not. The State Department, where I spent my day, has instructed most employees to stay home tomorrow. My employer, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, has gone to remote teaching until mid-April (but we are on spring break next week). Let’s not even think about what canceling entry to the US for Europeans other than Brits means: there are 2-3,000 flights across the Atlantic daily. I don’t know how many of those are to and from the UK. Maybe 25% of the total? That would make a minimum of 1500 aircraft idled.
The steam is going to go out of the global economy quickly. Recovery depends on how quickly we get back to normal. At this point, it looks like weeks or months, not days, unless Trump gets lucky and the virus just disappears in warm weather, as he has predicted. Il get to 70 Fahrenheit here tomorrow. But even that won’t reduce the onus on his Administration for having mismanaged the epidemic from the first. In the meanwhile, thousands of people my age will have expired due to negligence. Fox News won’t be telling its viewers that however.
Americans re-elected George W. Bush after they understood that he had invaded Iraq by mistake (that’s the charitable version of the story). I suppose we are capable of re-electing someone who allowed an epidemic to spread out of control and grind the economy to a halt. But I certainly hope not. The corona virus should spell the end of Trump. If the Republicans won’t do it before the election–and they won’t–the rest of us should do it at the polls. Dump Trump.
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Arm twisting
Pristina daily Koha Ditore published this interview over the weekend. Fitim Gashi asked questions; I replied:
>Below you can find the question for the interview that Agron mentioned to you.
Q: How do you see the historical role of the United States in the creation of the state of Kosovo and current politics?
A: The US was vital to the independence and sovereignty of Kosovo, which had the good fortune to fight its devastating war with Serbia during the unipolar moment when Washington could do almost anything it liked in the world without serious opposition. It was also a moment in which liberal democracy, based on human rights for all, was the dominant paradigm.
The situation today is quite different. Washington has been withdrawing from overseas commitments, the Trump Administration is an ethnic nationalist one, and Russia and China are challenging US hegemony in various parts of the world.
Q: What is the impact that the US has on political decision-making in Kosovo, and why is this impact so great?
A: Partly because of its leadership role in 1999 and thereafter, the US is still first among equals in the diplomatic sphere in Pristina. The impact is great because Kosovo remains heavily dependent on US military, diplomatic, and political support. It is also great because Kosovars want it that way. When I urge them to diversify their support, they reject the notion.
Q: How do you see the role of the United States in the final phase of the dialogue. Is there any attempt to get this process out of the hands of Brussels?
A: Trump has no use for the EU and Grenell as no use for Germany, which is the most important of the European countries from Kosovo’s perspective. That said, the EU and Germany have much bigger problems today than Kosovo, which they seem glad to leave to the Americans, who are desperate for some sort of diplomatic triumph in the leadup to November’s elections. My advice: keep Germany involved. It is today the strongest defender of the liberal democratic ideals on which Kosovo was founded.
Q: Who should mediate the dialogue and where should the agreement be signed?
A: I’d prefer to see the US and EU working together in tandem, since that is a formula that has consistently brought good results in the Balkans. I couldn’t care less where the agreement is signed. Does anyone remember where the Dayton agreements were signed? The Trump Administration has promised the White House Rose Garden. I would guess he will get his way if there is to be an agreement.
Q: What compromises can be delivered by the parties in the final agreement and can they be painful for Kosovo?
A: Kosovo should be willing to compromise on ensuring the safety and security of Serbs and Serb monuments and other property throughout Kosovo, consistent with its constitution. Serbia should be expected to offer whatever it gets on those issues to Albanians living in Serbia. That’s called reciprocity.
Diplomatic recognition of sovereignty and territorial integrity as well as exchange of representatives at the ambassadorial level should also be reciprocal. All the existing bilateral technical agreements should be implemented.
Q: Has US policy on Kosovo changed with the Trump administration? If so, in what sense?
A: Yes, it has changed. The Administration has made it clear in public it would accept a territorial and population exchange that previous Administrations ruled out. Grenell and Palmer are committed to that formula, even if it has been rejected on its merits by Pristina and Belgrade. I also think Washington has shifted from expecting a reciprocal agreement on tariffs and an end to the de-recognition campaign to insisting on unilateral concessions by Kosovo. It is easier for Washington to twist the arm of a friend than twist the arm of an adversary.
Q: Prime Minister Kurti’s plan for partial and conditional lifting of tax on goods from Serbia was rejected by the US Envoy for Dialogue, Richard Grenell. Can the prime minister face sanctions if his decision-making is not in line with the Trump administration’s stance?
A: I might not apply the word “sanctions,” but he should certainly expect to suffer a cold diplomatic shoulder and possibly more concrete consequences. Welcome to the world of sovereign states. Trump is particularly vindictive and Grenell will imitate him.
Q: There has been criticism that Kosovo’s leaders are making decisions under pressure. Is Kosovo ready to take its own decisions, not to be subject of any international pressure?
A: We are all subject to pressures. The key is to make good decisions even under pressure. I wouldn’t yield on anything vital before the American election in November.
Q: Should Kosovo hurry to dialogue and reach the agreement?
A: No. Kosovo has to be ready to walk away from a bad agreement, even one supported by the US, in order to get a good one.
Q: So far, Kosovo has suffered from a lack of consensus in dialogue with Serbia, this was also confirmed by recent actions, where the president was part of reaching some agreements, while Prime Minister Kurti appeared uninformed. How much can this approach affect Kosovo getting into a bad deal with Serbia?
A: Only unity saves the Serbs, and only unity will save the Kosovars. The Americans are exploiting political divisions in Kosovo and pressuring their friends because it is easier than pressuring their adversaries. My advice: don’t fall for it. Those who cave on issues of sovereignty and territorial integrity will not be remembered well.
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