Tag: European Union
Eyes on the prize
Republika Srpska (RS)–the Serb-controlled 49% of Bosnia and Herzegovina–is equipping its police with automatic rifles as well as reportedly initiating counter-terrorism training with Russia. Does this matter? Is it a threat to a cold Balkans peace that has lasted more than 22 years?
This news certainly illustrates the timidity of both the European Union and the United States. Brussels and Washington would not have allowed such things to happen for many of the years since the Dayton peace accords brought an end to the Bosnian war in 1995. Now they shrug it off, knowing that neither has the political will to confront RS President Dodik and hoping that it won’t really matter anyway. Some think the weapons more targeted against Dodik’s opposition in the RS, rather than posing a threat the Brcko District or the Bosnian Federation. The RS interior minister denies the Russians will provide training.
Were I a Bosniak or a Croat I would not be a happy camper. I might want to see the Federation police match the RS arms and up the ante a bit to ensure that nothing untoward occurs. In other words, what the RS has done could initiate an escalatory spiral, one that will certainly increase the likelihood of armed clashes sooner or later.
What should be done to stop this? The most important thing is to ensure that the Brcko District remains outside RS and Federation control. Without the Brcko District, the RS is split into two pieces. That’s why it was so ferociously fought over during the war and its disposition could not be decided at Dayton. Instead, an American arbitrator decided it belonged to both the RS and the Federation, which meant in essence it belonged to neither. Reintegration there has been more successful than in most of the rest of the country. That makes it the keystone that prevents Dayton Bosnia from collapsing.
The US no longer has deployed troops in Bosnia and it is doubtful Washington could be convinced to send them back. The EU does, but they are currently scattered around the country in militarily insignificant numbers, constituting a security presence (not a serious deterrent force). But if a war starts again in Bosnia, it won’t start all over the country, not least because of the ethnic separation the previous war caused. Brcko will be the center of gravity of the next war. The EU should move all of its six hundred or so troops there, making clear that neither the Federation nor RS will be permitted to take it and cause the Dayton edifice to collapse.
It’s not that I treasure that edifice. There are good arguments against the rigid ethnic power-sharing arrangements created at Dayton. But a violent collapse of Bosnia and Herzegovina would be catastrophic. What is needed is a peaceful renegotiation, one that enables the country to qualify as a candidate for EU membership.
As luck would have it, Sarajevo is planning to submit its replies to the initial Brussels questionnaire concerning Bosnia’s EU candidacy within the next few weeks. That is the right direction: the EU’s new Balkans strategy has opened the possibility of new accessions by 2025. Bosnia and Herzegovina is unlikely to qualify in time for that date, because it has been slow to adopt and implement the acquis communautaire (the EU’s accumulated legislation and regulations). But it should do everything it can to move as quickly as possible, before the window closes unpredictably.
Dodik’s automatic rifles are bad. But far worse would be failure of Bosnians to keep their eyes on the prize of EU membership.
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Kosovo’s travail
I’ve already expressed my enthusiasm for the EU’s re-opening of the window for enlargement in the Western Balkans. I don’t take any of it back. But my friends in Kosovo are upset: the final text of the plan apparently erases explicit references to Kosovo, due to Spain’s concern that it represents a model for Catalonia.
I wish that hadn’t happened, but it is far from incurable. It is still clear that the EU is opening the window and that Serbia will have to settle its issues with Kosovo completely–“normalizing relations” is the euphemism–before acceding. The Union is not willing to bring in any new members that have problems with their neighbors. That means recognition and establishment of diplomatic relations between Pristina and Belgrade. I am assured on good authority that Madrid has made it clear that once Kosovo and Serbia settle their issues Spain will go along.
What Spain has done is nevertheless a diplomatic auto-goal. By implicitly accepting the analogy between Catalonia and Kosovo, Madrid makes itself analogous to Milosevic’s Belgrade. Objectively, that is not the case. I may think some of what Madrid is doing to fight the Catalan independence movement is unwise and counterproductive, but it is nowhere near the criminal abuse that Milosevic indulged in. Spain has not chased hundreds of thousands of Catalans from their homes, and the international community has not had to intervene to stop war crimes and crimes against humanity. Nor has Catalonia been governed for the better part of a decade by an international administration entrusted by the UN Security Council with developing self-governing institutions with a view to an eventual decision on final status. Worrying about Kosovo as if it is Catalonia in disguise is foolish.
Kosovars are also partly responsible for their own fate. They have spent years now refusing to ratify a border agreement with Montenegro and months threatening to undo their agreement to a special, internationally staffed tribunal to try accusations of war-time and post-war crimes. Small countries need lots of friends. The border issue is not worth 15 minutes of high quality diplomatic time, never mind years. The special tribunal was tough for Kosovo’s politicians to swallow, but regurgitating it would be no less painful. Had Pristina proceeded with the border demarcation and avoided a new debate over the special tribunal, it would no doubt have had more time, energy, and international credit to ensure better treatment in the EU strategy.
The opening of a Balkan window for enlargement by 2025 is an extraordinary thing for Brussels to do. There is no telling when the window will close again. The only productive response is to get ready as quickly as possible by meeting the entry requirements. For Kosovo, that means border demarcation (not only with Montenegro but also with Serbia) as well as complying with whatever the special tribunal decides. The alternative is decades in purgatory, where friends are few. Kosovo’s citizens would do well to avoid that.
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So far, so good
The European Commission today announced its new strategy for the Western Balkans: “A credible enlargement perspective for and enhanced EU engagement.”
That’s good news. The non-EU members of the Western Balkans are floundering. Autocratic impulses, Russian trouble-making, and Chinese cash are loosening the region’s attachment to liberal democratic values and commitment to joining the European Union, which has become far more difficult after a long recession, the migrant crisis, Greece’s financial debacle, and rising rule of law requirements. Anything that increases the credibility of the enlargement perspective should be welcomed, both in the region and in Washington.
Does the EU announcement portend real improvements or substantial acceleration in the enlargement process? The proof will be in the pudding, but the answer for the moment has to be yes. Brussels now says it will be able to admit its first new members by 2025, which means they would have to qualify fully by 2023 in order to allow two years for ratification in national parliaments.
Montenegro and Serbia are leading the regatta at the moment, based on the number of chapters of the acquis communautaire already under negotiation. Kosovo is in the rear, not yet having achieved candidacy status. But the announcement makes it clear each country will in principle qualify on its own without any pre-ordained order. It also underlines the importance of settling issues with neighbors, which means Serbia will have to come to terms with Kosovo sooner rather than later in order to take advantage of its leading position in the regatta.
The European Commission announcement includes an indication of priority areas for 2018-20:
rule of law, security and migration, socio-economic development, transport and energy connectivity, digital agenda, reconciliation and good neighbourly relations.
This too is good, as it tells gives the Western Balkan countries a pretty clear idea of what they need to work on. There are really no surprises here: rule of law has been at the top of Brussels’ concerns since what is now regarded as the premature admission of Bulgaria and Romania, the migrant crisis has preoccupied many EU members for several years, connecting the Balkans to the rest of the EU with transport and energy infrastructure is a real and pressing need, and the “digital agenda” presumably includes cyberdefense as well as improving internet performance in the region.
Reconciliation and good neighborly relations are still big challenges in the Western Balkans, the former inside Bosnia and Herzegovina and the latter between Kosovo and Serbia. The Spanish are said to have drawn a red line at Kosovo’s entry into the EU as a sovereign state, apparently due to Madrid’s own concerns about Catalonian independence. That is terrible, since Belgrade has already accepted in principle that it and Pristina will qualify separately for EU membership, which is available only to sovereign states. Madrid’s position will encourage Belgrade’s intransigence.
But I am also told that Spain has indicated it will accept whatever solution Pristina and Belgrade come up with. I hope to see them do that sooner rather than later. If Belgrade waits until just before EU accession, it can be forced to accept whatever the most Pristina-friendly government in the EU decides. If Pristina waits, it runs the risk of seeing Belgrade accede to the EU without a satisfactory resolution of the issue.
That’s all for now. The EU does not seem to have posted yet the full strategy paper. I look forward to reading it and commenting in more detail in the future. But so far, so good.
PS: This is the full enlargement strategy paper, in what appears to be a near-final draft. Has anyone seen the final yet?
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Promising
Meeting today for the first time in Davos, Greek Prime Minister Tsipras and Macedonian Prime Minister Zaev exchanged friendly words and gestures. Tsipras said in part:
We must find a solution to all our pending issues, so that as our neighbor country wishes its European accession process and its membership to NATO can move ahead so in particular I made clear that we must find a mutually agreed solution, erga omnes, and in this framework we agreed to intensify the negotiation process that is taking place under the UN in order to reach a solution on the name.
He also announced unblocking of his “neighboring country’s” hopes in connection with the Adriatic-Ionian Initiative (can I confess I don’t know what that is?) and further progress in EU accession.
Zaev said in part:
The final solution has to be acceptable to both sides, we need to take care of the interest of one another, the solution has to take care of the national dignity and identity of our peoples to show practically that we are stronger committed to finding a solution, I announce that our government will change the names of the airport and highway, the highway will be called Friendship. Our actions show our good faith, this testifies to the fact that we have no irredentist aspirations towards our neighbor.
For the uninitiated: the airport and highway were both named for Alexander the Great, whom the Greeks claim exclusively as their own, along with the name “Macedonia.”
This exchange sounds pretty good to me. There is willingness on both sides to try to move things forward, in the context of the more than two-decade-old UN mediation. Particularly promising is Tsipras recognition that EU and NATO accession for his neighbor are important, implying that Greece should bend to make them happen.
The devil is of course in the details, especially those two Latin words: erga omnes. What the Greeks want is a name for the country the United States has been calling the Republic of Macedonia for more than a decade that will be used for all applications (“towards all”). This means not only in its relations with Greece, but also with other countries and even internally, requiring a change in the country’s constitution.
That’s difficult for the Macedonians, who have been calling their republic Macedonia and themselves Macedonians at least since 1944. Of course the Greek claim is far more ancient, but it is hard for many of us to see how a place called the Republic of Macedonia can be confused with Alexander’s Macedonia, any more than the Estados Unidos Mexicanos can be confused with the United States, or New Mexico with Mexico. Nor is there any more irredentist claim associated with the the use of the name Macedonia than in these other cases, where no such claim exists.
What’s at issue here is not really the name but rather identity. Many Greeks believe themselves, their language and their culture to be descended from the ancient Greeks and admit no other claim. The language of the Republic of Macedonia is Slavic, not Greek, in origin and most of its citizens make no claim to descent from the ancients, though some part of ancient Macedonia is inside the Republic (most of which was Paeonia I am told).
So what’s the problem? Most citizens of Macedonia are happy for their republic to be called Macedonia. Though they have been glad to repeatedly and definitively reject any implication of a claim to Greek territory, they don’t want to change their identity or their republic’s to suit a neighbor. Greece has wanted to deny them this privilege, seeing it as an assault on Greek identity and feeling the need to defend themselves.
Nothing announced today even comes close to resolving this deeper identity conflict. But confidence building is a good thing. Today’s mutual announcements are a promising new start in the right direction. Ethnic nationalist politicians in both countries will now try to slam the door shut to any further progress. Tsipras and Zaev will need determination and luck to keep things moving in the right direction.
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Two new lows
President Trump has hit two new lows: his racist comment on the origins of some American immigrants and his renewed threat to abrogate the Iran nuclear deal.
Neither is a surprise. His racism has long been apparent. What else was all that “birther” stuff about where Barack Obama was born? He believes, with good reason, that racial prejudice appeals to his almost entirely white base. He has reportedly been saying so to those he has talked to privately since his comments became public. I have no doubt he is correct.
There is just no getting around the hard fact: more than one-third of the American electorate either holds racist views or doesn’t regard racism as a political disqualification. Never mind that African immigrants to America are more educated than its native born, or that Norwegian immigrants to the US fared remarkably poorly. Prejudice ignores the facts.
On the Iran nuclear deal, the President is promising to withdraw unless he gets satisfaction within four months on two issues I regard as important: the deal’s “sunset” (i.e. expiration clauses) and inspection of Iranian nuclear sites. But neither problem, important as they are, can be solved with a unilateral withdrawal four months from now.
It has been apparent since the conclusion of the agreement that something would have to be done about its expiration. But trying to do that now, 7 years before the first of the expirations, is impossible: the Europeans will not go along with a US threat to withdraw and reimpose sanctions at this stage in the deal’s implementation. They might do so as expiration approaches, but they are correct in thinking there is no urgency about the matter.
The US attempt to impose urgency will fail. The Iranians will then have a choice: continue to implement the agreement with the Europeans, or withdraw and make a rush for nuclear weapons. Either move will weaken the US. We could go to war in a last-ditch effort to prevent Iran from going nuclear, but the odds of success in that endeavor are not good and the ramifications for the region are disastrous. I’d bet though on the Iranians continuing to implement the deal, making European support for extending it far less likely and any US rush to war unjustifiable.
As for Iranian military sites, the issues involved are serious and complicated. But neither the US nor the Europeans have exhausted the provisions in the deal to press for inspections to ensure that these sites are not in violation. They should do that first. Trump’s threat all but guarantees they won’t.
The threat to withdraw from the nuclear deal is cast as an ultimatum to the Europeans, not to Iran, to fix these two main issues: expiration and inspection of all sites the International Atomic Energy Agency requests. It ignores the option the Europeans have to continue the agreement without the US. This is Trump’s frequently repeated error in negotiation: he threatens to act on his own best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA) but ignores the other guy’s. The result is that he rarely gets what he wants. The other guy has options too. In this case, both Iran and the Europeans can do better without us than we can by withdrawing.
Trump is still campaigning against Barack Obama: both his statement on the nuclear deal, which refers explicitly to his predecessor, and his racist remarks should be read in that light. The result is two new lows that weaken America’s standing in the world.
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Iran options
There are now some ideas out there about how the US should respond to the protests in Iran. Dubowitz and Shapiro, Michael Singh and Eli Lake have chimed in. Here’s my compilation of their and other proposals. I don’t mean to suggest I support these, only that they are options. I’ll clarify my own views in a later post.
Two things should be clear from the outset: any US effort will be far more effective if it has broad bipartisan and international support, and only Iranians can determine how this episode ends.
- Consistent bipartisan public and diplomatic support, including at the highest level. This is what the Trump Administration is doing, with tweets by both the President and the Vice President. Congress might chime in with a resolution. President Obama could contribute his charisma and organizing skills. The US government’s broadcast networks will join in. The idea is to encourage protest against a regime the US finds oppressive, corrupt, and aggressive, in the hope that it will either modify its behavior or fall to the popular will. This public support could focus on revealing corrupt practices and documenting unjustifiable arrests by the Islamic Republic’s security forces, including objecting to them in diplomatic contacts. Public and diplomatic shaming of this sort will be more effective if some countries relatively friendly to Iran can be convinced to join in. Today’s meeting of the UN Security Council provides an opportunity for that.
- Sanctions against human rights abusers, corrupt officials and enablers. The Global Magnitsky Act and other US legislataion makes this pretty easy: the President needs only to name names to block their financial resources and travel. Treasury has started with entities linked to Iran’s ballistic missile program. While there aren’t a lot of Iranian officials putting their savings in US banks or visiting the Washington Monument, listing them gives other countries pause as well. If the Europeans join in such designations of individuals, that would greatly amplify the impact. Likewise high officials of the regime who have been welcome in the West and its media could be given the cold shoulder until the repression stops. The US could also levy sanctions against companies that supply Iran with repressive apparatus or help Tehran to block internet communications, and encourage the Europeans to join in.
- Encouragement to tech companies to keep its channels to Iranians open. I’m a bit perplexed what this means in practice, but Karim Sadjadpour is pushing it so it must be a good idea. If there are ways for the tech companies to circumvent or reduce the impact of the Islamic Republic’s efforts to block internet and social media communications, there is obvious virtue in encouraging the companies to do whatever is possible. That should include not taking at face value Tehran’s blackballing of individuals to remove them from social media, and blocking any censorship efforts beyond the confines of Iran.
- Heightened visibility and costs of Iranian activities in the region. One aspect of the protests is criticism of the Islamic Republic for spending the nation’s resources in Syria and Yemen rather than benefiting Iranians at home. This complaint could be encouraged by greater attention in the international press to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ sponsorship of Hizbollah, Shia militias, Hamas, the Houthis and its other proxies, as well as more effective efforts to counter them on the battlefield.
- Reduced diplomatic ties. The US can’t do this, because it only has a interests section in the Swiss Embassy that handles minimal essential services as well as diplomatic communications. But it could encourage the Europeans and others to lower the level of their representation.
- An end to the visa ban on Iranians. This move by the Trump Administration lends credence to the Iranian regime’s claim that the US is prejudiced not only against the regime but also against Iranians. Vetting of Iranians for US visas is already vigorous. The ban could be lifted to signal support for Iranians while opposing the regime.
None of these moves would do more than marginally increase pressure on Tehran. All would require US diplomacy to enlist the support of many other countries, something President Trump’s egregious behavior towards many of them has made far more difficult.
As Karim Sadjadpour puts it, “change will not come easily, or peacefully, or soon.”
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