Tag: European Union
Macedonia in limbo
Macedonia’s December 11 election has left the country in precarious limbo while the State Election Commission decides several appeals. Initial results suggest the former Macedonian ruling party (VMRO-DPMNE) won a plurality but lost seats and now leads at best by only two. Its main opposition (SDSM), which has publicized illegal government-initiated wire taps revealing malfeasance, gained both votes and seats. The main Albanian coalition governing partner (DUI) lost votes and seats, mainly to a new political movement (Besa).
The prospect of losing power has excited former Prime Minister Gruevski to paroxysms against the international community, which he blames for his electoral loss as well as the antecedent scandals that caused the Europeans and Americans to force his resignation last January. A Special Prosecutor has indicted Gruevski for prompting violence against a political opponent. Gruevski is convinced that the Americans and Europeans are doing their best to make sure the final election results do not return him or his party to office.
That is likely true. While everyone is entitled to be considered innocent until proven guilty in court, once indicted politicians in democratic countries generally resign or do not seek public office. The Americans, at least until January 20, and Europeans will think it important that Gruevski conform to that norm. Especially as the accusation is one of abuse of power, his returning to power before the court case is decided would be distasteful at best, prejudicial to the judicial proceedings at worst. The fact that his parliamentary delegation included a convicted war criminal will not help him with the internationals.
The question is whether the opposition can form a coalition that commands a majority in parliament. Numerically, there are ways to do it, but politically some of the combinations are ruled out, as I understand Besa has pledged not to enter a coalition with DUI. Parliamentary systems make government formation particularly complex and difficult.
But the main thing for now is to get a clear election result, which may require that the poll be re-run in some places. Gruevski’s political party doesn’t like that idea and is demonstrating outside the election commission to try to prevent it from happening. That they are entitled to do, but the fact remains: no legitimate government can be formed on the basis of dubious election results.
Macedonia has a habit of driving up to the brink of disaster and only turning away at the last moment, often with international help or pressure of one sort or another. That is not a good way to run a sovereign, democratic state. Skopje’s troubles are causing its hopes for NATO and EU membership to fade farther into the future. Macedonia above all needs institutions that can manage the political competition transparently and fairly. Let’s hope the election commission is up to the task.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Big trouble brewing
President-elect Trump’s cabinet appointments were not moderates from the first. With the exception of Defense and Homeland Security, he has appointed people who oppose the missions of the departments they have been named to lead. Rick Perry famously couldn’t even remember that Energy was one of the departments he said as a candidate he wanted to abolish. Ryan Zinke, named to Interior, opposes the conservation that department is entrusted with.
On domestic issues, we can anticipate that Congress will present a roadblock to some of the more outrageous proposals from the new administration. Abolishing Obamacare without providing an alternative isn’t going to happen, for precisely the reason Republicans opposed it in the first place: there are a lot of people enjoying its benefits. Depriving 20 million people of health insurance is not a winning political maneuver. The Energy Department isn’t going away, if only because it makes our nuclear weapons and manages nuclear waste. I’ll bet the national parks will still be the national parks four years from now, even if they will be open to more commercial activity than today.
On foreign policy, there are fewer constraints. The beneficiaries are not so well defined and presidential powers are dominant. Trump shook the One China policy with a single phone call, precipitating bellicose rhetoric from Beijing about the South China Sea. He has named as ambassador to Israel an advocate of Jewish settlements on the West Bank who opposes the two-state solution and looks forward to moving the embassy to Jerusalem. His bromance with Putin is already shaking allied confidence in NATO. Trump is a master at upsetting apple carts with small gestures.
His nominee for Secretary of State, Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, is not at first sight the same type. By all reports, he has been a capable, maybe even an outstanding, manager of a gigantic energy company, which under his guidance even accepted that global warming is real and caused in part by human activity. But he too has been willing to defy expectations and do business not only with Russian President Putin but also a non-sovereign state like Iraqi Kurdistan as well as with petty dictators in weak states who need Exxon to exploit their resources so they can steal the revenue and keep themselves in power. It is hard to picture Tillerson supporting democratic reforms after a career of ignoring regime abuses, as Rachel Maddow ably made clear last night in an interview with Steve Coll:
Perhaps the most important foreign policy nomination has not yet been made: the US Trade Representative is presumably the person who will need to fulfill Trump’s campaign promises by renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), withdrawing from the Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations, and ending the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). If he follows through, these moves will make Europe, Asia and Latin America doubt America’s longstanding commitment to free trade and investment, present the Chinese and Russians with opportunities to fill giant gaps, and undermine the World Trade Organization.
That however is not my biggest concern. Trump is an ethnic nationalist with an extreme ethnic nationalist, Steve Bannon, as his chief strategist. They will be sympathetic to ethnic nationalist reasoning, which is what Russian President Putin is offering as an explanation for his aggression in Crimea, Donbas, Transnistria, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia. “Just trying to protect ethnic Russians,” Putin says. How many of these places will Trump be willing to concede to Russia in order to consummate his bromance with Putin? The Trump administration may also be more sympathetic than Obama has been to Iraqi Kurdistan’s independence ambitions, setting off a series of partitions in the Middle East (Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, even Turkey and Iran are potential candidates).
Four years is a long time. I don’t think it will be more than a month before some of Trump’s international moves brew the United States big trouble.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
The Aleppo defeat
You can always tell when a cause is lost: the UN General Assembly passes a resolution to stop the bombing, allow in aid, and protect civilians. This was the clear signal this week that Syrian opposition forces in Aleppo are on the verge of defeat at the hands of multinational Shia militias as well as Iranian, Russian and Syrian government forces. Russian efforts to arrange a ceasefire for evacuation of civilians have failed, so far. Fighting age men are reportedly disappearing, likely some of them into prisons from which they will never emerge.
Assad is crowing. For good reason: victory in Aleppo will allow him to concentrate his forces against Idlib, which is the last remaining bit of what he has termed “useful Syria” that he doesn’t control. It runs from Damascus north to Aleppo and west to Lebanon and the Mediterranean. If he doesn’t already, Assad will soon control about one-third of the country’s territory and tw0-thirds of its population.
But the war will still not be over. The opposition will have some territory in the south along the Jordanian border and some in the north (west of the Euphrates), while the Kurds will control the rest of the border with Turkey and the Islamic State will control Raqqa and much of the relatively unpopulated east. The defeat at Aleppo and the impending defeat at Idlib will drive more opposition fighters into the arms of extremist jihadis, strengthening both Jabhat al Sham (the erstwhile Al Qaeda affiliate) and the Islamic State.
Assad now seems likely to survive, if only because the Americans will continue to pursue Jabhat al Sham and the Islamic State, which now represent by far the largest threat to his hold on power. This will make life easy for Trump. In order to ally with Russia as he says he wants to do, he’ll need only to cut American assistance to those few non-jihadi opposition who are still fighting Assad and provide support only to those willing to join the campaign against the Islamic State at Raqqa.
How Trump and National Security Adviser Flynn will square this de facto alignment with Iran I don’t know, but who’s watching? Like George W. Bush before him, Trump is likely to open still another door to Iranian power projection to the west.
Assad’s survival is not however the end of the story. Syria is a shambles. It needs hundreds of billions in aid. The Americans have already provided billions, but that has been overwhelmingly humanitarian assistance, much of which went to regime-controlled areas. I doubt however that the Americans will be interested in providing reconstruction assistance to the Assad regime. Even for a Trump administration, that might be a bit much, and in any event Congress likely wouldn’t go along.
The Europeans will be under a lot pressure to provide aid, since Assad will provide them with some minimal reason to hope that refugees will return if the Syrian economy revives. That however will be a false promise, as he doesn’t want them to return and restart the rebellion against him. He prefers to provide homes and livelihoods to non-Syrians, mainly Shia, who have fought on his behalf.
The people who should ante up are the Russians and Iranians, who have caused much of the damage and are coming out on the winning side. That entails obligations that the Washington and Brussels recognize, but Moscow and Tehran don’t. They aren’t likely to do more than minimal assistance calculated to help Assad regain and maintain control over strategically important turf.
Without a significant influx of resources, Syria will remain a fragmented basket case for many years to come. Even after Raqqa and Deir Azzour fall (precisely to whom is not yet clear), Islamist insurgency is likely to continue. Turkey and its Arab and Turkmen allies will control part of the north, with the Syrian Kurdish PYD controlling the rest. A bit of the south will remain in opposition control.
The Aleppo defeat may be the beginning of the end, but it is not yet the end.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
What to expect in the Balkans
Not much, in the first instance. It has now been a long time since a president of the United States regarded the Balkans as a priority. A region that in the 1990s was the object of two US military interventions (in Bosnia and Kosovo) and NATO deployments has dribbled its way down the list of priorities and now rests no higher on most days than a deputy assistant secretary in the State Department. That’s not a bad thing: democracy and statebuilding in the Western Balkans has been relatively successful, with Slovenia, Croatia and Albania now NATO members and Montenegro in the accession process. Slovenia and Croatia are also EU members and all the other countries of the region are pointed in that direction, each at its own pace.
But the Westernization process in the Western Balkans is still not complete, has slowed recently, and could be curtailed or even reversed during the Trump administration. Bosnia is suffering attacks on its constitutional legitimacy, rooted in the Dayton peace accords of 1995, from the President of the relatively autonomous 49% of the country known as Republika Srpska. Macedonia is stalled due to internal strife and Greece’s refusal to accept is name. Kosovo started its existence as a sovereign state well behind the others and likewise suffers internal strife and continuing problems due to Serbia’s non-recognition. All the Balkan countries are suffering a Russian soft power assault on their media and institutions.
If the new president is inclined to accept a Russian sphere of influence in the Balkans, the consequences for the region’s relatively new democracies could be dramatic. Montenegro’s NATO accession depends on ratification in the US Senate. Progress in Bosnia will require the EU and the US to act in tandem to promote political and economic reforms. Improved relations between Kosovo and Serbia likewise depend on concerted action Brussels and Washington, as will resolution of Macedonia’s internal and external problems. Just easing up on these ongoing efforts could doom them to failure.
But worse could be in store. Trump wants to improve American relations with Russia and may be tempted to concede items of value to get them. If, for example, he were to accept Russian annexation of Crimea, that alone could set off a series of ethnically based partitions not only in Ukraine but also elsewhere: in Georgia, Moldova, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Macedonia. It would be truly miraculous if such a chain of partitions were to occur peacefully. It is far more likely that it would entail instability, ethnic cleansing, redrawing of borders, and war. White nationalists like Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief long-term strategist, will no doubt be telling the new president that ethnic partition is natural or inevitable and not such a bad thing after all.
What this amounts to in the Balkans is an assault on the post-war order established in the late 1990s as the most recent Balkan wars came to an end. It wasn’t an entirely liberal democratic order, as ethnic identity and group rights have remained an important dimension of organized political life virtually everywhere in the region. But it was an order based on aspirations to EU and for some NATO membership that involved establishing independent judiciaries, relatively free media, representative legislative bodies, and peaceful resolution of disputes. Upsetting this order in favor of ethnic separation and illiberal autocracies with territorial pretensions would be perilous: this is a part of the world involved in two world wars, in addition to its own post-Cold War conflicts arising from the breakup of former Yugoslavia.
I don’t expect Steve Bannon or John Bolton to worry about that, but I do hope that more pragmatic Republicans like Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Corker or outgoing New Hampshire Senator Ayotte, both of whom are rumored for cabinet positions, to understand that the Balkan wars of the 1990s and the subsequent peace were a bipartisan effort, with support led as much by Republican Senator Dole as anyone else. Preserving that bipartisan legacy of peace and increasing prosperity is important, even if the region no longer attracts high level attention.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
What the election means for the Balkans
I did this interview for Filip Raunic of the Croatian website Telegram about a week ago. They published it today.
Q: The situation in the Balkans, especially Bosnia and Hercegovina with separatist tendencies of its entity “Republika Srpska (RS),” is tense. Do you think US will regain its focus on Balkans any time soon? And should it?
A: It is difficult for Washington to focus on the Balkans. Apart from the election, the Americans have a lot of other things they are dealing with: Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Ukraine, Afghanistan, the South China Sea, just to mention a few. Washington long ago transferred the main responsibility in the Balkans to Europe. Still, the US will not accept an RS declaration of independence or other moves that threaten peace and stability in Southeast Europe.
Q: How do you see Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton with respect to foreign policy towards Europe and Balkans?
A: I think Hillary Clinton would be good for all those who look to the EU and NATO as anchors of their foreign policy. She understands the region and will want to see progress by those countries who seek membership in these organizations. Donald Trump appears to know nothing about the Balkans and likely cares less, except when it comes to collecting a few Serb or Croat votes in Ohio. I’ve seen no sign his wife has given him any instruction on Slovenia.
Q: Croatia is considered as the main US ally in the region. If so, would President Clinton because of her interventionist policy be better for Croatia and its political role in the region than president Trump?
A: It takes two to influence. Russia is a declining regional power with a GNP less than that of Spain, an aging and shrinking population, an imploding economy, and a petty autocratic as president. Anyone who wants Russia’s influence can have it so far as I am concerned, but I expect most people in the Balkans understand that the EU has a great deal more to offer, especially as it begins to recover from a deep recession.
Turkey, like Russia, has a long history in the Balkans, and its companies have done well there. But it too suffers from a burgeoning autocracy. Sure Ankara will have some influence wherever it plants its commercial activities, but I don’t think it today a very good model of how to administer rule of law or allow a free press.
The US will continue to be diplomatically present and influential in the region, but it will also expect the sovereign states that are allies and friends to handle as much of their own affairs as possible. That, after all, was the purpose of creating the independent states from former Yugoslavia: so that they could manage their own issues and enjoy the benefits of free democratic states.
Today, Milena Pejic of the Belgrade daily Blic asked another question about the election, and I answered:
Q: I was just hoping that you can give us some final predictions and thoughts about he US election? Who do you think is going to win and who would be the better choice for the rest of the world, particularly Serbia?
A: I have long supported Hillary Clinton and believe she will win: Go vote! – peacefare.net
Neither Clinton nor Trump is likely to give much priority to the Balkans, but Clinton would certainly be committed to stability and democracy there, including the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as Kosovo.
With respect to Serbia, it seems to me recent events suggest it faces a serious political and criminal threat to its democracy and stability from Russian and Russia-aligned forces within Serbia. Trump’s “bromance” with Putin could lead to an increase in this threat. The safest place for Serbian democracy is inside the EU, not straddling between the EU and Moscow.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Russia’s shenanigans in the Balkans
My colleague Siniša Vuković and I published a piece on foreignpolicy.com today concerning the failed, Russian-backed coup plot in Montenegro last month. It concludes with this:
The Balkans will be way down the list of priorities for the next American president. The Islamic State and al Qaeda; China’s claims in the South China Sea; the wars in Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Afghanistan; North Korea’s nuclear program; and dozens of other problems are far more threatening to U.S. national security. But what America does not need is any further distraction in the Balkans, where two decades of investment have come close to stabilizing a chronically war-prone area that played unhappy roles in World War I, World War II, and the aftermath of the Cold War. It would be better and far less costly to counter Russian efforts there with a renewed preventive effort to enable all the Balkan countries, if they want, to enter NATO and the EU, where they will find themselves far less vulnerable to the Kremlin’s meddling hand.
RSS - Posts
