Tag: NATO
Evenhanded would be wrongheaded
Yesterday, I said Kosovo’s 100% tariff imposed on Serbian imports was a violation of its international obligations under the Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA).
Today, my email brought me this from the Kosovo Government. I still think these issues should be mainly resolved within the CEFTA framework, but certainly the government paper casts doubt on the bona fides of Serbia as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina (where policy is essentially dictated by Republika Srpska). I’m sure there are trade complaints as well in the other direction. They all need to be resolved, as much as possible within CEFTA.
The Kosovo Customs Agency is ensuring that it is exempting humanitarian goods from the tariffs.
Some of my Serb friends are suggesting that the only reason for a Kosovo army is to chase Serbs imminently from the country. That’s silly. NATO is there and will remain for some years still, until Kosovo can defend itself at least for a few days from whatever threat Serbia presents. The less the threat, the smaller the army. No army is needed to chase people from their homes, as the tragic rioting of March 2004 demonstrated.
It is far more likely that the Serb Army would seize northern Kosovo, on grounds that its population is threatened, a notion Belgrade has been pumping up relentlessly for weeks if not months. NATO might even fall for such a ploy, given its weak-kneed and gullible reaction to the Serbian Prime Minister’s threat of the use of force if Kosovo votes to create an army.
There is right and wrong here. Serbia is wrong to harass Kosovo’s exports, to prevent it from joining international organizations, to seek to block it from creating an army, and to threaten the use of force. Evenhanded at the moment would be wrongheaded.
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Security and trade post-election
The Center for Strategic and International Studies November 14 hosted two panels on the midterm elections’ implications for the trans-Atlantic agenda and trade policy. The first featured a discussion with Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) and the second a conversation between CSIS experts Louis Lauter, Vice President for Congressional and Government Affairs, and William Alan Reinsch, Senior Adviser and Scholl Chair in International Business. Heather A. Conley, Senior Vice President for Europe, Eurasia, and the Arctic and the Director of the Europe Program at CSIS, moderated.
President Trump’s current threat to leave the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty set the tone for the first discussion. Murphy framed the move as consistent with a broader agenda from the anti-institutionalists in the Administration to withdraw from multilateral organizations, with the spotlight on NATO after the President’s threatening comments last summer.
Murphy highlighted that there is a tendency in Congress to separate the President’s actions and statements from the Administration. While the President is launching rhetorical assaults against NATO, under the surface NATO cooperation continues. Many Republican colleagues have favored this approach, creating an atmosphere complacency. Murphy cautioned that the President should be taken at his word. Congress should prevent an executive withdrawal from NATO. The Senator introduced a failed bill back in July that would have required Congressional consent. There might be more interest in the Democratic-controlled House once Congress reconvenes.
Murphy warned that US foreign policy has become too sanctions dependent. There is a need to create and use alternative Congressional foreign policy instruments, a recommendation echoed by Lauter in his recent study on Congressional foreign policy preferences. The Senator recently introduced the European Energy Security and Diversification Act to finance energy infrastructure in Europe as a means to promote independence from Russia. He also pointed to the need to fund fragile democracies in the region.
Trump’s distancing the US from its NATO allies should be seen as part of a general trend towards isolationism and nationalism, in contrast to French President Macron’s vision for multilateralism and internationalism to solve global problems. Trump’s America First message still resonates with large swaths of the country, prompting Murphy to state that until we fix our domestic politics and economy, politicians will be able to sell Trump’s message in regions that have seen losses in jobs such as manufacturing.
While Reinsch pointed out that trade is low on the average voter’s motivations, Murphy underlined the connection between global institutions/alliances and the strength of the American economy and jobs. Trump’s threatening posture towards NATO does not exist in an economic vacuum. Macron has been urging Europe to become more militarily and technologically autonomous, in part by favoring European defense contractors over American ones, in response to Trump’s criticism of NATO. The steel and aluminum tariffs imposed on the EU make the situation worse.
The political divide between skeptics and supporters of liberalized international trade rests more within parties than between them, according to Reinsch and Lauter’s recent studies. Lauter’s study of the pre-election Congress’ foreign policy preferences found that Congress was fairly internationalist, with Reinsch elaborating that trade was less a partisan issue and more a regional one. The coasts tend to be pro-trade while skeptics dominate the Midwest, as demonstrated in the mixed reactions to Trump’s tariffs on the EU.
A post-election survey of incoming Democrats looked at their public statements on the issue. Twenty-four of fifty-five surveyed said nothing about trade following the election. Twenty-one made pro-trade statements, and eight anti-trade statements. While Democrats may hold the USMCA (the NAFTA replacement) hostage for political reasons, Reinsch predicted that the new Congress will include many pro-trade representatives. It is too soon to write a general obituary for trade agreements.
China is the regional challenge that will likely continue to enjoy bipartisan support, evidenced in the reaction to the Administration’s 301 report on China. The question will be how this is handled moving forward in light of Trump’s relationship with the WTO. While he has rejected appointments of new judges for its dispute appellate body and is willing to go beyond the WTO to achieve policy goals, Reinsch emphasized that the Europeans and Japanese want to address concerns over China within the context of the WTO.
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Midterms and foreign policy
I gave a talk this morning at the Italian International Affairs Institute (IAI) on “The 2018 American Midterm Elections: What Do They Signify for the US and for Europe?” Here are my notes for the occasion, which I pretty much used as written:
- It is a pleasure to be back at IAI, which has been kind enough to host my talks many times over the 25 years since I left Rome as Charge’ d’affaires ad interim of the American Embassy.
- Let me start with some basics: the elections are “midterm” because they fall in the middle of a Presidential mandate. They are multiple, that is elections rather than election, because more than one institution is contested: all of the House of Representatives, about one-third of the Senate, and many governorships, state legislatures, and local positions.
- They are also multiple in another sense: even elections for Federal offices in the US are run by the 50 states, not by the Federal government. While all the states elect members of the House from single-member districts with approximately the same population as well as two Senators (no matter what the population of the state), the rules governing who is eligible to vote, design of the ballot, polling procedures, opening times, counting, tabulating, and ultimately deciding the outcome vary quite a bit from state to state and even from county to county.
- Quite a few of our states have trouble getting it all done, especially when the margins are narrow. There are still a few seats undecided.
- Nevertheless, the general shape of the outcome is clear: Democrats have won control of the House of Representatives; Republicans have maintained control of the Senate, widening their margin by a couple of seats.
- What does this mean for the future, especially for American foreign policy and relations with Europe, including Italy?
- First thing to understand is that the election was not about foreign policy. The two biggest issues were health insurance for Democrats and immigration for Republicans. Trade, national security, nuclear nonproliferation, arms control, the Middle East, Iran, China, Russia and all the other issues IAI and I care about were virtually absent from the pre-electoral discourse.
- It was vigorous and led to a high turnout by American standards: about 50% of registered voters. That will sound very low to you, but it is not low in the US, where about 60% turn out for presidential elections and midterms generally draw about 40%.
- There are many reasons for this. Americans move frequently and die pretty much at the rate of everyone else. There is no national procedure for updating registration lists, and virtually no one unregisters when they move out of a community to another one. So some of the low turnout is a statistical artefact.
- The resulting anomalies have led to Republican claims that there is a great deal of fraudulent Democratic voting in US elections. There is no evidence for that. To the contrary, the evidence demonstrates concerted efforts by Republicans in many states to suppress voting by their opponents with ID requirements, closing polling places, and other tricks of the trade.
- The higher turnout this time around occurred among both Democrats and Republicans, but the Democrats have more to gain because their relatively young voter population normally turns out much less than the older Republican voter population.
- What looked like a modest shift the day after the election turned into a considerable Blue Wave as more results are finalized. The shifts from the last midterms in 2014 are notable:
under 30, +11D to +35D
women, +4 to +19
Latinos, +26 to +40
Asians, -1 to +54
college grads, -3 to +20
independents, -12 to +12
single, +13 to +24
not white evangelical, +12 to +34
- Rural areas voted heavily for Republicans. Suburbs, which have generally leaned Republican, turned bluer this time, mainly because of the votes of college-educated women.
- In short: Americans are divided, perhaps more than they have been since World War II.
- On one side, we have a modest, but bigger than normal for midterms, recovery of the Obama coalition, despite a House of Representatives gerrymandered in favor of Republicans and a Senate “map” that incidentally favored Republicans.
- Some high-profile progressives like Beto O’Rourke—a challenger for Ted Cruz’s Senate seat in Texas—and Andrew Gillum—the black Democrat who ran for governor of Florida—lost, but their showings were respectable enough to make them serious future candidates.
- On the other side, we’ve got a Trump-dominated Republican party, which will be more radical than in his first two years. Many of the relative moderates are not returning to Congress. The Republicans there will be whiter, more male, and more rural than before.
- The big winners in this election were those who want America divided and immobilized. That includes Presidents Putin and Xi. America will be consumed for most of the next two years with the 2020 presidential election. The Mueller investigation and oversight hearings will increase the noise and divisiveness, perhaps even to the point of impeachment.
- The Democrats, who are mostly moderates, have limited powers to influence foreign policy. Their main lever of power will be oversight: the power to convene House hearings and subpoena witnesses. The Senate will continue to rubber stamp Trump’s nomination of judges and ambassadors.
- That said there has been considerable agreement in the current Congress between Democrats and Republicans on maintaining the foreign affairs budget and toughening up against China, Russia, and North Korea. There are disagreements on the Iran nuclear deal, which Democrats favor, and on the defense budget, which Republicans traditionally favor.
- In the Middle East, we are likely to see a continued US effort in eastern Syria, some effort at rapprochement with Turkey, and Congressional pressure to stop the war in Yemen as well as sanction Saudi Arabia for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. The Administration will resist that pressure but may give in on Yemen, which would bring Washington into closer alignment with most Europeans.
- It remains to be seen whether the consensus in favor of funding defense, development and diplomacy that existed in Congress since 2016 will be maintained. The Administration itself has signaled an intention to cut defense. Many newly elected Republicans will want to cut development and diplomacy. Democrats will defend both, but compromises should be expected. There is nothing popular about the foreign affairs budget in the US, though most Americans do favor continuing commitments abroad.
- On NATO and the EU, I don’t think much will change. Trump has made it clear he thinks little of NATO and less of the EU. The Congress and the American people are more favorable to both and will try to insist on maintenance of the Alliance. Trump’s hostility to the EU will, however, find some resonance among protectionist Democrats and Republicans. The steel and aluminum tariffs seem destined to stay, at least for now.
- Macron and Merkel notwithstanding, there are of course many in Europe who are sympathetic to their own version of Trump’s nationalism: make Italy, Hungary, Poland, or Denmark great again by blocking immigration, protecting domestic industries, rallying anti-minority sentiment, and undermining the rule of law. Berlusconi after all was an Italian invention.
- I’m afraid the only thing that will sober some of Trump’s American supporters will be a major economic downturn, and even then they may prefer to blame it on someone other than the incumbent, most likely minorities, immigrants, Europeans, and terrorists.
- That said, I think we have passed the moment I would call “peak Trump.” Even without a recession, most Americans—3 million more of whom voted for Hillary in 2016 and haven’t approved of Trump since—are now fed up. Unlike 2016, that majority has spread into red suburbs and states and mobilized more effectively. Democrats won the popular vote for Congress by about 7%. That could be a landslide in a presidential election.
- Trump has a difficult road ahead. But that should be little comfort. If I had to guess, his fall might be at least as painful as his rise. He will resist accountability and transparency to the last.
- Europe has a tremendously important role to play during the next two years. Merkel and Macron have already done great work in maintaining the vision of a united and liberal Europe. So long as Germany and France remain on that line, I can hope the rest of Europe and the US will eventually find their way back from ethnic nationalism.
- But they and those of you who agree with that vision are going to have to do much more. Here are a few concrete suggestions:
• The NATO allies really do need to meet the 2% goal by 2024. Failing to keep on the tracks plays directly into Trump’s malicious hands. If they do so by joining together to form Macron’s European army, I have no objection.
• A negotiated resolution of the trade dispute is highly desirable. Even better would be returning to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which offered big economic benefits.
• The US and Europe need to hang together on Russia and China or hang separately as Ben Franklin said to his fellow revolutionaries. US gas supplies should help on the Russian front.
• On Iran, I see no hope of a US/EU accommodation so long as the US stays out of the nuclear deal. But I don’t really see how it can re-enter under this president. Some issues will have to wait for 2021, when discussing a follow-on deal will be needed anyway.
• On Syria, prospects are better. The US and Europe seem to be on the same wavelength in withholding reconstruction aid until there is a credible and irreversible political transition under way. That is the way to succeed, but pressures on Europe will be great.
• On Libya, the Americans are hoping Italy and France will work together to end the civil war and put the country back on a sustainable path.
- There are lots of other issues, but the overall strategy should be this: hang together where possible, help each other out, and hope to get to 2021 in good enough shape to return to the trajectory most of us would prefer: a Euro-Atlantic community whole and free, though wiser and better, from Vancouver to Vladivostok.
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Insufficient
November 12, the Atlantic Council convened a panel to discuss the challenges of hybrid warfare. Russia and other authoritarian powers are wielding cyberattacks and active measures, campaigns of disinformation and propaganda, against the US and its allies. Ambassador Victoria Nuland, former Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs at the State Department, Thomas Rid, Professor of Strategic Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced Studies, and General Riho Terras, Commander of the Estonian Defense Forces, gathered to discuss these threats in a conversation moderated by Jonatan Vseviov, Estonia’s Ambassador to the United States.
Cyberattacks and active measures are two different forms of covert action, but both are increasingly common in the digital age. The US and its allies have been slow to understand and adapt. Both often seek to exploit weaknesses arising from division and decentralization. They undermine the sovereignty of states, but there is no clear international framework to neutralize the threat or reprimand the perpetrators.
Even though active measures have a long history predating the internet, technology has drastically changed how they are carried out. As described by Rid, active measures are now more active and less measured than ever before. More active because the speed of communication and analysis allows disinformation campaigns to be fine-tuned while in motion. Less measured, as cyber infiltration techniques have increased ease of exfiltrating massive amounts of information.
According to Rid it is also easier than ever to lead journalists and activists to inadvertently aid hostile foreign initiatives. The 2016 Democratic National Committee hack in the US illustrates these changes: the stolen information was uploaded to Wikileaks in one massive dump, leaving American journalists to sort through and expose the most explosive stories. The strategic challenge for liberal states is to change the cost-benefit analysis for authoritarian states considering these measures. Potential victims must harden themselves and demonstrate a willingness to impose costs on perpetrators.
Nuland outlined reforms which the US ought to implement in anticipation of future influence campaigns. The US needs a framework to bring together its various intelligence agencies, technology experts and business leaders, similar to the coordinated restructuring on counter-terrorism implemented after 9/11. She highlighted tech companies as especially vulnerable due to the incentives against cooperation or sharing of information and design. The US government has an opportunity to build a framework to guarantee intellectual property and encourage tech companies to come together and discuss shared vulnerabilities in design, code, and supply chain that expose them to foreign exploitation.
Internationally there is need for similar coordination, allowing both flexibility and cooperation between countries. Terras noted there is no single public response which would work just as well in Estonia as it does in the US, so NATO members should retain flexibility on how best to counter disinformation and propaganda. At the same time, there is a need for greater cooperation between allied intelligence services in identifying culprits and international solidarity in ascribing blame.
The trickiest issue may be domestic political messaging. The panel discussed the importance of informing the public on hybrid warfare without overstating its effects. Publicly acknowledging and attributing foiled attacks is a key tool for discouraging future attempts. Acknowledging the problem is also a necessary step in educating the public on critical reading and cyber security skills.
At the same time, Rid warned of the risk of over-estimating the effects of foreign interference on domestic politics. In reality the effects of these methods are short-term, serving mostly to exploit existing domestic divides. Nations must maintain a faith in the efficacy of their own institutions and public discourse. The tendency to blame all domestic issues on foreign adversaries is itself characteristic of authoritarian countries.
The issue of appropriate response is more open to debate. States could counter with cyberattacks of their own. Aside from the risks of escalation, the panel discussed the risks inherent to cyber weapons: they are difficult to aim, easily attributed, and easily turned against their makers by adversaries. Other measures like sanctions and attribution of attacks to individual hackers can also deter and demoralize hybrid warfare attempts. No clear decision was reached on the most effective form of deterrence, but the panel agreed that the efforts made by the US and its allies to date have been insufficient.
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A serious choice
This seems good for election day:
Best guesses are a Democratic win in the House, Republicans retaining the Senate. But if 2016 taught us anything it is not to depend on polling. Polls are heavily dependent on assumptions about turnout, which are particularly difficult this time around. There are lots of indications that more people will vote than usual in midterm elections.
What difference will it make? In foreign policy, the President has free rein. He can pretty much do as he likes, unless legislation constrains him. That is unlikely if the Democrats control only the House, not the Senate.
But there are some issues on which sentiment among both Republicans and Democrats in Congress is different from the White House’s inclinations. Support for NATO and understanding of the European Union, opposition to Russian malfeasance worldwide, sympathy for refugees, doubts about the Yemen war and North Korea, interest in bringing US troops home from Afghanistan and the Middle East, and support for open societies and free economies are all more evident in Congress than in the Administration. If they use their oversight responsibilities well, House Democrats could make common cause on at least some of these issues with like-minded Republicans. That would strengthen the professionals inside government and might lead to some modest course corrections.
But on other issues Democratic control of the House is unlikely to make much difference. They would have preferred that the US stay in the Iran nuclear deal, but they aren’t going to speak up, for fear of being tagged as pro-Iranian, against the renewed sanctions the Administration has imposed. Nor will Democrats strongly oppose tariffs, which some of the party’s traditional support base likes. Certainly China has few sympathizers among Democrats. Support for Israel among Democrats is strong, making it unlikely there will be strong dissent from Trump’s heavy lean against the Palestinians. The areas of bipartisan agreement on foreign policy are not as wide as once they were, but there are still some in which Trump can rely on the House Democrats to be uncritical.
Apart from the specific foreign policy issues, the significance of this midterm election lies in the choice of what kind of America its citizens want. In his pursuit of making America great again, President Trump has tried hard to sharpen the lines of difference between Democrats and Republicans, to appeal to racists, anti-Semites, and xenophobes, and to frighten Americans into voting for incumbents. They include people whose ideal is an America that treats dictators as friends, closes itself off from much of the world, treats even allies as threats, and arms itself to deal with a world in which no norms are the norm. The Democrats, while focusing mainly on domestic issues like education and health care, are projecting a more open and optimistic vision of an America more engaged diplomatically and ready to maintain and expand international norms and commitments.
This is a serious choice. Go vote.
PS: A friend sent this:
I write this on the verge of the 2018 by elections in the United States. I implore you to make this a repudiation of the divisive and anti-democratic tendencies of Trump. As many of you might know, I served 25 years in the US Army defending the Constitution that Trump flouts almost on a daily basis. His rants against the media reveals his distaste for the 1st Amendment (freedom of press and expression). His desire to repeal the 14th Amendment with an executive order shows his lack of knowledge about how Amendments evolve. His political theatre of sending US troops to the border area suggests he does not understand that they cannot engage in law and order enforcement as forbidden by the posse comitatus act of Congress. Most importantly, he has the instincts of a dictator and employs many of the same tactics as used by President Orban who has become an authoritarian leader of Hungary that has attained his power by turning segments of the nation against one another, racism and control of the press and justice system. With 16 years serving with the UN in Former Yugoslavia, I have witnessed first hand how such divisiveness and artificially induced hate of the “other” can destroy a nation.
Vote and repudiate Trump and his enablers.
PPS: Another friend sent this:
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Let’s not forget
Greater Albania he suggested was a failed political project of Mussolini. Today Albanians throughout the region aren’t interested. What they want is to be part of the West, which means NATO and EU membership for each of the countries in which they live. Albanians are an important pro-Western factor throughout the Balkans. Already in NATO, Albania will now focus on its EU aspirations.
Albanian President Meta appeared at Johns Hopkins/DC yesterday. He made a good impression, in particular on the difficult issues of Greater Albania, border changes in general, and treatment of minorities.
Border changes, the President said, are not a good idea, in particular to accommodate ethnic differences. Discussing them opens a Pandora’s box of possibilities throughout the region and beyond. Far better to treat minorities, the Bulgarian and Macedonian minorities in Albania were mentioned in particular, properly. They want and deserve equal rights under the rule of law. They are not seeking more, a view contested by an audience member from the Macedonian diaspora.
The President was optimistic about the completion of the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline segment in Albania this year and the link up to Italy soon. He suggested that tourism development on the country’s southern coast is progressing well, with major hotel chains making investments. A new north/south road near the coast is also planned, if I understood correctly.
As I don’t follow things in Albania closely, I took the occasion to review quickly some of its data. Growth the last few years has been erratic. While still poor by European standards, Albania is middle income for the World Bank, with a per capita GDP approaching $5,000 (but close to $12,000 taking purchasing power into account). Since 1990, when its isolated Communist regime started to fall , the World Bank says GDP has grown by a factor of more than 6, life expectancy is up six years to 78, births per woman have dropped to 1.7, poverty and extreme poverty have declined. Yes, things have improved.
There are still big problems. The EU, which has indicated it may open negotiations for accession with Albania next year, first wants to see a more effective, merit-based public administration and a more independent judicial system capable of dealing especially with organized crime and corruption. Asked how Albania would react to the populist wave in Europe and the US, President Meta responded Albania would have to work harder and better to meet more stringent accession requirements.
No doubt I’ll get nastygrams in response to this post, reminding me that Meta himself has been accused of corruption and claiming him to be untrustworthy or worse. Sorry folks, I’m not omniscient. I don’t know any Balkan politician who hasn’t been accused of one thing or another. I rarely know the truth or falsity of the charges. I more often than not have to await that more independent judiciary to decide which allegations are true.
In the meanwhile, I take pleasure in the notion that people are living better in Albania than they were when I observed elections there in 1996, a grim moment punctuated by a lot of protest gunfire. I also take pleasure in the notion that there are still people who wisely realize that joining trans-Atlantic institutions is a worthy goal even if the uncertainties and pain are significant. Albania is surely closer to European Union membership than it is to the broken country I saw following the collapse of its state-endorsed pyramid schemes. If it keeps going in the right direction, it will get where it wants to go.
Let’s not forget what the Albanian exodus to Brindisi (Italy) was like in 1991.
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