Tag: United Kingdom

Vucic got what he wanted and then some

Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić’s Progressive Party won an absolute majority in national parliamentary elections, with double the vote of the main opposition coalition yesterday. His party also won a plurality in the Belgrade city council. The election was “free” in the sense that all registered citizens could vote, but far from “fair.” The government exploited media control, pressure on voters, abuse of institutions and public functions as well as forged signatures and phantom voters. Elections in Serbia are stolen before election day. Elected autocrats are all the rage these days.

Stronger and more recalcitrant

The new parliament replaces one in which Vučić’s party had only a plurality. He gained that in an election that much of the opposition boycotted. The election thus strengthens his hold on power, which is going eleven years. If it sticks together, the one-quarter of the parliament that the main opposition coalition, Serbia Against Violence, gained will give it a platform for its anti-violence, anti-corruption, anti-inflation messages. But it will not be able to block legislation or exert substantial influence on foreign and defense policy, which is the prerogative of the president.

We can expect ontinuation of Serbia’s current strong lean towards befriending fellow autocrats in Russia, China, Belarus, Azerbaijan, and Hungary. While the Progressives ran on a nominally pro-Europe ticket, they have done little to move Serbia closer to the European Union. Instead they have successfully straddled the East/West divide. Vučić pursues a “non-aligned” hedging policy that flirts with both in order to extract valuable concessions from Moscow, Beijing, Brussels, and Washington.

Some might hope Vučić would use his victory to settle Serbia’s conflict with Kosovo and move definitively in the Western direction. That isn’t going to happen. He has locked himself into intransigient opposition. He refuses even to acknowledge Kosovo’s de facto independence. This would be easy to do. He could turn Milan Radoicic, who led a failed terrorist rebellion in northern Kosovo September 24, over to the Pristina authorities. Serbia recognized the validity of their judiciary in the 2013 Brussels agreement that Vučić has been trying to get Pristina to respect. But he won’t do that. Or anything else to make amends for sponsoring a well-equipped armed rebellion intended to lead on to a Serbian military invasion.

Europe and the US will do nothing

The US, UK, and EU could in the aftermath of this flawed election their pressure on Vučić. They say they want Serbia solve its problems with Kosovo, adhere to Ukraine sanctions against Russia, and speed reforms required for EU accession. But the five EU member states that don’t recognize Kosovo will prevent any push on Kosovo issues. Hungary will block any pressure on Russia questions. The EU as a whole is much more concerned with Ukraine and will let Serbia slide.

The Americans are still claiming that they’ve convinced Serbia to embrace the West. This is laughable but no one in Washington these days wants to tell the would-be emperors they have no clothes. They prefer to pretend that agreements Serbia has renounced in writing are legally binding. “They are being written into the requirements for accession” State Department officials like to explain. That is fine with Belgrade, which knows full well accession is a distant horizon, at best.

I might have some hope for the UK, which isn’t committed to the American pipedreams and isn’t constrained any longer by the EU. But London hasn’t been vocal in denouncing Serbia’s current behavior. It is likely shy of offending Brussels and Washington and anxious to protect its own equities in Belgrade.

What’s the then some?

Vučić’s party wasn’t the only one to do well in yesterday’s elections. Some ultra-nationalists and outright pro-Russian parties did too. That gives Vučić an “Après moi, le déluge” argument. If you are not nice to me, look what might come next!

Some in Kosovo might hope that now at least Pristina can be relieved of the “consequences” the EU mistakenly levied in response to its deployment of mayors to municipal buildings and police to northern Kosovo, where they blocked an armed rebellion. We’ll have to wait and see, but I doubt Pristina will get satisfaction. The EU has developed a habit of favoring Serbia that is going to be hard to break. The US is not far behind.

President Vučić has won his cake. Now he’ll eat it. That’s not good news.

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US sanctions are failing to prevent Bosnian Serb peace violations

I am pleased to publish this piece by Ajdin Muratovic, a Washington, D.C.-based Security Fellow at the Truman National Security Project. He has extensive experience working, studying, and living across Eastern Europe.

Targeted sanctions—an increasingly popular item in Washington’s Western Balkans toolkit—are supposed to change behavior and deter future malign conduct. Yet the sanctions the US has leveled against Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik for violating the peace agreement that ended the Bosnian war are failing to achieve either objective. The results could be catastrophic. Failure to maintain peace and stability in Bosnia risks triggering another war in Europe. That could lead to untold human suffering, while sapping resources and bandwidth from strategic priorities such as the war in Ukraine. Such an outcome is easily preventable. US policymakers should modify a sanctions regime that is insufficiently tough, poorly targeted, and lacks multilateral support.

How we got here

In late 1995, the US-led Dayton Agreement ended nearly four years of extreme violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Bosnian war introduced the term “ethnic cleansing” to the world. It featured genocide, concentration camps, mass rape, and hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded for the first time in Europe since the Second World War––all less than an hour’s flight from Germany. The Dayton Agreement succeeded in reconciling warring parties and preserving Bosnia’s territorial integrity, but at a price. Postwar Bosnia became a highly decentralized state with two powerful subnational “entities” – the Bosniak-Croat dominated Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH), and the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska (RS), the latter currently led by Dodik.

Dodik has led Bosnian Serb politics for most of the almost three decades since the end of the war. He was initially seen as a moderate with whom the West could work rather than a hardline Serb nationalist. He started his political career as a State Department darling. But he eventually came to undermine the Dayton peace agreement by creating illegal parallel government institutions, seizing Bosnian central government property, ignoring Bosnian constitutional court orders, and obstructing policies that would improve the Sarajevo government’s ability to function, all while promising unification with Serbia.

Sanctions and the reaction

In response, the US sanctioned Dodik, twice: in 2017 for “actively obstructing the Dayton Agreement” after he defied constitutional court rulings; and again in 2022 for numerous “corrupt and destabilizing activities,” including accumulating “personal wealth through graft, bribery and other forms of corruption.”
Yet Dodik has only become bolder and more extreme since being sanctioned. A recent report to the UN Security Council stated that “secessionist rhetoric and action” has “intensified” during the past six months. The report cites as evidence Dodik’s March 2023 proclamation that “our goal is unification, meaning leaving Bosnia-Herzegovina and joining Serbia.” He added that he and his allies “are just waiting for the moment to do that.”

Rather than idly waiting, Dodik and legislators from his party are acting, implementing a stealth secession. In June, they voted to suspend all rulings of Bosnia’s constitutional court, effectively removing Republika Srpska from the court’s jurisdiction. This and similar moves by Republika Srpska officials violate the Dayton Agreement and threaten to ignite a war. If history is any guide, it will quickly become a regional conflict.

Unrivalled American influence

This is happening in a country where, unlike in Iran or Russia, the US has unrivaled influence. American officials designed Bosnia’s contemporary political system during the Dayton negotiations at an Ohio military base. The agreement, part of which also serves as Bosnia’s constitution, renders it a non-sovereign state with ample opportunity for American intervention.

The most powerful official in the country is not its elected head of government, but a foreign diplomat appointed by internationals known as the High Representative (HR). He oversees civilian implementation of the Dayton Agreement. The HR has immense powers to ensure treaty compliance, including vetoing legislation and firing Bosnian officials. US support is vital for the appointment of a HR, and the Deputy HR is always an American.

An EU-led military force, currently over 1,000 troops, supplements the HR’s treaty enforcement. Additionally, the Dayton Agreement, and a subsequent UN Security Council resolution, permit NATO deployments, including US troops, without consent from Bosnian officials. Although Europeans occupy key civilian and military roles in Bosnia, they only do so with American blessing. Perhaps no example better illustrates American centrality in Bosnia than the fact that key decisions, such as new election laws, are frequently negotiated in the U.S. Ambassador’s residence, rather than in Bosnian institutions.

Strategic irrelevance and tactical errors

Yet Bosnia is not a strategic priority for the United States government. The US Trade Representative’s website, which lists over 110 trading partners, does not include Bosnia. Neither the US National Defense Strategy, nor the National Security Strategy, mentions the country. In fact, the two documents only refer to the Western Balkans region only once. Washington’s assessment that Bosnia is not a priority has led to a concomitant lack of consistent US engagement and high-level policy attention when it comes to the region. This includes insufficient US pressure on problematic actors such as Dodik.

Tactically, sanctions against Dodik have failed in three primary ways.

No isolation

First, they have not isolated him politically or economically. Dodik and his political party continue to win elections. Internationally, he punches above the weight of a sub-national leader. He has allied himself with fellow European right-wing and pro-Russian politicians such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban to avoid potential EU sanctions, attended Turkish President Recip Tayyip Erdogan’s recent presidential inauguration, and is a frequent guest of Putin.

Still, American officials regularly meet with Dodik and behave as if he is a good-faith actor. Dodik has replied to such American attention by doubling down on pro-Russian and secessionist policies. Such meetings only served to highlight the irrelevance of existing sanctions – a point that both Dodik and the opposition make. The sanctions have also been financially inconsequential. Bosnian politicians mostly confine their assets and dealings to the EU and neighboring Balkan countries.

No multilateral complement

This highlights a second tactical shortcoming. There are no multilateral sanctions to complement American ones. So far, only the United Kingdom has joined the sanctions against Dodik. EU sanctions would impose serious economic and lifestyle costs on destabilizing individuals. But the Union refuses to activate a more than decade-old framework to sanction individuals that “undermine the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and constitutional order” of BiH.

Hungarian and Croatian officials have signaled that they would not provide the necessary unanimous support, despite abundant evidence of sanctionable offenses. Reports also indicate that the EU’s envoy to Bosnia advised against joining the US sanctions for fear of making Dodik a “martyr.” The response to Saudi Arabia’s murder of Jamal Khashoggi demonstrated that individual member states, such as Germany, can levy sanctions independent of the Union. No individual EU member, however, has been willing to join the US in sanctioning Dodik.

Inadequate targeting

In addition to not bringing allies along in support of sanctions, Washington has done an inadequate job of targeting Dodik’s network of political and economic accomplices and proxies. In 2022, the US Treasury, acting on a new executive order that includes corruption as a targetable offensive, sanctioned a Dodik-linked construction firm and a TV station. This well-intentioned attempt has yet to bear fruit.

The construction firm, Integral Inženjering, continues to profit from EU-funded projects, such as a newly-constructed bridge to Croatia. It participates in European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) projects, despite the US being a founding member of the bank and its biggest capital contributor. Alternativna Televizija, formerly a USAID-supported outlet that Dodik’s proxies took over in 2017, has continued with the same pro-Dodik coverage as before the sanctions.

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

While the US failure to dedicate significant attention to Bosnia has placed the region’s security at risk, it is not too late to make tactical adjustments to sanctions policy. The limited goal should be stopping Dodik’s attacks on the peace agreement.

Get real

Policymakers first need to be honest about the present failure. State Department officials regularly claim, without concrete evidence, that sanctions are having an impact. American lawmakers, rather than serving as an accountability mechanism, are reinforcing the State Department’s narrative. Senator Shaheen, usually an astute foreign policy observer, stated that Dodik, “is upset about the U.S. sanctions, so clearly they are having an impact.”

But merely upsetting a targeted individual is an unserious metric. The US must hold itself to a higher standard. The American-led Dayton Agreement provides ample political and military leverage to maintain regional stability.

Stop the useless meetings

Second, U.S. officials should stop meeting with Dodik and other sanctioned individuals until they start reversing their destabilizing policies. Six years of meetings have not achieved anything other than making US officials appear feckless and incompetent. In a symbolic example of his approach to the US, Dodik humiliated the American ambassador to Bosnia in 2017 by refusing to shake her extended hand. Despite his clear contempt for Washington, every US Ambassador and visiting State Department official since then has continued to meet with him.

Dodik uses these meetings as a spectacle to demonstrate to local audiences his strength relative to the superpower’s emissaries. Frequently he will insult U.S. officials, or even walk out of meetings. None of these meetings have resulted in substantive policy changes on his part. If Washington wants to effect change, its officials need to stop serving as props in this humiliating charade. He is not a good faith actor. Dodik is an aspiring strongman who respects strength, not goodwill gestures.

Target the enablers

Third, the US needs to target Dodik’s economic and political enablers. Earlier rounds of sanctions against Dodik-affiliated entities demonstrated that a business doesn’t need to be registered in Dodik’s name to be considered under his control. While sanctioning Dodik-affiliated television station ATV was a good first step, Washington should go further and lead sanctions against the crown jewel in Dodik’s collection of businesses. That is ATV’s sole owner at the time of sanctioning, a tech services firm named Prointer.

Institutions controlled by Dodik’s political party have awarded Prointer tens of millions of dollars in no-bid IT contracts. The bulk of Prointer’s offering is American software services – 15 of the 22 companies it lists as “technology partners” are US-based. Dodik has confirmed that his son works for the firm. That gives credence to allegations that he was secretly managing the firm on behalf of his father. Prointer is one part of a vast business empire – stretching from real estate to fruit exports – that provides Dodik with unrivaled financial resources to maintain power and pursue his destabilizing agenda.

Avoid contradictions

The US should also sanction the political enablers of Dodik’s secessionist agenda. Treasury’s recent sanctioning of Dodik’s right-hand woman, Zeljka Cvijanovic, is an important step after six years of misguided and contradictory policies. Both Cvijanovic and Dodik celebrate convicted war criminals, engage in genocide denial, defy constitutional court rulings, and call for secession.

The US also appropriately sanctioned Dragan Stankovic for expropriating central government property, but it was Cvijanovic who signed into law the unconstitutional framework for him to do so. The UK sanctioned Cvijanovic in 2021 for violating the Dayton Agreement, but American officials continued to host her in Washington. This accommodating behavior, despite her secessionists policies, only served to embolden separatists by implying that the US was not willing to reinforce its rhetoric of upholding the Dayton Agreement.

Washington should not put itself in such a contradictory and counterproductive situation again. It must demonstrate the same decisiveness that it did in 2004 when it sanctioned every single member of the Serbian Democratic Party for obstructing war crimes prosecutions. Additionally, it banned from US entry every coalition partner of the SDS. These moves sent a clear message about US values, policies, and commitment to upholding the Dayton Agreement. They also contributed to SDS’ political collapse by effectively isolating a whole network of destabilizing individuals.

Secondary sanctions

Fourth, the US should impose so-called secondary sanctions on Dodik himself and his family, forcing non-US firms and individuals to choose between doing business with the U.S. or with Dodik. This type of sanctions leverages US dollar dominance in global trade and American market power to effectively compel non-US entities into implementing American policies. Such sanctions, for example, would apply to any bank dealing in US dollars – practically every legitimate bank on the planet – and conducting business with Dodik.

Secondary sanctions can be controversial for many reasons, including for imposing opportunity costs on non-U.S. businesses for the sake of American interests. While there is rising pushback against them – from China to Russia and plenty of countries in between – there are no American allies that engage in significant business relations with Dodik, meaning that secondary sanctions would be less of a burden than other examples. Additionally, secondary sanctions would partially compensate for the current absence of multilateral sanctions.

Multilateral sanctions

Fifth, irrespective of whether the U.S. implements secondary sanctions, it should ensure that sanctions against Dodik and his allies are multilateral, rather than easily evadable unilateral ones. The US should, at a minimum, coordinate its targeting with the UK to avoid an inconsistent approach, as was the case with Cvijanovic. While getting agreement from all 27 EU member states to sanction Dodik may be unlikely, Washington can still convince individual member states to levy their own.

Germany, for example, has already suspended development projects in the RS, but it should also employ a more targeted approach by punishing destabilizing individuals instead of the whole citizenry.

WHY THIS MATTERS

History demonstrates that seemingly isolated Balkan tensions can quickly escalate to regionally destabilizing events. Yet Europe lacks the willpower, coordination, and capacity to address continental security challenges without American support. To avert humanitarian catastrophe and distraction from strategic priorities, the US should refine its existing sanctions regime.

Dodik’s current trajectory makes peace unsustainable. Future actions to uphold the Dayton Agreement will inevitably require more funds and bandwidth at a time when there is already one war in Europe. The current US sanctions policy undermines its earlier investments in the region and squanders its influence. US taxpayers contributed over $15 billion from 1992 to 2002 on military operations to stabilize BiH and implement the Dayton Peace Agreement.

A National Defense University report assessed that Bosnia was the “exception” to otherwise “poorly coordinated and executed foreign interventions.” This US investment created unprecedented leverage to ensure stability in a volatile region. The current sanctions policy, however, is undermining this investment and making it likely that Dodik will collapse a US-sponsored peace agreement.

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With balance and proportionality for all

I don’t know why this fine letter from the chairs of the US, German, and UK legislative foreign relations committees appears in the Kyiv Post before other outlets, but what it suggests would be a good restart in the right direction:

Miroslav Lajčák 
Special Representative to the Western Balkans 
European Union 
 
Gabriel Escobar 
Special Representative to the Western Balkans 
United States Department of State 
 
The Lord Peach GBE KCB DL 
Special Envoy to the Western Balkans 
House of Lords 
 
Your Excellencies,
 
We write to raise our concerns over the current policy of the EU, U.S. and UK towards Serbia–Kosovo relations. We believe that recent events and crises have highlighted flaws within our collective approach and would request it is reconsidered.
 
Whilst our focus must remain on the normalisation of relations and continued Euro-Atlantic pathway for both Serbia and Kosovo, the recent unrest requires all parties to renew focus on de-escalation and deterrence.
 
The boycott of the Municipal elections by Kosovan Serbs on 23rd April, subsequent attack on KFOR soldiers on 29th May and arbitrary detention of Kosovan police officers by Serbian authorities on 14th June all point toward a rapidly deteriorating situation which not only threatens the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue, but regional peace itself. Recent discoveries of arms caches in northern Kosovo and reports of continued weapons smuggling across the Serbia-Kosovo border highlight the risks of further escalations.
 
Kosovo is a sovereign country and functioning democracy. This fact should form the basis for our
collective policy towards the current crisis. Attempts to disrupt democratic elections in Kosovo by Serbia must be criticised publicly as foreign interference with tangible measures implemented to hold them accountable if they continue to undermine free and fair elections. This will help to facilitate future elections with full participation from all communities present in the northern Municipalities. We must exercise deterrence diplomacy if the current crisis is to be resolved, the EU-facilitated dialogue is to yield positive results, and the implementation of the Ohrid Agreement is respectfully adhered to.
 
We are asking for balance and proportionality to return in dealing with Kosovo and Serbia.
 
Kosovo has faced significant repercussions following the efforts by Mayors to enter their offices in Northern Kosovo. Kosovo must coordinate with KFOR in the future to prevent escalations. But the lack of pressure placed on Serbia following the arbitrary detention of three Kosovan police officers and failure to hold to account those responsible for attacks on KFOR highlights the current lack of even-handedness in addressing such flash points.
 
We do note the recent sanctioning by the US Government of Aleksandar Vulin, head of the Serbian Security and Information Agency (BIA). 
 
The current approach is not working. We would ask that the international community learns from our past and ensure we do not adopt a Belgrade-centred policy for the Balkans. We also ask that you consider adopting a policy of deterrence diplomacy to prevent further aggravation of the security and political situation in the north of Kosovo, with balance and proportionality guiding any statements and any punishments or sanctions issued and that those who do up-hold the rule of law and democracy are not scolded.
 
Signed,
 
Senator Bob Menendez
Chair
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
United States Senate
United States of America 
 
Michael Roth
Chair
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Bundestag
Germany 
 
Alicia Kearns MP 
Chair
Foreign Affairs Committee 
House of Commons 
United Kingdom

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The West needs to rebalance Balkans policy towards tough love

The US Congress has now conducted hearings on the Balkans in both the Senate and House. Members from both sides of the aisle evinced discomfort with Biden Administration policy. It has leaned heavily towards appeasement of Belgrade and has failed to react strongly to secessionist moves in Bosnia. What is the alternative?

The US is oblivious to the obvious

Administration officials are fond of reiterating the laudable 1990s strategic objective: Europe “whole and free.” They are oblivious to the obvious. It is not happening anytime soon. President Putin has forced the drawing of a new line in Europe. The Russian-dominated parts Europe will remain for now on the Eastern side of the line. This includes Russia and Belarus as well as parts of Georgia (Abkhazia, South Ossetia) and Moldova (Transnistria). The remaining questions are about Ukraine and the Balkans. Will the line go through them, or will they join the West?

In Ukraine, conventional warfare will answer the question. In the Balkans, it is already decided. For the foreseeable future, there is no serious prospect that Serbia or Republika Srpska (the Serb-dominated part of Bosnia and Herzegovina) will join the West.

Bosnia and Herzegovina

For the RS, that is obvious. Its president, Milorad Dodik, is a wholly-owned Russian proxy. He is doing his best to end any accountability to the Sarajevo “state” government. The RS parliament has already passed legislation denying the validity of Constitution Court decisions. It is only a matter of time before it passes legislation claiming state property, which the RS needs as collateral for its international loans. The international community’s High Representative will presumably annul all secessionist legislation from now on, but how he will enforce his decisions is not clear.

Dodik may not proceed all the way to declaring independence, as even Serbia would be reluctant to recognize the RS. But whether he does or not, RS will remain attached to the East so long as he is in power. The only hope for getting rid of him is to bankrupt the entity and bail it out with Western financing, conditional on his resignation and an end to secessionist ambitions. It is not yet clear whether Washington and Brussels have the stomach for that.

Serbia

Serbia is different. President Vucic is hedging between East and West. He plays Washington and Brussels off against Moscow and Beijing, hoping to get all he can from all four. Belgrade has a policy of military neutrality, for example, and conducts exercises with both NATO and Russia. Serbia buys weapons from both East and West. It ships weaponry to both Russia and Ukraine. Belgrade has refused to align with EU sanctions against Russia, but it votes against Russia on some General Assembly resolutions denouncing Russian aggression.

This Yugoslav-style “non-aligned” foreign policy is linked with ethnic nationalist domestic politics and ambitions for regional hegemony. Judging from ongoing anti-Vucic demonstrations, there are a lot of Serbs who aren’t happy with the current regime, which they view as violent, corrupt, and repressive. But the only viable electoral opposition to Vucic stems from his Serbian nationalist right. He has all but obliterated the liberal democratic opposition, which was weak to begin with. He controls most of the popular media and judicial system in addition to the executive. The Serbian security services and their allies in the Serbian Orthodox Church are wedded to Moscow.

In the region, Vucic aims to create the “Serbian world,” analogous to Putin’s “Russian world,” an idea that supported the invasion of Ukraine. In its weakest form, the goal is Belgrade political control over the Serb populations in neighboring states. Belgrade has already achieved that in Montenegro and Kosovo. In Bosnia, only Dodik, whose interests are not congruent, stands in the way. In its stronger form, the Serbian world entails annexation of territory Serbs occupy in neighboring countries and creation of Greater Serbia.

Rebalance the policy

Belgrade has not moved one inch closer to the West in the six years of Vucic’s presidency, despite consuming a truckload of diplomatic carrots. Strengthening of his links to Beijing has more than compensated for any weakening of his links to Moscow. The RS has spent 17 years moving towards secession. It is not going to reverse course without vigorous pushback. This situation requires a more realistic Western policy in the Balkans.

We need to lower expectations and raise incentives. Dodik’s RS and Vucic’s Serbia are not going to voluntarily embrace the West. The US, UK, and EU will need to starve the RS of all Western funds in order to end Dodik’s secessionist ambitions. They will also need to end Serbia’s immunity from Washington and Brussels criticism. Washington recently sanctioned Aleksandar Vulin, Director of Belgrade’s Security Intelligence Agency, for corruption, drug and arms trafficking, and supporting Russia’s malign influence. That was a step in the right direction. The EU should do likewise. A public demand for Vulin’s removal as well as for the arrest and extradition to Kosovo of the thugs who attacked NATO peacekeepers in May would be another.

Possible benefits

Rebalancing toward Serbia and the RS would have the great virtue of testing not only their intentions, but also Moscow’s and Beijing’s. Moscow under current conditions is not going to want to increase funding to the RS. China hopes to use Serbia as an entry point to Europe. Beijing might think twice about investing in a Serbia that is on the outs with the EU. We could well be happily surprised if China and Russia decide to cut their losses and leave Serbia and the RS on the Western side of the new division of Europe. If they don’t, we will at least have saddled them with significant burdens.

Rebalancing could also help to revive the moribund dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina. Washington and Brussels have focused their pressure on Pristina, which has no hedging option and has traditionally bandwagoned with the West. There is a long history of Pristina responding better to carrots than sticks. Even longer is the history of Belgrade responding better to sticks than carrots. If Vucic saw Washington and Brussels coming after him with a stick rather than carrots, he would be inclined to hedge more in their direction. Tough love would bring better results than appeasement.

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So it fizzled. When will the next time come?

Yesterday’s insurrection and impending coup is today’s fizzle. Yevgeny Prigozhin has agreed to turn the Wagner troops around while he expatriates himself to Belarus. Ostensibly he and Putin reached an agreement, with Belarus’ President Lukashenko mediating, to avoid bloodshed. The Wagnerites get amnesty. Putin gets to stay in the Kremlin.

Question marks

I suppose it could be that simple. After all, if you are a Russian patriot, civil war is not appetizing. But there are still lots of question marks. Why did Prigozhin light the fuse? Why did he decide to abandon the effort? Did he fail to get support he thought would be forthcoming from others? Why did Russian forces not attack the Wagner column? What did Putin agree to do in exchange for the standdown?

Then there are the longer-term questions. Can Prigozhin really be safe in Minsk? Will this incident weaken Putin’s hold on power? If you are a Wagner fighter do you really believe there will be no retaliation? Are you willing to stick with an enterprise that apparently lost the contest? How will this incident affect the extensive Wagner operations in Africa and Syria? How do you feel if you are a Russian soldier on the front lines in Ukraine? What about ordinary Russian citizens? Does Chinese President Xi think Putin is a reliable partner?

Cracks are showing

Prigozhin for weeks has been complaining loudly about Russian Defense Minister Shoigu and Chief of Staff Gerasimov. Prigozhin accuses them of incompetence, failure to supply Wagner’s forces, and even an attack on his men. Neither Shoigu nor Gerasimov has been seen for a few days. Putin appeared to come down hard on their side in the pissing match with Prigozhin, but it is also possible he has agreed to sack them, but we’ll have to wait and see.

In any event, the Wagner fizzle suggests Putin’s hold on power is not quite as tight as many imagine. Prigozhin can’t be the only discontent almost a year and a half into a war that has gained Russia little and cost a lot. The crackdown that is sure to follow the Wagner non-coup could widen the fissures in the ruling elite. But there is still little sign of popular willingness to challenge the Kremlin.

Keep the popcorn for next time

Some will worry that Putin falling could bring chaos to a nuclear-weapons state. Or put those weapons into the hands of someone like Prigozhin. Those are legimate concerns, but there is little the West can do about them. The US, UK, and Europe are bystanders who can do little more than keep up their support for Ukraine and hope that somehow Moscow decides to cut its losses and leave. In the meanwhile, it was a good show while it lasted. If you haven’t finished your popcorn, hold on to it. Next time might not be far off.

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Stevenson’s army, April 12

– NY magazine has a summary.

–  WSJ reports on Hungary.

– Guardian traces sources.

– Reuters says Iran shipped weapons via Syria relief flights.

– Guardian says UK special forces are in Ukraine.

My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. 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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