Balkan outlooks

The Honduras mess

2012-01-27T12:03:00.005+01:00

The NY Times has an article about the situation in Honduras.

In June 2009 a US supported military coup deposed the democratically elected government of Zelaya - that it considered too leftist. In November 2009 they held an election that no one believes to have been honest and that brought president Lobo to power who still rules.

Since then Honduras has gone from bad to worse with political killings, a sharp increase in drug smuggling, the highest murder rate in the world, enormous corruption and a dysfunctional judicial system.

Yet Obama is still supporting this charade.

Syria - the League gets it, but only a bit

2012-01-23T20:21:00.003+01:00

As I have mentioned before the previous demands of the Arab League to Syria made no sense. They basically demanded Assad to surrender. And as that wasn't likely to happen they were a recipe for a civil war.

With first the observation mission and now a plan that looks for a Yemen-like solution - including amnesty for Assad - the chances are better. However, the plan is still somewhat unrealistic:
- amnesty for Assad is fine, but what about all the people who work for the regime. Many assume even that Assad is just a figurehead. In that case he wouldn't be able to accept a solution where only he gets amnesty.
- replacement of Assad by his deputy is a reasonable idea. But I wonder whether there isn't someone else in the present elite who enjoys more trust amongst the opposition. On the other hand: this should be the result of negotiations; not a precondition for it.
- the plan still foresees democratic elections in a few months. That is not feasible. The country has no democratic traditions and no existing parties. Just as in Egypt and Tunisia it would mean that the Brotherhood will win as they have the best organization. But this organization is not built for democracy so the result might very well be a new dictatorship. In addition the conflicts are much too sharp: democracy is only possible when the main parties are prepared to compromise. Elections at the moment would simply mean a revolution by ballot box and result in mass harassment of all those who are even remotely connected with the present government. It would be much better to focus on values: more freedom, less political prisoners and less torture.

So the best idea would be to have a transitional government with a minority representation for the opposition that initially focuses of make the country more free and more civilized. Elections should be held when the government thinks the time is there, but it should be understood that that will take at least two years.

Erdogan and Assad

2012-01-19T23:50:00.003+01:00

It is a common phenomena that when rulers rule too long they get bored with the internal affairs of their country and want to play on the international level. This happens not only with dictators but even more with democratic leaders who after some six year already will find that they are usually the most experienced among their international colleagues.

Often this results in rather embarrassing scenes. To make themselves internationally acceptable they blindly copy what the US is saying at the moment. And one gets the impression that they would do anything for a photo opportunity with the acting US president.

It looks like something like that is happening to Erdogan in Turkey too. While suppressing the press in his own country he enthusiastically embraced the Arab Spring. He pressured Mubarak to resign. He didn't utter one word of protest when the West initiated a civil war in Libya that killed 50,000, destroyed the country and brought it to near anarchy. And finally there was his "masterpiece": Assad in Syria.

And so we saw him going to Syria, having a long talk with Assad, coming back with the message that he had agreements with Assad for reform, feeling disappointed and deceived when Assad didn't deliver and then turning on Assad, calling for his resignation and introducing sanctions.

The list of misunderstandings here is almost too long to consider:
- It is very arrogant to think that as an outsider you can dictate how a country should be ruled. Even a dictator has his constituency that has to be consulted. And he has also to face practical difficulties that might have been ignored during the talks.
- Assad and his allies know the fate of Gadaffi and Mubarak and they will not be very eager to submit to the same treatment.
- Syria is a poor country and it is well known that poverty and democracy seldom go together. A regime change might very well end up as a Salafi dictatorship. Instead of democratization it might be a better strategy to aim for more freedom and less torture.
- Unlike his father Bashar al-Assad is not very political talented. International diplomats were already before the Arab Spring complaining that he seems out of touch with reality. He seems not to grasp basic concepts like that it is not wise to anger the US if it is not strictly necessary. In addition there is doubt how much power he really has and to what extent he is just a figurehead for other people.
- In this context one cannot expect that one day in Damascus will result in democratic change. Instead to achieve results some international diplomat or politician should take it upon him to serve as a kind of long term coach for Assad and other powerful people in his regime. That will be an unthankful job as the international media will likely discard him as defending the regime. Yet it is the only way to achieve peaceful change.

It is clear that Erdogan won't volunteer for this job. He wants to stand in the limelight and be praised and honored. For doing unpopular work with an uncertain outcome we will need someone else.

Dumb and Dumber at the EU

2012-01-16T09:57:00.002+01:00

The most important problem in the EU at the moment is the gap of competitiveness between Germany and Holland one side and many Southern countries on the other. Where many Southern states would need trade surpluses to get them out of their budgetary problems they have instead trade deficits. And the main countries they have a deficit with are in the North.

To mend that competitiveness gap the Southern countries are following very restrictive
fiscal policies. Unfortunately the EU is now forcing the North to implement similar restrictive policies. This means that the Southern countries are now running after a moving target that they may never reach before they stumble.

The logical alternative would be to have the North following an expansive fiscal policy. Unfortunately the EU leadership is so ideologically blinded that they refuse even to consider such options.

How management consulting and equity funds breed inequality

2012-01-15T14:36:00.002+01:00

Reading a nice article about Romney and his past as management consultant and leader of an investment fund finally made me understand what causes increasing inequality.

The point is that both management consulting and equity funds introduce top-down change. But many of the ideas they introduce are nothing new for people in the lower ranks. The consultants may have an MBA and use advanced statistical methods, but many opportunities for improvement are well visible for anyone with a bit of common sense. The only thing that management needs to do is to create a culture where such improvements are rewarded and not crushed by those whose personal interest might be hurt. The Japanese kaizen management technique is a good example how bottom up improvement works.

At first sight it may seem that it makes no difference whether a change is initiated from the top or from the bottom. But in fact it does. The first effect is on rewards: those who are credited with the improvements also get the rewards. And if the top is credited with them it will see its remuneration increase at the expense of the lower ranks. The second effect has to do with continuity. As long as mr. genius is leading the company results may be good. But inevitably he will sometimes be succeeded by a weak leader without much initiative. And then all improvement will stop. If, on the other hand, change is coming from below improvements may continue even under a weak leader.

Preparing for the post-Western world

2011-12-29T08:06:00.002+01:00

As the Libyans have experienced and the Syrians still experience Western sanctions come sooner and sooner and are every time better refined to hurt a country. But I wonder about the larger picture.

On the one side there is the issue of globalization. Free trade only works when you can trust that the other side will always deliver. Syria, that had in the last decade done a lot to open its economy is a good example. Now it is paying a price for that openness. I am sure that China and all the other countries that might one day find themselves to be America's newest favorite hate object have taken notice and will try to take precautions. This will hamper further globalization and may well reduce it.

While the Far East has taken over much of our industries finance is still very much a Western monopoly. But the increasing use of financial sanctions - now both against Iran and Syria - must make the Chinese wonder. I expect them to take steps to lessen Western control of international banking.

The EU as modernizer

2011-12-27T10:24:00.002+01:00

The EU likes to see itself as the big modernizer. Their favorite success story is how they absorbed the former dictatorships Spain and Portugal and made them into stable democracies. And how later they repeated the trick with Greece.

I have never believed much of that story. On the one hand Spain had become a rather prosperous country and - as I have mentioned before - prosperity - and with it a growing middle class - makes a democracy much more viable. Portugal and Greece also saw a rise in prosperity after becoming EU members, but that was caused to a large extent by money from Brussels and not by real development. We basically bribed those countries to stay democratic. But the price was that those countries have a dubious kind of democracy where you can vote how much you want but nothing really changes. The political dynasties of Greece are a good example of what is wrong. The EU isn't bothered too much about this fake democracy. Most rules come from Brussels nowadays in a very undemocratic way and the EU wants obedience more than anything else.

But nowadays the EU seems to be losing it. They no longer seem able to maintain even a semblance of democracy in all those countries they aim to modernize: they simply have too much to bother about. Nearly half the EU countries are former dictatorships, then they have the Balkans, the former Soviet Union and the Arab World and finally there is also the economic (euro) crisis. They really dropped the ball with Hungary that adopted a couple of very authoritarian laws without being bothered by Brussels. The recent complaints about how Serbia is implementing its judicial reform fall in this category too.

The basic problem is that the EU operates like a mafia. If you don't behave like they like they will send in some tough guys (or girls like Merkel) who make some veiled threats. The EU has strayed so far from its ideals that it no more remembers how it once did the trick with some gentle moral persuasion.

The EU's crazy aviation tax

2011-12-26T11:18:00.002+01:00

The craziness with which Western countries try to ignore international law keeps increasing. One good example is the aviation tax that will start with the beginning of next year. On itself there is nothing wrong with a tax on fuel for planes. On the contrary, not being taxed gives air transport an unfair advantage over other types of transport.

The problem is in the extra-territoriality. If there is a flight from Brussels to Tokyo the EU wants to tax the whole route and not just the part between Brussels and the Ukrainian border. If a country like Russia or China had done such a thing the EU would have fumed with anger but nowadays the EU leaders feel just as invulnerable as their American colleagues. Both the EU and the US leaders are incompetent to get their own affairs back on track. It looks like their extremist foreign policy is meant to give their voters the impression that they are still in control.

In the mean time we will likely see that people will get creative evading the tax. One example are ideas to give fights from Hong Kong to Germany a stop in Mumbay. It is 1800 km extra but that will be more than compensated because you have only to pay tax for the distance between Mumbay and Germany.

Comparing communists and the Muslim Brotherhood

2011-12-25T14:09:00.004+01:00

There is a considerable similarity between the communist parties at the time of the Soviet Union and the Muslim Brotherhood now:
- In both cases these are parties that are supported by dictatorships that want to export their ideology. in the case of the Muslim Brotherhood the money comes from the Gulf States.
- In both cases party members are known for their loyalty and fanaticism. I suspect that that is caused to a large extent by the fact that there are no real ideological discussions in the party as the ideology is settled by the money supplier. This allows one to be a true believer. Sometimes elements of the ideology may changed by the money supplier but that is still less stressful than seeing an endless ideological battle as often happens in democratic parties.
- Both types of parties are very capable to survive in adverse circumstances like dictatorships.
- Both types of parties can show a wide range of behaviors: from loyal democrats to ruthless Machiavellians and even terrorists. As this is directed by the money suppliers it is hard to predict how they will behave.
- Both tend to have many faces. Some are plain front organizations while in others the party is only contributing in the background.

This all makes it very doubtful how the Arab Spring countries will end even if they have free elections. At the first elections almost inevitably the Brotherhood will win and so they will be happy to participate. But what will happen if at some point the voters get tired of the Brotherhood? Even the leader of the Tunisian Islamists is known to have given some threatening statements on what would happen if they didn't get enough votes.

We know how communism worked. Each "converted" country became a communist dictatorship that tried to export its ideology to its neighbors while making it impossible for its own citizens to get rid of communism. Just as communism Islamism has already been a powerful exporter of terrorism - with Osama bin Laden as its greatest success story - and of ideological fanaticism - as can be seen in many extremist mosques in Europe and the US. If this ideology is allowed to expand things will only get worse.

The EU goes for broke

2011-12-21T16:45:00.002+01:00

It is really amazing to see how the eurocrats have managed to once again solve an EU problem with more power for Brussels. It is obvious that to the question "double or quit" they know only one answer "double". Unfortunately - as many gamblers know - this strategy often leads to it that you loose everything. Most likely we will see something similar here too.

Germany keeps advertising that the problem is irresponsible spending of Southern European countries while in fact it is that the countries are no longer competitive compared to Germany. For years Germany has lowered its wages and cuts its government spending in order to become more competitive. But that competitiveness came at the expense of the South Europeans. Now they need to lower their wages and cut their government spending too in order to catch up again. But as Germany keeps doing the same they are facing a moving target and it is doubtful whether they will be able to catch up before the things start to fall apart.

Germany seems very allergic to any proposal that might hurt its exports. It has refused to cancel defense orders from Greece, it blocks an expansive policy by the European Central Bank that might take some pressure from Southern Europe and it forces the Southern countries to very restrictive economic policies that hurt their prospects - in the hope that that way they will be able to pay to Germany. So in the end all those massive European funding programs serve mainly to keep Germany's economy going.

Of course this is window dressing. On the short term Germany gets the other countries to foot its bills. But in the longer term it may find that Southern Europe is not capable to pay every loan it granted back. The damage that it does to the Southern economies will harm Germany's economy in the long term. And one can only hope that the EU will find a nice way out once things are no longer tenable.

The present strengthening of the power of Brussels carries another risk: it may cause Southern Europe to become permanently in debt and dependent on aid from the North. The "great" example is Southern Italy that since Italy's unification in the 1860s has become poorer and poorer and keeps exporting people instead of products.

There is a remarkable similarity between Merkel's behavior in Kosovo and regarding the EU. In both cases she seems totally out of control and no longer capable of common sense. It looks like her power has risen to her head.

Blowing up Europe

2011-12-07T20:02:00.003+01:00

Every general knows the term "tactical retreat". It means withdrawing your army because your supply lines are too long, you risk to be cut of from the rest of your troops or another sector of the front needs reinforcement. Such a tactical retreat is exactly what the EU needs at the moment. Unfortunately our eurocrats have gotten used to always wanting more and they simply seem incapable of making a step backwards.

If they had withdrawn a few years ago the euro crisis would have stayed rather small. If they had spent a few billions to grease the transition Greece - whose core problem is a lack of competitiveness - could have left the eurozone without much problems and would by now be refinding its competitiveness. And if they had not forced to accept bad bank loans from speculators in order to avoid trouble with the banks Ireland wouldn't have much problems now. By highlighting that a lack of competitiveness can lead to the exit from the euro they would also have encouraged Spain and Italy to take their problems more seriously.

Now we see instead the eurocrats making another power grab. This time they want automatic fines for countries that have a too large budget deficit. But such a fine would only make the deficit larger. And sometimes budget deficits arrive suddenly like we saw in Spain and Ireland when their real estate bubble burst. The real problem of the eurozone is seldom budget deficits - it is countries that are not competitive and live above their means. Spain and Ireland got into problems thanks to a busting real estate boom, not because they spent too much. But now they have to adjust.

The eurozone has two structural problems and we will need to find an answer to them:
- one is that its economies develop not in sync. The bursting of the real estate bubbles in Spain and Ireland are good examples of that. One could argue that allowing those bubbles to happen was bad economic policy to begin with but as virtually no economists or politicians raised the issue we will have to consider such developments as de facto "natural" developments. It takes painful adjustments for such economies to get back in sync with the rest of the eurozone.
- the other is more structural. I call it the "Southern Italy effect". Since Southern Italy became part of Italy around 1860 it has become poor (much poorer than before) and mafia infested. It have no good theory why that happened, but given the fact that Spain and former Yugoslavia had similar problems between the north and the south there must be some structural cause. I see a great risk that with further integration of the EU the whole of Southern Europe may become caught in such a poverty trap.

It looks like - except for giving in yet again to the power hunger of the eurocrats - the European leaders will today once again attempt to buy time and to evade the structural problems. If they continue that way they might well end up blowing the euro. But maybe that would be the better outcome in the long term. Finding a solution that lets the rot go on just slow enough to be "manageable" might in the long term be yet worse.

Border changes: it is so simple

2011-12-07T07:45:00.002+01:00

As I keep hearing people claim that border changes will lead to long term instability I will once again repeat my thoughts on that subject.

My rule is simple: "Don't do it. But if you have to do it anyway then do it good."

The first part is what everyone knows: border changes can generate a lot of trouble. If today you have Congress of Berlin (1878) you will find that some parties will keep grumbling and when after a few decades the power balance has changed you will get a new set of border changes. In addition border changes are often accompanied by soft or hard ethnic cleansing and "population exchanges".

But sometimes you cannot avoid border changes. A secession movement is too strong or the international players are too strongly in favor. In that case the second part of my rule applies and that part is often ignored.

Doing it good means two things: first of all you take into account all things, including the desires of the local populations. Secession according to existing internal borders - without considering the consequences - is in my opinion a fundamental error. In addition the border changes - and how they are implemented - should be mutually agreed. That way it is possible to have peaceful border changes as multi-ethnic countries like Belgium and Switzerland demonstrate.

So what does that mean for Northern Kosovo? As long as opinions vary from Albanians who want it ethnically cleansed from its Serb population and included in Kosovo until Serbs who want it included in Serbia you won't find a solution. Allocating it to Kosovo now will lead to (soft) ethnic cleansing of the Serbs. Allocating it to Serbia will very probably lead to long term territorial claims by Kosovo Albanian politicians.

For that reason I think the solution for the moment should be to decide to give Northern Kosovo very strong autonomy - virtually independence - for the coming 5 years. That is in fact a continuation of the present situation. The big difference is that once you decide to this constellation formally you can also make agreements on how the area should be governed.

Will that lead to another situation like the RS in Bosnia? Actually I think the entity solution hasn't done that badly: compared to Croatia - where we implemented a unitary state - Bosnia has done better in terms of minority returns. The Bosnian solution could have worked even better is we had not consistently sabotaged it by insisting on a unitary state. That polarized the ethnic relations while the entities were meant to take them out of the equation.

The disadvantage of Dayton was that it was to a large extent an imposed solution. An imposed solution leaves room for nationalists to demand more. A real solution has to be negotiated and that takes time. At the moment it is impossible to find any solution that would not lead to one - and maybe even both - negotiators to be seen as traitors as soon as they came back home. Real negotiations make the parties gradually aware of the position of the others and how far that position is real and how it is nationalistic greed. They gradually establish criteria about how you treat people and how you want to be treated.

That takes time. We have recently seen how it took Belgium one and a half year to find a solution for a relatively minor problem. Kosovo very likely will take longer. Problem is that until now real negotiations still haven't started. One can blame for that to a large extent the Western countries that have treated Kosovo mainly as a play-field for their international power games.

What I would like to see is that the West explicitly admits that the treatment of minorities in the rest of Kosovo is still so bad that it is ethically irresponsible to deliver the Northern Serbs to a similar treatment. From there they could decide that Northern Kosovo should keep for at least the next 5 years its present semi-independent status. As that is a temporary solution it could be acceptable for both parties. In contrast to what the EU is doing now it would not leave space for yet more adventurous policies that aim to change the "facts on the ground". It would also clearly establish that the Northern Serbs have good reasons at the moment not to want to be part of Kosovo.

Every border change should be thoroughly negotiated. The trouble in Croatia and Bosnia was a direct consequence of not following that rule. The present trouble similarly is a direct consequence of separating Kosovo from Serbia without proper negotiations.

Negotiating takes time. But it also is a dialogue that forces both sides to take each other seriously. I think Kosovo would be in a much better shape if it had spent the last 12 years negotiating with Serbia. The mafia style posturing that is propagated by the EU and the US takes in the long run much more time and is much more harmful.

The profits of doom

2011-12-05T10:30:00.002+01:00

100Reporters has an article The profits of doom about arms smuggling towards ex-Yugoslav republics during the early 1990s.

However, I couldn't find an underlying report.

I don't think that it is that important who profited from the conflict. In our present world there will always be some people who are prepared to supply arms. The real sources of the conflict are to be found in Western diplomatic circles - and they are until now beyond scrutiny.

German views on the recent Kosovo clashes

2011-12-02T01:00:00.003+01:00

Looking at the German press about the recent clashes between NATO and protesters in Northern Kosovo the fate of the own soldiers dominates - above all in Austria.

Some headlines:

Mitteldeutsche Zeitung: Kirsch fordert höhere Auslandszulage für Soldaten im Kosovo. Translated: Kirsch (president of a union of soldiers) asks for a higher expat allowance for soldiers who go to Kosovo.

Nachrichten.at: Im Kosovo verletzter Soldat: „Beim Bosnien-Einsatz 2012 bin ich dabei“.
Translated: Soldier who was wounded in Kosovo: "I will be there when we are stationed in Bosnia".

Heute.at: Kosovo-Fliegerarzt im Talk: "Soldaten bekommen psychologische Hilfe". Doctor on airplane that evacuated soldiers to Austria: soldiers get psychological help.

Thüringer Allgemeine: Verletzter Sondershäuser Offizier will im Kosovo bleiben.
Translated: wounded Officer from Sondershausen wants to stay in Kosovo.

I could go on and mention another dozen similar titles.

A translated quote from one German parliamentarian who visited Kosovo: Johannes Selle was not only as parliamentarian happy to have learned a bit more about the background of the UN mandate in Kosovo. It is important for his decisions in Berlin. Even though the soldiers cannot go into details for security reasons became it clear that the confrontations in the area of employment have changed recently. "The red line of mutual agreements has been crossed by the few Serb militants", cited Selle. And he means that people no longer keep the agreement not to shoot each other.

In addition the Serb hooligans recently place women, old people and children in the street blockades, so that the soldiers can no longer use tear gas when they want to remove street barricades. But the main problems in the regions have been solved and they will deal with the remaining militant hooligans too - so Selle und Hengstermann (an officer) briefly summarize their conversations with soldiers. They have developed a good relationship with most of the people - but the situation is still too dangerous for touristic trips.

I read several reports that in general relations between German soldiers and the Serb population are good. It looks like the Serbs in Kosovo - and specially the protesters - should spend more of their time explaining their cause to those German soldiers.

We are mishandling the Arab Spring

2011-11-27T23:12:00.005+01:00

In less than a month it will be a year ago that the series of protests that we call the Arab Spring started. Although we as Western countries are outsiders we have played an important role in shaping the results of these protests. And I believe our results are rather mixed.

Tunisia

In Tunisia all elements for more democracy were present. It is a prosperous country with a considerable middle class: a configuration in which a democracy is likely to develop and prosper. Wikileaks had undermined the credibility of its leader so that not much was needed for protests to break out.

Too much has been made of the departure of president Ben Ali. As an old man he simply didn’t have the energy to lead the country through a difficult transition. But if he had been 30 years younger he might very well have led the transition to democracy himself.

Revolts are of all times. But usually they just bring another regime of the same type. A transition to democracy demands more than a revolution: it demands another way of thinking. Tunisia had the advantage that such thinking was already present. Other countries need lengthy negotiations before the key players are able to see how democracy can work in their country.

Western media and leaders love black-white thinking in which people are good or bad. However, real bad people like Hitler that are beyond the hope of salvation are extremely rare. The authoritarian rulers of the Arab world are simply products from another age when more forceful methods to keep order were considered acceptable. They have a sense of entitlement but so do most politicians who have been in power for a long time.

Many journalists have tried to explain the insurrections in the Arab world out of the mismanagement of the economy. But countries like Egypt and Tunisia had high economic growth before the protests started. A more likely explanation is the “revolution of the rising expectations”: when people are more prosperous they also expect a better government and things that they previously saw as inevitable are no now longer considered acceptable. The same phenomena could be observed in the West in the 1960 rebellions.

Another often repeated story is that the rapacious elites of the Arab world took all the wealth for themselves and left the rest of the population in poverty. But the economic statistics are clear: countries like Egypt and Tunisia have less inequality than the West – not more.

A third often repeated theme is that the leaders have lost contact with reality. We love to repeat how Saddam’s information minister Mohammad Saeed al-Sahhaf declared that there were no US troops in Bagdad while their sound could be heard in the background and Gaddafi’s “zenga, zenga” speech was parodied. Counterproductive actions like attacks on embassies in Syria are also part of this pattern. Of course when people have been in power for decades they get a bit calcified and their shortcomings become more problematic. But that is not the main cause of this behavior. Rather it is a type of loss processing. The psychiatrist Kübler-Ross has written that people process grief in 5 stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance – not necessarily in that order. Her book is about how people deal with the announcement that they are terminally ill, but people who loose (a part of) their power react very similarly. It is normal that they initially are in denial. And even attacks on embassies do not mean that these leaders are not capable of adapting themselves. What is important in this context is taking time: expecting total surrender in the first round of negotiations is a recipe for disaster.

However, while that may explain the Tunisian revolt it does not necessarily explain the others. In the case of the others there was a lot of copycat behavior. But that may well mean that they have a much lower chance of success.

Egypt

Egypt is a much poorer country with many local potentates who have considerable ability to direct the vote of the local population and an army that is used to a privileged position. It is a well known fact that democracy doesn’t work very well in poor countries. So it is doubtful how democratic Egypt can become. Most likely non-democratic forces like parts of the Muslim Brotherhood, the army, local strongmen and certain businessmen will keep playing an important role.

Obama made the error to think that the Arab spring is about regime change. That led to his push for the departure of Mubarak. This was a mistake. It directed the discussion away from the question how Egypt should change and democratize. The consequence is that that discussion now still needs to be held. And the bad influence of the Obama decision is still visible: the protesters on Tahrir Square are now asking for yet more people – mainly the army leadership - to go instead of discussing how Egypt’s government can be made more democratic.

There is another reason why it was not good for Obama to push for Mubarak’s departure: it puts Obama in the driver seat instead of the local opposition. This means that Obama robs that opposition of much of its power to negotiate with their regime. Later on that became a serious point in Libya and Syria.

Obama’s recent statement that the military should swiftly start a “full transfer of power” to a civilian government in a “just and inclusive manner” contains a similar problem. Democracy works when the main forces in a country believe in it as a political system and trust each other and the rule of law enough. When that trust is lacking one cannot expect people to just make the jump.

Arab authoritarian leaders – including the Egyptian army - like to forecast chaos when they are gone. Western leaders and media tend to discard such statements as propaganda and like to stages incidents where those authoritarians try to prove that they are needed – like the incidents with the Copts in Egypt. However, this does not take away that both these leaders and many citizens in those countries sincerely believe this point. The present chaos – and the preceding civil war - in Libya show that their fears are not totally unfounded.

Libya

The Libyan uprising was a typical copycat uprising. Once the regime became serious in its suppression the uprising collapsed like a house of cards. What “saved” it was the fact that the West took up its case. But this Western involvement had little to do with the internal situation in Libya. With his active and erratic foreign policy Gaddafi had made many enemies in the West and now they saw their chance.

The Western aversion went so far that it consistently sabotaged efforts to come to a negotiated solution. The consequence was that the conflict was fought till the bitter end and probably about 50,000 people died – about one percent of the population. In addition there was considerable devastation and the country is left in a state of near anarchy. There are still many Western leaders who advertise this operation as “humanitarian” but I think “war crime” would be a more suitable term. In this context we should also consider how deadly NATO bombings are: very likely they have killed over 10,000 people.

Western involvement in this type of cases knows a typical pattern of blowing up incidents and then crying for sanctions. These sanctions are an important psychological tool. By committing ourselves to sanctions we committed ourselves with the US against Libya. At first sanctions are typically very small and we tend to disregard their effect. What we forget is that their main effect is on us. We will become more likely to commit ourselves to more sanctions later on (psychologists and salesmen call this the “foot in the door technique”) and we will find it very difficult to withdraw sanctions as long as any conflict is going on. We are sold on each step with the message that with just a little more pressure the regime will topple – what obviously never happens.

In Libya this pattern started with the indictment of Gaddafi by the ICC for shooting some protesters. I think this was a bad mistake. Even in Western countries the police sometimes shoots protesters. This is something countries should handle themselves. The ICC should concentrate on more important issues.

The next step was the Security Council that asked NATO to protect Libya's civil population. It was achieved by misrepresenting a threat of Gaddafi towards the rebels as a threat towards the whole population of Benghazi. There were no reports of large scale retaliations by Gaddafi troops in the large area that they had already conquered so it was no reason to explain his word as more threatening than they were.

It is amazing to see how many Western observers cling to the idea that the more a regime is removed the better. They consider revolutionary changes like in Iraq and Libya as better than partial changes like in Tunisia and Egypt. This view saw its summit in the disastrous de-Baathification policy in Iraq. What these observers fail to see it that even amongst the officials of the most ugly regime there are many people who just want to serve their country. Removing them creates a vacuum that is difficult to fill. With negotiated gradual transitions one can keep most of those dedicated people in place.

It would have been much better for Libya to have a negotiated solution. Gaddafi probably would have gotten a nice retirement somewhere near Sirte and his family would be absolved for any crime it had done during the regime or the war. But this would have been a small price to pay for saving ten thousands of lives, preventing a lot of devastation, anarchy and tense intertribal relations.

Bahrain

In many places in the Arab world the power is concentrated in the hands of some ethnic groups or clans but Bahrain is unique as the only case where ethnic discrimination is the main issue. Being part of the Shiite majority in Bahrain means that your chances for a decent job are considerably smaller. So unlike the other Arab countries Bahrain has a systemic problem.

In that light the disinterest of the West to the suppression in Bahrain looks specially bad. It highlights that Western interests – in this case an American basis in Bahrain – are more important than human rights.

Yemen

Yemen had seen many false starts before president Saleh finally signed an agreement to leave. Yet I think this is how things should go.

Far going changes nearly always take a lot of time and negotiations. Belgium recently took one and a half year to solve a conflict between its main ethnic groups. So we shouldn’t be surprised when it takes a lot of time to negotiate the terms under which a dictator leaves. All the talking and thinking about the future makes the chance greater that the new political constellation will work and not disintegrate into anarchy or strife.

Such negotiations are not always nice. People will come back on what they have promised and sometimes they will lie and evade. At other times they will feverishly defend unreasonable positions. But often there is logic in the madness as “unreasonable” demands may hide much more reasonable concerns that may not be considered politically correct at the moment. Long negotiations also result in the main players learning – and sometimes trust – each other.

One should not underestimate the stress this places on the diplomats mediating in such conflicts. They should be nearly completely egoless to be able to deal with the endless setbacks. Forget the Dayton Agreements on Bosnia that were finished in a couple of days thanks to bulldozer diplomacy by Richard Holbrooke: that is not how it works and it is probably no coincidence that the implementation of Dayton is still mired in controversy. Too many details were not discussed.

Every time the West has tried to evade such lengthy negotiations it has resulted in a bloody mess. We saw it recently in Libya. And previously we saw it in former Yugoslavia where the West avoided real negotiations about how the country should be partitioned by declaring the inner boundaries as external boundaries and declaring previous internal Yugoslav agreements void.

Tunisia and Egypt had much less negotiations and yet no revolution. But that means that the transition is only partial and that a lot of subjects still have to be negotiated later on. That in Tunisia a further transition was possible was mainly an effect of stronger trust between the players.

Yemen has been saved from war because no country found it important enough to send soldiers and only its neighbors even bothered to try to mediate the conflict. If it had been a more important country we would very likely have mishandled it into a war.

Syria

The risks that Syria will fall into a civil war are well known. Given the size of its population and its ethnic fragmentation such a war might cost well over a 100,000 lives. Yet this aspect has suddenly disappeared from the discussion about how we should deal with Syria. Instead we see a pattern of blowing up incidents and demanding sanctions that looks very similar to that in Libya.

One often hears the figure of more than 3500 killed. What is amazing about this figure is that over a third of them are police and soldiers. This means that about 2 protesters and rebels have been killed for every cop or soldier. This figure is extremely low. When faced with an insurrection or guerrilla most governments are much more deadly. So – although there are without doubt excesses – we should also give the Syrian troops some credit for the prudent way in which they handle the situation: the US troops in Iraq were considerably more deadly when they faced armed opposition.

The Syrian opposition is united in two coalitions. One is the NCC (National Coordination Committee) that unites the groups in Damascus. The other is the SNC (Syrian National Council) that was only recently formed and unites a number of groups outside Syria. The NCC is prepared – under certain conditions - to negotiate with the regime but the SNC is only prepared to negotiate about the transfer of power. Many see the SNC as a creation of Western diplomacy. Very probably it will fall apart when its only goal is met. Lessons from the former Yugoslavia plea against too much involvement of emigrants: they tend to be more radical and more inclined to favor the use of violence.

The West has resolutely chosen for the SNC. US ambassador Ford went so far as to sabotage a planned meeting between the regime and the NCC by going to Hama a few days before and making some radical statements that spoiled the mood for compromise. US diplomats have also repeatedly said that Assad should go. Just as in the case of Libya negotiations with the regime seem to be out of the question for the Western leaders. That that may mean a civil war seems to bother no one.

Here just as in Libya global considerations play a role. Syria supports Hezbollah and Hamas and is considered an ally of Iran. But by clothing these goals in human rights rhetoric the West is turning the latter into a bad joke. It isn’t very good long term thinking either. A messy transition like in Libya generates a lot of instability that may lead sooner or later to the rise of another adventurous dictator.

In bringing Syria into its present spot at the brink of civil war the Arab League has played an important role. Consciously or unconsciously it has followed exactly the script that the West would like it to follow to drive Syria into a corner:

An example is the demand to Assad to withdraw his troops from the cities. This does not make sense in a situation where the opposition is armed. It would mean that the government leaves the cities to the opposition that would be free to declare them “liberated” areas. The minimum the League could have done to be impartial is ask the opposition to lay the arms down too. If you combine this with the fact that the SNC only wants to talk about regime chance the conclusion is that the Arab League is asking Assad to give up. This is not mediating or finding a solution: it is taking sides in a way that makes the conflict unsolvable and brings civil war nearer.

The same lack of impartiality can also be seen in the criticism of human rights violations. While the Assad government certainly has dirty hands the opposition has too. Yet somehow neither the Arab League nor the Western countries criticizes the opposition or is bothered that it might not be an improvement.

Their recent demand for observers is little better. Usual the function of observers is to look onto it that both sides stick to an agreed solution. But in the case of Syria there is no agreed solution: there is a low level civil war in which both sides not always respect human rights. When there is no trust between the parties and no will to make a solution work observers are worthless. We have seen in Kosovo that observers can be very partial and instrumental in bringing on a foreign intervention. It looks like the Arab League is aiming for a similar scenario.

Amazing was the statement by some diplomats that Assad by not following the demands of the Arab League had insulted it. It looks like these people don’t understand what mediation means.

In Syria the main opponents are the government that is dominated by Alawis and the opposition that is dominated by extremist Sunnis who have waged a guerrilla war before – the one that ended with the Hama massacre. These Sunnis are far from harmless: there are already numerous reports of Alawis being targeted for killing and of their flight from some cities. Only a carefully negotiated solution can avoid a deadly civil war. This will inevitably be a long and tedious process.

Conclusion

The similarities between the wars in former Yugoslavia and the Arab Spring are striking. In both cases Western involvement worsened the situation and resulted in much more deaths. If Syria descends into a civil war the number of Arab deaths will nearly certainly exceed that in the Balkans.

The elements involved are remarkably similar:
- Western governments that try to inject their own political goals: in Yugoslavia anti-communism, in the Arab world anti-Iranian sentiments and an aversion to adventurist leaders who finance and arm guerrilla and political movements.
- Impatience in negotiations. Incapability to understand that this is about subjects that may take many months to negotiate. Demonization of some parties that makes it difficult to take them seriously during negotiations. A tendency to impose solutions.
- A contempt for the local population that becomes visible in a tendency to ignore their opinions and not to bother about violence. Most Western diplomats and politicians reason from the point of view of power politics. They seem incapable to understand that helping a country in its process towards democratization requires a fundamentally different point of view.

good fences make good neighbors

2011-11-11T19:14:00.002+01:00

"Good fences make good neighbors" is an English saying that clear appointments make it easier to be on friendly terms with someone. This is exactly the reason why changing borders is so risky: everything has to be agreed again. Putting minority rights on paper helps only a little bit. You cannot legislate discrimination and contempt. After some time in most cases there develops a kind of mutual respect but that takes time and sometimes involves confrontations.

However, once you are changing borders everything is in play. The Western countries are still pretending that blowing up Yugoslavia was not the changing of borders but they are just deceiving themselves and trying to deceive the rest of the world. What they did put all ethnic relations in play and made it necessary to find new power balances and new ways of living together.

In such unstructured circumstances it is a matter to find a structure as soon as possible. However, as long as there are open points of conflict this will be difficult, although not impossible. That implies that subjects for conflict should be minimized. The first and most simple way to do this is to apply ethnic borders. This reduces the risk for long time border conflicts and also conflicts about the government trying to impose its will in the minority area - often involving efforts to change the ethnic balance. Next is to settle all conflicts as soon as possible. Kosovo's thousands of real estate conflicts for example should have been settled long ago with some special procedure. Similarly perpetrators of crimes against the other ethnic group should be convicted fast: the punishment might be somewhat lower to compensate for a less careful procedure as usual.

For that reason I have already often repeated that the rule should be: "Don't change borders, but if you do it do it good". That is: take into account ethnic borders and other practical considerations so as to minimize the number of inherent conflicts.

Syria's stupid protesters

2011-11-08T18:41:00.002+01:00

For a moment there was hope. The Arab League's mediation seemed to succeed after Assad had consented to talks with the opposition. He even promised to withdraw his troops from the cities. But then he seemed to do the opposite and increased the army actions against the protests. So what went wrong?

It was the behavior of the opposition. They chose to explain the behavior of Assad as an admission of defeat. And they announced that they would intensify they demonstrations. This was clearly a show of force meant to show that Assad had lost and that they now controlled the cities.

But Assad had not meant it that way. And when confronted with this behavior he had no choice but to stay in the cities. What he meant was a kind of armistice where the protesters kept low key and in exchange the army withdrew.

The protesters would have had little to loose to wait and see whether Assad was really serious. They could always come back on the street. By staying home and waiting they would have shown that they are real democrats who want to solve things with talks. It would have shown maturity and promised well for the future. By instead keeping on the protests they showed that they are only interested in getting power for themselves.

The EU short term memory on border changes

2011-11-08T06:39:00.002+01:00

Once again the EU has stated that "If we are talking about territories, we believe that there shouldn't be any more changes of borders in the Western Balkans. Therefore, this is something that the EU stands on".

Strange how principles can change. Just 4 years ago EU diplomats were open to a division of Kosovo.

How not to win a propaganda war

2011-11-07T18:45:00.002+01:00

Serb nationalists have published a video that an Albanian newspaper found quite useful. It shows NATO soldiers removing a barricade with primitive means while elsewhere Serbs are using better material to strengthen their barricade. In the mean time some Serbs youth are standing around teasing the soldiers with the words "Arbeit" (German for work).

These youth stroke me as totally stupid. They should try to convince NATO of their point of view, not turn it into an enemy. Obviously they don't understand the power of NATO and how nasty it can be. It raised for me the question whether there were any Serb adults in the area. And if they were - why they didn't interfere. One should give those youth banners and slogans that serve their cause but one should withhold them from this kind of self-destructive actions.

Mafia politics in Kosovo and Bosnia

2011-11-02T21:58:00.005+01:00

Before Hitler started his real wars he had a period in which he just got his way by establishing fact-on-the ground. He did it when he invaded the Rhineland, when he announced to have an airforce, with the annexation of Austria and finally with the annexation of Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia. It was a prelude to war. Far from leading to stability it led to an ever increasing appetite.

Now we have the West implementing a similar policy in the Balkans. Just as Hitler had his philosophy of Untermenschen here we have Robert Cooper's theory about pre-modern states where we as civilized Westerners can basically do whatever we want to bring civilization. The result is that we now see both in Bosnia and in Kosovo an attempt to establish facts-on-the-ground.

In both cases it starts with a unilateral act by the West's favorite party. The act is clearly illegal but close enough to the rules to be defended in front of ignorant journalists. It is then also defended by the US ambassador and there is even active Western support for it.

In Bosnia it started when the Bosniaks usurped the presidency by installing as Croat member of the presidency a Croat who had been chosen nearly exclusively with Muslim votes. Later on they captured also the government of the Federation. These are clear attempts to undermine the Dayton Agreement. Western support became visible when the OHR overruled the Central Election Commission who had condemned the Bosniak move.

In Kosovo it started with the Albanian attempt to capture the border posts in the Serb-controlled north. Western support became visible when it helped transport Albanian police to the border after they had been driven away.

The combination of these two events makes it clear that the real actor behind these events must be somewhere in Washington or Brussels. This and the underhanded way it is executed makes me very pessimistic that we will see a speedy solution in either area. When people with moral consciousness of Machiavelli are determining what happens anything can happen.

It is good to remember the sorry end of Machiavelli himself. The kind of behavior he advocated may bring victories but it destroys trust. And that means that in the everyone ends worse. Solving ethnic conflicts requires trust more than anything.

Fighting corruption in Bihar

2011-11-01T12:15:00.003+01:00

Bihar in India used to be one of those places where corruption and crime linked politicians make all progress impossible. Now, according to this article ("How Bihar Went from Basket Case to Case Study") that is no longer the case. It praises a local politician, Nitish Kumar, for the turnaround. The article is a nice illustration how fast such corruption basket cases can be changed.

It should be noted that neighboring Uttar Pradesh has simultaneously undergone a similar transformation. So maybe it is not only the presence of an idealist politician but was it also somehow "in the air".

Postscript. Foreign Policy had in januari 2012 another article ("The battle for Bihar") on the subject. It compares the situation in Bihar with that elsewhere in India where corruption is increasing.

Lost decades in Eastern Europe

2011-10-31T11:08:00.003+01:00

The NY Times has an article about the Hungarian economy. They note that one pharmaceutical company - Richter - does almost half the R&D of the country. For the rest there came some car industry but much foreign investment was about "service centers". Problem is that the car industry and service centers don't produce self-sustaining growth. That is only done by companies like Richter. And the economic climate hasn't been favorable to them:

But through the previous decade the forint was buoyed by a speculative carry trade in which investors borrowed euros at low interest rates to buy the higher-yielding Hungarian currency, creating a headache for exporters. Mr. Bogsch referred to this period as a “lost decade.”

While things are easier now, the pressures remain intense. Profitable companies are a tempting source of revenue for a cash-strapped government, which recently slapped a €13.5 million crisis tax on Richter.

More fundamentally, Mr. Bogsch said he worried that the difficulty in attracting capital to Hungary would make hiring and retaining talented staff ever harder.

So much for the benefits of being an EU member and having a neo-liberal currency policy.

This is one of a series of a NYT special report on Central European business. Others are:
In Euro Zone or Not, Countries of Central Europe Are Buffeted
In Romania, Start-Ups Gain Strength

KFOR lies

2011-10-26T11:58:00.002+02:00

KFOR claims that it insists on "unconditioned freedom of movement for all citizens and international missions".

This sounds nice. But beneath it are a few lies:

- there is no real freedom of movement in the South of Kosovo. The cities are still nearly mono-ethnic Albanian, most minorities live in enclaves, refugee returns are virtually nonexistent and just a year ago Amnesty International wrote a report about the maltreatment of Roma returnees. The Serbs in the North have good reason to want to stay free of this kind of "freedom".

- the Albanian police men and border guards are neither just citizens nor part of an international mission. They are officials who want to impose their rule. Nobody contests their right to visit Northern Kosovo as a tourist but they have different intentions. So when KFOR spokesman Nowitzki provides this argument for the KFOR position he misses the contradiction in his own words.

NATO promotes violence in Kosovo

2011-10-21T16:53:00.004+02:00

In the past month Kosovo has seen two violent deaths of Serbs in Kosovo's South. This comes after a long quiet period so the question is justified if this may be related to the tensions in the North. I think it is and I think this makes NATO responsible for those deaths.

The standard role of peace keepers - as NATO still wants to call itself - is to guard the peace while either the parties involved negotiate for a solution or some international authority like the ICJ or the Security Council takes a decision. This means that peace keepers should guard the status quo, only make changes when absolutely necessary and then do that preferable in agreement with the parties involved.

NATO is clearly overstepping its role as peace keeper and following a pro-Albanian policy. The message from this to the population - both sides - is that NATO is partial. That message is not restricted to Northern Kosovo but is visible to everyone. You can see it in Kosovo Albanian politicians who speak with more confidence. You can see it on internet forums where Albanians write with more confidence and you see it also in the increase in incidents that seem to reflect a growing Albanian assertiveness in Southern Kosovo.

The latest incident, involving usurped Serb-owned land, is in this respect illustrative. Usurped land has been a problem in Kosovo for decades and it has become specially acute after the 1999 war. A lot of effort has gone in handling them but the procedures stay vague and progress is slow. There are still many thousands similar property disputes that could get out of hand.

Peacekeeping is supposed to create stability, but NATO has created a climate where everything is fluid and Albanian efforts to grab more are rewarded rather than discouraged. One may not like the stability because it contains some injustices, but it is not the task of peacekeepers to judge what is unjust or to solve injustices. As the murders in Kosovo show there is a balance between injustices. Repairing those for one side while ignoring those for the other creates problems rather than solving them.

One could argue that NATO just wants to create a better equilibrium. But changing an equilibrium is always risky. Not only the loser has to consent. The winner has to consent too that there are still limits to his power. And until the new equilibrium has been accepted both parties may do anything to improve their position.

Every modern country consist of equilibriums. We have constitutions and laws that define them. For example the power distribution between the states and the federal government in the US is clearly defined. If the federal government would transgress its boundaries anything could happen. But where the US accepts internally such boundaries it behaves to the outside as if it is the absolute superpower who should determine everything. This is a very dangerous thing that does not only harm the relations of the US but also all the situations it wants to influence.

Should EULEX be abolished?

2011-10-16T18:43:00.004+02:00

Last Thursday I attended a lecture by Johan van Vreeswijk who until last July was an EULEX prosecutor. As he made some fame as a crime fighter in Kosovo I had expected to hear a lot about how the rule of law is strengthened in Kosovo.

Instead he spent nearly the whole lecture defending the present escapades of EULEX and KFOR in the North of Kosovo. Unfortunately he is no expert in international law and he couldn't convince me. On criminal law - his expertise - he was very short: he expressed great confidence in his Albanian colleagues. It took a question from the public to have him say something about the Limaj case and then he only said that he regretted it that it took two years just to hear Limaj on his corruption charges due to dysfunction in the EULEX organization.

Obviously if the Albanians are doing so well it raises the question whether EULEX is still needed. My gut feeling was that EULEX is a complete failure and that they are now behaving like a third rate Balkan politician who has failed to improve the life of his voters and now uses nationalism as a cheap way to appear useful anyway.

Belgrade's Gay Parade

2011-10-07T16:57:00.002+02:00

Belgrade has forbidden its Gay Parade for this year.

I think they have a point in this. Demonstrating and rioting against Belgrade's Gay Parade has become a kind of meeting point for Serbia's extreme rightists. Given the upheaval about Kosovo they would probably be stronger than ever and their protests might even attract people who don't have anything against gays but who do believe in the extremist cause.

In that light I think the EU position that the Parade should be held is disingenuous. I suspect that they see the Parade as a win-win-win situation. If Serbia's government manages to keep order it would be a loss for Serbia's extreme right. If there are riots it would be used against Serbia in the Kosovo negotiations and if they forbid the Parade that is used against them.

There is no doubt that Serbia should do more to get its right extremists under control. But using the gays as decoy birds for that purpose seems to me a bad move.

On the death of Agim Zogaj

2011-10-07T16:31:00.004+02:00

The death of protected witness Agim Zogaj in the process against Kosovo minister Limaj has once again highlighted that some people in Kosovo are above the law. The question is what EULEX can do to fight this culture of silence and intimidation.

One error EULEX makes is making its cases too big. They should learn the lessons the US had learned when it sent mafia boss Al Capone to jail for tax evasion. There was little doubt Al Capone was responsible for numerous murders and other crimes. But by concentrating on the one issue that could be proved without endangering numerous witnesses they avoided exactly the kind of trouble that we see in the Haradinaj and Limaj trials.

The ICTY and EULEX like to make their cases in a kind of documentary of all that went wrong in former Yugoslavia. But that isn't a suitable tactic in the case of Kosovo where witnesses are both endangered and sometimes unreliable. Instead they should just concentrate on one or two relatively easily provable incidents and condemn people for those.

11 years for tax evasion - as Al Capone got - may be a bit too tough and not achievable in Kosovo. But even a much shorter sentence would stress the principle that nobody is above the law.

Another legal tactic is that of the "criminal organization". Here the fact that a person was member of an organization is considered enough to hold him responsible for the crimes of that organization. This can be applied in human rights cases too as was recently done in the Demjanjuk case. The fact that Demjanjuk worked as a guard of a concentration camp was considered enough to hold him partially responsible for the mass murder that was committed in that camp.

Another error the EULEX makes is that it thinks it can have it both ways. That on the one hand it can prosecute Kosovo's leaders for mafiose behavior and on the other hand it can use the mafia tactics of establishing facts on the ground, violence and intimidation when it comes to Northern Kosovo. What Kosovo needs is a change of political culture, but EULEX just has adopted the mafia culture.

Where are Serbia's allies?

2011-10-05T14:16:00.002+02:00

There is no longer any hiding in diplomatic niceties: the NATO raids in Northern Kosovo have finally forced Serbia to talk openly about splitting Kosovo so that the North tip can join Serbia. It has generated the predictable negative reactions (such as REFRL calling it a "tirade") but as I wrote previously that was predictable. It is easier for Western diplomats to discard Serbia's politicians as crazy or nationalistic than to change their opinions. To achieve a change of opinion will demand persistent campaigning and explaining.

What has been until now however are allies. Sure, some university professors and former politicians have spoken out. But I have been astonished that none of the NATO members that do not recognize Kosovo have spoken out publicly against the behavior of the NATO "peace keepers". Neither has any major active international politician spoken in favor of a partition of Kosovo. Those that did were unimportant enough or did it discrete enough for the international press and the Western diplomacy to ignore.

Yet the nonsensical ban on partition is potentially harmful to many other countries as well. Spain for example would face a similar problem with Navarra if the Basques might ever secede.

Many countries have provincial borders that are centuries old. More often than not if they had to be drawn today they would be different. Changing them raises so many emotions and interests that it usually better to spend political capital on more productive issues. For that reason the US position that a partition of Kosovo should have been done before is in my opinion disingenuous. The only right time to do it is when there is an urgent need to do so. And there was not such a need in the 1990s. It is there only now when we are discussing Kosovo's independence and the bad position of Kosovo's minorities since the 1999 war.

Kosovo's North: the Swiss and Finnish look

2011-10-02T21:33:00.004+02:00

Swiss and Italian taxfree areas
This article drew my attention to the fact that Kosovo's North is not the only area in Europe with a tax-free status.

Of course Europe has its tax paradises, like Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco and the Channel Islands. But there are also small taxfree areas like Samnaun, Livigno and Campione d'Italia. They are just municipalities without special autonomy that for historical and geographical reasons got a tax-free status:

- Samnaun in Switzerland is on the Austrian border and could until 1905 only be reached over Austrian soil. Nowadays Swiss tourist have to pay taxes (in Martina) when they leave Samnaun for the rest of Switzerland.

- Livigno in Italy is a small municipality in the Alps at the border with Switzerland. For centuries it was a very poor place that in the winter was often isolated from the outer world. Diverse motives have been mentioned for its tax-free status: the fear that everyone might leave and the area might become uninhabited and the poverty and local resistance against tax. Nowadays it is rich - thanks to tourism - but still tax free.

- the Italian municipality Campione d'Italia on the Lugano lake is an enclave that is on all sides surrounded by Swiss territory. It has taken over many Swiss systems: the legal coin of the area is the Swiss franc - although the euro is widely accepted too; car plates are Swiss; most phones are on the Swiss network and if you send mail to the place you can both address it to Italy and use the Italian postal codes or use the Swiss equivalent.

The Åland Islands
One could also compare North Kosovo with the Åland Islands as there are a lot of similarities in the situation.

Sweden had for centuries ruled Finland and Swedish had become the language of the ruling class while Finnish was the language of the farmers. Only the last century before independence (1809-1917) was Finland ruled by Russia. In 1917 Swedes still formed 15% of the population on the mainland and they were overrepresented in the upper classes. Nowadays this has decreased to 6%. The Åland Islands are on the sea between Sweden and Finland and when Russia conquered Finland they took the islands too. When Finland declared independence the islands - that are nearly completely Swedish speaking but adjacent to Finland - wanted to join Sweden but the Finnish government objected. In contrast to the brutal politics that we see now regarding Kosovo in 1921 the case of the status of the Åland Islands was brought to the League of Nations. These ruled that the Islands should stay with Finland but get far reaching autonomy so that they should keep their Swedish character.

The League of Nations decision in the case of the Åland Islands was a close call and might just as well have gone in favor of the Swedes. But the maturity with which the case was handled stands in great contrast with the swashbuckling diplomats and generals that we see now in Kosovo. Another contrast is that while in Kosovo "freedom of movement" is taken as an excuse for a policy that is in essence one of ethnic cleansing on the Åland Islands the opposite has been done: you need special permission to settle on the islands.

A coward gets no respect

2011-09-26T14:52:00.004+02:00

I am puzzled at Serbia's reaction to the situation in Northern Kosovo. The situation clearly asks for a repeating - again and again - of Serbia's position and arguments and of replying to any statement made by Western diplomats.

But Tadic seems strangely quiet. His behavior reminds me of that of that conference in Belgrade where the Russian ambassador asked whether there was any Serb in the room as no one seemed ready to take up the subject of what is happening to the Serbs in Kosovo now.

As I have stated before only a principled approach and a consistent to any undesirable statement of Western or Kosovar diplomats and leaders will gain the respect that will bring Western policy changes.

Sure, such a policy will initially evoke condemnation from Western actors. No one wants to change and it is only human to protest rather than change one's way of acting. That is psychology 101. It will take persistence - without allowing oneself to be provoked - to achieve results.

Of course Tadic shouldn't do it alone. Serbia's opposition is just as absent. Someone should remember Germany of its harmful role in the violent breakup of Yugoslavia. And someone should make it clear that the policy of Merkel and US ambassador Dell is one of ethnic cleansing. Traditionally this is the role of the opposition that less hampered by diplomatic niceties. Albin Kurti in Kosovo is a perfect example of how this is done.

Serbia has a tendency to take indefensible positions. Not paying for electricity, the petrol smuggling in the North and the cadastre problems were such positions. I believe that Serbia should get rid of such positions. They evoke unilateral reactions and are internationally hard to defend. But one can wonder whether negotiations are really the best way to achieve that. In some cases unilateral gestures - in consultation with the Western countries - might be a better solution.

Kosovo and the German Constitution

2011-09-22T22:38:00.000+02:00

As President Koehler experienced a year ago the German Constitution as explained by the German Federal Constitutional Court is against sending German soldiers on attack missions outside NATO territory.

A siege definitely is a form of attack and the behavior of the German Army in Northern Kosovo has a lot of a siege. So it would be interesting to see what would happen when someone went to this Court with a complaint over the behavior of the German Army in Kosovo.

Up to World War III?

2011-09-19T17:34:00.003+02:00

The situation now is starting to look more and more like that on the eve of World War I. It is often thought that the rise of Germany was the main cause but I think the general climate in that period was more important. Geopolitical changes like the rise of Germany are happening all the time. What differs is how people deal with them.

Before World War I there had been a long relatively peaceful period and nobody expected anything serious. People were very nonchalant about war. There were even reports of people celebrating when their country declared war and the general expectations were that within a few weeks "our" troops would be home celebrating victory.

We see now increasingly the same thing happen. The speed within which the US undertakes new wars keeps increasing while its respect for international treaties and organs keeps diminishing. And the recent enthusiasm in Europe about the Libya war and Germany's behavior in Kosovo show an increasing war-loving Europe too.

In 1914 it went wrong when the adversary proved too strong and the diplomats were incapable of finding more peaceful solutions. Now the West may one day find itself facing China or Russia and have the choice between real war and compromise. It might well end up with real war.

Diplomatic "successes"

2011-09-13T11:52:00.002+02:00

Western diplomats are still celebrating their success in bringing down Gaddafi. Never mind that it took 30,000 to 50,000 Libyan lives. Never mind that the fact that half of the dead are Gaddafi soldiers most probably means that at least a third of all the dead were killed by NATO. Never mind too that a negotiated solution was possible and that it would very probably bring in the long run more democracy, stability and prosperity. Our most evil politicians had another "bad guy" to pummel in order to increase their popularity at home and that was what counted.

Our diplomats in the Balkans aren't sitting still either. They just managed to solve the problem of Kosovo's custom stamps. Never mind that it was a non-issue as Kosovo has virtually no exports and saw the issue merely for its propaganda value. Never mind too that the "solution" brought increased ethnic tensions, replaced negotiations with establishing "facts on the ground" and the use of violence and led to rabid nationalism in Pristina. Never mind too that the issue could have been solved with a little Western pressure, some small inducements and some token Albanian concessions... We had to feed the blood hounds at home.

Now we are heading for the next showdown in Kosovo. At stake this time is Kosovo's "lawless North". As I have written previously I think it is in reality about the money that the Kosovo government is missing due to smuggling. Here too Kosovo's government has partly to blame itself and its uncompromising attitude. The West could adopt a minimalist attitude and refrain from going beyond the immediate problem in an evenhanded manner. But they there is a risk that they will attempt to bring Kosovo's North under Albanian rule. This might result in open ethnic conflict and large scale ethnic cleansing. But our diplomats are so used to blaming everything that goes wrong on their "pre-modern" victims that this seems to be less of a mental obstacle as it should be.

Serbian blindness

2011-09-05T18:58:00.008+02:00

EUObserver reports some Serbian reactions to the custom stamp deal. According to the article:
For his part, Serbia's minister for Kosovo, Goran Bogdanovic, on Sunday told press that Kosovo customs officials will still not be allowed to man crossing points in northern Kosovo and that customs income based on the new stamps will not be allowed to go to Pristina.

Radenko Nedeljkovic, the head of Serb enclave's local authorities, put it more bluntly. "I am sure that there will be no Albanian customs officers at the Brnjak and Jarinje crossings. As far as the stamp is concerned, it can be used south of the Ibar River," he said, referring to the river that separates the enclave from Pristina-controlled Kosovo.

I don't understand the exact meaning of this. However, if it means that Serbia intends to keep allowing the smuggling like it always happened it is bound to fail. As I have written before I think Kosovo's budget deficit due to its quarrel with the IMF is one of the reasons for the present trouble. So Kosovo needs every cent it can lay its hand on and it has an urgent need to repair holes like the one in the Northern border. If Serbia wants to keep the initiative the best it can do is to dictate the new situation itself: it should collect customs at the border and send part of it to Pristina. But it could shape the situation by keeping some of the money for the North itself and for costs, not accepting Albanian custom officers, making a difference between the North and the rest of Kosovo, demanding "exit" stamps near the Ibar, etc. The alternative is to expect that Kosovo build border posts along the Ibar and I don't see that happen.

In the recent incidents there is a division of labor between the US and the EU. The US provides the ideas, while the EU takes care of the implementation. An important role is played by Robert Cooper - the EU "negotiator". In his articles and books Cooper has written that one should use "rougher methods" when dealing with "pre-modern" states: But when dealing with more old-fashioned kinds of states outside the postmodern continent of Europe, we need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era - force, pre-emptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary to deal with those who still live in the nineteenth century world of every state for itself. Among ourselves, we keep the law but when we are operating in the jungle, we must also use the laws of the jungle..

When one considers that this kind of interventionist ideas came into being as a consequence of the Balkan wars of the early 1990s there can be little doubt that he sees the countries there as "pre-modern". It is this kind of colonial thinking by the Badinter Commission that started the problems in Yugoslavia. I consider it very harmful as it dehumanizes those "primitive" people and justifies all kinds of outrages against them. This is how America's Indians got eradicated. In my opinion we should always look at what valid arguments people have - even if we consider them "pre-modern". In some cases like ethnic cleansing special targetted measures may be justified - but who dares to say after Hitler that only "pre-modern" politicians do such things?

The recent trouble started when Cooper got closer involved with Kosovo. I don't doubt that US ambassador Dell and others have formulated the goals. When Cooper was Blair's senior advisor on foreign policy he followed US policy too with his "poodle" politics: Cooper has more ideas about the means than about the ends. If he is now happy to implement US policy it is only a continuation from his previous behavior.

Bühler seeks the confrontation again

2011-08-31T08:12:00.003+02:00

Bühler had some interview with Associated Press. He announces operation in collaboration with EULEX. I am still looking for an article with the complete text, but the excerpts look bad.

According to Google News:
But he said Tuesday that more tension is likely as international authorities seek to indict local Serbs who blocked roads and also fired at NATO peacekeepers. "I mean heavy reaction in terms of demonstrations, roadblocks denying freedom of movement for the troops, rhetoric and so on," Buehler said. "We can handle such a situation."

He said NATO has given evidence in the border crossing cases to the European Union rule of law mission and that arrests by the EU's 3,000-strong police mission are pending.

Buehler met Tuesday with Robert Cooper, an EU envoy who mediates an ongoing dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia representatives. The next round of talks is scheduled for Friday.

According to Mercury News:
He said NATO peacekeepers have deployed to support the EU police in the tense area controlled by minority Serbs that refuse to cooperate with international authorities and reject Pristina's authority.

The move comes a day after the top NATO commander in Kosovo Maj. Gen. Erhard Buehler warned of renewed tensions in the area pending arrests of local Serbs suspected of involvement in the recent violence.

In an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, Buehler said he expected "a heavy reaction" from Serb extremists as international authorities seek to indict suspects.

"I mean heavy reaction in terms of demonstrations, roadblocks denying freedom of movement for the troops, rhetoric and so on," Buehler said.

In my opinion clear and open fact finding and only then prosecution would be a better way to prevent future violence. What Bühler is doing looks more like a classical FUD operation.

The link with Cooper is interesting. It suggests that this is also about putting pressure on Serbia before the negotiations.

Kosovo's unwise strategy

2011-08-29T14:33:00.005+02:00

After the "technical negotiations" had achieved some results the most visible reaction in Kosovo was one of disappointment and protests. Kosovo had accepted some aspects of the Serb parallel structures and it had given up on some symbols of its independence. According to the protesters this put the universal recognition of its independence further away.

The reasoning behind this is that there is only one way to achieve full recognition: getting Serbia to accept it step by step. As Kosovo doesn't have much means to pressure Serbia this strategy relies heavy on international pressure on Serbia. It is a strange strategy for conflict "resolution" as it totally gives up on compromise and mutual interests.

As a consequence the prospect for further "technical negotiations" is bleak. Kosovo has already announced that it will not change its custom stamp. Not even a symbolic change as a face-saving gesture towards the Serbs. This is not negotiating: this is dictating. It is a strategy born out of fear as it is feared that any concession might harm Kosovo's prospects. But no concession often means no agreement and as a consequence Kosovo is now in many areas more handicapped by its dubious status as necessary.

One has to wonder whether this strategy has any chance. It is basically a continuation of Kosovo's strategy since the beginning of the Ahtisaari negotiations and it hasn't brought much. Recently Kosovo has raised the stakes by using its special police while also KFOR has used the threat of violence. But is a risky strategy. Jeremic will not hesitate to use the violent character of Kosovo's present strategy as an illustration of the illegal character of its independence. And if Serbia doesn't give in enough it will simply mean a continuation of the stalemate of the previous years. If there is one lesson from Bosnia it should be that the stronger the international pressure to solve a conflict in a lopsided way the more unsolvable that conflict becomes.

In my opinion the wiser alternative would be to embrace the "technical negotiations" and accept that it will occasionally have to make minor symbolic concessions and accept the status quo in the North until status negotiations result in a final solution. It looks likely that Kosovo can achieve a lot in that way. Nearly all costly workarounds of the present situation could be repaired. However, two prices would evade Kosovo: official recognition and control over the North. Those could only be solved in status negotiations.

Kosovo's status could easily be solved with some kind of deal where Kosovo accepts border changes in the North and some additional rights for Kosovo's Serbs. However, the greatest obstacle are the Western countries who oppose even extra autonomy for the North on the pretext that that would have consequences elsewhere in the Balkans. The West posts as Kosovo's friend but with this position I think the old saying applies "with these friends, who needs enemies?".

I find the international position on border changes hypocrite. Kosovo cannot be compared to Bosnia. Its history of ethnic relations is much worse and unlike Bosnia there is a linguistic gap between the communities. Multi-lingual countries usually have one of two properties to make it work: either there is a lingua franca like Hindi and English in India or it is beneficial to learn the main language because it offers good job perspectives. In the case of Kosovo there is no lingua franca - although Gemana and English slowly get some of that status - and neither learning Serbian nor learning Albanian offers good perspectives for a job.

My advise for Kosovo would be:
- Act in good faith in the "technical negotiations" and be prepared to compromise. Don't worry too much about symbols. Solve all the major points like telecom, customs and energy. With some Hong Kong-like status you might even participate in sports events. Make also agreements on property rights.
- Accept that the North will stay separate for the time being and that the status will stay unresolved for some time.
- Concentrate for the time being on economic development
- Nobody expects EU membership to become an option even for Serbia before 2020. So don't worry too much about it. Tell the EU instead that more trust needs to built between Kosovo and Serbia before a final solution is reached.
- Become more serious about refugee returns. I still see regularly Kosovo Albanian posters on the Internet claiming that expelled Serbs "deserved" it. This should stop and Kosovo's leadership is responsible for that. This is not only about minorities: it is also about the rule of law and openness to foreigners. Consider the position of an American who thinks about investing in Kosovo. When he looks at how the Serbs are treated and how Kurti is talking about Americans he will inevitably conclude that one day he may be targeted too and robbed of his investments while Albanian nationalists cry that he deserves it.
- Stop with unilateral moves like we have seen with electricity, mobile telephone, the border posts and the trade boycott. They signal to local Albanian nationalists that Serbs are fair game, they lead to an increase of harassment - both by nationalists and by government officials - and they destroy trust between the communities. This kind of moves may provide some minor tactical wins but for the long term they mean strategical losses. These moves go also against the rule of law. This may seem counterintuitive to some - given all the propaganda that the Pristina government is restoring the rule of law - but one of the main functions of the rule of law is to make life predictable. From that point of view these measures are major violations. No one wants to invest in such a climate.
This doesn't mean that everything in the present situation should be accepted. No electricity without paying and no smuggling are general principles. But there should be flexibility in the implementation.
- From the Serbian perspective Kosovo's recognition is its negotiation chip. In return it mainly wants protection of Kosovo's Serb minority. So if Kosovo wants Serbia to do concessions on the symbolic level it should be prepared to give hard guarantees that for example exclude unilateral actions like the recent ROSU intrusions in Kosovo's North.
- One day the status will come up for resolution. By then Kosovo should at least have a stronger position so that it is less dependent on internationals. By then also other regions in the Balkans might have become more stabilized so that "precedent" fears regarding border changes will be less important. There would be more trust between Serbs and Albanians. At that time it might either be decided to have border changes in exchange for recognition or the existing position of Northern Kosovo might be formalized as some kind of far-reaching autonomy in a recognized Kosovo.

On the Euro Crisis

2011-08-29T10:29:00.002+02:00

As the crisis in the Eurozone keeps deepening I want to make a few notes:

- The core of Europe's problems are internal tensions. Compared to Germany the Southern European wages are much too high. This leads to trade imbalances and as a consequence the South is becoming more and more indebted to the North. For a long time the pattern was masked because the North bought companies and real estate in the South, attracted by a self-reinforcing bubble in real estate prices. But this no longer works and now we will have to break this pattern. The fact that this comes on top of the financial problems that were exposed by the crisis of 2008 only complicates the matter.

- the Eurocrats keep pushing for more centralization. They want a common European economy, taxation, etc. In their view Europe should become something like the US. I don't believe that is a good option and I doubt whether even 10% of Europe's population would support such a proposal. But even if everyone wanted it it would be a surreal discussion: we live no longer in 1776 and working out the details of a federation would take at least a decade. For now we should draw the obvious conclusion that we have gone a bridge too far and that some kind of retreat is inevitable.

- the Eurocrats have a history of never wasting a crisis and always bringing in more centralization as the solution for problems that arise. The euro was brought to us at least partly as a solution for the problems of the snake. Eurocrats are used to get their way and it will take a major shock for them to admit that this time has to be different. They are also well aware that the setback may mean that they won't see the federal Europe they long for in their lifetime.

- as I have written elsewhere I think the Eurocrats are betting on the wrong horse. One should give countries time to adapt to Europe. The Irish and Spanish real estate bubbles were vivid illustrations that these countries were not ready for the euro. Their adaptations to the EU real estate market should have happened while they still were outside the euro so that they had the tools to regulate the bubble. Also I think slowly integrating the former Soviet block and the Arab world should get more attention. We may never want Turkey and the Arabs inside our Brussels decision making apparatus but we should be open to economic and other kinds of integration.

- I don't believe in formal rules like the 3% limit on government deficits or the recent attempt of Spain to put that kind of provisions in its constitution. It is window dressing that treats future generations like little children. It evokes exactly the kind of evasion as we have seen with Greece.

Did Dell instruct Bühler?

2011-08-26T19:12:00.004+02:00

Looking at the Wikileaks cables from Belgrade and Pristina I noticed one cable from ambassador Dell from januari 2010 in which he utters claims on Northern Kosovo that seem rather closely related to what Bühler more recently has stated.

Some quotes:
Â¶2. (C) Currently, we have a growing, if still somewhat
fragile, consensus within the international community in
Pristina that the time is right to end the years of drift on
the north and to alter the dynamic of a hardening partition
between the north and the rest of Kosovo. In part, this is
sparked by the new willingness among Kosovo Serbs to engage
with Kosovo institutions. It also stems from Belgrade's
increasingly aggressive actions in the north (e.g., seizure
of the Valac electrical substation; unilateral appointment of
Serb judges to illegal parallel courts) that have underscored
to representatives of the international community on the
ground the risks of continuing to do nothing. For ten years,
we told the Kosovars to trust us -- "let us handle the
situation, and we will protect you" -- and now the government
of independent Kosovo is increasingly asking us when we are
going to make good on that commitment. KFOR is drawing down
(in six months NATO could take a decision to cut its forces
in half). We need to take advantage of a unique opportunity
that has crystallized and act now while we still have a KFOR
presence capable of handling any contingency.
[..]
We know, however, that there will be difficult
challenges that pose risks. For example, EULEX must get
serious about rolling up organized crime networks in the
north that feed the parallel structures and make the current
situation unsustainable. The northern Serbs are the first
victims of these thugs, and there is a growing body of
reports that they would welcome a change if EULEX can deliver
it. We must, also, deal with the blatant theft of Kosovo
property that has allowed Serbia to, in effect, seize the
northern power grid in Kosovo. Dealing with these issues
will require hard choices and fortitude.
[..]
In recent meetings with Boris Tadic, both Angela Merkel and Nicolas
Sarkozy reportedly emphasized that Serbia's path to Brussels
runs, in part, through constructive relations with Pristina.
This is the perfect message. Brussels needs to repeat it --
regularly.

It looks like Bühler has heard he same story. However - as the pressure on the Northern Serbs with border blockades shows - Bühler and Dell in the end don't believe their own story.

Strategic Options for Serbian Diplomacy in Kosovo

2011-08-25T23:51:00.001+02:00

Another recommended article: "Strategic Options for Serbian Diplomacy in Kosovo: Interview with Dušan Proroković". Interesting for the depth in which it discusses the situation.

Kosovo’s Land for Peace Solution

2011-08-25T23:50:00.001+02:00

Harvard International Review has an article "Kosovo’s Land for Peace Solution" that gives a nice review of the issue.

Kosovo going the way of Bosnia

2011-08-24T15:27:00.005+02:00

At the moment Belgium has been more than a year without a government. Few Belgians worry. They are used to the fact that when the conditions under which the Flemish and the Walloon live together need some update it takes a long time. You have two very large groups with different ideas and many people have seldom contact with members of the other group. And many that do have contact will try to avoid the subject as it might spoil the relationship. But in the contacts that there are slowly a compromise will arise. Politicians may love taking extreme positions but people discussing with friends will find some kind of compromise. It takes a lot of time before such ideas have trickled up and a consensus has been reached.

Unfortunately the West didn't have that patience when the Bosnians needed to agree on how to go further after the Dayton Agreement. Instead of waiting until some compromise arose Western diplomats couldn't resist to choose the side of the Muslims. Initially it seemed to help. But in the end it led to a near complete stagnation.

The problem was that once the Muslims saw they had Western support they increased their demands up to the point where the Serbs even with Western pressure wouldn't agree. The most problematic aspect however was that this changed the communication. Where in the past Muslims had to convince the Serbs (and the other way around) of the reasonableness of their proposals they now only needed to convince the internationals. This meant that real communication between Serbs and Muslims stopped. And without real communication you cannot find a solution.

At the moment the same development is happening in Kosovo. The internationals have chosen sides. At the moment they are still in the phase of self-congratulation - believing they have achieved something. But in the long run it threatens to lead to complete stagnation.

It already went wrong with the issue of the custom stamps. I am really amazed that what exactly happened is still shrouded in mysteries. In my opinion openness would have been the solution. Both the Serbs and the Albanians should explain in details what happened and why they took the position they took - including the concessions they were prepared to make. If there is any disagreement of facts - let the international mediators clarify them. Then let the Kosovar and Serbian public opinion do its work and sooner or later they will agree on what is a reasonable solution in the given circumstances. As Kosovo hardly exports anything there is no real reason for hurry.

Instead the internationals allowed Kosovo to do a grab for the border posts in Kosovo's North. It was a clear violation of the agreement before the "technical talks" that during the talks no one should unilaterally try to change the "facts on the ground", but the internationals chose to ignore that and even defended the Albanian actions. They suddenly "discovered" that the Kosovo government had the right to control Kosovo's whole territory. Never mind that that right was once denied because it would have led to massive ethnic cleansing - something KFOR is supposed to prevent.

It is popular in diplomatic circles to see Balkanians as irresponsible children who would immediately make war if you gave them such basic rights as to negotiate with each other over borders. The decision to create "forgone facts" in the negotiations between Kosovo and Serbia fits in the same tradition. This attitude was in the 1990s the most important cause of the wars. We can only hope that the damage will this time be more restricted.

The NATO files on Kosovo Serb leaders

2011-08-17T10:26:00.012+02:00

The newspaper LajmeShqip is publishing leaked NATO files on Kosovo Serb leaders. Until now they have published 8 of the 430 files they have.

Here you will see one example. The articles are in Albanian but Google Translate is your friend. Here for example is the Google translation of the above article.

You should click on the image of the NATO document to see its full size. It is not downloadable or linkable as far as I can see. Under the heading "Rezultatet e kërkimit :" you will find links to the other published files. These links are only visible in the original, not in the Google translate version.

Actually these NATO files bring very little news. They are in French so few people will be able to fully read them. All the content is about the years 2000 and 2001. Much of it seems to be copied from the Serbian press.

It seems that KFOR has lots of these documents - also about Albanians. They have lots of intelligence officers that make an inventory of the locals to keep busy. But most their intelligence is skin deep. The pieces that have been published are full of articles from local newspapers, rumors and superficial observations in the style of "A met B at time t". The longest files are 5 to 6 pages long. I considered translating one piece but it looked all so harmless that I didn't consider it worthwhile. Instead I will analyze interesting parts of one piece at the end of this post.

To me the main "contribution" of publication of these files seems to be to bring back to life the much more conflictuous and lawless climate of shortly after the war. People have evolved and we should deal with them as they are now - not ten years ago.

Here is an article (in Serbian) with a reaction of some of those involved.

The file on Milan Ivanovic
So let's have a look at one of the files. I have chosen Milan Ivanovic. Together with Jaksic he seems to attract most attention in the media.

At one point it is claimed that Ivanovic is "xenophobe". Here is the context: "He claims that foreign aid organizations favor Albanians and that the Serbs get less aid. He distrust foreign Albanians who illegally come to Kosovo. He wants the disarming of the UCK that he accuses of a campaign to exterminate the Serbs and other minorities. He favors a multi-ethnic Kosovo. He is a xenophobe. He gives speeches blowing hot and cold. He doesn't speak English. He distrusts Kosovars who are capable of communicating with foreigners."

He has some distrust - in a situation where just 2 years ago there was a war in which the West attacked him and he is still amidst refugees from that war. Can you really blame him for that? Maybe it is just the Westerners who are insulted that he doesn't speak more and more openly with them and that he distrusts their intentions?

Another issue is his supposed involvement in organized crime. The main text concerning this issue is "He is supposed to control fuel, medicine and building materials in Northern Kosovo. Competent businessman (smuggling?), quite sportive, has a certain influence on the population but doesn't have much idea of the hierarchy and methods of security. Takes regularly word at meetings or manifestations. Little Charisma.".

So he should control some important trades but the document is not sure whether he is involved in smuggling. Also his lack of interest in the hierarchy and methods of security suggests that he is not involved in some criminal organization. It looks as if someone has written down a couple of rumors without bothering with contradictions.

On the date 14/05/01 it is mentioned that "at the moment" there is a barricade near Zubin Potok where truck drivers must pay 1000 DM. Part of it would be for the people on the barricades and part for Vuk Antonijevic and Milan Ivanovic.

Near the end of the document it is mentioned that they are against the arrival of Covic in Kosovo because they believe that a representative from Belgrade would restrict them in their present relative liberty: "Comment from the source: that way those 3 persons have numerous advantages. Also, mr. Dimkic can obtain finances from UNMIK thanks to his position as director of Trepca while, in the case of Marko Jaksic and Milan Ivanovic they enjoy a total liberty to let flourish their dishonest activities."

Interestingly, in the Jaksic file one finds the statement that these "dishonest activities" serve to finance the bridge watchers. So the term seems to say more about the biased attitude of the analyst and his informer than of Ivanovic. Ivanovic may just be an informal leader who organizes an informal tax. This is the more probable as the text says nothing about extraordinary richness. Probably the Jaksic and Ivanovic files were composed by two different intelligence officers, illustrating the chaotic nature of these files.

Autonomy for the North of Kosovo?

2011-08-14T13:27:00.009+02:00

An increasing stream of articles from the Kosovo Albanian press suggests that the EU is working towards more autonomy for Kosovo's North. The municipalities should get a part of the receipts at the border crossings. Interestingly, the head of the Serbian negotiation team has denied that it is at the moment an issue. But as the EU likes to work around Belgrade in Kosovo whenever possible and mainly consults it when pressure on the local Serbs is needed it may be that Stefanovic is simply kept out of the loop. So lets have a look at the plan.

The first problem is that it contains the same problem as much of the Ahtisaari Plan: it is not real autonomy as they still will need approval from Pristina for nearly every decision they make. As the article says: "The municipalities will have a special budget line that will be controlled by Pristina." The firing of police commanders in the North a month ago showed just how little such Pristina monitored autonomy is worth.

Thereby comes that the attitude of the Pristina authorities hasn't changed much as events a few months ago showed: the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Special Forces entered the Serbian side of the divided city of Mitrovica and began to forcibly remove Serbian licence plates from vehicles, seized ID cards and passports and other Serbian documents. Even student discount cards issued to university students by the Republic of Serbia’s government were seized. Those who did not produce these documents on demand were forcibly searched.. As this outrageous behavior - there were similar reports from Kosovo's South - was clearly ordered by the government it shows how Pristina really thinks of minority rights.

A second problem that only can be found in Albanian language original of the article is the criminality in the North. According to the article such autonomy would be impossible as long as organized crime rules there with people like Marko Jakšić, Milan Ivanovic and the parallel structures.

This seems to me a rather unhelpful approach. First of all it not is very helpful to equate parallel structures with organized crime. It ignores that they have primarily a nationalist function. A second problem is that while Kosovo claims that all its problems come from its unresolved status it is the truth in the North. Very few people will invest there knowing how Serbs and Serb businesses are treated elsewhere in Kosovo. So smuggling is seen as a natural alternative. And the Serbs in Northern Kosovo are certainly not the only to accept help from criminals in their ethnic struggle. Support from Albanian criminals for the KLA was widely known and in the Bosnia war all sides had support from local criminals.

So this approach creates a kind of chicken and egg problem where the end of criminality is demanded as a condition for creating the kind of climate where criminality is no longer seen as needed to support the ethnic survival. It might help if the advocates of this approach studied the failure of "standards before status".

Thaci is in serious financial trouble. The wage hikes he gave before the elections were against his commitments with the IMF and the IMF has answered with sanctions - meaning less loans. Other organizations like the EU follow the IMF in this and it is estimated that in total Kosovo gets some 200 million dollar less. I wouldn't be surprised if one of these days Thaci is no longer able to pay wages. I suppose that this financial trouble was one of the main reasons for the attack on the border posts. The amount of money Serbia invests in Kosovo to support the Serb minority more than offsets the losses Kosovo makes at the border but that doesn't count in this context. I suppose Thaci's financial difficulties are also considered a problem by Western diplomats and that they won't be satisfied with a solution that doesn't at least partially addresses this problem.

Then there is the problem of the US. In the past the US has not exactly been cooperative when it came to proposals for more autonomy. An often heard objection is that they don't want a second Bosnia with its ossified ethnic relations. However, I think they misread Bosnia. The problem in Bosnia is not so much the entities, it is that these entities are constantly under threat to be abolished.

There is an old saying: "good fences make good neighbors". Its message is that when you don't trust each other completely on some subject you should make the agreement on that subject explicit. That removes that subject as a potential source of conflict and opens the way for a better relationship. For a similar reason rich people marry often with a detailed marriage contract. In the same way the entities serve as a guarantee that neither ethnic group will ever be completely powerless as they will always have their "own" area to fall back on. Just recently we have seen how the lack of such guarantees for the Croats evoked an escalation in the relation between Muslims and Croats.

The US may be pacified by calling it not autonomy but a "special status". It unclear to me what that will mean in practice.

border changes
As I have repeatedly mentioned I would prefer border changes in Kosovo. With their clarity they can avoid of a lot of the trouble that we see in Bosnia where - unfortunately egged on by outsiders - there is disagreement about the purpose of the agreement and some want to change it. The Western countries have raised objections but in my opinion they don't hold.

According to international law countries have the right to decide in mutual agreement to border changes. In the West this right might well be exercised in the near future, for example in Northern Ireland, Scotland or Belgium and no one objects to that. However, at the same time the West is denying similar rights to the Balkans. To me it seems that one more time - after 1878, 1919 and 1920 - the West imposes borders on the Balkan and believes that they will be eternal.

An often heard objection is the domino effect: other minorities like the Bosnian Serbs and the Macedonian Albanians would demand the same and the result would be an avalanche of ethnic conflicts. My position is that these negotiations should have been held already in 1991. They weren't because of intellectual laziness of Westerners that didn't want to be bothered with tedious negotiations about often minute details. They also hoped that once a new country was formed the issues would solve themselves but if things were so easy the border changes of 1878, 1912, 1918 and 1945 would each have settled things already. The interethnic relations are nowhere as bad as in Kosovo and I am convinced that these other countries can resolve their internal problems peacefully. Although of course it could help if some real mediators from the West kept an objective eye on it.

Some Americans and Europeans like to declare that a partition of the North is impossible because the Albanians reject it. However, some months ago we saw in the press one Albanian after another discussing partition. The discussion abruptly ended with the visit of an US official to Pristina. Albanians publicly reject partition primarily because they believe that it will diminish American support for their case - not because they are fundamentally against it. Westerners who see a fierce rejection are just hearing what they want to hear. It is their fear of a domino effect that is the primary obstacle - not Albanian extremism.

It will be great help if the West when new negotiations happen finally stops with its habit of rewarding violence as it did on many prior occasions, like the 10 day war in Slovenia, the 2001 war in Macedonia and most recently Kosovo's grab of the border posts. This policy of rewarding violence makes peaceful negotiations more difficult.

Bühler's homefront

2011-08-12T15:35:00.003+02:00

In other to understand general major Bühler's position on Kosovo better it may be good to have some closer look at the German media. The following blogpost appeared in a German defense related blog on 30 juli.

Kosovo: No end to the tension in sight

T.Wiegold 30. Juli 2011 · | 56 Comments

As a precaution we keep keep holding an eye on the situation in Kosovo…

Have the Kosovo Serbs won the power struggle with NATO as DPA reported today? Or has the (German) KFOR-comander general major Erhard Bühler only temporarily declined to remove the blockades as the Tanjug reports from an interview of Bühler with a Kosovo television station?

This may not happen a second time. Next time we have to use violence and everyone should know that, said Bühler here

(I would have loved to link to a situation description at bundeswehr.de, where it is among others reported that the mission of the ORF-battallion to Kosovo o es unter anderem heisst, dass die Entsendung des ORF-Bataillons in den Kosovo still isn't definitive… Unfortunately the site is down.)

Subscript: Interesting report of the Swiss Depeschen-Agentur (sda) on the employment of Swiss soldiers (Swisscoy). The surprising thing: among the whole 6000 men NATO employment in Kosovo the Swiss have the only two helicopters that can fly at might?!

As can be seen from the 56 comments this evoked a strong discussion. The tendency was that what was already shown in the blog post: criticism of NATO for weakness. It went so far that Bühler felt the need to reply on 2 august at 0:11 in the morning:

I will once try to supply some facts for your discussion. The KFOR-supply convoy consisted of some 15 vehicles, partly tractor trailers, the personal was 50% civilian. It was stopped at a 700m deep staggered blockade that consisted of trucks, tree trunks, building material and mounds of gravel. Around the blockade a mass of some 1500-2000 people had formed. In addition some 200 to 300 radicals that were armed with guns and hand grenades had mixed amonst the protesters, partly on the hills left and right of the convoy. They had fired at least four (untargeted?) shots with automatic weapons. That they don't carry weapons for nothing have thy shown on previous days with attacks on a KFOR-helicopter and a KFOR-company at the Jarinje border crossing. The company had in the fire fight maintained its position against the attackers, but could not prevent that the border station was set on fire with firebombs.

We could introduce from our own forces we could introduce one company from the North and one from South and a treain with EULEX police. More was not available because of the tense situation n the whole North. There was no ultimatum. It was more so that simultaneously with the negotiations we introduced and employed reinforcements.

It was clear to me at the time of the decision that this would expose me to public criticism. This didn't happen by the way in Kosovo while people there know tha such scenarios are not comparable to police situations in Germany. But I felt life and limb of the demonstrating citizens, including women and children, and my soldiers more important than the short term, otherwise very uncertain success of a violent eviction of the roadblock and enforcement of the right to freedom of movement of KFOR. Tactical success - if they might occur at all due to the facts presented - can be strategic, long-term effective defeats. Critical to the long-term success of KFOR, the acceptance by both the ethnic groups - who by the way are no longer hostile in the whole of Kosovo. The population in the north is already far too long a hostage of radical political structures, extremists and criminals that have unfortunately developed in the north because of a much too long time without law and order. In the currently very volatile situation, one may risk not to contribute to the further escalation by inappropriate action. Moreover, my soldiers have evacuated in the past two nights four roadblocks in the north by taking advantage of surprise ....

With kind greetings from Pristina

What misses is the realization that the use of soldiers for police tasks should be exceptional. KFOR should be for events like march 2004. In the present it should have done the absolute minimum: bring the special police back to Southern Mitrovica. Syria is no exception: when soldiers do police work there is always a high risk of deadly victims. Bühler tries to evade the responsibility by stressing that there are armed Serbs present. But doing that he evades the fact that soldiers are not trained for this kind of situations and that with his actions Bühler is putting civilian lives at risk. In addition he violates the neutrality of his force.

Culture, negotiation tactics and North Kosovo

2011-08-10T15:14:00.003+02:00

Both Serbia and the USA have an in-your-face culture where not much effort is spent on diplomatic niceties and where power is respected. In general not much time is spent explaining your position. It is a strategy that works when you are the strongest but gives problems when someone else is stronger. Interestingly Serbia's adversaries have been successful with the opposite strategy. Instead of arrogance they try to befriend as much people and countries as they can and they spend a lot of effort and money on propaganda. This doesn't mean that they are weak: they stick very stubbornly to their "principles" and refuse any concession where the payback is not very clear.

Kostunica understood this dynamic at least partially. When faced with the US dominated West he adopted at least some stubborn tactics. He wasn't very good in making friends in the West or propaganda but being a lawyer he stubbornly sticked to Serbia's legal rights in Kosovo and that worked. As soon as Tadic rose to power however this vision disappeared. Tadic made one concession after another to the West and each time he asked his audience to trust him. In 2008 he prevented a Russian resolution that might have prevented the transfer of power from UNMIK to EULEX. Later he failed to protest Albanian moves to fire police commanders and most recently he has he has reached a very weak compromise with KFOR on the border posts. He seems unaware that each surrender leads to an increased impression of weakness and that as a consequence new demands or unilateral moves happen.

I am not going to advice on strategy (Tadic might ask Kostunica), but I want to end with a quote from a recent blogpost by Daniel Serwer, an influential voice in America's Balkan policy, that illustrates how far Tadic has failed in explaining his vision on Kosovo to the West. The fragment comes after Serwer has explained that he understands the Albanian position:

I confess to less certainty about Serbia’s perspective. When Belgrade used to say that all of Kosovo is its Jerusalem and therefore cannot be independent, I understand both the sentiment and the implications, even if I can’t agree with the conclusion. But when Belgrade says, as it has lately, that it wants a deal to keep the north, that is more than a little puzzling. None of the main Serbian monuments, churches or monasteries are in the north. Most of the Serb population lives in the south. And the north would have a wide degree of autonomy if the Ahtisaari plan were implemented there.

The only serious objection to the Ahtisaari plan I’ve heard is that it would make Belgrade’s legitimate payments (pensions, teachers, etc.) to the north go through Pristina; some worry that they might be blocked there. This is a soluble problem, not an insurmountable one.

Some people tell me the real issue is Trepca, the large mine that has long dominated the economy of the north. Others say it is face saving: Serbia has to get something, if only “Ahtisaari plus,” whatever that means. Otherwise, Boris Tadic and his Democratic Party will lose the next election to the more nationalist, but now rhetorically quite tame, Tomislav Nikolic. Sometimes I think it is inat (usually translated “spite”) and the hope that by eventually surrendering Belgrade can extract concessions of more importance elsewhere (extraterritoriality for the Serb monasteries for example). Some claim that taking the north is just part of Belgrade’s persistent attachment to the idea of Greater Serbia, and the underlying notion that wherever Serbs are in the numerical majority that territory should be part of Serbia.

But I really don’t get it, so I invite readers to offer contributions to www.peacefare.net.

Bühler interview in Tagesspiegel

2011-08-09T00:06:00.002+02:00

Hereby a rough translation of an interview with Bühler in the German newspaper Tagesspiegel of 4 august:

Kfor Commander in interview

"We want to avoid escalation"

NATO has increased its commitment in the crisis region at the border between Serbia and Kosovo. Much too long has the lawless space in the North of Kosovo left to fence for itself. The German Kfor Commander Erhard Bühler on the sources of the conflict.

General Bühler, at the border between Serbia and Kosovo there are increasingly tensions. The KFOR troops, that you command, have been strengthened. How do you judge the situation at this point?

We have more talks. There will also be more talks at the European level. We have officially closed both border crossings: they will stay open for civilian traffic, humanitarian goods are of course passed through. Because of the severe threat of the bordercrossings and the large number of troops are they closed for heavy transports. We will keep this situation under control.

When I say "we" I mean KFOR, EULEX, but also the police. One must give the people more trust that the security organisations have the situation under control. And one must try to avoid any further escalation, and that is what we do. We will strengthen KFOR with the ORF battalion, an operational reserve from Germany and Austria. They will come here one of these days, not to escalate but simply to have more people. At the moment is everyone very tense, we are in essence with all people outside. I don't have any reserve left. That's why I welcome the step of NATO to send this battalion here.

The North of Kosovo was and is in fact a lawless zone. The government in Pristina doesn't control it. The influence of Serbia is limited. There are local kapo's, who are a mix of smugglers, businessmen and members of organized crime. Shouldn't one finally enforce the rule of law?

That should have been done long before. That is one of the causes of the present problems. It has much too long been allowed that radical structures arose. Those are specially very criminal structures, that by the way are multi-ethnic. These structures, radicals and criminals, are focused on keeping their power. It is about money, and they are the people that really have the power in the North. They are also the people that direct and pay the armed forces. They are the people that direct the roadblocks and they also pay the people that stand at the roadblocks. In essence they take the peaceloving population in the North to a certain extent as hostages.

This conflict in the North is not a direct conflict between Albanians and Serbs because there are very few Albanians there. How big do you estimate the danger that the tensions will spread to the South where the SErbs live in enclaves?

I am grateful that the population in the South of Kosovo looks very calm at the situation. I am grateful that they trust KFOR. We work on it and we keep also an eye on the South. We certainly cannot exclude incidents. But I believe that we don't have to expect larger incidents.

How do you judge the role of Serbia?

I believe that it is in the interest of Serbia that the situation in Kosovo, in the North of Kosovo, stays calm. In that sense I believe that the governmental actors - also in Pristina, also the international community - have a very high interest that the dialogue is continued and that as condition for that the situation calms down.

Kosovo is now more than 3 years independent. Formally, because it doesn't control its whole territory. Which security policy lessons should the European Union draw from these events, concerning the North? Shouldn't one inevitably conclude that this shouldn't continue.

I believe that this conclusion has been drawn, for a long time already. But I think that we must step-by-step also act: Law and order should also apply to the North, that is the deciding question. We have enough EULEX police in the country, that can act with support of KFOR. Law and order must there be enforce, so that subsequently the politicians can achieve political solutions.

Erhard Bühler (55) is major-general in the German army and since 1 september 2010 Commander of KFOR in Kosovo. The interviewer was Christian Wehrschütz.

Why Cooper is an improbable negotiator

2011-08-08T10:49:00.002+02:00

I spent some time looking up who Robert Cooper, who mediates the negotiations between Kosovo and Serbia. He certainly is a heavyweight: He was the top advisor of Tony Blair (remember the "poodle politics") and now he is director general for External and Politico-Military Affairs at the Council of the European Union.

Cooper is best known as an intellectual who wrote several books and the article "The new liberal imperialism". In his vision we are living in a postmodern world where states cede more and more legislative power to international institutions. One quote: What is the origin of this basic change in the state system? The fundamental point is that "the world's grown honest". A large number of the most powerful states no longer want to fight or conquer. It is this that gives rise to both the pre-modern and postmodern worlds. Imperialism in the traditional sense is dead, at least among the Western powers.

His vision on failed states has been very influential. He calls these the "pre-modern world". In the past greedy colonial powers or contestants in the Cold War would have taken over power in such areas for their own benefits and created order in the process but that is no longer the case. According to Cooper: What is needed then is a new kind of imperialism, one acceptable to a world of human rights and cosmopolitan values. We can already discern its outline: an imperialism which, like all imperialism, aims to bring order and organisation but which rests today on the voluntary principle..

One type of this imperialism is that by the institutions like the IMF and the World Bank that increasingly emphasize good governance. The other is "imperialism of the neighbors". This is what we see in former Yugoslavia: Instability in your neighbourhood poses threats which no state can ignore. Misgovernment, ethnic violence and crime in the Balkans poses a threat to Europe. The response has been to create something like a voluntary UN protectorate in Bosnia and Kosovo. It is no surprise that in both cases the High Representative is European. Europe provides most of the aid that keeps Bosnia and Kosovo running and most of the soldiers (though the US presence is an indispensable stabilising factor). In a further unprecedented move, the EU has offered unilateral free-market access to all the countries of the former Yugoslavia for all products including most agricultural produce. It is not just soldiers that come from the international community; it is police, judges, prison officers, central bankers and others. Elections are organised and monitored by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Local police are financed and trained by the UN. As auxiliaries to this effort - in many areas indispensable to it - are over a hundred NGOs.

On Kosovo his vision became clear in one of the Wikileaks Cables: Cooper stated that we have had some small successes in Kosovo and some failures. The Battle of Kosovo Polje anniversary passed without incident, with the Serbian royal family making some usefully anodyne speeches. But decentralization in Kosovo will not succeed. Serbian President Tadic has said that Serbia cannot call on Kosovo Serbs to vote in Kosovo,s elections. EUSR for Kosovo Pieter Feith thought we should think of 2011 as a deadline for bringing the ICO process to an end: according to Feith, once a state is up and running, the international community should step back. The "six point" agenda is largely dead. If one thing fails it means that you will have to try something else of course.

So what is my take on Cooper:

First of all he is a cosmopolitan, the kind of guy who has lived in so many countries and met people from so many countries that he no longer feels connected to one. He has become the kind of person that thinks that nation states are something primitive. The problem with this vision is that democracy becomes meaningless as there is no longer a feeling of common interests. And indeed Cooper is happy about the steady erosion of the powers of our national governments. Instead there are his "cosmopolitan values" like the ICC and the international treaties.

Cooper is wrong when he thinks that this is something new. The world's upper class has been international for many centuries. Even in the Middle Ages there numerous international marriages between members of the nobility. And where we face the power of the multinational cooperations people in the Middle Ages faced another powerful multinational: the Church. The international elite may now be a bit larger than in the past and have better means to stay in contact with its other, but they are still a very small percentage of the population. And that is unlikely to change.

Cooper is also wrong about the importance of the internationalization for peace. There are many other factors like the atom bomb and the fact that most wars are likely to cost more than they will ever deliver in booty and favorable treaties. And when one sees Western diplomats pummeling nations with threats of sanctions one gets the impression that the means have changed but the goals have stayed the same.

The cosmopolitan world view has been specially harmful in the Balkans. In the cosmopolitan world view nationalism is something for people like Le Pen and Wilders who thrive on fueling resentment against other groups. Any ethnic or nation identity is above their comprehension. So when they are confronted with a situation where these are very alive they try to reason them away. The favorite tactic is to assign one politician to the Wilders category and to assume that others are simply reacting.

This disability to see that ethnic groups have conflicting interests that have to be reconciled and this tendency to attribute demands of ethnic groups to racist attitudes is visible in the attitude of Cooper in the recent trouble in Norhern Kosovo too. That is why I think he should be replaced as negotiator.

Bühler, a Rambo general in Kosovo

2011-08-06T13:14:00.013+02:00

The title role in the present drama in Kosovo goes to general Buehler, the commander of KFOR. Gerard Gallucci already asked for his departure because he is not impartial - as a peacekeeper should be.

According to Gallucci this was not the first time that Bühler crossed the lines. He mentions an incident at the beginning of July when the Mitrovica municipality attempted to destroy the security wall of the UN compound in Mitrovica and Bühler initially supported them.

Now Tomas Brey from the Deutsche Presse Agentur has published an article that gives an insight in Buehlers brain. Copies of the German version ("Die serbische und albanische Mafia im Norden Kosovos hält die Welt auf Trab") can be found in many German newspapers and magazines.

The article starts as follows: It is organized crime, not politics, that keeps the world wary of the former Serbian province of Kosovo, General Erhard Buehler says. The German, who has commanded the NATO peacekeeping mission in Kosovo (KFOR) for almost a year, has repeated his view so many times that it has almost become his mantra. Criminals control everything in northern Kosovo, and ignite ethnic tensions to create conflict whenever their interests are under threat, Buehler says. Criminals belonging to the Serbian minority and the Albanian majority work seamlessly together, according to the general, who believes that 'the criminal structures have the final word.'

The article to goes on to write that the burning of border posts was the work of the the criminals, that they pay the people who man the barricades, the presence of Serb extremist organizations, the petrol and other smuggling operations, etc. According to him it is all the work of the parallel structures.

For his conclusion I will use my own translation of the German version of the article: This Mafia swamp should have been drained long ago, General Bühler keeps lamenting. The organization best fit for this would be EULEX with its special police, its lawyers and its government experts. But for years this EU mission that costs 100 million euro a year has been nearly invisible.

Obviously the general doesn't understand what ethnic conflicts are about. He simply defines them out of existence by blaming every problem on mafia manipulations. Neither does he understand the Albanian strategy to accept only complete surrender. In this strategy swampy situations like in Northern Kosovo are considered excellent propaganda tools - specially to convince naive people like the general.

And so our general has started his own mission. It looks like he has found it difficult to convince his international partners of his vision. So he has concentrated on convincing the German language area. Now he hopes to pick the fruits of that effort by importing lots of German soldiers.

The problem is that his actions are one-sided. Just as in Bosnia the West is facing the situation that by applying one-sided pressure they create a dynamic where neither side is inclined to give in. One side believes that they can always hold out and ask for more as those gullible Westerners will never be able to understand when they cross the line between reasonable and unreasonable demands. And the other side refuses to accept what it considers an unfair solution.

The present "agreements" between the Serbian government and KFOR are nearly certainly the result of threatening with further unilateral moves by KFOR. That raises the outlook that during future negotiations Serbia will be pressured with similar demands. I find the fact that the content of the negotiations is kept secret disturbing. KFOR is working for the UN and the public should be informed about its actions - specially when they as controversial as here.

The Serbian government could have challenged the general by confronting him with all the compromise proposals that they have done in the past. But it wouldn't have been easy. The general seems the arrogant type who most likely would have discarded those proposals as diversion attempts without even having read them.

Soldiers are educated to see things from one side. We want our soldiers to believe that their side is right on every point. That makes them better fighters than when they would constantly be doubting whether the other side might be right too. It is also the reason why soldiers should always be subservient to politicians. Politicians defend one side too. But in politics there is a reward on understanding you adversaries and to make compromises with them. In peacekeeping this competence is even more needed than elsewhere. Bühler however, has shaken off the control of politics and has become a rogue general. Even the fact that he instead of his civilian bosses is negotiating with the Serb leaders is completely unacceptable.

Rewarding violence in Kosovo

2011-08-05T15:50:00.003+02:00

Does anyone remember how the violence in former Yugoslavia began? It was when Slovenia occupied its border posts. The violence was rewarded by the EU that in following 10-days war put enormous pressure on the Yugoslav Army to withdraw. Since then it has often been noticed that if the EU hadn't rewarded violence at that point the other Yugoslav conflicts might have been solved more peacefully too.

Now we see that after Kosovo's unilateral occupation of the border posts the EU and the US are again rewarding violence by insisting on a final outcome that is more to the liking of Pristina than the situation before their action. It can only be expected that this rewarding of violence will produce more violence.

Of course this is not the first time that our peace keepers have rewarded violence. They did the same after the march 2004 riots when they suddenly dropped their "standards before status" requirements.

Why border changes in former Yugoslavia are not a problem

2011-08-05T10:58:00.006+02:00

In the Helsinki Accords of 1975 it was agreed that "frontiers can be changed, in accordance with international law, by peaceful means and by agreement." while "The participating States will respect the territorial integrity of each of the participating States.".

This makes sense. Border conflicts tend to last for many decades and have often been a major cause for wars. If all future border changes in the world are made in mutual agreement there will be no new border conflicts and the world will slowly become a more peaceful place.

However, strange things happened regarding Yugoslavia around 1990. Milosevic rose to power. As is so often the case with populists he had valid points but the ways he pushed them were not always helpful and he had a talent for rubbing both local and international elites the wrong way. Western anti-communists were horrified that communists were able to win elections and demonized Milosevic. Slovenian and Croatian nationalists grabbed this opportunity to promote their cause in the West. Western support went so far that they even supported Slovenia's and Croatia's opposition to national Yugoslav elections.

As a consequence when Slovenia declared its independence in June 1991 they got strong Western diplomatic support in the following 10-days war. As a result the Yugoslav army had to leave Slovenia. The West certainly crossed here the line when it came to non-interference in internal affairs and respect for the territorial integrity of states. And this certainly was not necessary to preserve the peace. In fact the West rewarded Slovenian aggression.

As is so often the case: one wrong step leads to the next. The next steps came in December 1991 and January 1992 when the Badinter Commission declared that Yugoslavia was in the process of dissolution and that from now on the republics were the successor states and their borders were just as sacred as Yugoslavia's had once been. Of course it is absurd that some EU advisory commission can define another state out of existence. If this should be possible at all it should be the privilege of the UN. Also the term "in the process of dissolution" was disingenuous: it allowed the commission to ignore a state that was still functioning quite well.

But the biggest problem was the statement that the borders of the republics were now protected by international law. One reason to respect existing borders is that they already have some legitimacy and that they have been proven to be viable in peace time. But that was not the case with the internal borders of Yugoslavia. In the course of its history Yugoslavia had several times completely changed its internal borders and while ethnicity had played some role in the present borders there were also considerations that shouldn't count when delimiting international borders - like the balance of power between the ethnic groups. In addition there was serious doubt whether the new borders were viable. The political troubles and the following wars indicated that those republics as they came out of Yugoslavia were unstable states that needed considerable changes before becoming stable. Even mono-ethnic Slovenia robbed 130,000 people of their citizenship.

Western politicians like to blame the following wars on Milosevic or on uncivilized Balkanians, but in fact it was they who created the instable and unlawful situation that was the main cause of the wars.

Since then Western politicians have resisted even mutually agreed border changes as they might produce a domino effect of border changes elsewhere. It is a typical case of being right for the wrong reasons. Having blocked negotiations when they were most easy to do - before independence - we now face situations where there is still no common vision. We can hold negotiations now under international supervision that takes care of fairness. But if we don't hold them the issues won't go away. Most likely they will jump up moments when the rest of the world is busy with other things and not capable of guaranteeing a peaceful outcome.

In fact the "sacred border" policy has worked nowhere:
- in Croatia it ended with a war and the permanent expulsion of 400,000 Serbs. The idea is that if you give one side all the power there is no problem. Unfortunately there are no minority rights then too.
The problem with this kind of "solution" is that they can poison mutual relations for a very long time. After 65 years Silesia and Sudetenland are still sore points in Germany's relations with resp. Poland and Czechia.

- in Bosnia it first led to a war and then to a state where many among the Serbs and Croats would want to leave. The Muslims claim to favor a multi-ethnic state but when one considers their results - how many Serbs and Croats remain in the Muslim-controlled area and how many are included in positions of power in local administrations - they seem at least as nationalistic as the others.
In the mean time some Western activists advocate the suppression of all nationalists in Bosnia. But that is what has been done the last 16 years and it hasn't helped. As soon as the Western pressure reduces the nationalists arise again as the issue of interethnic relations hasn't been solved. The recent troubles in the Federation show that it isn't the model for the whole of Bosnia that many Western idealists hoped.

- Macedonia was saved the troubles in the 1990s as the Albanians felt too weak. But after the Kosovo War they felt powerful enough to come with their demands. The situation is now stable but I won't be surprised when additional Albanian demands arise once Kosovo becomes international recognized.

- As Kosovo was no republic in Yugoslavia officially the "sacred border" doctrine did not apply here. yet out of fear for the domino effect the West has introduced it here as well.
If this continues the effect will most likely be similar to what happened in Croatia. After the 1999 war already over 200,000 people fled Kosovo and have never been able to return. Those remaining are mainly living in enclaves and subject to discrimination and pressure to sell their houses and land for cheap. As a consequence young minorities are leaving en masse and it is expected that many enclaves will die out in a few decades, a process sometimes called soft cleansing. Recently the US and EU are putting more and more pressure on Serbia to allow the same treatment for the Serbs who live in Northern Kosovo.

It is time that the West finally recognizes that the decision to declare Yugoslavia "in the process of dissolution" was wrong. Without that decision Yugoslavia might have dissolved anyway after a few years (it is hard to keep a country together when the north is four times as rich as the south) but it would have happened after the post-secession constellation of the new states had been thoroughly negotiated and necessary border corrections had been applied. The decision of the Badinter Commission prevented such negotiations and as a consequence there still isn't agreement among the ethnic groups of former Yugoslavia on how to live together. This has led to war and ethnic cleansing and the end is still not in sight. Let's finally begin to do the dissolution of Yugoslavia in a responsible way.

Pessimists like to claim that calls for border changes might happen everywhere in the Balkans. For example the Bulgarian minority in Serbia and the Albanian minority in Montenegro (that lives on the coast near Albania) might want to secede too. What they forget is that those borders have existed for many years without problems, are internationally recognized and without major problems. In contrast some of the borders between the former Yugoslav republics have a low legitimacy among the local population.

Ethnic noise to cover hard reality in Kosovo

2011-08-04T12:10:00.004+02:00

Kosovo has reached an agreement with the IMF and the World Bank.

It looks like the Kosovo government has found this period of ethnic tension the perfect time to get an agreement with the IMF. Most probably the inevitable budget cuts will hardly be noticed by the local mass media.

It may have been one of the reasons to start the trouble.

Obama's demise

2011-08-03T11:19:00.003+02:00

Since the budget agreement in the US the world's bourses are in falling fast. I think it is not so much the agreement itself as the disappointment in Obama that has caused this fall.

It started with the weak handling of the financial crisis. Obama pumped lots of money in the economy while it would have seemed more logical to push out the excesses first before starting to stimulate. Pumping to keep up leaking balloons is not a wise policy. But soon it appeared that Obama was really addicted to Wall Street when he passed nearly every opportunity to make Wall Street more accountable.

Obama got some credit for passing the health insurance legislation. But later on it appeared that it was an incoherent law that gave major benefits to special interests. And its lack of attention to costs make it doubtful that it will survive long in its present form.

Later on Obama passed the opportunity to raise taxes for the rich. The weak "concessions" he got in return from the Republicans raised the question what he was doing. Did he believe the Republican position? Was he a weakling who gave up in face of a bit of opposition?

The most recent agreement raises the same questions. It is full of points that have to be decided later - opening many opportunities for the Republicans to blackmail him again. No self respecting president would have accepted such conditions.

It is starting to look more and more like Obama's problem is weakness. This isn't about left or right. This is about (not) having a vision and defending it. It is starting to look like Obama's only loyalty is to the people who finance his campaigns.

This article {"Bruised, battered - and beaten?"} claims that the problem is that Obama is an idealist who believes in the power of words but who has no feeling for the dirty political handwork.

The Labyrinthian International Geopolitics of the Libyan Conflict

2011-08-01T16:40:00.002+02:00

Here is a nice article by Peter Lee on the Libyan conflict including the Western miscalculations like Sarkozy's advisors who thought Gadaffi would flee after the first bombs. It also pays some attention to the Kosovo precedent.

Concessions and blackmail in Arabia and the Balkans

2011-07-23T17:49:00.006+02:00

It is well known that giving in to blackmail is a bad idea. It very often leads to higher demands and more blackmail.

This is one of the reasons the Arab Spring isn't going as many would expect. The dictators are usually well aware that their country is ready for some additional freedoms. But they cannot afford to give in too much as it would be seen as weakness and only lead to more protests.

Something similar we see with the "pragmatic" negotiations between Serbia and Kosovo. I was a bit astonished to read the results. What Serbia had conceded was clear but I missed any concrete Albanian concession. It didn't help that some newspaper articles saw Albanian concessions in the fact that they hadn't achieved more.

As I see it the Serbian delegation hadn't done its homework and had not thought up a couple of counterdemands in answer to the predictable Albanian demands. Instead they let themselves be badgered by Cooper who operated with the typical Western arrogance that we often see by Wesern diplomats in the Balkans.

Soon it became clear that my estimate was right. The arrests of Mladic and Hadzic and the concessions at the talks didn't lead to a more benficial view of Serbia. Instead Serbia was seen as a pushover and demands started to stream in. Füle demanded full recognition of Kosovo and Kosovo imposed a ban on the import of Serbian goods.

It looks like Dacic doesn't get this. The primary goal of the EU is to solve the Kosovo problem. But how is of a lesser concern. They will concentrate most of their pressure on that party that seems most likely to give in. At the moment that is Serbia. It looks like the Serbian coalition believes that they can solve all problems and get Serbia into the EU. But you cannot hurry up negotiations. Trying to do so weakens your position and may delay a final solution.

On the other hand I cannot understand the motives of the Kosovo government. The most likely result of the present actions is a reaction from the Serbian government. It may refuse further negotiations or renege the results of the previous negotiations. So Kosovo's boycott will harm its economy and instead of increasing Kosovo's leverage only give it an image of an unreliable partner. The only people who will be benefit from this are Kurti and his ilk.

As a consequence I expect the follow-up negotiations to be much tougher.

Palestinians and Kosovo Albanians

2011-07-09T15:47:00.003+02:00

Some time ago I wrote an entry about the similarities between the struggles of the Kosovo Albanians and the Tamils of Sri Lanka. This time I will list some similarities between another minority that has been source of problems for a long time.

Just like the Albanians of Kosovo the Palestinians were the rulers of Israel for a long time. In both cases the new rulers (Serbs and Jews) were more modern what contributed to the marginalization of the Albanians and Palestinians. Their pride as former rulers contributed to make this backwardness last much longer than necessary. You have to swallow your pride to learn from people you consider inferior. Discrimination didn't help as it obscured the benefits of modernization. The result was an uncertain public led by populist politicians that promised the sky but in reality were mostly busy filling their pockets.

As I pointed out in my previous post the absence of exporting companies plays an important part in the irreality of Kosovo's foreign policy as there is no strong voice that advocates normality. We see the same thing with the Palestinians. Israeli propaganda complains endlessly about Palestinians duplicity. Palestinian leaders - also from the PLO - praise suicide attacks and hold for their own population much more belligerent speaches as for the international audience. It reminds one of the internet articles about Albanians sabotating Serbian companies in Kosovo. It is the resistance of people who don't see they have a stake in their own development.

Nowadays Kosovo hardly exports anything and it survives on international aid and emigrant remittances. Nearly the same applies to Westbank and Gaza.

In my opinion it is useless to criticize the Palestinians and the Kosovo Albanians for this situation. This is the politics of dependency. The only thing that will help is making them more responsible for their own fate. In this context it may be good to remember that many poor countries for a long time found themselves in a similar position when most of their budget came from development aid. Only recently has Western policy towards the developing countries shifted to one where the own responsibility is stressed. This has been partly accomplished by lowering import tarifs for their products.

Europe, the US and dealing with separatism

2011-07-03T22:10:00.003+02:00

Recently I suddenly realized how different traditions Europe and the US have when it comes to dealing with separatism.

The US has a tradition of suppressing rebellions. Its civil war was the most striking of these but in the first decades when the US was independent there were quite a few smaller rebellions.

Europe's experience is quite different. In the last centuries it has developed more and more towards nation-states. The experience is that when people don't want to live together they sooner or later will find a way to achieve that. Sometimes war played a role, like when the Habsburg empire fell apart after World War I and the many smaller border changes along ethnic lines after World War II. Nowadays nobody is worried about the fact that there is a real chance that in the coming decades Northern Ireland and Scotland may choose to leave the UK. Neither is there much worry about the fact that Belgium may fall apart.

Europe has little choice in this. While in the US after a rebellion was suppressed the people involved reentered the great melting pot in Europe your nationality tends to stay with you. If you are on the losing side of an ethnic conflict you may be subjected to discrimination or even ethnic cleansing. It is not totally impossible to create a melting pot in Europe: Turkey is a recent example. But it requires major commitment. And the melting pot is seldom universal: the US had its Indians and its Blacks and Turkey its Kurds and Greek who were not invited. Commitment to a common identity is rare and efforts to impose it from the outside - as we see in Bosnia - are doomed to fail.

It should be noted that the US is not above fueling ethnic tensions among its adversaries. An important reason that the Habsburg empire fell apart was that the US had been fueling nationalism under its minorities as part of its World War I strategy. The US also liked to fuel ethnic tensions in the USSR and has more recently been accused of fueling ethnic tensions in Iran and China.

Regarding Yugoslavia at first the European method of indulgence towards separatism dominated. It led even to ignoring of the Yugoslav constitution and insufficient attention to negotiations. Interestingly later on the US got involved and it put great value on the territorial integrity of Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. This was according to their tradition.

I think that this mix of traditions has led to a worse result than when either of the traditions had been used consistently.

Why Serbia's economic pressure on Kosovo doesn't work

2011-06-24T00:50:00.002+02:00

Part of Serbia's strategy to force Kosovo to accept a compromise has been economic pressure - mainly through the refusal to accept documentation that claims Kosovo to be an independent country. Until now it hasn't brought much result.

What made me wonder whether this really works was the lack of demands from Kosovo's society for a solution. It made me wonder whether Kosovo's export sector is simply too small to have political influence.

That would lead to the conclusion that Serbia's best strategy might be to actively encourage Kosovo's export sector. Of course it would need to keep some negotiation chips. But simply hindering Kosovo's exports may be a bad strategy.

The benefits of paralysis

2011-06-21T10:58:00.002+02:00

The NY Times has an article (Hip, Hip — if Not Hooray — for a Standstill Nation) in which it discusses the paralysis in the politics in Washington today. The article concludes that it is nothing new and that politics has always been this way:

Moreover, it’s useful to remember that the founders devised the system to be difficult, dividing power between states and the federal government, then further dividing the federal government into three branches, then further dividing the legislative branch into two houses. The idea, James Madison wrote, was to keep factions from gaining too much power, presuming that “a coalition of a majority of the whole society could seldom take place on any other principles than those of justice and the general good.”

This may be good to keep in mind the next time some Western diplomat claims that the mere fact that it has two entities makes Bosnia ungovernable.

Will Turkey go broke?

2011-06-20T12:54:00.002+02:00

Amidst all the enthusiasm about Turkey's economic success it is good to read the recent article in Business week about it (Turkey's Moment).

The article is rather short on figures but it creates the impression that with its large account of payments deficit and its huge influx of money it looks a lot like South East Asia at the eve of the 1997 crisis.

It would be bad for the Balkans if after Greece also Turkey falls into a crisis. But at least for the moment Turkey is still very confident.

Western cowardice in the Balkans (2x)

2011-06-19T14:45:00.003+02:00

This weeks saw several illustration of Western reluctance to take important decisions, despite evidence that delay may only make matters worse.

The Greek debt
One year ago Greece received a large loan from the EU. Now it is back for more. Unexpected? No! Because Greece didn't keep its commitments? No! It was calculated from the beginning. The only thing that might have prevented a new Greek crisis was when the markets might have suddenly developed faith in Greece and decided to give it new loans against decent rates. But that was very unlikely: Greece was forced to large budget cuts and that usually translates in a shrinking economy; creditors don't like that.

The real problem are Greece's creditors. Because of the uncertainty they change higher interest rates and that put Greece in a hole from which it is difficult to get out. Normally a country's debts is restructured when in such a situation. That may mean that part of the debt is forgiven but it may also mean that the creditors just have to wait a little longer for their money.

And this is where things get dirty. With the first aid operation a year ago their was no "restructuring". It it suspected that Lagarde, who coordinated that support operation and as a consequence has now the best cards to become the next head of the IMF, did so to protect the French banks who are major creditors to Greece. Some people believe that this background and the bad result of the operation make Lagarde a bad choice for this job.

This time another Frenchman, Trichet, the head of the European Central Bank is trying to prevent a "haircut" for the banks. Yet his arguments that such a haircut might have disastrous consequences sound hollow. That countries go broke is a normal thing. If the European financial system cannot bear such a development then that means that Trichet has failed in his job as overseer of the financial sector. he doesn't have much power in this respect but he certainly has a moral authority that he hasn't used.

In the mean time Greece stays in the twilight zone. This has both good and bad consequences. The good thing is that there finally seems to be some momentum to modernize the way Greece is administered. One bad thing is that financial uncertainty leads to stagnation. The longer the situation isn't solved the worse it is for the European economy. Another bad thing is that Greece may be forced to excessive cuts and privatizations that will harm it in the long term. I would advise Greece to simply refuse such prescriptions.

Trichet is both right and wrong. Restructuring the Greek debt may have serious consequences. But delaying it has consequences as well and it is very likely that the longer we delay it the larger the total damage will be. Often the fall of Lehman Brothers that triggered the crisis in 2008 is used as an deterring example. But companies go broke all the time. The real problem with Lehman Brothers was that the central bankers hadn't taken the precautions that made it possible to handle such a bankruptcy in an orderly way.

P.S. Here is an article that discusses the way

Kosovo's borders
While Europe keeps stumbling along with the Greek debt the US showed very similar behavior when Assistant Secretary of State Philip Gordon declared himself against a partition of Kosovo. According to him it would be "a a recipe for disaster for the Balkans".

It looked hardly liked a balanced statement. Being in the Balkan Gordon has very probably heard the usual threats ("if that happens our people will riot") and his statement may have been a result of that.

The result is that Kosovo stays in the twilight zone too. It will not be recognized and its relation with its Serb minority will stay tense. We see something very similar happening in Bosnia.

Here too the West is only delaying. The problem stays, keeps causing harm and may in the end very well be "solved" in a less decent way - like Operation Storm solved Croatia's ethnic trouble. Not to mention that such "solutions" may very well lay the foundation for new conflicts.

So Gordon too takes the way of the coward - avoiding solutions because their implementation is tricky and can get out of hand. This is the wrong way. The West should together with the local ethnic groups find solutions and find ways to implement them. That will take both an open ear, an instinct for fairness and diplomatic skills.

Russia and Brazil

2011-06-17T13:24:00.002+02:00

VOA News has an article "Can Russia catch up with Brazil". In this article it mentions similarities between the countries such as that both used to be dictatorships and that both were late abolishing slavery.

But where Russia is tuck with authoritarian Putin Brazil has found the way to democracy. The article's account of how this happened:
I was in Florianopolis, Brazil, lunching on shrimp stew with Roberto Schmidt, a lawyer and veteran of Brazil’s long, slow motion move to full civilian rule.

“Expansion of civil society is the key,” he said. “One year in the early 1980s, neighborhood groups just started forming across Florianopolis.”

As a reporter in Brazil in the early 1980s, I recall thinking that this proliferation of non-governmental groups, neighborhood groups, church groups, green groups, women’s groups, and independent trade unions was a boring story. For news value, how could this grass roots phenomenon compare with the pyrotechnics of civil war in El Salvador, Augusto Pinochet beating heads in Chile, and Maggie Thatcher rolling back Argentina’s occupation of the Falkland Islands?

But for Brazil, this transition to democracy was The Story.

On a political level, these non-governmental groups led to the formation of the Workers Party, Brazil’s first truly grass roots party. This is the party that overturned class expectations and put into the presidential palace Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, a former shoeshine boy whose formal education stopped at the fourth grade.

Unfortunately the US policy of color revolution has made grass root organizations suspect and politicized.

Science and dealing with dictators

2011-06-15T14:56:00.004+02:00

For my study I had to read some scientific publication (Less Power or Powerless? Egocentric Empathy Gapsand the Irony of Having Little versus No Power in Social Decision Making.) that has some interesting implications for how to deal with dictators.

It is a well known fact that when people get more power they use or abuse it. But this does not go on endlessly. When they get absolute power they become more generous. I quote one experiment from this article. I have changed it a bit to make it comprehensible without the context:
Participants were read a scenario in which they were asked to imagine themselves as being one of two competing owners of adjacent cafe´s. Both want to use the sidewalk in front of their cafe´s for an outdoor bar. Participants were told that the city council endowed them with 100 m2 that they could use together. As they were the ones that first contacted the city council about this extension of their cafe´, the participants are instructed by the city council to come up with a division of the 100 m2. Allocators could therefore propose a division of the 100 m2 to
their neighbors. In the condition in which the participants were confronted with a powerless neighbor, they were told that they could make any division and that the neighbor is going to have to accept this proposal—the 100 m2 will be divided as they propose.
It is important to note that this is equivalent full power. In the other condition, participants were confronted with a neighbor with a small amount of power. They were told that the neighbor has information that could lead to a decrease of the total space that could be used for the outdoor cafe´. The neighbor has a choice between either accepting the proposal that the participants make or informing the city council that the 100 m2 are too close to the street and that according to the law, 10 m2 would have to remain unused.
This would mean that although the relative sizes of the parts for each cafe´ owner would remain as proposed, the total area to be divided would be reduced by 10%. It is important to note that this situation is equivalent to 90% power. The scenario was accompanied by a map that gave an overview of the layout of the two cafe´s, the area to be divided, and, in the 90% power condition, the area that was too close to the street.
After reading this scenario, participants were asked to indicate what percentage of the total 100 m2 they would allocate to their neighbors.

The result was that the people with 100% power were prepared to give 41.9 square meters compared to 34.35 for the 90% power people. There are numerous experiments with similar results. It appears that when people have all the power they feel responsible: "Noblesse oblige".

Interestingly people don't expect this. When in an experiment people are put in the powerless position and given a little piece of information that they can use against the powerful side nearly everyone discloses this to the other side - seriously harming their receipts.

In this context it is nice to looks at the studies that show that nonviolent protest has the best results. Many people see nonviolence only as a trick: if you can't beat the government with arms it is better not to use them so that when the government uses them people will see it as excessive violence and the government will loose support.

The result is the kind of doomed insurrections as we have seen in Iran, Libya and Syria. Everyone - including the government - knew that the ultimate goal was the fall of the government and the government took accordingly measures to quash the protests. Compare that to Tunisia and Egypt where there were concrete demands like less corruption and the abolishment of the state of emergency. These were moral demands that not directly attacked the government and even when in the end the dictator left much of the established order - including the army - stayed behind.

An important factor behind this illfated strategy is that the CIA is pushing the opposition in those countries in that direction.

If we look to dictatorships that have become democracies it seldom happened at once in a revolution. Usually it happened in small steps that seemed logical at the time. This is how the moral appeals at the "noblesse oblige" of dictators works. With demands for regime change the protesters move themselves to more power. But just as in the experiments that makes the dictator less likely to grant more freedom.

It looks to me that in their present mode the uprising in most Arab countries are doomed to fail. The country were there is best chance for regime change is Syria but that is for the wrong reasons. The Syrian regime has chosen the strategy of massive reaction. As any guerrilla handbook may tell you this is bound to antagonize the population against the regime. It is standard guerrilla tactic to shoot a few cops in order to achieve such a reaction. But even if this strategy of provocation succeeds the humanitarian price may be very high.

When the rules have changed

2011-06-07T15:17:00.003+02:00

In today's Washington Post, Jackson Diehl argues that the International Criminal Court's role in Libya has not been helpful as it gives Gaddafi an incentive to keep fighting. It is an argument that I have made too.

I want to add one point: we should acknowledge that times have changed. Gaddafi is just one of many dictators in his part of the world. And many of his colleagues would be just as ready to kill protesters when they found it ready. As I have argued before - Ben Ali and Mubarak were geriatric old men who were overwhelmed by the protests. Had they been younger and more energetic they would most likely have put up more of a fight before giving up power. Dictators are ruler and judge in one and if they see a threat to stability they have good reason to lock up or even kill someone - all for the sake of stability and progress. That is the ideology that underlies their rule.

From this point of view is simply doesn't make sense to tell Gaddafi that suddenly he is a criminal just for doing what he has done the last 40 years. It makes better sense to tell him that times have changed and that now the time has a arrived for a more democratic and open style of government. He should leave but we don't blame him for what he has done with the best intentions. Those intentions are of course an assumption that we can adopt until proven otherwise.

This is not just about Gaddafi and his family. Hundreds of thousands of Libyans have supported him. By telling that Gaddafi is a criminal we are also telling those people that they are criminals. Doing that we make them to enemies of the new order while we did have a good chance to get them on our side. It is no coincidence that violent transitions lead to long term problems. We are now more than two centuries past the French revolution and there is still some antagonism between church and state left. Those Western bombers may very well be laying the foundation for similar problems between Libya's tribes.

Mladic, be a man and take responsibility

2011-06-02T17:47:00.003+02:00

Finally Mladic has been caught. And now we will see his process. If the processes of Milosevic and Karadzic are any guide it may be once again a disappointment for people who expect anything new.

Yet I think there should be. Milosevic and Karadzic were responsible for policies that took many unnecessary lives. But it is hard to find an optimal policy - Bush's policies in Iraq took many unnecessary lives too - and they might see reasons why it is in the interest of Serbia and the Serbs to be economical with the truth.

However, I can't see such a reason for Mladic when it comes to the Srebrenica massacre. Even if he didn't order it and wasn't aware of it until after it happened - what is very unlikely - he still would be responsible as the highest commander. It would fit him as a man to take that responsibility - however painful.

Mladic owes not only an apology to the Muslims. The mass murder also harmed the Serbs. It was a major strategic blunder that gave the Serb cause a bad name, made any further Serb conquest (Bihac?) internationally unacceptable and may well have led to the fall of the Krajna.

When he was commander in Bosnia Mladic had the image of being a brave man who didn't evade his responsibilities. Now he faces the ultimate test of his bravery. For his fate it won't make much difference: given his health it looks unlikely that he will ever again be a free man no matter what he does.

Sense and nonsense about reconciliation

2011-05-25T11:30:00.005+02:00

Reconciliation is hot. Western NGOs have spent millions in former Yugoslavia to achieve it. Put some people from ethnic groups that used to right each other together in some course or project and you can get a lot of money because it is supposed to contribute to reconciliation. As the reasoning goes: these people didn't talk to each other and now they are talking again; this must the the first step towards reconciliation.

It doesn't work always. Many of those projects in Kosovo found their end in march 2004 when Serbs saw their "project-friends" in the mobs that attacked them. And one has to wonder whether it works better in other situations.

A related concept is that of justice. Many millions have been spent on the ICTY and other courts to condemn the war criminals. But the effect has been limited. On the one hand it is good to see that some consensus arises on the facts and that for example you don't hear anymore that people deny that mass killings happened in Srebrenica. But when you hear the comments from the different parties it looks like the courtroom has become the newest battlefield. Everyone wants crimes by the other side exposed and preferably provided with labels like "genocide". And with good reason: the conflict is going on. Serbia and Croatia are still involved in a genocide case at the ICJ and in Bosnia the statuses of the Republika Srpska and the Croat majority region are ongoing sources of conflict.

South Africa is often seen as an example how to solve conflicts. But the South Africans did it very different compared to former Yugoslavia. First they found a political solution that had wide support on all sides. Many in the West think that only apartheid was abolished but the whites negotiated a deal that gave the country a very capitalistic constitution that protects them from large scale expropriations.

Only when there was a solution in which every part felt safe did the South Africans proceed to the next step: the "truth and reconciliation commission". Because of this timing justice was no longer loaded with political consequences. A second step they made was to pardon most of the crimes. In the heat of a conflict people do things that they normally wouldn't do and this was an implicit recognition of that fact. Also, because the primary aim of the commission was not to get these people convicted there was much more attention to what they thought at that time and how they came to their acts. This is a climate that produces real reconciliation.

In contrast the Western approach to Yugoslavia has been counterproductive. There has been no commitment to solutions that are seen by all sides as fair. On the contrary: a formalistic approach was chosen - encouraged by the Badinter Commission - that gave Yugoslavia's republics independence without negotiations and discarded widely shared concerns amongst certain groups as "nationalistic". And while the West has been very helpful to help those "warlike" people of the Balkans to find reconciliation it has been very unwilling to investigate its own role.

The psychology of war

2011-05-25T10:59:00.003+02:00

I found an interesting article about the psychology of war ("why war is never rational"). It basically says that sometimes we humans can be perfectly rational and balance costs and benefits while at other times we seem to lose all rationality. The latter happens when we think that a moral issue is at stake.

Of course at a certain level science is telling here once again what we already know. But on the other hand it is good to have it explicit as through the course of history populist leaders have been very good in raising our moral indignation about things that previously didn't bother us. It is also good to realize that a seemingly innocent change in a situation can change people's view from the rational to the moral side. The article provides some nice examples both from science and the real world.

The value of peaceful protest

2011-05-20T12:19:00.002+02:00

It is amazing how the concept of peaceful protest is eroding in the Arab world. Unfortunately that also means that its effectiveness is fading.

The original Gandhian idea of peaceful protest is to do something that is entirely within the laws of the country - no matter how repressive they are. That way the regime has no excuse for arrests or violence - unless it gives up on its own principles. And even when protests cross the borders of the law as understood by the regime they should restrict themselves to minor transgressions that normally are tolerated or just punished with a small fine.

As we can see in Libya and Syria it is impossible for protesters to win from a well-organized regime. So they shouldn't try. Instead of asking for regime change they should make reasonable demands like less corruption - including the removal of some corrupt officials - and more freedom.

The power of protesters in making a moral point strong enough that the regime feels pressured to give in sooner or later. The more disciplined and moderate the way this point is made the greater its chance for success as one of the main arguments for a dictatorship is always the supposedly undisciplined anarchic character of the masses.

On the Greek debt

2011-05-17T11:39:00.003+02:00

There is much noise nowadays about the Greek debt. Ferdinand Fichtner, a German economist, was one amongst many who argued for letting Greece default. I tend to support that idea but I will restrict myself here to just some thoughts about the problems:

- We should recognize that the budget limitations for the eurozone countries (the 3% rule) are a bad idea. They would be a very nice idea if they worked but in reality they are an incentive for countries to cook the books so that their debts become invisible for everyone except a few specialists. If the Greek debts had been open and clear for everyone both concerned Greeks and the foreign lenders to Greece would have become alarmed and the problem would have been noticed much earlier as it was now.

- In general it is a good idea to attack a problem as soon as possible. Japan's lost decade is generally seen as the consequence of not accepting the consequences of the collapse of the property bubble around 1990. Many companies that were de facto insolvent stayed around and they became a drag on the economy. After the crisis of 2008 the US was rigorous in accepting the losses out of fear of a "lost decade" but Europe has been much more hesitant and as a consequence it is believed that there are still much more problematic loans that keep poisoning the system.

This brings me to Greece. One has to be honest about whether Greece really will be able to repay its debts. If you think it is not - as the markets do - it is better to default today than tomorrow.

- The behavior Greece is showing now is typical of a country that no longer believes in a solution. All the discussion is about the pain and no one talks about the benefits of getting the finances back on track. With this attitude Greece may stay a problem case for a long time. You can't force a country towards a solution in which it doesn't believe and that may very well be impossible.

- Probable a default will have to be accompanied by an exit from the euro. This will be painful for many Greeks who have debts. But most of those debts are secured against properties that can be expected to keep their value in euro's. Of course it will be still painful for those people who have to pay off their debs from a reduced wage. It is quite similar to what the people in much of Eastern Europe and the Balkan experienced when their currency suddenly plummeted and it became much harder to repay their euro debts.

The reason why Greece might have to leave the euro is because its competitive position is so bad. While Ireland has nowadays an export surplus and might stay in the eurozone even if it defaulted it is dubious whether Greece can regain a competitive position without a default.

- the strategy of the europhiles is "double or quit" and they keep doubling out fear about the consequences of quitting. I think it is a stupid strategy. Greece quitting the euro won't do much to hamper European unity. The common interests that drive us towards more unity are simply too large. On the other hand might it very well be that the price of keeping Greece inside the eurozone becomes so high that it does serious harm both to the countries involved and to the process towards European unity.

I have never liked the obligation for new EU members to use the euro as soon as possible. Countries should first spend 20 or 30 years inside the EU and have found some balance before they enter the eurozone. So I would be happy if that rule disappeared as a consequence of the crisis. The eurozone has been an area of slow growth for the last decade so I don't see any reason to hurry its expansion.

In my opinion Brussels is paying too much attention to symbols like the euro and too little attention to the economic integration of Europe's periphery - the Balkan, the former Soviet Union, Turkey and the Southern Mediterranean. Whether all these areas will ever be part of the EU is unclear, but the dynamics towards one economic zone are obvious.

In my opinion Europe should strive for a circle of countries around it that have tied their coins to the euro but have not adopted the euro itself, much like the "snake" that connected Europe's coins before the euro. With such a loose connection countries can always devalue if the need arises - as is now clearly the case with Greece.

Managing the Arab Spring

2011-05-15T17:16:00.003+02:00

The New Yorker has a nice article (The Consequentialist: How the Arab Spring remade Obama’s foreign policy.) about Obama's policy towards the developments in the Arab world.

Here are some observations of my own:

- I don't agree with Obama's policy towards Egypt. Obama got seduced by the rhetorics of the protesters that you had to be for or against Mubarak and in the end turned against him. Instead he should have focused on content. He might for example have highlighted that having a "state of emergency" for decades is ridiculous. Now after the departure we see that this focus on people is staying with much of the attention focused on a persecution of Mubarak. Focusing on people is bad for two reasons: it removes the focus from the content - meaning less reforms - and it can easily turn into a witch hunt - meaning less democracy.

- I don't agree with Obama's policy towards Libya either. It was a good idea to avert a complete defeat of the rebels. Such a defeat would probably have meant decades more of dictatorship and Gaddafi might have killed a considerable number of people to deter the population from new protests. But aiming for a rebel victory is in my opinion unwise: It can only be achieved with thousands of deaths; The rebels are very divided and will most probably offer a very incompetent government; And given the ethnic divisions in Libya it may result in the kind of instability we have seen in Iraq.

- in Syria Obama is caught in the same dilemma. Instead of picking up complaints from the protesters he again is focused on whether the regime should stay or not.

- in Bahrain the US has ignored the repression what generally has been interpreted as a silent consent. This had two harmful effects. First of all it even more undermined the protests as it now became to be seen that the US was selective in which uprisings it supported - based on its own interests. Secondly by denying the Shiite majority in Bahrain a saying the US casted the conflict between its ally Saudi Arabia and Iran as a conflict between Shiites and Sunnites instead of as a conflict between Arabs and Persians. By doing that the US and Saudi Arabia made sure that Iraq will be on the side of Iran.

An essential part of democracy is negotiation and compromises. As such revolutions are a bad way towards them as they preach the victory of one side at the cost of the others. It is no coincidence that so many revolutions degenerate in dictatorships even though their initial intention was democracy.

The focus of Obama on regime change has had as a result that the focus has shifted in the Arab world too. What was an "Arab Spring" is now an "Arab Revolution". As we seen in history revolutions seldomly succeed and so the fate of the Arab world will most probably be similar to that of the European revolutions in 1848. In contrast a focus on content might have resulted in reforms everywhere, including countries that didn't see protests.

Sign the petition against EU natura medicine law

2011-05-12T16:41:00.000+02:00

The EU wants to introduce new legislation that forbids all natural medicine that haven't been tested anew in a long complicated bureaucratic procedure. The consequence will be that many natural medicine will become forbidden.

Sign the petition to stop this EU directive!

Europe bows to the money guys too

2011-05-09T14:20:00.003+02:00

Regularly it reported in our newspapers how powerful the financial sector is in the US. And we like to think that Europe is doing better. After all we don't have the multi-million dollar election campaigns that are largely financed by the business community.

Two recent reports undermine this impression:
- an investigation group on "transfer pricing" (one of the most popular tricks to evade taxes in the EU) was mostly manned by people from tax evading companies and their advisors.
- the most probable candidate to succeed Trichet as president of the European Central Bank is Mario Draghi. At the moment he is head of the Italian Central Bank but previously he worked for Goldman Sachs, the most dark force in the recent financial crisis.

Europe has always been business dominated as there is little interest from the citizens. But the present domination by financial interests doesn't bode well as their interests don't align with those of the European citizens.

Sri Lanka Tamils and Kosovo Albanians

2011-05-07T11:12:00.004+02:00

Usually minorities that want to separate are richer than the rest of the country. Think of the Basques and the Catalans in Spain and the Slovenes and Croats in Yugoslavia. They have a good reason to believe that when they no longer have to "subsidize" the rest of country they will be better off.

Sri Lanka Tamils and Kosovo Albanians are exceptions to that rule. Interestingly, when you compare them there are many similarities:
- in both cases there is a neighboring state/country (Tamil Nadu and Albania) where they dominate. Tamil Nadu is part of India but as a state it has considerable autonomy.
- in both cases they have in the past been either independent or part of that neighboring country.
- in both cases they collaborated with a foreign ruler (the British resp the Ottomans) against the majority. In that period they were the most prosperous group.
- in both cases that led to retributions after the departure of that foreign ruler.
- in both cases the national majority attempted to "majoritize" the area after they achieved power. In Sri Lanka a few years after independence in 1948 laws were adopted that made Sinhala the only official language. In Kosovo there was a not very effective policy between the World Wars that encouraged Serbs to move to Kosovo and Albanians to emigrate to Turkey.
- in both cases their recent nationalism is strongly supported both from the neighboring country and from the emigrant diaspora.
- in both cases this results in a kind of rejectionist nationalism where people refuse to learn the majority language and also in other ways isolate themselves from the mainstream economy. The resulting poverty is blamed on the majority and so one gets a self-reinforcing pattern.
- through time the situation gradually worsens with increasing mutual discrimination and violence.

Mbeki on Ivory Coast

2011-05-06T19:15:00.002+02:00

In a previous post I discussed the problems with the Western intervention in Ivory Coast. Now Mbeki, the former South African president who served as medator in Ivory Coast has written an article ("What the world got wrong in Ivory Coast") in which he confirms my impressions. Of course he is much better informed than I am and provides much more details.

EU sanctions for Bosnia

2011-05-04T21:29:00.002+02:00

According to rumors, recently confirmed by Inzko, the EU is considering travel bans and asset freezes for Bosnian politicians who are blocking all reforms in the country. I am really wondering how they think to defend that for the European Court of Human Rights. This is punishment without process, violation of property rights and violation of freedom of movement.

Another proposal is the posting of an EU ambassador the posting of an EU ambassador who would have a budget of up to 108 million euro this year that could be used to 'reward' parties who pledge cooperation. I propose that the next elections they simply go the the voting booths and ask everyone which party they voted. If they voted the "right" party (from the point of view of the EU) they would receive 50 euro. It would open new perspectives in EU "democracy promotion".

On the Hungarian constitution

2011-05-04T19:25:00.002+02:00

There have been lots of news reports about Hungary's new constitution. Complaints are that it strengthens the power of the Fidesz party and converts the constitution from a national document into something that reflects the desires of their party.

I won't discuss this aspect. Instead I want to focus on the procedure. What happens now in Hungary would be impossible in the Netherlands. In order to change the constitution the proposal has to approved twice by parliament and in between there have to be elections. The first time a single majority suffices; the second time a two-third majority is needed.

As a consequence the Dutch constitution (here is the translation in English of a prior version) is much more a simple rulebook about which everyone can agree than many "modern" constitutions. I believe this is what a constitution should be. However many "reformers" may like it a constitution is not a tool to achieve societal reforms.

The lack of a moral strategy for the Arabs

2011-04-25T22:52:00.002+02:00

If you read the headlines of some articles it is of utmost importance that the rebels in Libya win. Never mind that they are hopelessly divided and have even been unable to govern the piece of Libya that they control.

I think we are bringing the wrong message with our support to armed resistance. As our support is a;most by default selective (we didn't support resistance in Bahrain or Saudi Arabia) it puts us in a hypocritical position. This undermines the moral power of the present wave of unrest in the Arab countries.

The core of the protests in the Arab countries is against corruption. So we should help expose this corruption. But neither on Libya nor on Syria I have read any article that highlights corruption. Instead we see articles that seem to claim if those countries become democratic corruption will somehow magically disappear. I think it is the other way around. As long as corruption is not attacked it will just contaminate the democracy and soon we will find that chosen politicians are just as corrupt as dictators. If on the other hand we highlight the corruption and other abuses of a regime it will feel compelled to do something about it and it will result in a higher moral standard. At some point these higher standards will make the step towards democracy just a next logical step.

Nikolic's mistake

2011-04-20T23:02:00.003+02:00

I am rather puzzled by Nikolic's hunger/thirst strike in Serbia.

First of all you don't protest to change generally election laws. Sure, sometimes most people agree that the present government is stupid. But that is bad luck: election laws are there to be respected. A government has the right to end its period. If you don't respect that you don't respect the rules of democracy.

That doesn't mean that there aren't ways to undermine the present government and to force elections: The present government is a coalition. So it might be possible to find a coalition partner who might benefit if it leaves the coalition now. An alternative is to field proposals on which the coalition is divided or on which the coalition has chosen a difficult to defend position. The budget proposals by Ryan in the US were a good example of how to do this.

Of course the government parties still have an advantage and if they play their cards right they can prevail. But the opposition has the advantage that they can choose on which subject to fight and doing that they can push the government in the defense.

Nikolic's present action will weaken his standing with the EU and the US (and we know how important their input was in previous elections).It will also weaken his standing with the Serbian voters who value democracy. Even if he gets everything he wants this action may bring Nikolic more harm than good. Making threats is not the way to get things done in a democracy.

In my opinion Nikolic should as fast as possible find an excuse to end his hunger strike and lead the opposition again. It may cost him some voters in the short term, but continuing this charade is more damaging in the long term.

Why is Libya so difficult?

2011-04-10T19:08:00.002+02:00

Some thought about what is needed to solve the situation in Libya.

First an armistice:
- The West should go to Gaddafi, the East to the rebels. It doesn't matter where the border comes exactly as long as there will be a wide stretch of desert in between so that compliance can easily be checked.
- this leaves Misurata - the only town in the West where the rebels still are strong. One might consider a kind of neutral status for that city.

Then negotiations:
- keep in mind that Libya with its tribes is much more African than Egypt and Tunisia. The African countries are watching the events with at least as much interest as the Arab countries.
- Gaddafi should leave, but with honor. He might retire inside Libya, for example near Sirte.
- for the continuity it is best when much of Gaddafi's officials stay. Firing competent people for being of the wrong group is an expensive move - as Iraq and Kosovo can testify.
- aim for an agreement instead of a victory of one of the two parties. Having one of the sides win in an ethnic conflict can lead to many years of trouble.
- keep in mind that the goal is more freedom - both economic and of speech. Democracy is a means to achieve that - not a goal in itself.

Egypt needs Baradei as leader

2011-04-09T17:18:00.002+02:00

With the recent news on demonstrators in Egypt demanding Mubarak in court and soldiers crushing their demonstration it looks like things are going wrong.

In my opinion the main problem is the lack of credible leadership. Egypt needs a leader who both the demonstrators and the soldiers will believe. He should both be able to tell the demonstrators that it is not a good idea to bring Mubarak in court - provided he gives up most of his fortune - and to tell the soldiers that demonstrators are Egyptians too and deserve a decent treatment. I am not an expert on Egypt but I think that it should be someone from the opposition who has some credibility with the Mubarak-era establishment, like Baradei

Without such a figure there is a risk that the situation may escalate.

Bosnia and Ivory Coast

2011-04-09T17:09:00.004+02:00

While watching the news on Ivory Coast it may be good to remember that this is exactly what the Western cosmopolitans had in mind for Bosnia. Just as Bosnia Ivory Coast had a civil war between its main (clusters of) ethnic groups. And just as in Bosnia it ended with a Western-mediated peace.

Only this time there were no special provisions for the different groups. As each of the groups believed they were a majority they accepted the idea of a centralized state where winning the elections would mean the difference between being on top or being discriminated.

In the end the South lost (they claim due to election fraud). They didn't accept it and that resulted in the present stalemate. Now Western countries are using arms to impose their "solution". I am afraid that in the long term it will not work as well as they expect. There are already reports about mass murders by Northern troops in their EU/UN supported offensive. It seems those reports don't deter the Western country. After all the Northern candidate is a former IMF man and so he is supposed to be "our" man.

Postscript: Newsweek has an article ("Battle After Ballot") in which it wonders that the West might be doing more bad than good, both by getting involved in an ethnic conflict and by imposing "democracy" with violence.

Libya: time for a real armistice

2011-04-01T16:56:00.002+02:00

Now that the weather is bad for air attacks, the rebels are retreating again and the US has announced to restrict its part in the attacks it seems time for a bit of humility on the side of the rebels. Unfortunately we don't see much of it yet. The rebels have finally asked for a cease-fire, but their conditions sound completely unrealistic. What to think of their demand that Gaddafi should allow demonstrations? That is something for a peace agreement, not for an armistice: in a war you don't allow demonstrations.

I presume that the rebels can't do much better. They are highly divided and that is not situation in which an organization can make big concessions. So I think it time that some international leader steps in and takes up a mediating role. It is a pity that until now we haven't seen anybody who travelled both to Tripoli and Benghazi and tried to broker some armistice.

The big question in this is the role of the US. As long as Obama aims for regime change it is unlikely that the rebels will go beyond seeking delays in which they can rearm and seeking propaganda coups.

Why imposing democracy is bad

2011-03-28T13:37:00.002+02:00

As I explained in an article elsewhere the chance that the NATO operation in Libya will have a happy end is small. Iraq and Afghanistan are not exceptions but the rule.

The results of interventions have been extensively studied and they produce seldom democracy.

This is not surprising. Real democracy is about mutual respect between people. Equality for the law is in that respect much more important than the right to vote. The world is full of countries where you are free to vote but you are it risk to lose your house or your company due to obscure manipulations by people with power. In some of those countries (like Russia and Iran) the voting has become meaningless as it is predestined who is going to win. But in many others the government may change but somehow everything stays the same anyway.

As I mentioned a few posts ago peaceful resistance has a much better record at increasing democracy than interventions. To understand this one has to understand the outcome. An armed conflict ends with one side winning. If the existing powers win it doesn't have to bother with opposition for the next decade. On the other hand: if the opposition wins it doesn't have to bother with the former rulers and may discriminate them at will. When the conflict had an ethnic element this means that whole groups will be excluded.

Peaceful resistance on the other hand seldom ends with a clear win. If the opposition wins - like in Tunisia and Egypt - many elements from the former regime will stay behind. On the other hand can the regime never achieve a clear victory as there was no violent resistance. Too much violence will only undermine its own legitimacy. And even when defeated massive demonstrations will make a clear moral point about how a significant part of the population thinks about their "beloved leader".

It is this balance where nobody has all the power and solutions have to be negotiated or at least been taken with the interests of others in mind that forms the basis of real democracy.

Kosovo's mafia

2011-03-28T12:27:00.003+02:00

GlobalPost has three articles (How the US and allies ignore organized crime at the highest levels of a new democracy, Assassinations and intimidation and A hotbed of human trafficking) on organized crime in Kosovo.

In the articles are links to two external sources: one is a NATO/KFOR presentation on organized crime in Kosovo. Instead of a pdf they use their own type of presentation software that tends to stop after a couple of slides. What I have seen (the first 12) are maps of Kosovo with names of local mobsters and their gangs. In a NATO report from 2004 close associates of Thaci are extensively described.

Syria's options

2011-03-25T19:47:00.004+01:00

Now that Syria too is facing protests it may be good to review its options.

I think that corruption is a more important issue than democratization in the Arab world. The best thing that the regime could do therefore is to sack a few corrupt officials.

But that would only temporarily stabilize the situation. The regime will have to adopt an ideology of reform and modernization as its new power base. That can only work however when it is prepared to give up on present supporters who are only in for the booty. To achieve such a transition will be a risky balancing act for the regime.

I am pessimistic about democracy in Syria at the moment. Just as in Libya the regime has an ethnic base (the Alawites) and that bodes trouble. I think that it would be much better to strive for a society based on the rule of law - and equality before the law - first. Once such principle is established a transition to rule by other ethnic groups under a democratic system would be much less problematic.

Part of more equality for the law is an open discussion. Occasional public outcries help to make sure that the judicial sense of justice doesn't stray too far from the public sense of justice. This is problematic in the Arab world where few books are read and discussion is tightly controlled. There are rumors that the Syrian government wants soon to abolish the state of emergency. This would be a move in the right direction.

As one can see in East and South East Asia authoritarian regimes can stay quite popular if they manage to keep corruption under control and the economy going. But if the Syrian regime wants to transform itself in such a type of regime it will have to overcome serious resistance from Alawites who have grown accustomed to a privileged position.

Clinton needs a psychology course

2011-03-18T20:05:00.003+01:00

The following is a quote from the NY Times:

Characterizing Colonel Qaddafi as a menacing “creature” lacking a moral compass, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that the international community had little choice but to act. “There is no good choice here. If you don’t get him out and if you don’t support the opposition and he stays in power, there’s no telling what he will do,” Mrs. Clinton said from Tunisia on Thursday.

She went on to say Qaddafi would do “terrible things” to Libya and its neighbors. “It’s just in his nature. There are some creatures that are like that.” Her remarks, applauded by the studio audience where she appeared, amounted to the administration's most stridently personal attacks on the Libyan leader, echoing President Ronald Reagan’s “mad dog of the Middle East.”

It reminds me of how her husband contributed to the escalation in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and how he created a lasting polarization in the US between left and right.

Most people will prefer a more democratic Libya and may think that the cost of him restoring order in Libya is rather high. But Mrs Clinton takes this one step further and denies the humanity of Gaddafi. Consider the following points:
- the goal should be a democratic Libya, not a victory of the rebels.
- by denying that Gaddafi has a moral compass Clinton also robs herself of the opportunity to make an appeal to those elements of morality that Gaddafi still has left.
- Libya is no threat to Tunisia and Egypt and it has never been.
- Gaddafi also represents a tribal coalition. This makes it an ethnic conflict. And while Clinton may be capable of getting rid of Gaddafi this coalition will stay and may both cause and experience serious difficulties if it is not involved in the formulation of how the post-Gaddafi order will look like.

The article makes the comparison with Reagan. But in fact it is the contrast with Reagan that is standing out. With Reagan there was never a doubt about the humanity of the other. Reagan's best remembered words are "Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!". Note the politeness and how he doesn't put himself above Gorbachev. It was this attitude that opened the door to real negotiations. In contrast, if negotiations are ever started about Libya one can expect that Clinton will behave just like her husband did in Rambouillet in 1999: laying down an "nonnegotiable" agreement proposal.

Reagan wasn't shy of using violence if he thought it necessary and certainly wasn't more pacifist than the present US administration. But he didn't refrain from talking either. It looks like Clinton stops talking once violence becomes an issue. Certainly with someone like Gaddafi who is used to ignore the wishes of the international community occasional violence to make a point is necessary.

A better kind of UN resolution for Libya?

2011-03-17T12:10:00.003+01:00

Germany's and Russia's resistance against an intervention in Libya is historically understandable. Previous Security Council resolution on Iraq and Kosovo have been extended and distorted by the US in acts that can only be described as a betrayal of the principle of international cooperation.

I would favor a system where the implementation of the resolution is overseen by a really independent organ in which skeptics dominate. In the case of Libya this might be a council with Russia and the Arab League. It certainly should not be a kind of US dominated applause machine like the Kosovo Contact Group. Such overseers should have the power to revoke any permission that was given in the UN resolution.

Libya's stupid rebels

2011-03-14T11:15:00.003+01:00

In the semi-panic over the advance of Gaddafi's troops it may be good to remember that less than a week ago Libya's rebels rejected negotiations with Gaddafi. As one of their spokesmen said: "The position is there will be no negotiation with this man. He has committed genocide with aeroplanes and tanks.".

If this sounds reasonable to you please consider that this means that they were (and maybe still are) ready to accept hundreds of deaths just to satisfy their sense of justice. Not exactly a sign of great moral leadership. But this may not surprise anyone who knows their egoistic infighting: it took them a week to choose a leader and they still seem hopelessly divided between tribal leaders and advocates of Western style democracy. In this context it is also good to know that Bulgaria has protested France's recognition of he rebels because some in their National Transitional Council were involved with the torture of the Bulgarian nurses. With people like the former justice and interior minister - pillars of the repression - involved there are good reasons to be cautious in our support for the rebels. It may also be good to consider that the real reason for the refusal to negotiate may well have been that they hoped that a military victory would bring them more power.

Of course the same applies to the international leaders too. International outcast Chavez has been the only one to openly advocate negotiations. Among the NGOs there was a similar silence. Only the International Crisis Group asked for negotiations. Most of our "moral leaders" seem to prefer cheap soundbites about "genocide" and "justice" above finding solutions.

I am not against an intervention. But I am in favor of a minimalist approach that keeps the door open for negotiations and aims for more freedom instead of replacing a dictatorship by one tribe with a dictatorship by another.

The ethnic side of the Arab revolutions

2011-03-11T13:44:00.004+01:00

The revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt were rather straightforward but nearly all the remaining protests in the Arab world seem to be complicated by ethnic factors. An overview:

- Gadhaffi suddenly got his act together when his hometown Sirte was threatened. It is difficult to discern what is going on in his entourage. But it is well known that people from his own tribe are strongly overrepresented in the most powerful parts of the army. It looks like they felt threatened by this development. In that light I think we should take Gadhaffi's demand for negotiations serious and not aim for a solution where he and (more importantly) his tribe lose everything. Gadhaffi has repeatedly accused the West of wanting to split up Libya - one more sign he is acutely aware of the ethnic element. This offers hope that he might be open to some kind of compromise. As the Balkans showed creating winners and losers is a sure way to deteriorate an ethnic conflict - specially when the intended losers are well armed.

- Bahrain is divided between a majority Shiite population and a Sunnite ruler and elite. The US refuses to support the population out of fear of enabling Iranian influence and Saudi has made threatening sounds too and may invade if a Shiite takeover happens. Given these circumstances a kind of Finlandization would seem the logical solution. The Shiites would get an end to their discrimination (at least most of it) and would gain some political influence while the Sunnite rulers stay on with some decreased power.

- Yemen too is divided amongst many tribes who haven't formed a united front yet. It looks like the outsiders that matter (the US and Saudi Arabia) are happy to let this situation linger for a long time.

To summarize: it looks like the easy revolutions are over and we now are facing complicated ethnic puzzles.

Give peaceful resistence a chance

2011-03-10T13:30:00.005+01:00

The NY Times has an article "Give peaceful resistence a chance". It claims that peaceful resistance has a much better chance of succeeding than armed resistance.

Consider the Philippines. Although insurgencies attempted to overthrow Ferdinand Marcos during the 1970s and 1980s, they failed to attract broad support. When the regime did fall in 1986, it was at the hands of the People Power movement, a nonviolent pro-democracy campaign that boasted more than two million followers, including laborers, youth activists and Catholic clergy.

Indeed, a study ("Why civil resistance works") I recently conducted with Maria J. Stephan, now a strategic planner at the State Department, compared the outcomes of hundreds of violent insurgencies with those of major nonviolent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006; we found that over 50 percent of the nonviolent movements succeeded, compared with about 25 percent of the violent insurgencies.

According to the article peaceful resistance attracts more people and as a consequence police and army men are more likely to have relatives among them. Also when the police or army is faced with armed resistance that creates solidarity amongst them against the protesters. This is also the reason Mubarak sent thugs to provoke the population to violence that he could crush. But where Mubarak failed Gadhaffi's opponents soon resorted to armed resistance - decreasing their chance of success.

There is one weak point in this reasoning: It leaves the question whether peaceful resistance is possible against ruthless totalitarians like the regime in North Korea that never have been shy about using violence.

In the article Social science and the Libyan adventure Foreign Policy listed social research that shows that foreign interventions seldom lead to more democracy.

On 24 august 2011 FP had an article "Think Again: Nonviolent Resistance" by Erica Chenoweth that explains the same logic.

A repeat of the Ahtisaari debacle?

2011-03-06T14:30:00.004+01:00

As new negotiations between Serbia and Kosovo are planned to start this week, it is good to remember why the Ahtisaari negotiations failed. It had to do with the "principles" of the Contact Group (that included that the borders of Kosovo should not be changed) and of Ahtisaari himself (who demanded that Kosovo should never again be under Serbian rule). Those "principles" meant that Kosovo's Albanians already had their de facto independence and didn't see a need for concessions while the Serbs who saw all their demands thwarted had no other option than saying "no".

Now we see again that Western diplomats are hurrying to invalidate any Serb demand as a violation of Kosovo's sovereignty while they simultaneously support Albanian demands that Serbia sees as a violation of its sovereignty. If these diplomats get their way the coming negotiations are just as doomed as Ahtisaari's.

You can't negotiate about Kosovo's access to the international phone network without also discussing the right of Kosovo's Serbs to phone to their relatives in Belgrade without paying some expensive international tariff. You cannot talk about Serbia accepting Kosovo's institutions without also talking about Kosovo accepting the autonomy of its North tip. And you cannot talk about Serbia accepting Kosovo's privatizations without also talking about exceptions like Brezovica.

As the attempt to forbid minibuses between the Serb enclaves and Serbia showed most clearly Kosovo has shown itself very creative in harassing its minorities. It will be very hard to overcome the resulting lack of trust that Kosovo is serious about minority rights. It might help when our Western diplomats became less worried about Kosovo's status and more interested in real-life issues.

Postscript: East-of-Center lists the five EU guidelines for the talks:
1 - The dialogue is aimed at bringing both sides closer to integration into the European Union; acquis communautaire will be used whenever possible
2 - The dialogue will take place without prejudice to the status of Kosovo by any party
3 - Serious and concrete steps will be taken on the basis of “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”
4 - The EU will be responsible for the entire process and will define the agenda
5 - There will be a coordinated and common approach to the media by all the parties

Dealing with Gadhaffi

2011-03-04T11:41:00.002+01:00

Imagine you are a dictator and you are facing an insurrection. Obviously your first impulse will be to crush it. You have gotten power by crushing your opponents and you have kept by occasionally crushing them. Your thinking is not that different from a traditional parent: a good spanking and they will fall in line.

But this time it is different. This don't fall in line and they keep making trouble. Obviously a bit more repression is needed. And before you know it you are in a spiral of escalating violence. It doesn't help that you feel threatened and are worried about what might happen to you and your family if you might loose power.

It is probable that at some point you will give in. Your opponents are simply too strong and despite all the violence you are using you still have some love for your people too and you don't want to make victims when it isn't necessary. But it will take time for you to make the switch: you dreamed of growing old in your job and having your son to succeed you and now you have to give that up for an unclear future where you might even end up in prison or killed.

An ICC investigation won't deter you: 10, 100 or 1000 victims won't make much of a difference for an ICC verdict. You are an old man and if they get you you will very likely spend the rest of your life in prison anyway. But it will make the step of giving up power bigger. Now you not only have to give up your power but also your freedom. And you find it unfair. Dealing with life and death is part of the job of a head of state. Just look how many people are dying in Afghanistan because of some orders of Obama. And if there were riots in the US or some other Western country the police might very well use deadly violence.

Thing were easier for your predecessors who simply retired to a villa on the French Riviera. Nowadays an ex-dictator never is totally safe. Even Pinochet who had made a a deal for himself in his homeland Chili ended up under English house arrest for 16 months.

So how might a dictator like Gadhaffi be seduced to give up power?.
In my opinion there is only one way: appeal to his humanity. Tell him that it is over and that making more victims will only harm his image with future generations. Send someone who Gadhaffi respects and let him talk to him endlessly. Make also appeals to his family members and associates. And keep a door open so that he can leave with at least some dignity.

Putin and Barroso

2011-03-03T14:57:00.002+01:00

Putin and Barroso are not exactly friends. This FT article ("Putin set to resume battle with Barroso") sums it nicely up with many quotes from Wikileaks:
At a press conference to wrap up the 2009 summit in Moscow, José Manuel Barroso criticised Russia’s human rights record, only to receive a stinging rebuke from Vladimir Putin, who charged Europe with its own abuses, including mistreating migrant workers.

EDITOR’S CHOICE
Brussels blog: The WikiLeaks cable - Feb-24EU out to break energy dependence on Russia - Feb-02Putin’s ally delivers connects with the west - Jan-16Opinion: Europe has its mojo back - Feb-09In depth: WikiLeaks - Dec-09Lunch with the FT: José Manuel Barroso - Nov-19According to confidential US diplomatic cables obtained by the website WikiLeaks and seen by the Financial Times, the public spat was the tip of a very large iceberg. Two weeks after the summit, a senior European Union official told the US embassy in Moscow that it was evidence of “the widely known personality disconnect between Putin and Barroso”.

The Russian prime minister “views the EU commissioner as the ‘Trojan horse’ of the new EU states”, the cable states, citing the EU official. “The gas war with Ukraine only served to inflame the personal grievance Putin held against the commissioner.”

A few days ago the two had a new meeting. This time Barroso named some victims of Russian repression, like Litvinenko and Politkovskaya.

In my opinion this is a typical Cold War reflex. Every system has its victims. The US has its huge number of prisoners death sentences for innocents and Guantanamo. Western Europe has its Gypsies and its problems integrating Muslim immigrants. It doesn't harm to name those problems but if you want change you have to change a wider system. Barroso could have asked Putin what he sees as his goal. Does he see Western style freedom as the long term goal? If so: how does he want to reach it? If not, why not and what is his alternative. He could also have asked how Putin sees his own future. Does he want to retire at a certain age or will he run the risk to end up like Mubarak?

Thugocracy

2011-02-18T20:30:00.002+01:00

Foreign Policy has a front page article about Kosovo and the US support for Thaci and friends. One of the authors is Whit Mason who wrote the book "Peace at any price: how the world failed Kosovo".

It was interesting to see the issue discussed in such a prominent magazine, but people who know a bit about Kosovo won't find much news.

Interesting was a link to a France24 article that discusses and links to a 2003 article in which UNMIK discusses organ trafficking.

Teaching the revolution

2011-02-18T20:27:00.003+01:00

Foreign Policy is running an article about CANVAS, an organization in Belgrade that teaches people the strategies of Otpor. It discusses many countries and has special attention to the problems in countries like Myanmar, Iran and Belarus.

Here is an article critical of CANVAS and its support from US sources.

Privatizations in Kosovo

2011-02-17T22:02:00.003+01:00

Eciks enthousiastically reports about coming privatizations in Kosovo of elctricity distribution and post and telecom.

I am less convinced. We have had those kinds of privatizations in the Netherlands and the results are rather mixed:

- To my amazement the article talks about the privatization of energy assets. But if it is the same kind of privitization as we have in Holland this basically about a trading company that buys from power plants (and may operate some) and sells to consumers. This has mainly led to the rise of some dubious companies who promise cheap rates in your first year. And when you forget to cancel you pay much higher rates in the second year. So I don't see much benefits. And I don't expect it will help solving Kosovo's energy problems.
I am not sure what will happen with the physical infrastructure. In Holland that stays government property. Selling it would give the buyer a monopoly position. Few companies can resist the temptation to abuse such a position. And it is very difficult to write a contract that reconciles the governments aim of 99.9% uptime with the interests of a company that would make maximum profits at a much lower uptime.

- We have privitized the postal services. The result is that a number of competitors have arisen that pay a piece wage that is so low that its workers get less than the minimum wage. (In the past this would have been illegal but we live in strange times nowadays.) Under this pressure the traditional monopoly holder has steadily worsened its labor conditions. As a result our postal rates are rather low. But while the managers and politicians are crowing about the efficiency of the market it is in effect just oldfashioned exploitation of the workers.

- you can easily privatize mobile phone. You can also privatize service over the fixed lines like calling to other countries and internet. But the lines itself stay a natural monopoly and there is no easy way to privatize that. Here in Holland the main competition of the fixed line operator is the cable company. Together they form a natural duopoly. It looks like the fixed line operator is giving up on upgrading while the cable operator is slowly expanding its internet and phone services. But neither is investing in glass fiber, the supposed medium of the future.

Rethinking Israel's hubris

2011-02-08T13:16:00.003+01:00

Up until very recently Israel showed a steady increase in Jewish radicalism. It increasingly looked like many Israeli's prefer the present situation as it gives them an excuse to steal yet more Palestinian land.

The revolt in Egypt may become a turning point. As the Muslim Brother put the peace treaty with Israel into question the Israeli's once again realize that they are a few million Jews amidst a see of Arabs. In the short term they can rely on their technological and military superiority to survive but it is rather foolish to assume that that situation will remain forever.

Israel had forgotten for a few moments that behind those few million Palestinians are a few hundred million Arabs. Those Arabs are not exactly loyal allies for the Palestinians. But just a bit of loyalty at the right time can be enough to make real trouble for Israel.

Financial inequality and the crisis

2011-02-06T20:42:00.004+01:00

In the 1920s the US reached record inequality. In the 1930s it slowly reduced to to reach a low point after World War II. From then it stayed low to around 1970 when it slowly started to rise again. Nowadays it is setting new records.

Globalization may be one cause. A political system where the rich can buy their laws another. Many more explanations are going around.

But most interesting is the suggestion that the similarity between the 1920s and the last decade are no coincidence. Both era's saw rising inequality ending in a financial crisis. In both cases the root of the crisis were very relaxed credit standards. It is claimed that these standards were a direct consequence of too much inequality: the rich had too much money to spend and the poor too little. By lending it to the poor the rich could keep the consumption boom going.

I could go on much longer but other did it better than me. So three recommended articles:
- Deepening crisis traps America's have-nots by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. This is good as an introduction.
- The United States of Inequality by Timothy Noah. This is a thorough series of articles.
- Plutocracy Now: What Wisconsin Is Really About. How screwing unions screws the entire middle class. by Kevin Drum. This article explain how with the decline of the trade unions the Democrats have lost their basis. The article is also a good entry point to other articles on Mother Jones.
- Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% is an article by Joseph E. Stiglitz. He nicely formulates it all, although I didn't find much new insights.

The Albanian stalemate and Western guilt

2011-02-06T18:23:00.003+01:00

After the 2009 elections the socialist opposition claimed that the government had committed election fraud in some places and they demanded a recount. The Berisha government consistently refused this. Since then the opposition has boycotted the parliament.

On 21 januari 2001 three demonstrators were killed by the Republican Guard during protests. Berisha blocked prosecution of the perpetrators.

During all the unrest the Western reaction has been to ignore the problem and to encourage the Socialists to resign to their fraudulent defeat. All this under the pretext of being "neutral". In my opinion the West is making a major error in doing this.

Albania's socialists are no saints and there were accusations of election fraud against them too after the 2002 elections. However, after the 2005 elections they voluntarily gave up power - something Berisha never has done. Having bought into the Western concept of voluntary power change they expected the West to defend it when they were in the opposition. Instead they were betrayed.

There is little sign that Berisha is prepared to give up power - ever. The West should finally accept this and turn up the pressure on Berisha. Without Western pressure the situation may well get worse and worse.

How to handle Egypt

2011-02-06T13:29:00.005+01:00

Iran in 1979 had a revolution that was supported by a broad coalition. Then the Islamists took over and monopolized power. The same happened with the French revolution and the Russian revolution. There is even a saying that "a revolution eats its own children" - meaning that the revolutionaries of today may tomorrow be sidelined and imprisoned by their more radical brethren.

For this reason the suggestion by US envoy Frank Wisner that Mubarak should guide Egypt through a transition to more democracy makes some sense. However, there is no way to be certain that Mubarak really delivers and not goes back to his old ways as soon as he sees a chance. Abolishing the Mukhabarat, Egypt's infamous secret service might be a good start.

Radicalization of the revolution might happen most probably when the situation is not clear. Mr. Mubarak has had his chance and he has missed it. Now the main task should be to establish a broad coalition that can guide Egypt towards a more democratic future. When they set clear goals at the beginning the chance for radicals to take over will be the smallest.

Postscript: After protests the US retracted a bit from Wisners position, but not much. It appeared that Wisner - some years ago ambassador in Egypt - is working now for Patton Boggs, a lobbying firm that has the Egypt government and military among its customers.

Postscript 2: Here is a plea for a constitution and an orderly transition.

Appeasing China

2011-02-06T12:22:00.003+01:00

The publication of the new Wikileaks by The Telegraph draw my attention to some other articles in that newspaper. I specially like the comments by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. This one is about how to deal with the rising power of China. If it keeps rising at one day it will take over from the US as the most powerful nation on earth.

The world has been in a similar situation before. Around 1900 Germany was the rising power and bound to take over from England. That had such a destabilizing effect that it ended with World War I. Just as we see now from China there was then a lot of German arrogance. But there was also a lot of paranoia among the other European nations that gave Germany the justified feeling that Europe was conspiring against them and envied them for their prosperity.

The article sees as favorable for the present situation that China has an aging population and that such countries usually aren't that aggressive. It may also help that the China's rulers seem wiser than Germany's rather foolish emperor.

But there are enough risk factors left and the stupidification of America's foreign politics with the rise of Sarah Palin and the Tea Party forms a risk too. I encourage you to read the article.