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The Trump Administration is bringing Kosovo and
Serbia Presidents Thaci and Vucic to Washington June 27, in an
effort to hammer out some sort of agreement the American President
can boast about at a Rose Garden ceremony before the November 3
election. Speculation about the substance has focused on the
apparent willingness of both Vucic and Thaci to consider land/people
swaps on an ethnic basis: Serbs in northern Kosovo would be traded
to Serbia in exchange for Albanians in southern Serbia.
This is a spectacularly bad idea, against which I
and others have argued vigorously, as it would destabilize the
Balkans as well as Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. Only Vladimir
Putin could like it. Maybe Trump’s special envoy Richard Grenell has
been listening, as he has now let it be known that his Washington
conclave will focus on economic agreements while the more sensitive
political issues will be settled in talks the European Union hosts.
If we accept this division of labor at face value,
it is certainly odd: economics is the specialty of the EU. The
US–not the EU–will have to deal with Russia on the bigger political
issues like diplomatic recognition and UN membership. But I trust
the EU a whole lot more to oppose partition of the two countries
(which is what a land/people swap amounts to), as Germany is solidly
against it and the five countries within the EU that do not
recognize Kosovo also have good reasons to oppose partition, along
with several other EU members.
It is of course possible that Grenell is
prevaricating. The Trump Administration tells more lies in a day
than most recent American administrations tell in a year.
Consistency is to Trump and Grenell “the hobgoblin of small minds.”
I’m afraid they agree with the American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson:
“With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.” If it is
partition they really want, they won’t let their prior statements
interfere.
Fortunately, in both Serbia and Kosovo the idea of
a land/people swap is getting a Bronx cheer. President Vucic still
wants it, and after Sunday’s parliamentary election he might have
the kind of super majority in parliament that would go along. But it
is doubtful that he can get it approved in a constitutional
referendum, which would require not only 50% to agree but 50% of
registered voters to vote. The second part of the double majority
would be particularly difficult. In Kosovo, Prime Minister Hoti has
declared his opposition, and there is nothing like a 2/3 majority in
parliament that would approve it, never mind 50% of the population.
Of course that doesn’t mean they won’t try it
anyway. Once written down with a map that shows on which side of a
new border Albanians should be and on which side Serbs should be,
the ethnic cleansing and self-cleansing will start, including
pressure to move to Kosovo on Albanians all over Serbia and pressure
on Serbs all over Kosovo to move to Serbia. This would also ignite
an independence move in the Serb half of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and
possibly a similar move by Albanians in Macedonia. The chaos would
destroy two landmark Clinton achievements: peace in Bosnia and
Kosovo.
But let’s assume Grenell is being honest. There
are certainly things that need doing on the economic front. He has
already supposedly negotiated agreements on air and rail travel
between Kosovo and Serbia, but there is no visible sign of
implementation. Getting that moving would be a good idea. The
Serbian and Kosovo chambers of commerce have a good understanding of
the non-tariff trade barriers on both sides of the border. Removing
those would help to improve economic conditions in both countries
and attract international investment, as would implementation of the
many “technical” agreements already negotiated between Pristina and
Belgrade.
So there are lots of good things Grenell can do,
if he focuses as declared on the economic issues. But there are also
bad ideas other than the land/people swaps. One thing on which
Pristina and Belgrade seem fully agreed is amnesty for their
respective bigwig war criminals. De facto that already exists for
Serb commanders in Serbia and Albanian commanders in Kosovo. Neither
country seems inclined to punish its war criminals any more than
Donald Trump wants to see American war criminals punished. Amnesty
for war crimes and crimes against humanity is not permitted under
international law, but that is just one more norm Trump might like
to puncture. It would be truly ugly, but not unthinkable, if renewed
American engagement in the Balkans came in the form of letting mass
murderers go free.
There is more than one bad idea in the Balkans,
and fending them off requires constant vigilance.
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