Austin Bay Blog

I occasionally contribute short analyses of military-related events in the Balkans to StrategyPage. Kosovo remains the “center ring” — the UN supports Kosovar independence, Serbia adamantly opposes it. But there is some encouraging news from the Balkans — most of it “slow news”, meaning non-sensational, developmental news. Bombs and bullets make headlines, bricks turning into hospitals and business districts don’t. Albania, long the most backward nation in Europe, is trying to modernize. It has come a long way but the road ahead is still rough. The Enver Hoxha dictatorship devestated the country with a “Stalinist-plus” savagery. Shaking that legacy is tough enough, but Albania still wrestles with an embedded “hill culture” that features smuggling empires and clan-based blood feuds.

Today US President George Bush visited Albania, which means the media tagged along. Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha delivered a welcoming speech in Tirana. Yes, his speech is generally upbeat and it is highly political. That noted, it also provides an insight into a “modernizing” Albanian interpretation of the last century of history. Actually, it goes a bit further back than that. At times Berisha’s speech echoes travails in the 15th and 16th centuries.

Here’s a link to the entire speech.

An extended quote:

…Mr. President, you are, today, an honorable guest and friend of a nation whose gratefulness and friendship towards your great nation and your country have been deeply embodied in the historic memory and in the conscience of its citizens. No other nation in the region or in Europe has ever gone through so much suffering, ethnic cleansing, racism, partitions, occupations, and severe dictatorships as we Albanians have. History was unjust and very severe to us.

We have been blessed, however. We have won in all our efforts to defend our identity in Western oriented national vocation to emerge from the age of oppression to the age of dignity, from the age of darkness to the age of freedom. We have won because our just cause has always had the powerful support of the U.S.A., the greatest and the most precious friend of Albanian nation. God bless your great nation.

At the beginning of last century, President Wilson did not allow the partition of the newly proclaimed Albanian independent state. The U.S.A. recognized Albania 85 years ago. Your visit on this anniversary is its most beautiful crown, the climax of excellent, friendly relations between our two countries.

Afterwards, President Truman made big efforts to free Albanians from their Orwellian dictatorship. At the outset of the ’90s, President George Herbert Bush and his administration provided an exceptional contribution to the fall of Berlin Wall, but the fall of this wall in Tirana, as well, opening the doors of freedom for Albanians.

President Bill Clinton led the North Atlantic Alliance in the fight for Kosovo liberation from the barbarian occupation. And today, Kosovo citizens find in your administration, Mr. President, the greatest hope and support for their project of a free, independent, and integrated state in Europe. Centuries ago, until our present days, hundreds and thousands of Albanians migrated to your great country. They are loyal and honorable citizens of the United States who have always loved, and still love the nation and the country of origin. They have — (inaudible) — a lot, they have kept a life of hope and freedom for Albanians always on.

In your presence, I’d like today to extend the most cordial greetings and my deepest gratitude. The friendly feelings towards your nation and your great country, the proud Americanism of Albanians are indeed a matter of their national pride. Albanians are very proud about the friendship with the U.S.A., and the cooperation they have with your nation in the war against international terrorism, of their presence on your side in Iraq, Afghanistan. I assure you that they will be on your side wherever their modest, but resolute contribution is needed against international terrorism, this most dangerous enemy of free people.

Above all, Albanians feel proud of their friendship with your nation because we share the values and the principles of freedom and market-oriented democracy. In this road, they have received an exceptional overall political, economic, financial, and technical assistance provided by the U.S. and the EU countries and other friendly countries, for which we remain truly, always grateful.

Sixteen years ago, Secretary James Baker brought to Albanians the message from the country of freedom, “Freedom works.” Today, after 16 years, I can say that despite the hardships experienced by our country, freedom for Albanians has worked more than any other nation. Albania, a country of denied freedoms and human rights, banned the constitution, a country of hyper collectivization and true human slavery, and the most extreme isolation, today is the country of political, economic, consolidated pluralism, of excellent religious centers, of functioning, working democracy. It is the country with a fast economic growth, with the private sector accounting for 80 percent of GDP. And the income per capita has increased 20 times more.

The slap at Serbia is a bit too much — calling Serbia’s control of Kosovo a “barbarian occupation.” But that’s another ethnic, historical and political indicator of why resolution of Kosovo’s “final status” is so devilishly complex and tricky. Serbia and its ally, Russia, oppose independence. So stay tuned.

UPDATE: And Bush calls for Kosovar independence.

U.S. President George W. Bush said on Sunday the United Nations should grant independence quickly to the breakaway Serbian province of Kosovo, and if Russia continued to block it then the West would act.

Bush’s insistence on a deadline for a U.N. Security Council resolution to give independence to Kosovo was the latest sign of heightened tensions between Moscow and Washington. Russia has threatened to veto the Kosovo proposal.

A bit later the Reuters report notes:

…a Kremlin official said Bush’s comments in Albania had not altered Russian opposition.

And:

Serbia strongly opposes the loss of Kosovo, its spiritual heartland dating back 1,000 years. Russian President Vladimir Putin told visiting Serb premier Vojislav Kostunica “with pleasure” at the weekend that he had thwarted Western plans.

Finally:

Bush urged Serbia to reconsider its adamant opposition and reliance on Russia and think of its future as part of the West.

“We want to make sure that Serbia hears that the United States supports their aspirations for closer integration with the West. That means working with the United States in a bilateral fashion. It also means potential membership of NATO for example.”

Multiple diplomatic trains on multiple tracks. You bet– and they could crash or derail. Diplomacy, economics, and politics are iffy, nudging endeavors. However, the “guiding” element — getting everyone on the same train running in the same direction– is “an inclusive West” with expanding economies and a mutually-dependent defense arrangement.

Like I wrote in my post about Russia and ABMs, Kosovo represents a real clash of US-Russia interests. And as I noted, Brzezinski didn’t cover Kosovo in his Time Magazine essay. Why the blind spot? Some of the comments on that post offer speculations. Following Occam, there are too likely reasons: either it didn’t fit with his anti-Bush tirade or he forgot about it. The Bush Administration is “following the arc” of the Clinton Administration’s Kosovo policy. In other words, the Bush Administration is pursuing a multi-administration policy goal — one crossing party lines. I think it very likely that a Democrat administration will do the same on Iraq.

One of my chief criticisms of the Bush Administration is its failure to lay the groundwork for a “multi-administration, trans-generational” war for modernity.

I discussed that failure in a July 2005 article for the Weekly Standard.

An extract from that article:

For the strategic good of the United States, and global liberty in general, however, this poisoned White House-press relationship may prove to be a huge problem. Al Qaeda’s jihadists plotted a multigenerational war. In the early 1990s our enemies began proselytizing London and New York mosques and in doing so began planting cadres throughout the world. Even if Washington leads a successful global counterterror war, many of these cadres will unfortunately turn gray before it’s over. That means a multiadministration war, which means bridging what my friend Sam Palmer (a genuine liberal warrior, God bless him) identified as the whipsaw of the U.S. political cycle.

The Bush administration has not done that–at least not in any focused and sustained fashion. My mother predicted this. December 2001: Mom phoned and said she remembered being a teenager in late 1942 and tossing a tin can on a wagon that rolled past the train station in her hometown of Plainview, Texas–a World War II scrap metal drive. She knew that the can she tossed didn’t add much to the war effort, but she felt that in some small, token, but very real way, she was contributing to the battle.

“The Bush administration is going to make a terrible mistake if it does not let the American people get involved in this war. Austin, we need a war bond drive. This matters, because this is what it will take.”

She was right then, and she’s right now. Early on the Bush administration failed to tap the great reservoir of political willingness 9/11 generated. Would the national press and academic left have called a “Democracy Bond” or a “Security and Development Bond” drive corny? Of course they would have–but so what? Clothing drives for Afghan refugees? Maureen Dowd might have snarked at that, but again, so what?

Perhaps the Bush Administration is finally crafting a “multi-administration policy” with GEN Petraeus as the “transitional figure.” At the moment the media fixates on the 2008 campaign’s rhetorical swill, but that’s a very real possibility . DOD certainly is looking beyond the horserace Sturm und Drang.

From the Washington Post article by Tom Ricks:

U.S. military officials here are increasingly envisioning a “post-occupation” troop presence in Iraq that neither maintains current levels nor leads to a complete pullout, but aims for a smaller, longer-term force that would remain in the country for years.

This goal, drawn from recent interviews with more than 20 U.S. military officers and other officials here, including senior commanders, strategists and analysts, remains in the early planning stages. It is based on officials’ assessment that a sharp drawdown of troops is likely to begin by the middle of next year, with roughly two-thirds of the current force of 150,000 moving out by late 2008 or early 2009. The questions officials are grappling with are not whether the U.S. presence will be cut, but how quickly, to what level and to what purpose…

I wrote in 2004 that waging this war would be an issue in the US election of 2016.

Ned Lamont fell off the edge of the Earth. Let the DailyKos crowd gnash its collective teeth.