Albanian Diplomatic Academy
Tirana
Lecture by Professor Henry H. Perritt, Jr.
Actually, Ambassador Bashkurti, if
you wanted to go on for the whole hour saying nice things about me that would
be fine!
It’s a real pleasure to be here once again. I am privileged to consider Ambassador Bashkurti a good friend.
I admire what he has done during his career for the people of
What I’d like to do this evening is to talk about three things. I hope I will say some things that you disagree with along the way because that’s the way we can have an interesting discussion and learn from each other.
First, I would like to talk about why the
I begin by enumerating the interests that the
So it’s very important that all of us who understand that
First, we have an interest in there being stability in the
Balkans. If there is not stability, violence can spill over to
Second, there is a significant Muslim population in the
Balkans, especially in the Albanian community. It’s important for
Third, it’s important for any great power to avoid failure.
We have committed ourselves to build democracy and a prosperous economy in
Fourth, we have specific interests in specific countries in
the Balkans. Serbia is a big country and
its history over the last 15 years have shown that it has immense capacity to
make trouble and it will retain that capacity for a long time to come. So it’s in
The other specific country I’d like to mention is
Fifth, it’s important for the
Finally, we have an interest in adapting to the difficulties confronting the European Union. The EU may be so consumed for a period of time over its internal problems and the failure of its constitution that it is unable to fulfill the aspirations that other states have for membership. We must be creative in thinking about how other multilateral institutions can provide at least some of the things that people had hoped for from eventual membership in the EU; for example, the Council of Europe, NATO, and the World Trade Organization.
I’m happy to say that currently the Bush Administration seems to recognize that America does have interests in the Balkans and that the most important thing that we can do right now is to be actively engaged and to provide leadership in making sure that final status negotiations for Kosova begin right away, and are concluded promptly.
Now I’d like to spend a few minutes talking about final status for Kosova. There are two somewhat different things that we should talk about in conjunction with final status negotiations. The first is technical and the second is political.
What I mean by technical is the agenda for final status negotiations. A list of different subject areas and issues that have to be worked through before final status negotiations can be concluded. What’s on the list? First of all there are conceptual issues about how the conflicting ideas of sovereignty, self determination, and human rights are to be resolved. That is in large part a conceptual issue, but it’s important in international law.
Second, the issue of whether borders are to remain the same
or are to be redefined has to be addressed.
The
Third, final status negotiations can only be concluded through expression of a new constitution for an independent Kosova. And whenever you write a constitution, you have to make difficult decisions about the structures of government which allocate power among political institutions--the presidency in the assembly, and through voting and representation systems. Constitutions also allocate power between the cities and the rural areas, between the elites and the masses, between rich and poor, and among different ethnic groups. When you write a constitution you have to understand what institutions will protect human rights, which is just another way of saying that constitutions must provide for how the law will protect the weak from the strong.
Once a constitution is written, that’s not enough; final status negotiations also must include some kind of vision for how Kosova becomes prosperous economically. In my view, the biggest failure in the last six years is that no one developed a vision, let alone a plan, for how Kosova can have a bright economic future; not the UN, not the World Bank, not the EU, and none of the three major political parties in Kosova. No one has done the hard work to think through how Kosova achieves economical growth and creates jobs.
The reality is that independence won’t mean much if young people can’t get jobs and people can’t provide for their families.
Closely related to economic development is the need for some
sort of claims resolution machinery. That is in part about privatization
claims, it’s in part about housing claims, it’s in
part about pension claims by Kosovars who believe that pensions to which they
are entitled are being held in
There also has to be a plan for regional security. NATO may stick around for a while longer--or maybe General Lama [in the audience] will protect Kosova--or some other mechanism must be arranged that will make sure that Kosova can enjoy military security even though any Kosovar army will be much smaller than other armies in the region.
And finally there has to be a plan for energy and for regional economic integration because Kosova is not big enough and never will be big enough to be self sufficient economically.
Now that’s a very long list. I would argue that we could take just one item from that list, any of them, and that all of us together--we’re all pretty smart--and we could all take just one item and all work hard for a year before we had analyzed all the alternatives and picked the best solution.
There are seven
items on the list and nobody is prepared with respect to any of them; not
UNMIK, not the EU, not the
Now to turn attention from the technical side of the final status negotiations to the political side, I just want to offer some observations. First of all, there is a serious problem with unrealistic expectations by the Kosovar Albanian public. The expectations are unrealistic in two respects, both of which are bad. The first expectation that is unrealistic is that final status negotiations will begin tomorrow and the day after tomorrow everyone will agree that Kosova is independent. The second way in which the expectations are unrealistic is that too many people believe that the day that Kosova becomes independent, the day after that. everyone will have job an will be rich.
Neither of those two things is true. It’s important that there be the kind of political leadership that helps people over time adjust their expectations to reality.
My second observation is that what some people consider to
be extreme political positions are not necessarily bad at the beginning. Here’s
why. When someone negotiates he needs to
be able to say to his or her opposing negotiator, “You sound very reasonable
and I would like to be able to agree with you, but I can’t do that because I
have this lunatic on my side. I have to
be able to sell our final deal to the lunatic.”
Some people have criticized those in Kosova now, like Albin Kurti, or sometimes Hasim Thaçi who have expressed a
very hard line--an unyielding--line on independence. That’s not necessarily a bad thing at the
beginning because it protects Kosova’s negotiating
position. The Serbs know how to do that
and Kosova should be as effective at negotiation as
But there is something that is very important if that’s going to work in the end. If for example you’re Albin Kurti, and you say, “Independence is not negotiable; we must have independence tomorrow,” you need to understand in your own mind how you will modify that position, and sell the realistic agreement that will not in the end give you everything you said you wanted. You can’t say that publicly because that would undercut your position, but you have to know how that position gets modified as negotiations move forward.
My third observation is that
But there haven’t been any statements in the
My fourth concern is that there is a great risk that what comes out of the final status negotiation will be a muddle. My own instinct is that the best outcome is simple and straightforward. Kosova should be an independent state, and it should have sovereignty, and it should be recognized by other states of sovereign and that that should happen next year.
For people who are concerned that that would be too risky, that Kosova might not be ready politically, legally, or economically for that, I would argue that there are some simple sources of leverage for the international community with respect to a fully independent Kosova. First of all Kosova is going to need security assistance, military security assistance, from somebody else. This is a dangerous neighborhood, and Kosova is not big enough to take care of itself.
Second, Kosova’s economy is in very poor shape and whatever the plan is for economic prosperity there will be a period of five to ten years or longer when Kosova needs substantial economic assistance from the international community.
Both the need for military assistance and economic assistance are powerful sources of leverage to make sure that an independent Kosova continues to cooperate with the international community in pursuing goals that everyone has already agreed on including respect for human rights and a rule of law.
Even if that is the right idea, it’s going to be very
difficult for people to agree on that outcome.
The leadership of
What worries me is that the
If the European Union is too much in the driver’s seat, the correct answer to final status will be too hard to agree on and we’ll end up with is a muddle. We won’t call it “UNMIK” anymore, maybe “EUMIK.” Maybe it won’t be called that but the European Union will have some kind of supervisory responsibility in Kosova. Well, the European Union has always, since 1999, had final decision making authority with respect to economic affairs, under Pillar IV. A senior diplomat for the European Union named Nikolaus Lamsdorff was in charge of Pillar IV. His only accomplishment—his only accomplishment—was to stop privatization for 14 months. That is not the kind of help that Kosova needs from the European Union or anybody else.
People talk about conditional independence. I don’t think anybody knows what that means. One thing it might mean is that you give a
little bit of independence now and you dole out additional pieces over time according
to certain criteria. Well that’s exactly
the same thing as “Standards before Status,” and that didn’t work. Another thing it might mean is that you give
all of the sovereignty now and you take pieces of it back over time if people
don’t perform well. That’s usually a
very difficult thing to do anywhere in the world. And that’s what ended up as the system in
At the beginning,
It may be that I just haven’t been imaginative enough to
understand what conditional independence really means. If it means one of those two things, it’s a
bad idea and people, including the political leadership of
What’s necessary for us to have a chance to get the right
kind of final status is for the
The good news is that the Bush Administration now recognizes
that we do need to provide leadership in the Balkans. With respect to Kosova,
the President and the Secretary of State have put some of very best people to
work on final status for Kosova. I hope that that level of interest and
commitment will continue. The other
piece of good news is the Bush Administration’s commitment to
But, I think that the Bush Administration’s commitment for
the
Let me make just a few observations about
The far worse possibility is that
While we manage the
On the other hand, that does not mean that multilateral
institutions are unimportant. They are very important. The United Nations, for example, is very
important and the fact that it doesn’t work very well doesn’t mean we should
give up on it; it means we should try to fix it. That will require
The final observation about
Now I just want to say two more things of a broader nature.
First of all as, Ambassador Bashkurti
said, I’ve been to Kosova 15, close to 20 times. My Kosovar friends often say
that they appreciate how much
In my own case and in the case of about 15 law students in their early 20s that I have taken to Kosova over the years, we’ve heard stories of people in Kosova who are aged 18-20 couldn’t stand it anymore and picked up a gun and decided to fight for their future even though they thought they might get killed and didn’t know how they would win.
That helps us remember that 230 years ago something similar
happened in
But they fought anyway.
It’s good for Americans to be reminded of that. That’s what we get, what we Americans get from learning about Kosova.
The final thing I want to say is this: Any serious review of the challenges for the Balkans and for Kosova going forward, says that the biggest gap is a leadership gap. Final status is in question because of inadequate leadership now.
Even if Kosova becomes independent soon, final status and independence won’t mean anything unless there is good leadership.
And you can do
something about that. That’s why you’re here. I’m glad to be here with you.