Partition Trouble

Here Robert Wright talks a bit about the problems with our recognition of Kosovo independence:

Meanwhile, whatever one thinks this all says about the liberal hawk movement, it just reflects a staggering incompetence on the part of the Bush administration. At the end of the day, recognizing Kosovo independent was probably the best choice to make, but it's a very problematic path. It's the kind of thing that, before you do it, you need to lay the most groundwork possible and also have plans in place for dealing with the fallout. Instead, the administration seems to have kind of wandered into it as a kind of afterthought. In part it just illustrates that Bush is a crappy president, but it also highlights one of the highest prices of the Iraq War -- it's an enormous drain on the attention of senior policymakers. Many aspects of US foreign policy, however, can't be left on autopilot. Senior political leaders need to be involved and engaged or else nobody's around to keep things on track.

Comments

How do you embed BH.TV?

Posted by Jacob | February 23, 2008 5:35 PM

"It illustrates that Bush is a crappy president..." and I might add that Rice may be the crappiest secretary of state ever.

Posted by Lukeness | February 23, 2008 5:47 PM

Leonid Brezhnev is a blogger now?

Posted by jim | February 23, 2008 5:48 PM

Remember the Seinfeld episode where Elaine draws big, fake eyebrows on Uncle Leo.

Enter Mickey Kaus.

Posted by jeff | February 23, 2008 5:54 PM

i'd just like to point out that Robert Wright is an intellectual lightweight. he's not a credible source on practically anything, because he's so dumb. let me put it this way: he's the Wolf Blitzer of video blogging.

Posted by BA | February 23, 2008 5:59 PM

Last I heard, ALL of the EU states bordering the Balkans did not recognize Kosovo. You think maybe the people closer to the scene might possibly have a better grasp of things than Beltway Clausewitzen?

Is there ONE thing that President Shitstain has not fucked up?!?!?

Posted by sglover | February 23, 2008 6:22 PM

Mickey truly has a face for Real Audio. Why on earth would he participate in a medium that required him to go on camera?

Posted by Exile on Ericsson St. | February 23, 2008 6:27 PM

In unrelated news, I watched Bill Maher last night, and Matt Taibi looks like the lovechild of a good-looking Southern fraternity boy and Chunk from Goonies.

Posted by Mike | February 23, 2008 6:44 PM

Remind me again which President made such recognition a near certainty back in the 90's?

Posted by James Robertson | February 23, 2008 6:51 PM

Every time I see Mickey Kaus, I'm convinced of evolution.

Posted by Randy Paul | February 23, 2008 7:05 PM

Listen to the whole thing to get a sense of how deeply stupid Kaus is. He asserts that there were
Albanians streaming into Kosovo , and analogizes that to Mexicans entering the United States. I think the Kosovar Albanians were actually streaming into Albania to escape the murderous Serb onslaught. Kaus uses his misunderstanding to argue that Mexican immigrants will seek independence in the southwest U.S. That is, he channels his inner Malkin. Bob Wright needs to find a better BHTV partner.

Posted by jimbo | February 23, 2008 7:09 PM

As to separatist movements: recall what kind of political hay was made back in the 1930's over German minorities in various European countries.

Now, Mexico is hardly fascist, but it is way, way less stable than I'd like. It doesn't take a whole lot of imagination to posit a nationalist government in Mexico aiding and abetting whatever nutters exist in the southwest with dreams of "Aztlan" on their mind.

Likely? Probably not. Completely out of the question? Not really. If Mexico does have a revolution at some point, the outcome would be really hard to predict. Outside of Edmund Burke, few people in 1790 saw where France was headed...

Posted by James Robertson | February 23, 2008 7:23 PM

I'm amenable to Wright's point, but I'm failing to see how a lengthy position paper would placate the nationalist hoodlums in Serbia. "Damn, I was going to firebomb the U.S. embassy, but I see that Subsection 216.2 applies to the Kosovo situation. Never mind."

Posted by Adam Villani | February 23, 2008 7:35 PM

"Listen to the whole thing to get a sense of how deeply stupid Kaus is. He asserts that there were
Albanians streaming into Kosovo , and analogizes that to Mexicans entering the United States. I think the Kosovar Albanians were actually streaming into Albania to escape the murderous Serb onslaught. Kaus uses his misunderstanding to argue that Mexican immigrants will seek independence in the southwest U.S. That is, he channels his inner Malkin. Bob Wright needs to find a better BHTV partner.

Posted by jimbo | February 23, 2008 7:09 PM"

He is very odd. He gets these weird obsessions - Mexican immigration, teacher's unions, etc. - fills them with paranoia, projects a small trend onto the whole nation (such as failing to note the differences between California's teachers' unions and those nationwide) and then sees everything through his pet peeve. The worst part is that he gets paid to be pathetic. And he fucks goats.

"I'm amenable to Wright's point, but I'm failing to see how a lengthy position paper would placate the nationalist hoodlums in Serbia. "Damn, I was going to firebomb the U.S. embassy, but I see that Subsection 216.2 applies to the Kosovo situation. Never mind."

Posted by Adam Villani | February 23, 2008 7:35 PM "

True, but a competent administration could have at least worked out a better security detail for our location in Belgrade and anticipated the reaction. Hell, think of what happened to American embassies and consulates in China after the Belgrade Embassy bombing.

Posted by Reality Man | February 23, 2008 8:22 PM

Like watching Kaus afraid to speak until Wright allows.

As you know, the Mexicans stole his airtime.

Seroiusly, how does Mickey Kaus earn a living, really? He doesn't 'write' anymore.

The Slate paycheck? This may be the most egregious affirmative action of all timne.

Posted by Andruw | February 23, 2008 8:35 PM

"Seroiusly, how does Mickey Kaus earn a living, really? He doesn't 'write' anymore.

The Slate paycheck? This may be the most egregious affirmative action of all timne.

Posted by Andruw | February 23, 2008 8:35 PM"

Hey, people with a face for radio and a voice for print and a brain for doodling need work too!

Maybe he pulls two slate paychecks: one for him and one for that annoying editor characters voice he injects into his posts. He might still get some residuals from his book "The End of Equality: And the World's Largest Subtitle That Screams Who the Fuck Needs a Marketing Department" from DLC types who think they need it on their mantle but never crack the spine.

Posted by Reality Man | February 23, 2008 8:48 PM

Oh yeah, Kaus. He still fucking goats?

Posted by sglover | February 23, 2008 9:03 PM

Senior political leaders need to be involved and engaged or else nobody's around to keep things on track."

I agreed with this post up until this sentence, because it sounds to me as though what you're saying is that the Bush Administration screwed this up because some political appointee failed to keep the career State Dept. officials "on track."

It may be that Matt meant, if senior political appointees are not engaged, then inevitably some political appointee will screw up the process, but I feel reasonably confident in believing that whatever the problems with our reaction, they probably didn't originate with the foreign service officers (although I admit I have no inside knowledge of this situation).

Posted by Doh | February 23, 2008 9:05 PM

How do you embed BH.TV?

It looks like you use the following code: [embed width="448" height="316" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://bloggingheads.tv/maulik/offsite/offsite_flvplayer.swf" flashvars="file=INSERT URL HERE"][/embed]

For the URL, you put whatever the URL of the episode or dingalink is, except you insert "mirror-playlist/" after "diavlogs" (so "http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/8977" becomes "http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/mirror-playlist/8977"), and of course use angle brackets (>) instead of square brackets ([]).

Posted by Alexander Dietz | February 23, 2008 11:14 PM

This is the sort of completely fucking ridiculous pose that we now are supposed to accept from supposedly serious people.

Matt, if you agree with the decision, you agree with the decision. You don't get to take the good parts and give the bad parts to someone else. That's dishonest. Hackish. Childish. Really.

Tell me, is the German government distracted by the Iraq war? The French? What's their excuse? (Do they need an excuse to agree with you?)

Here's the thing: in the real world, which most of the reality-based community doesn't even bother to visit any more, sometimes there are situations in which there aren't any first-best solutions available. And when the second-best choice that you endorse is the one chosen, well, the thing to do is man up and accept the consequences. You don't get to pretend that had you been in charge you'd have found a pony and then it would have been alright.

Reality Man, is your comparison to the Clinton administration meant to be favorable? I mean, here you are invoking the Clinton administration's bombing of the Chinese embassy as if it were some sort of high point of competence. Jesus Christ,is that really the sort of thing the Bush administration should be looking at as a model? Do you even think before you start typing?

Posted by Thomas | February 24, 2008 1:09 AM

I think this post may be missing a big part of the problem. It's not that the Bush administration is just distracted. It's that they don't properly value competence. That's not to say they want morons working for them, but personnel selection up until very recently valued ideoligal loyalty over everything else. What we have is a variant of the classical "yes men" syndrome" writ large. So yes, it's very possible that at the point in the bureacracy where this issue should have been recognized and evaluated there is dead weight clogging up the channels. All it really takes is one person in the right place who finds the issue boring, has ideological blinders on, or is just lazy to create a snafu. And we've seen that over and over again for the last seven years.

Posted by David | February 24, 2008 2:48 AM

David, this is a little detail about the man you are slurring. It's obvious that our man in Belgrade is nothing more than a loyal Bushie.

ameron Munter was sworn-in as United States Ambassador to the Republic of Serbia on July 26, 2007. A career Foreign Service Officer, Ambassador Munter was Deputy Chief of Mission at the American Embassy in Prague, Czech Republic from August 2005 to June 2007. He volunteered to lead the first Provincial Reconstruction Team in Mosul, Iraq, from January through July of 2006, and then returned to Prague. He came to Prague from Warsaw, where he served as Deputy Chief of Mission from 2002 to 2005.

Before these assignments, in Washington, Ambassador Munter was Director for Central, Eastern, and Northern Europe at the National Security Council (1999-2001), Executive Assistant to the Counselor of the Department of State (1998-1999), Director of the Northern European Initiative (1998), and Chief of Staff in the NATO Enlargement Ratification Office (1997-1998).

He has also served overseas in Bonn (1995-1997), Prague (1992-1995), and Warsaw (1986-1988). His other domestic assignments include serving as Country Director for Czechoslovakia at the Department of State (1989-1991), Dean Rusk Fellow at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy (1991), and Staff Assistant in the Bureau of European Affairs (1988-1989).

Ambassador Munter was born in California in 1954. He attended Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and the universities in Freiburg and Marburg in Germany. He received a doctoral degree in modern European history in 1983 from The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. He taught European history at the University of California in Los Angeles (1982-1984) and directed European Studies at the Twentieth Century Fund in New York (1984-1985) before joining the Foreign Service.

__

Folks like Munter will be part of the government in the event that a Democrat ever wins the presidency. I assume you will stop with these ignorant and ugly attacks on our civil servants at that point in time.

Posted by Thomas | February 24, 2008 11:25 AM

I think Matt is being a little unfair to Bush administration itself. Instead of showing how crappy a president, Bush is, it shows how others can take advantage of such a crappy presidents.

Condoleeza Rice had stalled the official secession for quite some time to try get all the ducks in order, i.e. lobbying EU countries, other nations such that they would understand that Kosovo was a special case and in no way affect how America worked with other secessionist movements. There was no way a policy statement could make such a distinction clear, only top level diplomacy. Even if Serbia and Russia remained angry, Rice was working so that they would be the only major parties that would be left on the outside.

Unfortunately the Kosovars that had been led by a extreme Albaniana nationalists were not idiots either. They knew that while that diplomatic support could help the US, the timeline of a Bush presidency would be reaching its end and independence had to be declared quickly before the chits became invalid. Albania may have tortured suspects on CIA commands, cooperated in Iraq invasion, and been an altogether nice American stooge, but an Obama or Hillary govt, probably would not feel they owe the Albanian people anything. They rushed the gun to get a good 10 month Bush protection and endorsement, and Bush's hand was forced.

Unfortunately for us, America will live with consequences after the Bush presidency. Like a lot of things.

Posted by Space Monkey | February 24, 2008 11:31 AM

Space Monkey, would you please identify what you think the discontinuities in US policy toward Kosovo are? When do you think US policy toward Kosovo changed?

I mean, didn't you notice that the Democrat candidates both endorsed Kosovo's move? That Joe Biden did as well, and is urging the Senate to do the same?

Posted by Thomas | February 24, 2008 12:07 PM

Bloggingheads: so easy, even a caveman can do it.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | February 24, 2008 1:34 PM

Thomas:

Actually, I wasn't making ignorant an ugly attacks on civil servants. I myself have worked in the State Department. What I'm saying is that once you deliberately start inserting senior staff and portions of the bureacracy with people who value ideology and loyalty over competance, you will inevitably have inferior decision making overall. There is a clear difference between the average employment objectives of the Clinton adminsitration and Bush II, and it clearly shows up in the policy end product over and over again, whether that be foreign affirs, energy, environment, or whatever.

I myself happen to agree with the decision to recognize Kosovo's independence. I was talking about underlying issues that seem to prevent this adminsitration from clearly thinking things through even when they are on the right track.

Please also note that I have refrained from assuming anything about you or calling you names. Have a nice day.

Posted by david | February 24, 2008 4:54 PM

>>Bloggingheads: so easy, even a caveman can do it.

That wins. Close the thread.

Posted by jim | February 24, 2008 8:20 PM

Thomas:

Sorry for the delay. I looked it up and you're right.

I looked up the official statements from both candidates, and you're right they are both broadly in agreement with the official Bush position. Clinton's statement is just as self-congratulatory as the Bush statement, possibly reflecting the history of the Kosovo conflict under Bill Clinton.

I thought ten years of de facto independence and declaring independence ten months before Kosovo'a greatest benefactor changes president was suspicious. Especially after Bush's statement supporting Kosovo independence from Albania last summer. After some research, I found the previous delays in secession were driven more by Serb elections than American elections.

I still think Obama would have handled it differently, and his statement about Kosovo is more even handed about protection of minorities in Kosovo as well as the need for working with Serbia. Also a lot less of the Wilsonian idealism.

Anyway, sorry about that.

Posted by Space Monkey | February 24, 2008 8:42 PM

David, let's start with the second bit: I didn't call you any names, I criticized the position you took.

On the merits: if you want to criticize the Bush administration, the story should instantiate the charge. When the story doesn't, well, it hurts the credibility of the general point.

We see this time and again from Democrats on the supposed issue of competence, but the instances time and again are just as this one--they aren't in fact examples of incompetence. See, eg, the Medicare prescription drug roll-out.

Posted by Thomas | February 24, 2008 10:19 PM

Lot of interesting comments as well, especially some tying the events to the US's commercial and military interests in the region.

The Real Story Behind Kosovo's Independence
http://www.alternet.org/audits/77546/?comments=layout#comments

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | February 25, 2008 4:31 AM