One could practically hear a collective sigh of relief across the European Union when Péter Magyar’s opposition party won a resounding victory and incumbent Prime Minister Viktor Orbán conceded defeat in Sunday’s crucial elections in Hungary. The election was critically important to the people of that country,  but it had also become a battleground for Russian disinformation, anti-Ukrainian messaging, amateur false flag claims of terrorist threats from Serbia, and the injection of American MAGA-right wing nationalism, which itself has been very much inspired by the illiberalism of Orbán’s 16 years in power. 

The congratulations are rolling in from leaders from across the European Union. Experience and the mindset of the Brussels technocratic machinery suggest that the EU will view this as a reset signaling that everything has turned for the better in Hungary and that everyone can return to business as usual. However, this moment should be seized as an opportunity for renewal and reflection. It should inform current and future policymaking by the EU, EU member states, and the broader democratic community.

Orbán’s loss and Magyar’s win is yet another important bellwether for understanding the rise of Hungary’s illiberal state model, while also now pointing to techniques for resistance to and reversal of such antidemocratic trends. 

A first step

For the people of Hungary, this is an important step – but only the first – in rolling back the political, social, and economic damage of the past 16 years. The experience of Poland under the Law and Justice Party (PiS) suggests that it’s far easier to break institutional systems and trust than to (re)build them.

It is heartening that Magyar has noted his commitment in restoring relations with the EU and NATO; this in itself will be a great asset in removing what had often become a weight on these institutions. But it bears repeating that Magyar himself comes from Fidesz and is part of the center-right mainstream. There is no reason to think that culture war issues will simply go away. In fact, it’s very important to remember that there is now a global network of wealthy and connected people who have demonstrated they are willing to spend money and political capital supporting the Orbán vision. Magyar will face numerous challenges as he seeks to rebuild institutions and employ judges and other civil servants who are committed to the country rather than just a party or an individual. Constitutional reform needs to be part of this rebuilding. Throughout the process, Magyar’s government will need to learn how to explain what they are doing and why to the people of Hungary, who have grown accustomed to rhetoric from a state machinery retrofitted to suit Fidesz – what has been termed a “competitive authoritarian regime.” The media machine that has been created over the years by Orbán’s cronies, who together with the state control an estimated 85% of the media, will in particular be difficult to dismantle and rebuild.

Clean-up job

A lot now depends on how Magyar works to clean up Hungary’s systems, as he and his team dig-out a decade and a half of corruption and self-dealing. It’s important to remember that it was the shared frustration with endemic corruption that enabled a unified opposition and brought 77% of the people out to vote. This shameless and widespread corruption (described as a “post-Communist mafia state” as early as 2016)  naturally accompanied the building of a state based on power, self-dealing and patronage, and which enabled the erosion of governance and services that ensues when bureaucrats and independent experts are bullied and replaced with loyalists and sycophants.  It took people getting fed up with this corruption to lead to this opposition victory. It will be interesting to see what connections, European and beyond, will be exposed in the coming weeks and months. The recent revelations of Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto’s reporting to his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, from EU meetings on sanctions like a control officer, foreshadow more such linkages.

Soul-searching in Brussels – and beyond?

At the level of the European Union and its machinery in Brussels, this development should prompt some soul-searching on how certain aspects of the EU itself enabled Orbán’s long hold on power. Let’s not forget how long it took to get Fidesz out of the center-right pan-European EPP; Fidesz finally left on its own in 2021 – Orbán’s 11^th year in power – following suspension in 2019, but remaining in the EPP European Parliamentary group for another two years.  This network has a lot to answer for in nurturing Fidesz (and other reactionary “national conservatives”). It will be interesting to see if they maintain public and friendly links with politicians and other reactionary figures coming over from the other side of the Atlantic. Closer to home, it’s important to remember that the EPP is still “investigating” Serbia’s ruling SNS following the numerous abuses of power by the party and President Aleksandar Vučić. 

In fact, the frustrations that finally hit a boiling point among people in Hungary will sound extremely familiar to citizens throughout the Western Balkans, who similarly feel that they have lost a generation to the same corrosive political and economic trends, following wider hope a generation ago in most of these countries. They have all experienced a different flavor of kleptocratic self-dealing and poor governance for much of the past three decades,  layered on top of the trauma and dislocation of the violence that accompanied the destruction of Yugoslavia. 

These trends also are becoming increasingly familiar to citizens of the US who have seen an even more rapid-fire dismantling of checks and balances and expertise over the past 16 months. 

Defending democracy

The EU (and the broader set of democratic countries that have been described by Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney as “middle powers” and by DPC as “Europe+”) would do well to learn from this and other cases to better formulate and message their own policies and remind their citizens of why democratic values and human rights are not just some lofty ideal but are inextricably related to governance success, broad-based and shared prosperity, and comprehensive security. 

Hungarians have demonstrated that democracy can and must be defended from below – and that it helps to have convincing, inspirational leadership which recognizes that need for a broad popular coalition in favor of a governance system based on rules, not connections or loyalty.

The EU should also consider the lesson that should be learned in terms of its enlargement agenda. Corruption and political and social control are not bugs in the system of countries struggling to move towards healthier democratic systems and ultimately EU membership. Rather, they are the feature of authoritarian and kleptocratic regimes that have as their bottom line consolidating and staying in power.

No business as usual

Tisza’s overwhelming victory cannot be an excuse for the EU simply breathing a sigh of relief, then coasting or returning to business as usual. The Union and its member states failed the diagnostic test that 16 years of Orbán’s increasingly disruptive rule – and his now demonstrated service to Moscow (and Trump’s MAGA movement) – posed to the EU as a community of rules and values. This needs to be remediated, including through developing EU-wide popular democratic defense and resilience. The influence of malign actors in Europe’s neighborhood and in the EU itself will only become more sophisticated and targeted. Finding ways to inoculate themselves from these infections will be critical and will include efforts to identify and counter disinformation, but also to find ways to maintain digital sovereignty over their information space. This will be needed to counter not only Russia but a United States under Trump and with its own emboldened and increasingly unaccountable Silicon Valley class. This class has weaponized US state power against the EU’s ability to defend the privacy and interests of its own citizens. 

However, for now, before sitting down to understand what happened to bring about this result and what could happen next at a time of global uncertainty and risk, one can be forgiven for wanting to exhale – and celebrate. But it should be taken not as a signal that everyone can relax, but as a moment that should be seized to regain the progress, momentum, and values-based self-confidence that the democratic world has allowed to shrivel during a period in which antidemocratic forces have shown increased swagger.

The post The people of Hungary deserve support, not complacency appeared first on Democratization Policy Council.

by Bodo Weber

Executive Summary

Last June, the ambassadors of the European Union and the US to Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), together with the UK ambassador to BiH, struck a deal on Mostar with the main Croat and Bosniak parties, the Croatian Democratic Union of BiH (HDZ BiH) and the Party of Democratic Action (SDA). The agreement ended a ten-year deadlock on implementation of a Constitutional Court of BiH (CC BiH) ruling that suspended the Election Law of BiH and provisions in the Mostar city statute that regulated local elections on the grounds they were discriminatory, and returned the right to vote to the Herzegovinian city’s citizens, who on December 20 will vote for the first time in 12 years to elect their local representatives. The deal was praised by the West as a major breakthrough, a long-awaited return of local elites to a policy of compromise, and even an expression of a “thriving democracy.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

The agreement is an exercise in muddling-through, a transactional bargain between the Western negotiators and the leaders of the HDZ and SDA, Dragan Čović and Bakir Izetbegović, that signs off on the ethno-territorial division of Mostar after 25 years of international efforts towards reunification of the once multi-ethnic city that was divided during the Bosnian war. Even worse, the deal contains a major Western concession to Čović’s long-standing project of creating a de jure or de facto third entity designed to conceal the disintegration of the country. The Mostar deal is just the latest chapter in a decade and a half of a failed Western BiH policy with the EU formally and jealously in the lead, further aggravated over the last several years by the accelerating crisis of the West’s global role, and of liberal democracy in the West – on both sides of the Atlantic. It bears all the hallmarks of that combination: no strategy, no leadership, no (serious) defense of the values and principles of liberal democracy or of the core principles that guided the West’s Balkan policy of the last three decades and no adherence to the lessons learned from it.

The Mostar deal is in fact a set of three agreements: The first, an amendment to the Election Law of BiH, formally replaces the discriminatory provisions and regulations in the election law and in Mostar’s city statute that regulated local elections in Mostar, and which were suspended by the CC BiH in 2010. The second, an amendment to the existing 2004 city statute, establishes a new HDZ-SDA power-sharing arrangement based on the ethno-territorial division of Mostar, by shifting the city’s power center to a semi-formal governance level below the central level, in the form of so-called city areas – which are also electoral districts for the city council elections. This arrangement defies all principles of democracy, rule of law and local self-governance. Even worse, it renders the return of the right to vote to Mostar’s citizens moot, and establishes new forms of discrimination. With the third agreement, the West has for the first time given the seal of approval to HDZ’s terminology “legitimate political representation of constituent peoples,” – a means by which Čović’s generational project to establish a de facto third, Croat entity in BiH may enter through the back door of electoral system reform – and put pressure on the SDA to do the same.

The Mostar deal rests on three transactional foundations: It was the first international negotiation on Mostar with no defined political principles and aims; it was the first negotiation on Mostar conducted with only two of the nine political parties of Mostar; and it was a bargain for the HDZ and SDA in which the West got one agreement (on the electoral law) in return for accepting two others, negotiated between the two parties with almost no intervention by the West.

Since the deal was signed, it has been met with criticism. Western actors have begun to seek a way out of a mess of their own making. Western capitals have shifted blame onto their negotiators in Sarajevo. In turn, the negotiators have looked to the Mostar actors they have betrayed – opposition parties, civil society actors, and citizens – to help them out of their predicament by voting in the elections on December 20 and preventing the two-thirds majority win for HDZ-SDA needed to adopt the new statute. In the meantime, negotiations over the third agreement have stalled, leaving open the possibility the entire deal will collapse in the end.

There is hope for a U-turn on Western BiH policy: First, in the European Commission’s May 2019 Avis that presents the outlines of an initial masterplan for a long-term, strategic policy on BiH of the EU and the wider West based on conditionality for comprehensive, structural reform, with constitutional change at its core (but that has not yet been followed up by the member state governments); and second, in the impending inauguration of US President-elect Joe Biden in January 2021 and the potential for change that it represents. But first, the damage that the Mostar deal has inflicted upon Mostar, the Federation of BiH, the country as a whole, and to Western policy towards BiH must be addressed.

Recommendations

For immediate damage control

To Mostar citizens:

• Mostar voters need to save their city from ethno-territorial disintegration by voting on December 20 for any party or independent candidate except HDZ and SDA, thus denying them the two-thirds majority they need to adopt the draft city statute.

To the West:

• Key EU member states such as Germany need to seize leadership on the Mostar issue post-election, push for an EU position against the new city statute, and re-define/establish red lines against the ethnic disintegration of Mostar and the Čović-HDZ project that is behind the political agreement on changing the electoral system.
• The incoming Biden administration needs to reverse the policy pursued by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Palmer of appeasing the nationalist parties, join the EU in re-defining/establishing red lines on Mostar and electoral reform, and refrain from any past inclination towards the “need to give something to the Croats” (i.e., the HDZ BiH). It needs to refrain from rushing to achieve any quick deliverables under newly established US leadership, but instead work in close cooperation with the EU.
• The EU and the US should refrain from engaging in negotiations on the implementation of Sejdić-Finci and other court rulings until they define a joint, strategic policy that aims to move BiH out of its trajectory of accelerating regression.

For the longer term

• The EU and the US need to start an initiative on a long-term comprehensive BiH policy that puts constitutional change at its core with comprehensive conditionality, by turning the EC Avis and the Priebe report into a master plan, using the international community’s Dayton instruments to create a conducive environment for reform, and preventing further deterioration of the political and security situation in BiH.

Read the full paper

The post The West’s Dirty Mostar Deal: Deliverables in the Absence of a BiH Policy appeared first on Democratization Policy Council.

It was her serendipitous discovery of a little known building on the campus of George Mason University, outside of Washington DC, where she found the hard copy archives – papers, letters, and musings – that allowed her to patch together in detail the intentions behind a decades-long effort by a handful of the country’s wealthiest and most fervently anti-government/small government citizens. These men, led by the ideology of a relatively unknown yet profoundly influential thinker named James Buchanan, and funded by the deep pockets of the better known Charles Koch, intended to “save capitalism from democracy” (p.xx).

These oligarchs were troubled that, as more Americans enjoyed and exercised de facto and de jure voting rights – including women, people of color and the poor – these masses would vote for policies they wanted, such as more public education, public health, and consumer and environmental protection, to be paid for through progressive tax rates. Rather than allow this scenario to unfold, an effort to hack the American system began, based on three elements: minority rule (through capturing the Senate, maintaining the electoral college and gerrymandering), highly conservative judicial activism (most notably in the Supreme Court, but also through lower levels), and voter suppression. The country would technically be democratic, but calculated and targeted restrictions would ensure it would be a democracy “in chains.” MacLean’s historical narrative is chilling in its prescience.

The fruits of recent doom-scrolling led me to ponder that three variations are unfolding, in three very different places. The first symbolizes a possible consolidation stage that leads one to wonder whether and how the juggernaut can be stopped; the second outlines efforts at an endgame of political hacking in an institutionalized system in which norms and values of participatory democracy for all have long been discarded; and the third provides a glimmer of hope that resistance to such well-executed, anti-democratic strategies can begin to be rolled back.

First, the ramming through in record time of Amy Coney Barrett to serve a lifetime appointment on the US Supreme Court, represents the pinnacle of the generational effort to control the Supreme Court. The new 6-3 conservative majority could make broadly popular programs impossible to implement (such as some sort of Medicare for All), and could lead to sweeping federally mandated deregulation at odds with voter preferences at the state level (think environmental protection or gun control measures in California.) As awareness of this fait accompli sets in, a variety of options seem to be on the table, ranging from court rebalancing, to commissions on more fundamental reform, to perhaps simply start ignoring certain rulings. However, none of these options will be quick, or smooth. A country with a population that is increasingly diverse and left leaning – particularly among the young – could find itself chained to the ideological goals of an oligarchic few.

Second, and illustrating the chains at a more advanced micro level, is evident in the divided city of Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina (population ~ 110,000 and falling due to braindrain and out-migration borne of frustration with corruption, patronage and gridlock). In this case, a city that has been divided, exploited and increasingly malgoverned since the darkest days of the wars in the early 1990s is on track to have this dysfunction finally codified and legitimized. It is not a surprise that the city’s two leading parties, the HDZ and SDA, have agreed on a plan to change the city’s electoral representation system in a manner precisely and mathematically tailored to ensure their dominance of city neighborhoods/party fiefdoms while allowing for the veneer of democratic choice. What is a surprise is that some  international actors, desperate for a “deliverable” and a good news story, seek to portray this as a move away from the stagnation in that city that has prevented local elections for more than a decade– willfully ignoring the reality that this will dig the hole of divided malgovernance ever deeper. This external legitimization risks further emboldening party actors as they continue to chain citizens to a system geared solely toward party loyalties rather than represented citizens. Even more troubling is that following local elections in December according to these engineered election apportionment rules, the same parties will claim a popular mandate to continue rigging the system at higher levels of government, finishing by political cleansing the aims that the war in the early 90s did not complete.

The third example – and the only one that leaves one feeling any sense of grounded optimism – happened in Chile, following strong support among voters to re-write that country’s constitution. This case provides a directly relevant glimmer of hope that constitutional rigging can be reversed, because, as described by MacLean, Chile’s political, economic and constitutional structures were put in place not only according to the same “economic liberty” ideology underlying the American experiment underway, but with the direct support of some of the same ideological fathers. Following the 1973 Pinochet coup, this hitherto democratic, now-authoritarian country provided these ideologues – “the Chicago Boys” – with an ideal, anti-communist tabula rasa upon which to test their theories in real-life, as Chile’s military leaders, “wanted to find a way to ensure that Chileans never again embraced socialism, no matter how strong the popular cries for reform. The solution they came up with was to rewrite the nation’s constitution to forever insulate the interests of the propertied class they represented from the reach of a classic democratic majority” (p.155).

This was part of a significant social-structural overhaul in the ‘70s and ‘80s in which industry-wide labor unions were banned, social security and health care were privatized, education was reformed to minimize critical thinking in terms of utilitarian workforce preparation, and the ability of the central government to set regulations was curtailed. While on the one hand this created economic stability that stood out in the region – particularly when compared to less stable neighbors in South America. But the fact that it remained fixed after the country’s democratic transition as part of the price of that transition also ultimately fed the widespread discontent with the endemic and worsening economic inequality, the decrepit social services and education available to the people, huge public debt, and an “endless opportunity” for corruption with no meaningful checks and balances. The description of the damage this economic liberty experiment in Chile wreaked on society could serve as a warning for the US of the perils of placing economic rights above all others.

Taken together, these three cases shine a light on the role structures – constitutional and institutional – play in either enhancing or limiting meaningful political participation, representation, accountability and policy. In a system in which “locks and bolts” (to use another phrase referenced in MacLean’s book) seriously constrain democratic participation, it is facile to suggest voters are somehow to blame for not wanting effective governance “enough” to change it. Chile shows that even when facing such obstacles people can get fed up. This week we will have a glimpse of whether US voters have had enough. And upcoming local elections in Bosnia will serve as a barometer of the lived and expressed frustration of those citizens, and also of the extent to which extent structures expand or contract rights, deter or facilitate corruption, and reflect majority or minority rule.

The post Breaking the Democratic Chains appeared first on Democratization Policy Council.

The gratuitous and protracted killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police on Memorial Day spurred an unprecedented outpouring of black American demands for police accountability and systemic change – beginning in Minneapolis, with some high visibility instances of property destruction, looting, and violence.  But in the main, nationwide protests have been peaceful.  They also exhibit hitherto unseen transracial and societal solidarity, well outside the urban areas where protest began.  This is a rapidly developing constituency with the potential to drive a major recalibration of American society.

Much remains uncertain.  But the breadth of the perception gap builds on an already stunning polarization in American society as the November elections approach – and the prevalence of firearms (and their centrality in the identity, in particular, among Trump’s constituency) makes this a particularly volatile moment.  What became abundantly clear with Trump’s attempt to militarize responses to protests and unrest, as well as having Lafayette Square cleared of peaceful protesters for his photo op at St. John’s Church, was that there are no limits to his efforts to drive polarization.  It is not incidental to his agenda.  It is essential.

The political dynamics playing out at present emerge organically from the soil of America’s four centuries of racial oppression and inequity.  But the Black Lives Matter Movement and demonstrations nationwide gained a global resonance and solidarity, spurring societal reflections and calls for justice.  These are both closely related to the abuse of power which generated the popular outrage – systemic police brutality, but also local issues of systemic unfairness and lack of reckoning with the past.  So while this historical moment emerged with specific American contours, it is a global one. 

Some parallels can be made from quarters not typically high in the US public consciousness.  Trump’s operating system is strongly reminiscent of those which have played out from the late 1980s to date in the former Yugoslavia.  The resemblance is so strong that I have called Trump “our first Balkan president.”  

Inated States of America

Trump’s initial and continuing appeal to his constituency has been reaction to and fear of societal change, as well as resentment at its perceived prime movers and beneficiaries.  In what became the waning days of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milošević appealed to Serbs, first in Kosovo where they felt outnumbered and displaced from a rightful dominance by the majority ethnic Albanians, but then throughout Yugoslavia, playing on their sense of having been cheated in the multinational Yugoslav federation.  A potent element in his – and other nationalists’ – repertoire was inat (Ee-not), a word brought via Ottoman Turkish usually translated as “spite,” but closer in meaning to German schadenfreude, requiring a longer explanation in English.  It connotes in four letters “this is going to hurt me, but it’s going to hurt you more – and I am going to enjoy that you are suffering.”  While English has no snappy equivalent, it is clearly felt here and has become pandemic.  “Owning the libs,” “rolling coal,” and “triggering” are all evidence of this trend.  Donald Trump’s harnessing a deep seam of untapped inat made him president.  His administration has been a breeder reactor of it ever since. 

The fear of a reckoning for past wrongdoing can be a strong bonding agent for communities and societies.  This was evident in Nazi Germany in 1945, as Allied armies advanced from east and west. Germans flocked westward, fearing the revenge of a ravaged Soviet Union.  In Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnian Serb separatist leader Milorad Dodik has often said the country was untenable because of Bosniak desire for “revenge,” while continuing to deny that genocide had been committed against them by Bosnian Serb forces in the war – a legally established fact.  His rationale was clearly to frighten Bosnian Serbs to cleave to his leadership, for fear of being overwhelmed.  Demographic fear of being outnumbered by Muslim fellow citizens proved of great utility as a mobilizing tool among Serbs in particular; a “green transversal” theory was touted – and remains in circulation.  Genocidal policies and acts from the wars of the 1990s have provided inspiration for white identity nationalist violence worldwide, most vividly in Anders Breivik’s 2011 Utoya massacre in Norway and in the Christchurch shootings in 2019.  The “great replacement” theory – that whites and Christians will be outnumbered and dominated by migrants and non-Christian minorities – gained traction in Europe and the wider West, despite the evidence contradicting the apocalyptic Clash of Civilizations visions.

While the demographics at play in the United States are very different – African Americans are 13% of the population – the fears of the waning of white dominance in the US have been central to Trump’s appeal to “Make America Great Again.”  But the direction of travel toward whites ceasing to be the majority in just a generation, provides an ambient fear environment undergirding the entire Trump agenda.  Trump’s referring to white nationalist demonstrators at a “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville as “very fine people” was widely seen as validation. (The rally featured a Nuremberg-style torchlit march in which participants chanted “you will not replace us! Jews will not replace us!” and one antifascist demonstrator, Heather Heyer, was killed and several more critically injured in a deliberate car attack.) The fact that Trump advisor Stephen Miller, behind the Muslim ban and institutional brutality toward asylum seekers, is reputed to be writing an upcoming Trump speech on race, is indicative of the likely content.  The timing and venue of that speech – initially scheduled to be delivered on June 19^th in Tulsa, Oklahoma – seems as calculated and egregious an expression on inat politics as any in the Trump presidency.  June 19, “Juneteenth,” is the day American blacks celebrate the end of slavery; Tulsa was the scene of a particularly devastating racial pogrom against the black community in 1921.  The fact that the rally has been shifted a day has done nothing to dull the initial message sent that black lives do not matter, but rather only provides (im)plausible deniability.

Such calculated polarization to maintain power remains endemic in post-Yugoslav politics.  A Catholic mass in Sarajevo, sponsored by the parliament of Croatia, to commemorate victims of the summary executions by Tito’s partisans of Croat and other collaborationists (including civilians) fleeing Yugoslavia in Bleiburg in 1945 was the most recent such example of spectacles designed specifically to inflame and divide.  The backlash in Sarajevo against the mass was predictable, though its scale surprised many during the current pandemic.

Now that a much more pronounced demand for an end to police brutality against blacks has been made, and the disproportionate harm the coronavirus has wreaked upon the black population in particular (and people of color more broadly) has come into focus, demands for a more thorough recalibration of the American social contract and order are being heard.  It precipitated palpable angst, particularly in exurban and rural white Trump strongholds, in large part due to disinformation.  Yet in that same terrain, less predictably, unprecedented solidarity demonstrations continue.  Polling conducted on June 9-10 shows overwhelming support for peaceful protests, with even a 59 percent majority of Republican respondents in favor – 82 percent for banning police chokeholds.  This is a tectonic shift.

Trump’s call on governors to “dominate” the protests, employing overwhelming force, as well as insistence on the theatrical deployment of National Guard and militarized, unidentified federal agents, demonstrates a clear desire to play to those fears and escalate a sense of crisis.  It is likely that he wanted to seize the initiative to precipitate more confrontation and violence, to give both a pretext for the harsh crackdown he desired and to scare white voters who might have thought of gravitating to Biden or sitting the election out into voting for him.  In essence, by escalating radically, he aimed to force them to choose between fear and a sense of justice or fairness.  The greater the perception of chaos, the more likely they would vote for him.

Efforts to escalate deep social divides for political gain were seen recently in another part of the former Yugoslavia – North Macedonia – twice in two years.  In both cases – a still murky firefight between security forces and ethnic Albanian militants in the town of Kumanovo in May 2015 and a “spontaneous” nationalist attack on opposition lawmakers to prevent the formation of a government in April 2017 – the evident aim was to stoke fears of renewed ethnic conflict (or even actual violence) to justify a clampdown and Nikola Greuvski remaining in control (in 2015 as prime minister; in 2017 as the clear power behind a caretaker government).  In neither case did it have the desired effect.  Gruevski is now a political asylee in Viktor Orbán’s Hungary.

Trump’s Phantom Paramilitary Boogeymen

Dominance of media isn’t feasible as before – but it doesn’t need to be once society is so polarized that the information space is effectively politically segregated.  In this world – in broadcast, online, and social media – Antifa, a loose self-organized agglomeration of leftist streetfighters who sometimes appear at demonstrations and engage in violence, has been amplified from the fringe phenomenon it truly is into a fearsome paramilitary army in the Trumpworld imaginary.   But this has already had real world consequences, with peaceful multiracial Black Lives Matter marchers having to pass a long lineup of heavily armed residents in northeast Indiana – in sight of police – being just one of many examples of the potential confrontations set up trough manufactured fear. 

In the past week, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson has provided a perfect window into this dynamic, showing a number of Yugoslav-era parallels.  In his monologue, Carlson acts deliberately as a white fear agitator and amplifier – both to Fox’s overwhelmingly white, right-wing viewership, but at least as importantly to President Trump himself, playing to his most authoritarian and repressive instincts.  It is, in effect, an admonition not to “go wobbly,” but rather to radicalize, as demonstrated in Lafayette Square.  He spoke of “the mob” swarming “like hornets,” calling on those in government to “protect your people.”  Carlson in particular among major media commentators is promoting what might be called a “black scare,” stoking an ambient fear of chaos which can only be met with repression, both from the government, but also from militia types.  The fact that such messages continue long after any significant incidence of property damage or violence from demonstrators is telling.  In a recent episode, he argued that any engagement with the Black Lives Matter movement was a slippery slope.  Maintaining group homogenization – and segregation – is a staple of top-down Balkan politics.

This is a typical post-Yugoslav technique.  Bosnian Serb political leader Milorad Dodik, for example, could have scripted this immediate grasp for the lever of fear.  In response to demonstrations at poverty and lack of accountability which erupted in Bosnia and Herzegovina in early 2014, Dodik spoke darkly of the threat to the Republika Srpska from the neighboring Federation half of the state, illegally establishing checkpoints, as well.  But he was simply the best positioned to act with coercive power on the fears he stoked; other politicians in the country had parallel instincts to ethnicize the protests to deflect public anger away from themselves. The fact that this failed to gain traction was not lost on citizens throughout the country.  Four years later, following the still murky murder of a Banja Luka youth, David Dragičević, demonstrations began, led by his father, Davor, against widely suspected police misconduct and perhaps involvement.  The deep public distrust of the official version from Dodik’s authorities helped the movement grow – and gain palpable solidarity across ethnic lines, merging with demonstrations in Sarajevo against authorities for the killing of local youth Dženan Memić – also with high suspicion of official malfeasance.  The fathers of the young men became allies and friends – and struck fear into the static political establishment like no bottom-up effort since the war.  Violent suppression of demonstrations in Banja Luka in late 2018 broke the momentum.  But the demonstrated popular solidarity challenged the dark soul of the country’s corrupt power-sharing machine, showing the limits to the effectiveness of the old divisive toolkit. In another parallel, the Covid-19 crisis has given established political leaders the ability to direct public resources in blatantly self-dealing ways – or without any transparency at all.  This phenomenon was observed ludicrously in Bosnia, where an SDA-connected raspberry farmer was able to get a concession for ventilators at an absurd markup – a fact exposed through investigative journalism.  In the US, Trump’s Treasury Department refuses to disclose the distribution of $500 billion in aid to businesses, with Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin stating that the information concerning this public money was “proprietary.”  In both cases, fear of accountability is evidently absent, as patronage is surely present.

The movement’s rapid growth, wide reach, and wider pool of sympathy may, counterintuitively, stiffen resistance and its recalcitrance.  The very diversity of participation in the growing demonstrations, as well as their broad reach, is likely an amplifier of angst for a certain segment of the white population.  If my children, grandchildren, friends or neighbors don’t evidently share my fears, at least I know Trump does – and he has my back. 

Over the course of the Trump presidency, much has been made of his erratic nature, that he seems to lack a governing strategy.  But in a land without strategic opponents, the intuitive tactician is king.  Trump has a thin playbook (the very term is antithetical to his ethos), but the plays in it are tried and true.  General James Mattis correctly observed he hasn’t even tried to unite the American people.  This is by design.  He never could to begin with; his goal is to keep his own constituency galvanized behind him and to keep his opponents divided or otherwise neutralized.  The noxious, caustic atmosphere of division, resentment, fear, and enemies is the only air that he can breathe to survive politically.

His trip to the White House bunker was therefore metaphorically perfect, as well as a reflection of genuine fear – leading to his performance of authoritarianism in “the battle of Lafayette Square.”  The broadening of a popular movement for change against police brutality, which he has advocated and supported, does not bode well for him.  The terms of the political discourse in America have already changed radically as a result first of a global pandemic, and now a concurrent movement demanding equality and justice.  That changes the atmospheric composition to one upon which Trump cannot survive.

Social movement research demonstrates that developing breadth in a movement – and cutting into support bases of the regime – dramatically increases the possibility of success.  And this is precisely what Trump fears.  Furthermore, the loyalty of security forces is also essential.  The unwillingness of the (rump) Yugoslav Army and much of the police to violently disperse crowds in Belgrade after Slobodan Milošević’s attempt to steal an early presidential election put paid to his regime – and ultimately landed him in the dock to face war crimes charges.  The statements by former Secretary of Defense James Mattis and several other secretaries of defense, chiefs of staff, and defense officials are clearly aimed at encouraging those in uniform to not obey an illegal order.  The June 11^th statement by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley that his appearance with the president in his photo op had been “a mistake” which made the military appear political, amplified this.

We may never know what went through Trump’s mind as he heard chanting crowds outside the White House and hurried downstairs.  But his phone call to governors and photo op soon after seemed an attempt to calm himself, to “take back control.”  But like the Wizard of Oz, his machinery failed him.  Unfortunately, he is not the only one afraid.  And we can count on the fact that he will do his utmost to amplify and capitalize on those fears.  There’s nothing scarier than scared white people.

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I’ve increasingly been using this space to work through what I’m thinking as I watch history in motion on both sides of the Atlantic. While the parallels have been emerging since 2015, as with so many things the COVID-19 crisis makes some things much more acute, either by opening up opportunities for new problems, or shining light on problems that have been lurking, hidden from view to anyone not actively looking.

Reading an article about a Republican effort to deploy 50,000 poll watchers for the November US elections – allegedly to reduce fraud, but largely interpreted as being aimed at voter suppression in key states – was troubling, but not surprising. It also brought back memories of my first experiences in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In mid-summer 1997, I got a call from an old friend from my university days who was working for the Peace Corps. On short notice, he had been asked to find around 300 Americans who were interested to go to Bosnia and Herzegovina to serve as supervisors in the country’s first post-war local elections. I was one year into a doctoral program in conflict analysis and resolution, and jumped at the chance.

It was a long time ago, but certain things stand out in my mind. Refueling a charter flight in Shannon, Ireland. Landing in Zagreb and taking a bus to Tuzla via Brcko, as there was a policy of ensuring that the American observers stayed in the zone where American troops were stationed as a part of the NATO Stabilization Force. Serb soldiers in purple camouflage taking a long time to check all of our documents before we continued our journey, then passing through the wild west of the Arizona Market.

There were a lot of older retired Americans who routinely went out to supervise elections around the world – “election tourists,” some called them. And a lot of people in their 20s looking to get involved in international relations careers, in that short-lived, post-Cold war euphoric period between the end of the war in Bosnia, and before 9/11, the war in Iraq and the financial crisis began to erode the clarity of the elusive yet seemingly achievable democratic peace.

I remember sitting in a large hall in a school in Tuzla getting briefed. In the presentation of the Dayton political structure, after listening to an earnest young man (I think he was Irish) talk about the Federation and the Republika Srpska, I remember one American observer standing up and asking, “The Federation? Republika Srpska? Just what country are we in right now?” It was only with time that I would come to appreciate the irony of this question.

We were there to ensure that every single one of the country’s 2000+ polling stations would have a foreign, independent observer present to give credibility to the voting process, the count and the ballot delivery; back then the ballot boxes were escorted by NATO peacekeeping troops to ensure confidence in the results. These measures were seen as necessary as the war had only been over for a little over a year and a half; no one wanted to take the possibility of a trusted, participatory and free and fair vote for granted. The 1996 general elections a year earlier had been widely criticized, marked by intentional and unintentional voter disenfranchisement, misinformation and logistical problems. The voter turnout was estimated to be over 100%.

The army of observers in September 1997 was part of an effort to improve the situation. And some aspects had improved, though the political aim of pressuring, deterring or otherwise inhibiting voter choice was still clear. This was not entirely surprising after a war that displaced half the population, ravaged the country’s infrastructure and was from start to finish predicated on unravelling social bonds and trust. It was also an early example of war by other means, and of using ballots rather than bullets to achieve narrow political aims.

Except for my translator, a good-looking, very tall young man who simply disappeared at some point, people were friendly and open and positive as we patched together English and some dusty Russian from my college days. The experience and the people I met led me to settle on a dissertation topic on the peace process, which in turn brought me back. And kept me here for two decades.

And now I’m more worried about my parents in New York during the pandemic than they are of me in Sarajevo.  As I follow news in the U.S., I’m seeing independent inspectors general being dismissed; states being pitted against one another in a twisted demonstration of feudal federalism; armed individuals and “militias” claiming the public space resisting any semblance of shared public solidarity.

And now efforts that are viewed as intended to reduce the vote among the marginalized and the poor; the exact opposite of participatory democracy. Republicans will claim a commitment to fight voter fraud, in spite of the fact that voter fraud is less likely than being struck by lightening. Democrats in turn are expected to organize their own poll watchers. Regardless of what happens on November 3, the erosion of trust has already begun. America’s increasingly tribal, us. vs. them politics will stake out and divide yet another part of the public sphere, further destroying the civic.

As I continue to wish that the US would look to Yugoslavia in the early 1990s to recognize the consequences of undermined institutions, weaponized nationalism and party divisions based on identity rather than policy, I find myself wanting to see a corps of international election observers deployed to the US, to do what I did in Tuzla in 1997. They could never have the coverage possible in a small territory like Bosnia, but could focus on population areas in swing states.  Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Ohio would likely be as exotic to some as Tuzla, Banovici or Kladanj were to us.

It would be an investment in the shared human interest in the ability to participate in the basic decision of who governs one’s community and country. A reminder that no country or society is immune to challenges to accountable democracy. And a signal that in the 21^st century the struggle to protect these values is a global two-way street. Balkan election tourists: welcome to Wisconsin.

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