Search This Blog

Saturday, September 5, 2020

Another Great Foreign Policy Victory Ignored

 Yesterday, Serbia and Kosovo agreed to normalize economic relations in a deal brokered by the USA.  It's a major breakthrough to resolve a festering international problem.  Serbia and Kosovo were both part of the old Yugoslavia.  When that country broke into seven pieces in the 1990s, there was fighting between ethnic and religious groups.  NATO even stepped in during the 1990s to stop the Serbs from using ethnic cleansing against the Muslims who are the majority in Kosovo.  Since then, there has been peace, but no relations between the neighboring states of Kosovo and Serbia.  The new agreement hopefully goes a long way towards ending that confrontation.

The problem of Serbia and Kosovo is one that could have led to renewed fighting in the Balkans at any time over the last 25 years.  During the Obama/Biden years, the administration made a big show of appointing a special envoy for the problem who accomplished nothing (as was the usual case during that administration.)  President Trump appointed Ric Grenell, who was then US ambassador to Germany as the special US representative for dealing with this problem and Grenell is the one who led the successful effort to get the current deal done.

As part of the deal, the Trump administration also got Kosovo to recognize Israel which makes for yet another Muslim majority nation to do so.  That should help with getting more Sunni Arab states to follow the lead of the UAE and make peace with Israel.  Indeed, the UAE/Israel deal and the Serbia/Kosovo deal are two major foreign policy achievements by President Trump.  The media, however, treats this as a non-event, since they can't stand to give credit to Trump for achieving anything, especially something that the Obama/Biden administration tried but totally failed to do. 

No comments: