Change of Change: U.S. Foreign policy & Balkans
American history professor Charles Ingrao said that he expects the new U.S. administration's Balkans policy to differ from that of George Bush. U.S. President-elect Barack Obama has already gathered a group of advisers who have great experience with the Balkans, Ingrao told Belgrade daily Ve?ernje Novosti. (Source: Vecernje novosti, Tanjug and B92 5th January 2009)
I found also three other interesting remarks from his interview as he said
- that Obama is "a lot more capable of analyzing complex issues" and that he would use his term to build relations with European partners and would not ignore the Balkans.
- that a group of 300 American scientists, historians, sociologists and lawyers will submit a special report on U.S. policies for the Balkans over the last two decades in late January.
- that “The U.S. government lied to its citizens regarding its resolve to arrest war crimes suspects, including Radovan Karadži?, to whom Richard Holbrooke promised that he would not be arrested if he withdrew from political and public life, and Ratko Mladi? as well,” Ingrao said
After hearing which persons Obama has gathered around him I have had and still have some doubts about new Balkans policy of U.S. Biden, Holbrooke or Kaplan can have long experience, but their actions have been quite anti-Serb and biased. Of course there is change when Bush administration is replaced with ex Clinton cronies – one could predict the second coming of the Clinton Administration.
However today I have some optimism related to coming U.S. Balkans policy. I believe that Obama is more analytical person than Bush and he can base his position more to facts than fiction so there is possibility to new pragmatic approach to Balkan problems. Anyway let’s give a change to change.
More my views one may find from my BalkanBlog archives.
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Comments
My prediction: Nothing is going to change actually. Only the way of handling things, like clinton's administration.
Let's hope though, even for small changes.. Better than nothing :)
Radovan Karadži?, to whom Richard Holbrooke promised that he would not be arrested ???
Was he not arrested in Serbia? That was not a
'special rendition' was it?
Obama must first decide if some members of Bush's gang should be arrested.
Serbia will be less important.
There seems to be a huge gap between fine ideas/plans/collected money in Brussels and their reasonable distribution at local level in Kosovo. The biggest mismanagement or misuse of Aid money is not according my opinion local criminal activities. The strategic error has made in international level by not knowing the demands on the ground, not adjusting ideas and plans according local needs or the moment of Aid delivery, using indefinite mixture of emergency relief and long term planning, lack of simple and unambiguous development strategy and strategic leadership.The real crime will be if international community does not correct earlier errors and practices at strategic level – only after that one can demand smoothly flowing project at local level.
Nothing is able to fulfill, as long as confidence. Everything is difficult at the beginning, is now at the beginning of the show that you have succeeded in half.
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Britons start arriving home from Tunisia with the Foreign Office advising against all but essential travel to the troubled north African country. http://iandgreen.com/items/Antimatt...