Daniel P. Serwer is vice president of the Center for Post-Conflict Peace and Stability Operations and the Centers of Innovation at the United States Institute of Peace. He coordinates the Institute's efforts in societies emerging from conflict, especially Afghanistan, the Balkans, Haiti, Iraq, and Sudan. He also leads the Institute's innovative programs in rule of law, religion and peacemaking, sustainable economies,media and conflict, and technology and peacebuilding.
Serwer has worked on preventing interethnic and sectarian conflict in Iraq, and he has been deeply engaged in facilitating dialogue between Serbs and Albanians. He came to the Institute as a senior fellow working on Balkan regional security in 1998-1999. Before that he was a minister-counselor at the Department of State, where he won six performance awards. As State Department director of European and Canadian analysis in 1996-1997, he supervised the analysts who tracked Bosnia and Dayton implementation as well as the deterioration of the security situation in Albania and Kosovo.
Serwer served from 1994 to 1996 as U.S. special envoy and coordinator for the Bosnian Federation, mediating between Croats and Muslims and negotiating the first agreement reached at the Dayton peace talks. From 1990 to 1993, he was deputy chief of mission and chargé d'affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Rome, where he led a major diplomatic mission through the end of the Cold War and the first Gulf War.
Iran is not my bailiwick, but as I am generally credited with having contributed to the program that helped the Serbs bring down Milosevic I dare to offer a few points: 1. The fears are well founded: no regime is immune to popular protest, and the more unreasonable they get the harder they fall. 2. The Green movement looks like a serious one, but it is impossible to predict when or if it might succeed. 3. Any autocratic regime will demonize the U.S. and the protesters even if the protesters don’t get assistance from Washington. 4. U.S. engagement with the… Read more
Okay, so I don't spend my summer vacation reading military doctrine documents or thick tomes on Iraq and Afghanistan. Reading isn't even my primary objective, though the kids are grown and there are no grandchildren yet to distract. First I've got to clear out the basement for the family reunion at Thanksgiving. Then there are my Arabic lessons: four hours a week during this staycation, though I confess that remembering four-syllable non-cognates doesn't get easier with more hours of tutoring (or with advancing age). I've learned three Romance languages to high levels of proficiency as an adult. If I… Read more
Okay, so I don't spend my summer vacation reading military doctrine documents or thick tomes on Iraq and Afghanistan. Reading isn't even my primary objective, though the kids are grown and there are no grandchildren yet to distract. First I've got to clear out the basement for the family reunion at Thanksgiving. Then there are my Arabic lessons: four hours a week during this staycation, though I confess that remembering four-syllable non-cognates doesn't get easier with more hours of tutoring (or with advancing age). I've learned three Romance languages to high levels of proficiency as an adult. If I… Read more
The unspoken consensus is surprising but clear enough to me: President Bush got the objectives more or less right, but he botched their pursuit. Does President Obama disagree that our objectives should include "champion aspirations for human dignity, strengthen alliances to defeat global terrorism and work to prevent attacks against us and our friends, work with others to defuse regional conflicts, prevent our enemies from threatening us, our allies and our friends with weapons of mass destruction..."? While I imagine that the Obama White House, when it gets around to issuing a national security strategy, will move the words around… Read more
Two Iraq wars are over: the one between Saddam’s armed forces and the Coalition and the one between Shia militias and Sunni resistance. The one between the Iraqi security forces and any serious internal challenge to the state’s monopoly on the means of violence seems to be coming to an end. A fourth Iraq war—between Kurdish forces and Baghdad’s security forces—is still possible. While security remains a priority, the issues vital to the US now are increasingly political rather than military. A stable, sovereign Iraq able to defend itself is very much in our interest. I don't see how that interest can be… Read more
The President presses the reset button better than anyone: he has done it repeatedly and well--this speech may be the epitome. "Barack Obama, we love you," one audience member yelled out. No one should underestimate the importance of an American President eliciting genuine enthusiasm in the Middle East. That said, he hasn't yet gotten much in return. Love maybe, but also a nuclear test by the North Koreans, stiff-arming from the Iranians and Syrians, grumbling from the Israelis, little or nothing from the Russians and Chinese, a downhill slide in Iraq, marginal help in Afghanistan from the Europeans... The Cubans… Read more
The impact of this crisis depends on how we and others react to it. "Bust" is a product not just of market forces but of government and public reaction to them. Protectionism, overregulation and excessive government intervention in markets and firms are the obvious dangers, but there are also risks associated with underregulation, systemic financial system failure and deflation. Steering among the shoals is not going to be easy. There are also enormous opportunities in this crisis. A number of our antagonists--especially oil-producing ones--have been seriously hurt as the price of oil dropped below $45/barrel. As the recover… Read more
I'm no expert on Pakistan, so I asked someone who is, a native of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas who has an excellent track record of careful analysis of events here. He does not regard the situation as hopeless, mainly because he believes the people of FATA are very much fed up with Al Qaeda. But he also thinks the Pakistani Army and the government in Islamabad have limited usefulness. Instead he points to the regional government in Peshawar, which he believes could assert control over FATA using the Pakistani police and frontier corps, with support from the Army. This… Read more
I find it hard to understand the arguments of those who oppose an independent, authoritative, 360-degree, nonpartisan ascertainment of the facts. I nevertheless find it easy to understand the fears of those who think that such an ascertainment is difficult. I also find it easy to understand those who are uncomfortable with prosecution of lower-level officials for crimes due to higher level decisions. That said, the US has a good deal of experience with independent commissions that have been successful in settling for most of us some difficult issues. And there is no reason in principle why the mandate… Read more
NATO is not the important issue. It is a convenient vehicle for both the Americans and the Europeans. Having survived the end of the Cold War, it could go on a lot longer, if only out of bureaucratic inertia. It went out of area and stayed in business. As one wag told me in the 1990s, "Have you ever been to NATO? All those paper pushers aren't going anyplace just because the Soviet Union fell apart!" That said, the trans-Atlantic divide is growing. Some would like to blame this on Bush, but even a president as popular in Europe as… Read more
The most important impact of the economic crisis is on the US itself. Without a strong recovery, you can forget about US leadership in the world--we won't have the resources, and the world won't want to follow. That would have a dramatic impact on our security. I am not convinced that the impact of the economic crisis abroad is as uniformly negative as some would suggest. Look first at oil prices, which are down largely because growth has crashed. A number of US adversaries are finding their treasuries empty and their trouble-making capacities limited. Venezuela, Iran, Russia--none of them are tweaking… Read more
I'm with Gordon Adams: resources have to be linked to strategy. OMB and NSC need to be "tight." And the State Department, if it is to become more of an equal partner, will need to delegate to the field much more authority over resources. Most Ambassadors don't have direct control over a lot more than the "representation" (entertainment) budgets of their embassies--most everything else is programmed from Washington. But the resources/strategy link has to be true also of the NSC itself, which is not going to be excused from crisis management in order to do long-term thinking. No President… Read more
Yes comprehensively and strategically (as Hillary suggests), but also slowly. Slowly not just because of the upcoming Iranian elections, but also because it would be good if we could score with Syria first. Iran's assessment of its own strategic situation will be different if Syria moves towards peace with Israel (a prospect whose likelihood we may know more about with Israel's election results tomorrow). It would also be helpful to us if US troops are successfully withdrawn from Iraqi population centers--where they are vulnerable to Iranian-trained militias--as is planned by the end of June. While some Americans will remain in military and… Read more
A footnote on the Balkans: Hillary may be correct in calling for a muscular U.S. role in the Middle East, but she is wrong when she says "...the Balkans, where the parties on the ground (especially the Serbs) were by no means worn out but the United States, with other international players, was prepared to assert its own perceived interests in a negotiated settlement." The Serbs were not only worn out in the summer of 1995, partly as the result of NATO bombing, they were also retreating as fast as possible in the weeks before the U.S. arranged a ceasefire,… Read more
I don't see how you get from where we are to peace--two state or other--with a divided Palestinian polity (never mind all the other problems). Timing is everything in diplomacy. Right now is time for peace between Syria and Israel: both countries seem ripe. Making that peace would open up options for dealing with Iran (and Hizbollah and Hamas) that do not exist today. The first step is clear: send an American ambassador to Damascus. Just that would be a powerful signal!… Read more
Okay, so I don't read these books for national security reasons: Dave Eggers' What Is the What?, Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, Ariel Sabar's My Father's Paradise. These are great non-fiction (even those that are technically fiction). But then I turn to Anne-Marie Slaughter's "America's Edge" in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs. And realize that this new diaspora literature reflects a connectedness with what used to be called the "old country" that has very deep national security implications. Every conflict and failed state on earth has its representatives in the United States--not just a spokesman or two, but… Read more
It is anyone's guess what the President elect will do after inauguration, but here are some things he should keep in mind: 1. Predictable "hot" moments in Iraq over the next year: January 30 provincial elections (10 days after Inauguration!), withdrawal of US troops from population centers by the end of June, scheduled referendum on the SOFA in July, national elections in December. 2. Unpredictable "hot" moments: Kurds and Arabs have their troops facing off one day, signing an oil deal with the Turks the next day--hard to tell whether they are ready to embrace or kill each other. 3.… Read more
Related Link: http://www.usip.org/specialists/bios/current/serwer.html
