Listening to the Scorpions’ “Wind of Change” while sitting in a restaurant in Pristina, the capital of the disputed Republic of Kosovo, on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, it hit me that Kosovo is an underplayed success story of nation-building. From an oppressed corner of Milosevic’s Yugoslavia, Kosovo has turned into a vibrant society. It has its share of problems, like all the other countries in the Balkans, but it has established itself as a case study for how Western democracies can work with a Muslim-majority country.

The fruits of this engagement were seen in the local elections held in Kosovo on November 15, the first held by Kosovo since it declared independence in February 2008. With the help of the Kosovo Democratic Institute (KDI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI), I was able to participate as an observer of the elections, up in the northern part of Kosovo. We were able to watch the elections from both sides of the Ibar River, the de facto dividing line between the Serb- and Albanian-controlled parts of Kosovo.

At the polling centers we went to in Mitrovica south of the river and in the town of Vushtrria, staffers conscious of the historic nature of the vote were more than eager to show us around. The major (Albanian) parties all had representatives at just about every station, who followed the election closely. And the aftermath of the election was like it is for most elections around the world — political negotiating behind closed doors. Like elsewhere, democracy works as far as it goes.

Still a House Divided

The key words in Kosovo, however, are “as far as it goes.” It doesn’t go up to the Serb-majority area in the north. As dusk started to gather in Mitrovica, we headed north of the Ibar into the Serb-majority areas. Polling stations were supposed to open, but the Kosovo Election Commission had left them closed in most locations out of safety concerns. Gangs of “Bridge Watchers” milled around election sites — Serbians who watched who crossed the bridges across the Ibar and pelted rocks on those with Kosovo plates. (Hence our choice of a rental Land Rover with neutral Macedonian plates.) A temporary polling center was run literally out of the trunk of a car at the “invisible border” between Serb and Albanian areas by a Brit and an Aussie – but no one showed up.

We drove up to Bistricë e Shalës, an enclave of 200 Albanians in the otherwise exclusively Serb Leposavić municipality. The last part of the drive to Bistricë was a five-mile ordeal on a dirt road over a mountain and down into a nestled valley. You could see why Serbs had failed to drive Albanians out of the location during the 1999 war — which made it all the more impressive that the Election Commission had a polling station set up, complete with party and NGO observers. But with Serbs in the north boycotting the election, all 146 votes for mayor cast in the nearly 20,000-person municipality came from that station. The most immediate issue the Mayor-elect of Leposavić faces is the fact that over 99 percent of his electorate doesn’t recognize his mandate.

The government of Kosovo has made strides towards solving this problem. A big step in the process is redistricting, creating new, Serb-majority municipalities to give the Serb minority more clout and buy-in to the process. While that has yet to make headway in parts of Kosovo that border Serbia, like Leposavić, it has worked in enclaves like Gračanica, home of a famous Orthodox monastery and over 10,000 Serbs. Despite Belgrade’s entreaties to boycott the Kosovo election, turnout in these enclaves was reputed to be around 30 percent, which compares favorably with Serb turnout for Belgrade-organized parallel elections last year. Mitrovica is scheduled to have similar, Pristina-organized elections next summer after a Serb-majority municipality is established there.

But the solution to Kosovo’s relationship with Serbia is a tough one. Over the local Peja beer the night before the election, one observer familiar with both Serbia and Kosovo asked: “Why would the Serbs want it?” noting that Kosovo’s GDP per capita was less than one-third the rest of Yugoslavia’s 20 years ago. Certainly the beauty and cultural heritage of the Serb monasteries of Gračanica, Dečan, and Peć pull at Serbian heartstrings. But Belgrade’s lament that Kosovo is the heart of Serbia is met with the rejoinder that that heart beats in a foreign body. With Albanians numbering over 80 percent of Kosovo’s population a decade ago, and outnumbering Serbs in the country 10-to-1 now, Serbian claims need to be measured against the reality on the ground.

From a cynical perspective, Kosovo is an opportunity for Serbia — a small, poor Eastern European country — to get the focused attention of the U.S. and the EU. The foreign minister of Serbia, the young Vuk Jeremić, would be an unknown back-bencher if not for boosting his career by insisting on the indivisibility of Serbia and Kosovo. Both the president and prime minister of Serbia, considered strongly in favor of Serbian membership of the EU, would be tarred and feathered were they to publicly consider Kosovo anything short of an integral part of Serbia. As such, normalized relations will not come as long as this generation of politicians is in office in Belgrade.

Small Steps

A solution will have to come with the next generation. After visiting Bistricë, we went into the Serb part of Leposavić and met with an example of what that solution to the Kosovo problem will be. Savo is a Kosovo Serb who grew up in Leposavić and commutes into Mitrovica every day to go to school. A talented musician who, like most 18-year-old guys, has a fondness for Metallica and Green Day, Savo hopes to study music at the local university in Mitrovica. Over peach slivovica he and his brother home-brew, Savo explained that his parents consider themselves strictly Serbs. But, when asked, Savo conceded that he considered himself both Serbian and Kosovar. He was in fact dating an Albanian girl he met through a political awareness program NDI is sponsoring to integrate teens from both ethnic groups in Mitrovica. It’s this kind of incremental embrace of the opportunities in Kosovo — the opportunities that 30 percent of Serbs in smaller enclaves grasped when they went out to vote — that will lead to a solution that both Serbia and Kosovo can live with.

But it’s a long road to get there. Helping both sides get down that road will be the carrot of accession to the EU. Both Serbia and Kosovo are part of the Western Balkan vacuum that exists within the European Union’s sphere. While Serbia is a full-on participant in the Stabilization and Association Process (SAA) that precedes EU accession, Kosovo has been part of the Stabilization Tracking Mechanism (which seems to be all the steps of the SAA, without the promise of EU candidacy at the end), with five of the 27 EU members, notably Greece and Spain, not recognizing its independence yet. Getting Serbia to the bargaining table with Kosovo as a prerequisite for EU accession would be a powerful motivator, much as the Greek Cypriot government in Nicosia was willing to talk to its Turkish counterpart before Cyprus’ EU accession in 2004.

For its part, Kosovo has so far been be willing to adhere to diplomatic niceties to assuage Serbia. The government in Pristina might want to consider another step of suggesting the exchange of “High Commissioners” with Belgrade. Taking a cue from the United Kingdom’s decolonization process in the 1950s and 1960s, such a move would acknowledge the special relationship between Serbia and Kosovo, allow Serbia to save face by not having to immediately accept a Kosovar ambassador, and — most importantly — give both countries a formal channel of communication to address their mutual concerns.

After dusk we went back to the Albanian part of Mitrovica to a school on the west side housing the biggest polling station in the city. As the clock ticked past seven o’clock and the polls closed, the polling station chairman asked for the door to the spartan classroom closed. I watched as polling officials, party representatives, and an observer from a local NGO gathered around the teacher’s desk. Opening the Election Commission’s booklet of directives, the chair began reading out loud the instructions.

As they went through the process the chair ordered one of the polling officials to retrieve the box of sealed disputed ballots to begin counting. A party official objected, saying that he interpreted the rules differently, and counting should proceed in a slightly different manner. After a couple of minutes of discussion, in which all had their say, the polling chair conceded the point, and ballots began to be counted. In that little corner of Kosovo, 500 miles behind the Iron Curtain that had lifted 20 years earlier, democracy slowly went to work.

McClatchy is reporting that the Obama administration has decided on a strategy that will involve sending at least 34,000 more American troops to Afghanistan. At present, this is a single-source story coming from at least two anonymous “U.S. officials” and has yet to be confirmed by the White House.

Separately, the Washington Post has reported that an announcement will be made “within days,” possibly in a prime-time address to the nation next Tuesday, December 1.

If the initial report proves to be true (and after all the leaks thus far in this process, it may not be), it’s unfortunate that the headline focused on the raw number of boots on the ground. The Obama administration’s primary objective has been to formulate and enact a strategy, and then resource it properly.

Though there has not been news of which strategy the Obama administration will embrace, the reported 34,000 troops strongly suggests that it will adopt many of the strategic recommendations offered in Gen. McChrystal’s August counterinsurgency (COIN) plan. Strategy sessions in the White House may have refined McChrystal’s plan by focusing the COIN on 10-to-12 major population centers and Ambassador Eikenberry’s last-minute objections have clarified the administration’s exit strategy, but 34,000 more forces would endorse the meat and potatoes of McChrystal’s strategic outline.

Here at the PPI, we understand the American public’s weariness and skepticism at this announcement. After eight years of war, many wonder why more progress hasn’t been made, and how many more American lives must be sacrificed. It’s a tough choice, but if this initial report proves to be true, we stand with the president in his decision to adopt much of Gen. McChyrstal’s strategy as the best choice to offer definitive and lasting security to the country.

The general’s plan is hardly a guaranteed success, but it offers the highest possibility of permanently denying al Qaeda the safe haven only the Taliban can provide in a difficult and complex operating environment. It also shows that the U.S. is committed to being a partner with the Afghan people against the Taliban, one of the most vile groups imaginable. They are fanatical ideologues who deny women basic rights and have been bent on enforcing a draconian interpretation of sharia law.

Even though it seems counterintuitive, it is our firm belief that adopting McChrystal’s plan now is likely to stabilize Afghanistan faster and ultimately permit American forces to come home sooner than if we remained strategically rudderless. Think of it this way: if al Qaeda somehow regroups and executes another mass-casualty attack against the U.S., then we’re essentially back to square one, deciding anew how many more troops to send.

Any announcement of troop levels is likely to send shockwaves through the Democratic Congressional caucus. The President will certainly have to make the rounds on the Hill to quell any impending revolt (including a possible war-tax). However, as Will Marshall and I have reminded Democrats, it’s crucial that they support President Obama’s decision:

Whatever course he chooses, the President will need his party’s understanding and support to succeed. If Democrats fall out over Afghanistan, he won’t be able to sustain a coherent policy, and the public will likely lose confidence in the party’s ability to manage the nation’s security.

Competence in national security is part of being a full-spectrum governing party, and failure to protect the country would be a key indictment against Democrats.

For all those reasons, if this initial report proves true, we welcome the president’s steadfast resolve and reasoned decision-making on this crucial national security issue.

Over at Democracy Arsenal, Michael Cohen — with whom I spent an interesting, accidental 48 hours in Dubai trying to get to Afghanistan as election monitors — attempts to place American foreign policy in context:

Sometimes it’s worth putting American foreign policy — and the military decisions we have made and continue to make since 9/11 — in a proper and sobering context.

Eight years and two months since America was attacked on September 11th, and 3,000 Americans were killed, the United States has approximately 168,000 soldiers stationed in two Muslim counties. In neither of these countries is there any al Qaeda presence — and there has not been any such presence since 2002. Indeed, since the fall of 2001, al Qaeda has not launched a single major attack on U.S. targets or the U.S. mainland.

Yet, instead of having a national debate on how we got ourselves into such a bizarre and pointless predicament — and squandered so many lives and so many billions of dollars in the process — the current debate in Washington is focused on how many more troops we will send into harm’s way to pursue an enemy that is down to about 200 core operatives.

Do you ever get the queasy feeling sometimes that somewhere in a cave in Pakistan, Osama bin Laden is having a bit of a chuckle about this?

But Michael’s “proper…context” leaves out too much. And the irony is that I have to engage Michael on the topic he wants to debate – “how we got ourselves into such a bizarre and pointless predicament” – in order to explain why he’s missing the point.

Michael seems preoccupied with wanting to debate the past, but it’s the past – the Bush administration’s extraordinary mismanagement and poor decision-making – that compels the Obama White House to revisit discussion of strategy and resources in the first place.

Michael and I had a heated discussion about all this in a cab in Dubai, and here’s the point we’ve differed on: Al Qaeda has not attacked the U.S. since 2001 due to a variety of factors, but al Qaeda’s current weakness is, I contend, temporary, and if the Obama administration fails to choose the most effective strategy (and match it with the sufficient military and civilian resources), the group could rejuvenate itself in the Afghan hinterland.

So, when the time comes and we feel confident that the large-scale terrorist threat to the U.S. is definitively a thing of the past, then we can have the debate Michael wants. In the meantime, a debate over troops and strategy in Afghanistan seems exactly the kind of discussion we should be having.

Yesterday, I railed on Joe Lieberman for convening a witch hunt over the Ft. Hood shootings. One man’s witch hunt is another’s “responsible statesmanship,” per Jamie Kirchick over at TNR’s The Plank. He makes two points:

Given the gravity of this incident and the potential for future such attacks, it makes eminent sense that such a hearing would occur, in order to find out how such clear and visible signals of impending danger were ignored by the Army hierarchy….It’s not “Going Rogue.” It’s responsible statesmanship.

The point Jamie misses is that though the Army’s performance evaluations clearly indicated that Nidal Hasan was a very poor psychiatrist (so poor that, as NPR’s Daniel Zwerdling’s excellent reporting indicates, Hasan’s boss had at least one discussion about the possibility of discharging him) with significant other problems, Lieberman’s witch hunt will be unable to find “clear and visible signs of impending danger.”

Why? Based on the evidence, the red flags just weren’t there. Only in hindsight could you connect Hasan’s questionable, disturbed past with a propensity for extreme violence. I worked at the Navy’s internal criminal investigation agency (NCIS), which examines threats to crimes against the Navy and Marine Corps. If I had to make a decision on resource allocation to the Hasan case one month ago based on what we know, I would have recommended no additional surveillance and that his file be reviewed perhaps six months down the road.

The Pentagon’s internal reviews are better equipped than Lieberman’s hearings to comb through the Army bureaucracy and propose mechanisms to address sub-standard performers with probable mental fragility. That said, even that investigative process can hardly be a guarantee of preventing another Ft. Hood.

The Washington Independent reports that Lieberman has determined that Ft. Hood was a “terrorist” attack, and that he has called Hasan a “lone wolf.” That’s subtle code for the controversial provision in the USA Patriot Act that allows the FBI to eavesdrop on individual “terrorists” who plot without outside assistance. The provision was removed in a recent House mark up in part because the Justice Department had a hard time making the case it was actually necessary. The constant invocation of Hasan as a “lone wolf” – which the Independent’s Daphne Eviatar argues actually doesn’t fit Hasan – could well serve as a pretext for re-authorizing the provision, and suggest some clues into Lieberman’s motives.

But that’s all speculative. At the very least, Lieberman should allow the military and FBI investigations to be completed before jumping in with his own highly public process. Leaping in front of the cameras to assign blame for Ft. Hood before the formal probes have concluded seems like something a politician, not a statesman, would do.