BFP Exclusive-The Breakdown in NATO’s Balkan
Expansion Strategy: The Case of Montenegro
Filip Kovacevic |
June 25, 2015 Leave
a Comment
The NATO's Balkan
expansion project has come to a standstill
Since its
independence in 2006, Montenegro is being pushed into NATO membership by its
corrupt ruling elite. The key political figures in this geopolitical and
ideological project have been a long-time prime minister Milo Djukanović and
the speaker of the Montenegrin Parliament Ranko Krivokapić. In my previous BFP
articles, I have chronicled many of their efforts on this front.[1] Notwithstanding their undemocratic
methods of holding on to political power, both Djukanović and Krivokapić have
received a great deal of concrete material support from the US and NATO
Establishments. This is just one of the countless examples of the US-NATO
rhetoric on "human rights" and the "rule of law" being
unmasked as nothing more than a cynical deception spouted for geopolitical
reasons. The control of territories and resources is the real name of this
game. This is as true in the Balkans as in the other colonized regions of the
world.
In recent years, there have been two
particularly egregious instances of the US-NATO representatives' meddling into
the Montenegrin internal political dynamic. The first instance took place after
the last parliamentary elections in October 2012 when the Djukanović-led
coalition lost the absolute majority in the Parliament and it seemed as if the
opposition parties were on the eve of forming a municipal government and
electing a mayor in the second biggest municipality in Montenegro, the
municipality of Nikšić.
Had this occurred, it would have
provided enough political momentum for the overwhelming opposition victory on
the presidential elections in April 2013, the victory of such a scope that it
would have been impossible for the regime to rig the election results (as
happened many times in the past). Knowing full well that this democratic
political turnaround could be a likely outcome, the US-NATO operators embedded
in Montenegro swung into immediate action in order to protect their political
puppets.
According to the public statement by
one of the leaders of the Montenegrin opposition, Nebojša Medojević, as well as
several reports communicated to me by credible non-political figures, an
official of the US Embassy in Montenegro, Andrej Popov, was instrumental in
pressuring the leadership of one opposition party not to make the common cause
with the rest and form an opposition-led municipal government in Nikšić.
Medojević went so far as to claim that
Popov was the CIA resident in Montenegro, the claim denied by the US Embassy
for obvious reasons.[2] However, Popov's interventions (whatever
form they took, whether that of the "carrot" or of the
"stick") were successful and the opposition's negotiations fell
apart. As the lasting political consequence, Djukanović's party was able to
hold on not only to political power in the municipality of Nikšić, but also to
steal the April 2013 presidential elections victory from the opposition candidate
Miodrag Lekić in a particularly brazen manner.[3] No US-NATO official condemned the
illegitimacy of the (re)election of the new-old president Filip Vujanović and,
in fact, it appears that, for all intents and purposes, they all breathed a
sigh of relief. Not for long, however.
It is one thing to legislate from on
high to the corrupt and servile elite, it is another to convince the people of
Montenegro that corruption and servility is the only way of life. No
self-respecting citizen will accept that and this goes for the majority of
Montenegrins. Their dissatisfaction with Djukanović and his cronies was
building up again in the anticipation of the municipal elections in the capital
city of Podgorica in May 2014. However, just as the public opinion polls began
showing the possibility of the regime change in Podgorica, the Montenegrin
government received a high-level visitor from NATO headquarters in Brussels.
It was none other than the NATO
secretary-general at the time, Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Rasmussen came to
Montenegro just three days before the elections in order to give explicit
political support to the ruling coalition and confer on them the so-called
international legitimacy.[4] He disregarded the mountains of evidence
on the regime's intricate electoral manipulations, collected by independent
media and various objective researchers, and declared that Montenegro is a
democratic country which shares "Euro-Atlantic values" and whose
membership in NATO is imminent.
Rasmussen's statements exposed as false
the frequent claims of the NATO propagandists in Montenegro that NATO
membership would have beneficial effects on the institutional democratization
and the overall economic wellbeing. The truth is, however, that the government
of Montenegro is run by a corrupt political clan tied to the regional and
global networks of organized crime, and the publicly expressed support by NATO
officials only serves to augment and justify its authoritarian practices of
political and cultural discrimination and abuse. When, not surprisingly, the
election results in Podgorica turned out to be in favor of Djukanović, it
became clear that, yet again, he succeeded to push the massive citizen
discontent under the rug with the help of his US-NATO "partners".
However, the discontent did not and
will not go away, and Djukanović has recently been dialing up NATO for
assistance again. And so, a few weeks ago, on June 10, 2015, the new NATO
secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg, former Norwegian prime minister, visited
Montenegro. [5] Stoltenberg replaced Rasmussen at the
helm of NATO after the 2014 Wales Summit.[6] However, his attitude toward Djukanović
and the rampant political corruption in the country was essentially the same as
Rasmussen's.
Even though Stoltenberg spoke of the
rule of law and institutional reforms, his pronouncements remained at a highly
abstract level.[7] He did not mention any of the various
concrete government scandals exposed in the last several years, including the
most recent revelations about the falsification of the level of public support
for NATO membership by both Djukanović and the minister of foreign affairs,
Igor Lukšić.[8]
Djukanović and Lukšić knowingly lied to
the public about the results of the opinion poll the government itself
commissioned and which showed that the public support for NATO has been
decreasing and that the majority of the Montenegrin citizens support the policy
of military neutrality. However, due to the courageous efforts of the
journalist Marko Milačić, director of the Movement for Neutrality of
Montenegro, all the reports, including the secret communications from various
Montenegrin embassies, saw the light of day and were published in the
Montenegrin daily newspaper Dan.[9] This created a major public outcry
against the government and NATO itself, but was conveniently ignored by
Stoltenberg and his Montenegrin "partners".
During his press conference with
Djukanović, Stoltenberg claimed that those countries in Central and Eastern
Europe which have entered NATO since the end of the Cold War "have strengthened their democracy,
improved their security, [and] made the lives of their citizens safer".[10] He
offered no confirmatory evidence for this claim and, in fact, the truth is the
exact opposite.
NATO
military-intelligence intrigues have actually corroded the democratic
procedures and mechanisms in the new members. In regard to the overall security
and citizen safety, even if one does not take into consideration the current
renewed militarization of Europe under NATO's auspices, it can hardly be said
to have improved in the last decade.
In
other words, Stoltenberg's rhetoric was a prepackaged PR product directed at
those Montenegrin citizens who may not have made up their minds about whether
or not they would support NATO membership. But, as they say in the Balkans, the
number of these is so small that one would need a flashlight to find them in
the broad daylight.
In
order to try to undermine the increasingly well-organized and vocal opponents
of NATO in Montenegro, Stoltenberg addressed what he was told by his hosts to
be the main criticism of NATO: the widespread negative public attitude due to
the 1999 NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which also
affected Montenegro and resulted in civilian casualties, including the deaths
of children. In contrast to his predecessor Rasmussen, who, in a typically
arrogant imperial fashion, told a Montenegrin TV audience that, basically, they
were bombed for their own good, Stoltenberg stated that he regretted the
civilian loss of life and expressed his condolences.[11] However, he immediately added
that the goal of the mission was to "defend the civilians" and that
this mission was successful. He did not explain how the "defense of
civilians" could involve killing hundreds of them, unless (and this is a
persistent "Euro-Atlantic" prejudice) "Western" lives are
more important than others and the geopolitical desire for territorial
expansion justifies the use of all the means at hand, including deadly force.
Stoltenberg claimed that NATO attacks made a lasting peace possible, whereas
the true state of affairs is that NATO bombing (which wrecked both the UN
Charter and the US Constitution) and the subsequent construction of the US
military base in Kosovo have made this part of the Balkans the perpetual source
of instability for many years to come.
In
addition, Stoltenberg stopped far short from admitting the guilt and taking the
responsibility for the civilian deaths, the enduring health hazards caused by
the bombs, and the billions of dollars of property damage. In this respect, it
is revealing that, while the Balkan media covered Stoltenberg's "statement
of regret" extensively, there is no mention of it in the report on his
Montenegro visit provided on the official NATO website. This leads to the
conclusion that the 'statement of regret' was made only in order to make a
positive impact in the internal political debates in Montenegro. After all, it
remained unclear whether Stoltenberg regretted only the civilian victims in
Montenegro or his regrets also extended to Serbia, where a far greater number
of civilians were killed. And what about the deaths of Chinese diplomats and
journalists?
However,
Stoltenberg's "bluff" was immediately called by those progressive
political forces in Montenegro which reject the imperial dictates either in
domestic or foreign policy. They refused to accept Stoltenberg's regrets and
exposed his behavior as "a desperate attempt" to increase the
percentage of NATO supporters in Montenegro and help the Djukanović regime
avoid having to organize a referendum on the question.[12] Still, the percentage of those
who demand a referendum is firmly above 80 percent, of whom more than a half
would say 'No' to NATO. This means that no matter what NATO does in the coming
period, its strategy to have the majority of Montenegrin citizens on its side
has failed. The NATO's Balkan expansion project has come to a standstill.
# # # #
Filip
Kovacevic, Boiling Frogs Post contributing author and analyst, is a
geopolitical author, university professor and the chairman of the Movement for Neutrality of Montenegro. He received
his BA and PhD in political science in the US and was a visiting professor at
St. Petersburg State University in Russia for two years. He is the author of
seven books, dozens of academic articles. He has been invited to lecture
throughout the EU, Balkans, ex-USSR and the US. He currently resides in San
Francisco, and can be contacted at fk1917@yahoo.com
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2015/06/25/bfp-exclusive-the-breakdown-in-natos-balkan-expansion-strategy-the-case-of-montenegro/
- _ednref1ENDNOTES
[1] See, for instance,
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2015/02/05/bfp-exclusive-the-citizenship-policies-of-the-us-puppets-the-case-of-montenegros-milo-djukanovic/
and
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2015/03/18/bfp-exclusive-the-balkan-gladio-of-congressman-mike-turner/
[6]
It is not a coincidence that both the former and the current NATO
secretary-general come from the NATO Scandinavian contingent (which, it must be
remembered, excludes the militarily neutral Sweden and Finland). Traditionally,
it is precisely the countries from this contingent that have been most in favor
of the antagonistic relations with Russia, in addition of course to the NATO
Baltic states, which, it appears, are not as yet "trusted" enough for
such a high post by the US (the CIA).
[7]
http://www.slobodnaevropa.org/content/stoltenberg-crna-gora-da-pokaze-da-je-spremna-za-clanstvo-u-nato/27066871.html
[9]
http://mnmne.org/marko-milacic-the-cablegate-affair-in-montenegro-cables-came-from-the-montenegrin-government-agency-for-national-security-and-the-council-for-nato/
[12]
http://www.vijesti.me/vijesti/pokret-za-neutralnost-stoltenbergovo-zaljenje-kalkulantsko-837698
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