sputniknews.com

Ukraine Mulls Repetition of Croatia's 'Reintegration' of Serb Krajina in Donbass

Sputnik

4-5 minutes

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Europe

13:14 05.08.2017Get short URL

On August 4, 1995, Croatia launched "Operation Storm" against the Serb-inhabited territory of Krajina. As a result, the self-proclaimed Republic of Serbian Krajina ceased to exist, thousands of people were killed and over 220,000 driven from their homes. More than two decades on, the Ukrainian leaders are mulling a similar scenario for Donbass.

Model disciples

© AFP 2017/ LIONEL BONAVENTURE

The idea of emulating the Croatian experience of "reintegration" in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics has been circulating in Kiev's corridors of power since the start of the armed conflict in Donbass three years ago.

"Croatia is a good example. While tolerating the existence of Krajina for three years, the Croats built up their economy and armed forces and then, in a matter of hours, their tanks wiped the separatists off the face of the earth," Yuriy Lutsenko, then President Poroshenko's political advisor, wrote on Facebook in 2014.

In 2016 Ukraine and Croatia set up a working group to provide consultative assistance to Ukraine on "reintegration of occupied territories." Croatia's then Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said that his country was ready to share its experience of winning back lost territories.

The move invited an angry rebuff from Moscow.

"The casualties inflicted by the large-scale military operations in Croatia in 1995 – Operation Lightning and Operation Storm – are well known, as is the resulting forced exodus of around 250,000 Serbs who permanently resided there. We have reason to fear that recommendations by foreign "consultants,", which might encourage dangerous illusions among the Kiev leadership that a military solution is possible in Donbass, will do anything but improve security in Ukraine's southeast," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Unfazed by this, Ukraine's Prime Minister Volodymyr Groisman said in June 2017 that Ukrainian officials should emulate the experience of Croatia, which "after a bloody war provoked by the regime of Slobodan Milosevic managed to take back lost territories and restore peace."

In an interview with RT, Yevsei Vasilyev, an expert on international security at the Russian State Humanitarian University in Moscow, said that Kiev was citing the Croatian experience in order "to apply its military aspect to the disobedient Ukrainians in the east."

"There are two reasons why the Croatian model is so appealing to Kiev. First, because it would help solve the problem with the help of a large-scale military operation, and, secondly, it would absolve them from any responsibility for the loss of civilian lives, because 'the winner gets it all,'" Vasilyev said.

© Sputnik/ Valeriy Melnikov

"Advised by their Western and NATO mentors, the Ukrainian authorities would like to use the 'Croatian scenario to get rid of the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics and bring Donbass back under Kiev's control. This is exactly what happened to the

Republic of Serbian Krajina

, which Croatia clawed back in 1995-1998," the expert continued.

He added that, just like the Croatia of the 1990s, Ukraine was now run by nationalists leaning back on Western assistance in their standoff with Russia.

"However, there is one big difference between the Croatia of 1995 and present-day Ukraine, and this is Russia, which will not allow any repetition of the Western scenarios of war crimes against civilians, much less in the vicinity of its borders," Yevsei Vasilyev emphasized.

The Donbass conflict erupted in April 2014 as a local counter-reaction to the Western-sponsored Maidan coup in Kiev that had toppled President Viktor Yanukovych in February.

Residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions held independence referendums and proclaimed the People's Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. Kiev has since been conducting a military operation, encountering stiff local resistance.

 

Oy Canada!

jpost.com

Oy Canada! - Opinion - Jerusalem Post

Efraim Zuroff

8-10 minutes

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Only time will tell whether the good news this past week that the Canadian citizenship of Einsatzgruppe D member Helmut Oberlander was again (for the fourth time!) revoked will mark the beginning of a satisfactory conclusion to this very frustrating and infuriating episode in the annals of attempts to bring Nazi war criminals to justice.

In certain respects, the Oberlander case is a symbol of the relative futility of Canadian efforts to take legal action against Nazi perpetrators and collaborators who were admitted to Canada during the decade following the end of World War II. To be fair, Canada was not the only country forced to face this issue. In fact, practically all the major Anglo-Saxon countries which fought against the Axis forces during the war made the same mistake of admitting Nazi war criminals afterwards.

In some cases, like in the United States, about 150 of these individuals were actually sought out for their unique expertise, like the Nazi rocket scientists and engineers who worked on the V-2 rockets and other similar projects. At least several dozen others, natives of countries which had come under Communist rule, were chosen for espionage tasks behind the Iron Curtain or as potential CIA agents.

Most of the Nazis’ helpers admitted to the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand, however, most of whom were from Eastern Europe, simply posed as innocent refugees fleeing Communism. At this point in time, it was easier to hide their role in the Holocaust, since the common perception in the West was that most of the victims of the Shoa had been murdered in death camps like Auschwitz or concentration camps like Dachau, Mauthausen, Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen, all of which had been run by Germans and Austrians and liberated by Allied troops.

It was only in the late Sixties and early Seventies that reports began to surface that there were numerous Nazi collaborators among the refugees admitted to Anglo-Saxon democracies in the immediate aftermath of World War II. These revelations were initially publicized in the US, where several members of Congress, particularly Elizabeth Holtzman of Brooklyn and Joshua Eilberg of Philadelphia, took up the cause, and prompted official government investigations which confirmed the existence of a serious problem.

At that point, however, these criminals could not be prosecuted for their crimes, since they had been committed outside the United States, and their victims were not American citizens. So rather than change the Constitution, the US government decided to try these individuals for immigration and naturalization violations (for lying on their immigration and citizenship applications regarding their service in or with the forces of the Third Reich), which were punishable by loss of citizenship and deportation from the country.

Eventually, after a somewhat rocky start, a special agency, called the Office of Special Investigations (OSI), was established in 1979 to handle these cases and the Americans began to win case after case. Their successes focused attention on the important role played by the Nazis’ collaborators in Eastern Europe, which led to similar revelations regarding the entry of Nazi war criminals posing as refugees to Canada, Australia, Great Britain and New Zealand, and the establishment of official government inquiries on this issue in each of these countries. Ultimately, all of these countries with the exception of New Zealand passed special legislation to allow criminal prosecution of Nazi war criminals resident in their country, which brings us to the Canadian chapter of the story.

The first case tried in Canada was that of Hungarian gendarmerie captain Imre Finta, who had played a major role in the deportation to Auschwitz in spring 1944 of more than 8,000 Jews from the Hungarian city of Szeged.

Despite the fact that Finta’s sole defense was superior orders, which had hitherto never been accepted in any trial of Nazi war criminals anywhere in the world, and that he had previously lost two libel cases with regard to the same accusations, he was acquitted, and the verdict was subsequently upheld by the Canadian Supreme Court, a decision which doomed criminal prosecution of Nazi perpetrators in Canada to failure. Under these circumstances, the Canadian authorities to their credit did not cease their efforts, but switched to the American model of prosecuting suspected Nazis for immigration and naturalization violations.

The Canadians first applied this remedy in 1994-1995, when they stripped 10 suspected Nazis of citizenship, among them Helmut Oberlander. The next step was to obtain deportation orders against the eight who refused to leave the country voluntarily, as did Hungarian police officer Laszlo Csatary, who helped deport over 15,000 Jews from Kosice to Auschwitz, and Mamertas Maciukas, who served in a Lithuanian murder squad which killed thousands of Jews in Lithuania and Belarus, in actions similar to those carried out by Oberlander’s unit. The problem is, however, that to this day, not a single one of those eight who opted to contest their deportation from Canada has been deported, and in the process, seven have already died in the country.

If one compares the biographic profile of the Nazi war criminals who emigrated to Canada with those who entered the US, their wartime service was virtually the same. Almost all of them hail from Eastern Europe, where collaboration with the Nazis included active participation in mass murder, and they served in similar positions, whether as local security police or murder-squad operatives or camp or ghetto guards. Since both countries apply the same civil rather than criminal remedies, the important question is why have the Americans been so much more successful in maximizing justice than the Canadians? (To date, the US has denaturalized 86 Nazi war criminals and deported, extradited or expelled 67, whereas the number of persons forced to leave Canada because of World War II crimes is less than a dozen.) Perhaps the answer might be that fewer Nazi perpetrators emigrated to Canada, but even if that is true (and no one to this day knows the exact figures for either country), there is a glaring discrepancy between the results achieved in Ottawa and those obtained in Washington.

There are numerous factors which have affected the belated efforts to take legal action against Nazi war criminals in the Anglo-Saxon democracies. Probably the most important has been the existence of political will, which is often dependent on the size and political strength of the local Jewish community on the one hand, and on the other hand of the émigré communities among whose members the suspects are found. Thus in Canada, I think that it would be very difficult to totally discount the fact that the Ukrainians are the country’s largest ethnic minority, and that their leadership, along with that of the emigres from the Baltic countries, vigorously opposed the investigation and prosecution of suspected Nazis.

This might well explain, why the Americans ultimately made special efforts to facilitate prosecution of Nazi war criminals (once the process was finally launched) by, for example, streamlining the appeal process, and there were no equivalent steps taken in Canada.

Thus the good news from Ottawa about the revocation of Oberlander’s citizenship should make us happy, but who knows if he will ever be deported, let alone prosecuted, for his service in one of the most horrific death squads which actively sought to implement the Nazis’ plan for the total annihilation of European Jewry.

The author is the chief Nazi-hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the director of the center’s Israel office and Eastern European affairs. His most recent book, with Ruta Vanagaite, Musiskiai; Kelione Su Priesu (Our People; Journey With an Enemy), has been published in Lithuania and Poland.

 

washingtonpost.com

Democracy in the Balkans is under siege, and the West is looking away

By Vuk Jeremic

6-7 minutes

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DemocracyPost

Opinion

Opinion A column or article in the Opinions section (in print, this is known as the Editorial Pages).

By Vuk Jeremic

DemocracyPost

Opinion

Opinion A column or article in the Opinions section (in print, this is known as the Editorial Pages).

July 13

Vuk Jeremic, Serbia's foreign minister from 2007 to 2012 and president of the U.N. General Assembly from 2012 to 2013, was a candidate in Serbia's 2017 presidential election.

Events in the Western Balkans twice cast a long shadow across Europe in the past century — first in 1914 and then in the 1990s. Both times, the forces unleashed by the carnage could not be contained within the existing international order. And in both instances, proffered solutions failed to resolve the underlying tensions that brought about the conflicts in the first place.

Located at the midpoint between Berlin and Istanbul, the Western Balkans is the most direct physical link between Europe and the Middle East. We were reminded of its strategic importance during the recent European refugee crisis, when the region served as the main land route for millions of migrants fleeing violence in Syria and Iraq. If we look at the political map of Europe, we see that the Western Balkans — notwithstanding its strategic location — remains outside the European Union. Some refer to it as the black hole of Europe.

Engulfed by a plethora of challenges, the European Union has clearly relegated the integration of the Western Balkans to the back burner. This is one of the most shortsighted strategic decisions made by this generation of E.U. leaders.

The region's increasingly distant European perspective has eased the way for local autocrats to seize power through populist rhetoric, dismantling the achievements of nascent liberal democracies. Consider Serbia's new president, Aleksandar Vucic, who served under Slobodan Milosevic as information minister in the 1990s.

He seems to have reached a tacit agreement with various Western decision-makers: In exchange for appearing to maintain stability, Vucic was de facto given free rein to suppress fundamental rights and freedoms. As a consequence, the divide separating Serbia from the E.U. has further deepened. Yet both sides seem content with maintaining the illusion that accession negotiations remain steadily on track, even though there is no end in sight.

Such trade-offs are not only morally questionable; they are also contrary to the strategic interests of the region and the whole of Europe. Under Vucic's increasingly iron-fisted, despotic rule, Serbia has experienced rigged elections, seen opposition leaders slanderously vilified without consequence and witnessed media outlets surrender their objectivity and independence to autocratic demands of fealty and subservience. This is hardly surprising, given that such methods were widely used the last time Vucic was in power, in the 1990s. Meanwhile, foreign investment levels are falling. Corrupt and incompetent cronies have taken over all positions of significance. And record numbers of young and educated people are leaving the country.

The situation is not much better in other countries, such as Macedonia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, where there have been massive street demonstrations, often violent, over the past few years. One also hears again calls for the creation of a Greater Albania, which presupposes forcible changes in borders — something that is hardly imaginable without triggering serious tumults.

Things are especially bad in Kosovo, which holds the infamous European distinction of supplying the largest number of fighters per capita to conflicts in the Middle East. There, the new prime minister is likely to be Ramush Haradinaj. A few years ago, Haradinaj was acquitted by the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia of gruesome charges, including the murder and torture of Serb civilians, after witnesses either recanted at the last minute or died under mysterious circumstances. His main rival is Albin Kurti, one of the most radical populist politicians in all the Balkans.

Vucic and other Balkan autocrats operate on the assumption that state institutions must not serve as barriers to the exercise of their will to power and that it's perfectly legitimate to manipulate public opinion to serve their own selfish interests. Such practices neither represent a good foundation for the achievement of long-term political and economic stability; nor do they contribute to establishing sustainable regional cooperation — much less reconciliation. Lending credence to such tendencies can make sense only if the goal is to entrench the Western Balkans as a sort of no-man's-land buffer zone between the E.U. and the Middle East, in the context of the refugee issue and much else besides.

Nonetheless, I believe that a stable and prosperous Western Balkans that increasingly looks like the rest of Europe is an eminently reachable goal in this generation. The region is blessed with a favorable geographical position, abundant natural resources, and perhaps most importantly, smart and creative people who possess the wherewithal to compete at a global level in their respective fields. It has the potential to catch up with Central Europe in terms of economic development and continental standards.

Yet this can be achieved only if the free exchange of ideas, thoughtful debate and meritocratic advancement can flourish within a genuinely democratic framework.

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Fake News on Russia in the New York Times, 1917-2017 | Dissident Voice

Herman's great article mentions systematic fake news/propaganda related to the destruction of Yugoslavia.

 

http://dissidentvoice.org/2017/07/fake-news-on-russia-in-the-new-york-times-1917-2017/

 

 

Srdja Trifkovic on the Trump-Putin meeting, Syria, and much more

Srdja Trifkovic on the Trump-Putin meeting, Syria, and much more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rFUQPp5aYY&feature=youtu.be

Transcript:

RT: President Vladimir Putin has addressed the media after two days of talks with the world leaders at the G20 summit in Hamburg. Srdja Trifkovic joins us now live… Putin says that the forthcoming ceasefire in Syria was very positive, in fact that it was a breakthrough. But there was a question how to monitor the ceasefire zone in Syria. Russia's foreign ministry says there would be Russian military police on the ground. Do you expect there would be a backlash from the Syrian rebels because of that?

ST: It is important that [Putin] specifically mentioned "the authorities in Damascus" as one of the parties essential to this deal working. He even mentioned President Bashar al Assad by name, which means that the Russian side most certainly will not accept any more of that old "Bashar-must-go" mantra. It is important that he mentioned Turkey and Iran in the same breath, as being on the same side, reading from the same page. We have two important hints here. One is that Ankara and Tehran are perceived by Moscow as being in the same camp of gradual pacification. The other is that it will no longer be possible for someone in Washington suddenly to remember, "and by the way, Bashar must go!" Unless it is accepted – even tacitly, quietly – that Bashar is part of the solution and not part of the problem, there will be no real breakthrough.

RT: Vladimir Putin also said that the U.S. position on Syria is "more pragmatic." Does that mean that there will be no more incidents like when the U.S. shot down a Syrian plane in Raqqa?

ST: On the whole, paradoxically as it may seem, the Trump administration's attitude is more pragmatic than Hillary Clinton's would have been, or even that of the hawks in the Obama administration. The launching of 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian airfield and the shooting down of the Syrian plane were not followed – as the hawks in Washington had hoped – by an escalation, by mission creep, by the announcement that there were no-fly-zones and so on. These episodes, unpleasant as they were, proved to be one-off incidents that did not reflect an overall strategic change, a gearshift in Washington.

RT: The Russian president says of Donald Trump… this is one of the most interesting lines from his press conference, that "the man we see on television is different from what we see in the meeting," the real man essentially. Do you think that Moscow and Washington will be able to mend the rift which was pretty apparent during the Obama administration?

ST: I am pleasantly surprised by the fact that the meeting went as well as it did, considering the absolutely histerical atmosphere in the American media and inside-the-Beltway establishment. You had a feeding frenzy by the sharks, telling Trump that unless he brought Fiona Hill along into the room, who is critical of Putin, unless he told Putin this, that, and the other, unless he read him the riot act, that Putin would win. The Washington Post went so far as to say, two days ago, that if there is an understanding, if there is a new dialogue, then Putin wins. In other words, everybody in Washington's establishment treated this as a zaro-sum-game: if Trump doesn't overcome Putin's resistance and makes him admit that, indeed, Russia had meddles, then Putin wins. I am glad that Trump has turned out to be an adult in this situation. I am also glad that Putin perceives this. He understands that Trump is in a very difficult position, that any rapprochement, any détente, will be immediately grabbed by the media pack and the Democrats, and the neoconservative Republicans such as Lindsey Graham and John McCain, as proof that Trump has succumbed, that Trump has – in the words of a CNN commentary – "fallen into Putin's trap." He is really between rock and a hard place. Considering the circumstances, Trump has done well and Putin has given him credit for that.

 

theduran.com

Did Bloomberg push fake news about Serbia's future ties to Russia?

Alex Christoforou

3 minutes

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Good propaganda is not about what you say, but about what you omit.

In the case of Serbia, and recent statements from it's new PM Ana Brnabic, EU cheerleading and Russian downgrading may have been the exact context Bloomberg was looking to push to its readers.

Two days ago The Duran reported on a Bloomberg report that Serbia's Prime Minister, Ana Brnabic, said she'd continue a path started by her predecessor, President Aleksandar Vucic, to make the country ready for EU membership by the time her term ends in 2020.

Bloomberg reported that Ana Brnabic said, "if Serbia is forced to choose between closer ties with Russia and joining the European Union, it will side with the latter, the country's new prime minister said."

According to Bloomberg, Brnabic said sentiments towards Russia can't be disregarded, "but our strategic path is the EU.''

"The EU is where we're going – that's clear.''

"We do have emotional ties with Russia because of tradition, culture and religion. There are many people in Serbia who completely perceive Russia as our big brother, our protector."

Bloomberg reported that "Brnabic's statement was the clearest yet on the Balkan state's direction as it seeks to re-integrate itself with western Europe while keeping hold of its tight relationship with Russia."

Now reports from Serbia and Russia show that PM Brnabic's words were taken out of context by Bloomberg, with much of her statements about Serbia's relations with Russia, and policy towards the EU, conspicuously omitted by the US mainstream media outlet.

The Serbian PM proved this point by passing along a full transcript of her recent interview with Bloomberg to Russia's ambassador in Belgrade, Aleksandr Chepurin.

The review of the Bloomberg transcript was announced on Thursday by Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

B92 reports…

TASS reported late on Thursday that Zakharova said Chepurin met with Brnabic "to determine what exactly she said (during the interview)."

During her meeting with Chepurin, Brnabic "assured Russia's ambassador that her words about the country's alleged choice of the European Union (membership, over closer ties with Russia) were misinterpreted by US media," TASS reported, and quoted Zakharova as saying:

"The Serbian prime minister said her words had been misinterpreted by the US news agency, and handed over a full transcript of her interview with Bloomberg, which had no words attributed to her. We judge by these explanations."

 

Openly Gay Serbia Premier-Designate to Head Pro-Russia Gov't

usnews.com

Openly Gay Serbia Premier-Designate to Head Pro-Russia Gov't | World News

4-5 minutes

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June 27, 2017, at 8:28 a.m.

Openly Gay Serbia Premier-Designate to Head Pro-Russia Gov't

 

In this photo taken Friday, March 24, 2017, a former Labor Minister Aleksandar Vulin, right, stands behind Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, in Belgrade, Serbia. Serbia's future first woman and openly gay prime minister Ana Brnabic has proposed the staunchly pro-Russian official, and former Labor Minister Aleksandar Vulin as the defense minister, damping hopes in the west that her nomination signals the country's shift away from Moscow's influence. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic) The Associated Press

By DUSAN STOJANOVIC, Associated Press

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Serbia's future prime minister on Tuesday proposed a staunchly pro-Russia official as the defense minister, damping hopes in the West that her nomination signaled a shift away from Moscow's influence.

State TV said Prime Minister-designate Ana Brnabic proposed a list of Cabinet ministers for adoption by parliament. It included Aleksandar Vulin, a former labor minister, to head the Defense Ministry.

As a government minister, Vulin has called NATO — which bombed Serbia in 1999 over its crackdown against ethnic Albanian separatists — an "evil" organization and has taken part in numerous verbal clashes with officials in neighboring Kosovo, Croatia and Bosnia that fueled ethnic tensions in the Balkans.

Brnabic's list also includes several other openly pro-Russian and anti-Western officials, including Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic.

Brnabic, who would be conservative Serbia's first female and openly gay government leader, is expected to take office this week after a vote in parliament, which is considered a formality.

When Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic earlier this month nominated the U.S.- and U.K.-educated Brnabic to succeed him as prime minister, it was seen as his attempt to calm Western concerns that Serbia was getting too close to Russia despite its proclaimed goal of joining the European Union.

It was always clear that by nominating Brnabic, who gained no real political experience as local administration minister in Vucic's government, the autocratic leader would retain power from his presidential position, which is formally ceremonial.

"If it's true that Vulin will be the defense minister, whose decision is that?" Vuk Jeremic, a former foreign minister who was a candidate in the April presidential election, told N1 television.

"If this is her choice of people, that is not an encouraging start," Jeremic said.

Serbia, along with Bosnian Serbs, remains the only real Russian ally in the Balkans. The Kremlin has promised to boost Serbia's military and has launched a major propaganda campaign to keep it away from Euro-Atlantic integrations.

Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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NATO member-states to be sued for 1999 attack on Serbia

b92.net

NATO member-states to be sued for 1999 attack on Serbia - Society

7-9 minutes

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A legal team is being put together in order to file lawsuits against NATO countries that took part in the 1999 bombing of Serbia.

Source: Sputnik Thursday, June 8, 2017 | 13:13

 

(Getty Images, illustration purposes, file)

These countries will be sued for material and non-material damage inflicted on individual citizens.

Sputnik is reporting that the forming of the team has been proposed by the Serbian Royal Academy and is planned to bring together the best lawyers from Serbia, but also from EU states, Russia, China, and India. The team of experts will be led by Srdjan Aleksic, a well known Nis-based lawyer.

"We will sue NATO member-states, participants in the 1999 aggression on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The 20 countries that directly or indirectly took part in the aggression. The lawsuits will be filed against individual member-states of the alliance," Aleksic explained for Sputnik.

The legal process will not take place before the International Court of Justice - but in each of the sued countries, individually.

"We consider their courts to have jurisdiction, because these countries have violated, above all, Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, that prohibits aggression against any country. NATO has violated Articles 5 and 6 of its own statute, because it is a defensive, not an offensive alliance. International law has been breached, above all those conventions prohibiting aggression and use of force against a sovereign country," he continued.

The legal team will put together nearly 20 cases backed by firm material evidence, collected from medical documents that indicate a causal relationship between NATO's use of (depleted) uranium ammunition, and the increased number of cancer cases in Serbia.

"Between 10 and 15 tons of uranium have been dropped on the territory of then Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro). The number of those ill with cancer is alarming. 2.5 percent of Serbia's population is diagnosed with malignant diseases each year, i.e., 33,000 people. One child is diagnosed every day. Since 1999, the number of cancer patients has grown five times. The population is falling ill on a mass scale, especially in southern Serbia and in Kosovo and Metohija," Aleksic said.

He stressed that during the aggression, so-called hazard facilities - chemical and petrochemical industry sites - have also been targeted, although this is prohibited by international law of war.

"Our prominent scientists, doctors, oncologists - above all Dr. Danica Grujicic and toxicologist Radomir Kovacevic, who have been researching this for years - will take part in preparing the lawsuits. The fact that a court in Italy found the state guilty for sending their Carabinieri to Kosovo and Metohija, to locations attacked with depleted uranium, speaks in favor of the veracity of our claim. 45 soldiers got cancer, and Italy has been paying big damages for this. Between EUR 200,000 and 1.2 million per soldier. Our claim is based precisely on this - that even the soldiers who took part in the aggression have gotten sick, and that their countries have been paying damages because of this. There is a soldier in Great Britain who was in contact with uranium in Serbia, and there is a ruling ordering Britain to pay damages to him," says Aleksic.

The lawsuits will also cover the consequences of NATO's use of cluster bombs, that resulted in the deaths of a great number of people, and the bombing of chemical and petrochemical facilities, that resulted in large oil and gasoline spills.

According to Aleksic, "it is very important to study and prepare the lawsuits well" - because some others filed against NATO members have been thrown out in the meantime.

 

Serbia and the Balkans Wars: The Future Belongs to Those Who Do Not Surrender

globalresearch.ca

Serbia and the Balkans Wars: The Future Belongs to Those Who Do Not Surrender | Global Research

By Milos Kovic

6-8 minutes

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How accurate is the theory that there are tragic events of exceptional strength that really shape the identity of a nation? How is this happening and what if we do not learn a lesson out of those experiences?

– The prominent French writer Renan wrote in his lecture "What is a Nation?" that people are often connected by memories of shared suffering, and Serbs are no exception. Today, when Yugoslavia is no more, there is no reason why Jasenovac should not be brought back to the center of the Serbian identity, just like the Jews did with Auschwitz.

During the Balkan wars and the First World War, we had a great victory, but also a lot of suffering. We were always criticized for building our identity on suffering, defeat, and therefore, for hardly looking towards the future.

Milos Kovic

– When Americans ask you a question like that, then they should be reminded of the Hollywood spectacle "300" about Leonidas, that they filmed and earned a great amount of money. What are the ethics taught in this film? It's not about celebrating only defeats. Battles are fought to be won. Nobody wants to die. War ethics require courage, wisdom and victory. And defeats teach us lessons and they should make us wiser.

If we draw a parallel between the behavior of the Allies in the First World War and what happened in the nineties, we can see that in both cases the Serbian interests were crushed and betrayed, but despite all harmful decisions for us, we still walk persistently toward the European integration.

– In 1914, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had a stick in one hand, and in another it had a bag, and they offered Serbia integration, better roads, better health care, better schools. The only condition was to give up independence. The EU today is having the same behavior, even worse. The stick is thicker and the carrots are thinner. It is interesting that, after all, at present a large percentage of Serbs are ready to plunge the country into the EU and to give up sovereignty and freedom, and in 1914 it was unthinkable.

Why was it unthinkable?

– The answers are within ourselves. We are subject to special treatment by the great powers who applied similar methods in Hawaii, the Philippines, the Wild West, in India. But we cannot always blame someone else. The Serbian honor was famed by Serbs from the Republika Srpska and the former Republic of Krajina (in Croatia). Just look at the unfortunate Montenegro, the former Serbian Sparta. Or our desolate Belgrade, which is still acting as if it was the capital of Yugoslavia. Compared to our ancestors, we are really distinguished by cowardice, fatalistic passivity and laziness. All this, however, can change quickly. Vladislav Petković Dis (Serbian poet) lamented in the same way over the Serbian vices, on the eve of the big victories 1912-1918. We only need determination, intelligence and courage.

Nowadays many people believe that our defeats from the end of the 20th century are somehow rooted in victories from the Balkan wars and the First World War, because at that time we got a new State?

– I would say that this kind of debate relates only to the nineties. The generations fleeing the military mobilization and protesting against their own country, at a time when the Serbs across the Drina river were fighting for survival, are now running from their own weakness and are accusing their grandfathers and great-grandfather. Those fathers plunged a mighty sword into the hard stone, and their sons, not being able to pull out that sword, are accusing their fathers for of it. Our grandfathers left us a great Yugoslav State. We, our generation, we were not able to preserve it. It is easy to blame the dead for our own weakness. Let's look in the mirror and answer the question about where we were and what we did in the nineties when Yugoslavia was broken down and what we are doing today when they are trying to break down our Serbia.

What actually happened to the Albanians in 1912, 1913, 1914, and after 1941?

– It was offered to the Muslim Albanians, who were a privileged class in the Ottoman Empire, to live in a relatively well-ordered and modern Yugoslav State instead of the Ottoman Empire. As equal citizens with their former serfs. Unfortunately, most of them refused. The hostility of Albanians towards the new State was based on class and religious grounds. That is why in the forthcoming World War, the majority sided with the occupiers and enemies of the Serbian people and they again committed genocide against the Serbian people in Kosovo and Macedonia, but also against the Macedonians.

To what extent is the issue explored in the Serbian historiography? Were there any punishment and reprisals in the Serbian army?

– Yes, there were. There are preserved commands from officers during the retreat across Albania stating that any robbery of Albanian civilians would be severely punished. In the short story "Resimić the drummer" Dragisa Vasic describes one such case, when the starving Serbian recruits, while crossing Albania, steal fowl in an Albanian village, and at the request of peasants, the Serbian officer shoots dead those kids. It was a real historical event.

Simon Sebag Montefiore in his "Jerusalem", considers the Albanians very seriously and notes that they have grown as a strong ethical group since the beginning of the 19th century. By what means did we underestimate them as a group and a political power?

– It must be said that Belgrade really underestimated the Albanian nationalism and that it was generally despised. We were unable to encourage professionals for Albanian studies. There were some, but not enough. It is still difficult to find one who would deal with this important question. Unlike Albanians who, at least in Kosovo and Metohija, were learning Serbian, we were not learning Albanian. So, there has been some underestimation, especially of the Albanian nationalism, and we paid the price. Nevertheless, we must not waste time on blaming ourselves, we must not lose faith in our own strength and we should not forget that the future belongs to those who do not surrender.

 Milos Kovic is Assistant professor at the Department of History, Faculty of Philosophy, Belgrade University. He is the author of  "The only path: Entente Powers and the defense of Serbia in 1915."

Translated from Serbian by Svetlana Maksovic

Original:

Source: ZURNALIST.RS 31.05.2017.

The Duran, English

 

nytimes.com

A Serbian Election Erodes Democracy

The Editorial Board

 

Protesters in Belgrade, Serbia, on Wednesday against the outgoing Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic’s election as the country’s next president. Andrej Isakovic/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

With Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic’s decisive victory in the presidential election on April 2, Serbia has edged closer to autocracy. Though the presidency is largely ceremonial, Mr. Vucic can now handpick his successor as prime minister and consolidate his power, since Parliament and the judiciary are all but locked up by Mr. Vucic’s Serbian Progressive Party. Having severely curtailed press freedom and marginalized political opposition, his concentration of power bodes ill for Serbian democracy.

Though Mr. Vucic won more than 50 percent of the vote, far surpassing the second-place candidate, Sasa Jankovic, who won a little over 16 percent, the election was marred by accusations of voter intimidation and a near total domination of Serbia’s media by Mr. Vucic and his party.

It speaks volumes about many Serbians’ cynicism that Luka Maksimovic, a 25-year-old student who ran — initially as a joke — under the pseudonym of Ljubisa “Beli” Preletacevic — a name that alludes to someone who switches political parties for personal gain — won 9 percent of the vote. But Serbians’ political disaffection goes beyond cynicism.

Every day since the election, thousands of protesters, mostly young, have turned out in the streets of Belgrade, blowing whistles and brandishing banners with slogans such as “Down with dictatorship” and “Vucic, you stole the election.” Mr. Vucic boasts that the fact that the government hasn’t cracked down on the protests “is a sign of democracy.” Given the hideous repression of public protest in many autocratic states, he has a point — or, perhaps he simply doesn’t view whistling students to be much of a threat now that the election is over.

In any case, Mr. Vucic could show a commitment to democracy by restoring freedom of the press, allowing access by the public to dissenting views and independent sources of information, and ordering an independent investigation of allegations of voter intimidation with a promise any involved will be punished.

European leaders who see in strongmen such as Mr. Vucic a force for stability — and who hope Mr. Vucic will make good on his promise to keep Serbia on track to join the European Union even as Russia’s influence in the Balkans grows — must avoid the temptation to look the other way as Mr. Vucic and his allies seize monopoly control over the country’s political institutions and its press.

To accede to such control by Mr. Vucic would be a betrayal of the European Union’s core values, and of the many Serbians who look to the European Union as a beacon of democratic rights and freedoms at a time when Eastern and Central European leaders are turning their backs on democracy.

 

LAWSUIT AGAINST CROATIAN IN AMERICA

 

REPUBLIC OF SERBIAN KRAJINA

GOVERNMENT AND ASSEMBLY IN EXILE

11000 Beograd, Zmaj Jovina 15

Phone. 063 / 495-051, vladarsk@gmail.com

Br. 3 6/1 7 - 14th III - 7525 (201 7)

 

EU DELEGATION IN THE REPUBLIC OF SERBIA

Avenija 19a, Vladimira Popovića 4 0 / V

Novi Beograd: Tel: +381.11.3083200 
Fax: +381.11.3083201 
E-mail: delegation-serbia@eeas.europa.

 

LAWSUIT AGAINST CROATIAN IN AMERICA

 

Dear representatives of the European Union in Serbia, please, on behalf of the 800,000 exiled Serbs from the Republic of Serbian Krajina and the Croatian - from 1990 to 1995 and for the truth about the Croatian crimes of genocide in World War II, when the Croatian army killed more than a million Serbs and tens of thousands of Jews and Roma to take into account that this is the truth of both Croatian genocide, as presented to a group of Serbian prosecutors from the Republic of Serbian Krajina and Croatian, a lawsuit out of court in Chicago has handed the US Ambassador to Zagreb - Croatian presidents, Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic. So, the judicial prosecution of Chicago, in the United Državamaje filed a request that the Republic of Croatia reparations payment, Serbs, Roma and Jews as war crimes under international law, no statute of limitations.

What is important in this court procedure is the reaction of the present Croatian officials, who said that the Republic of Croatia is not the successor of the fascist Independent State of Croatian and Croatia is still applied uniforms, ranks and His anti sayings Croatian fascist armies in World War II. To avoid this truth, today Croatian statesmen declared that the Republic of Croatia is not the successor of the fascist Croatian, but to be the successor to the anti-fascist movement during World War II, established by the Communists and the decisions of Parliament and the Government of Yugoslavia in 1945.

Please that the institutions of the European Union to take into account this statement by Croatian officials, as is true only to that decision in 1945 of Yugoslavia, Croatia declared a federal unit, in which two equal Croats and Serbs. In such a state, equal rights had Croats and Serbs - the national state and its ethnic and historical territories.

Thus Croatia was a multinational, not only the state of the Croatian people. It was like Switzerland and Belgium. Since in Belgium could one nation (Walloons) to seize statehood status to another nation (Flemish), as the European Union has allowed that the statehood status Croats seize the Serbs? This is Croatia did in 1990, when the Serbs declared nedržavotvornim people and legitimize the Serbs only national minority in Croatia. Thereafter, they were expelled from the Serbian ethnic and cal the country in 1995.

It is obvious that Croatia since 1990, the program returned the fascist Independent State of Croatian - Hitler's faithful allies from 1941 to 1945, as the expulsion of 800,000 Serbs from 1990 to 1995, the Croats conducted serious crime of genocide against the Serbs, how to i did in world war II.

In addition to these irrefutable facts and in the spirit of the content of the complaint against the Croatian in the United States, we are confident that you will ask its members Hrvats to facilitate the return of displaced Serbs in the Republic of Serbian Krajina, with the return of their fixed assets and all human rights, as well as the Serbian law on its own statehood, what have i Flemings and Walloons in Belgium.

I offer you one crucial fact - the Serbs had a statehood with the Constitution and in Austria from 1630 to 1861, but at that time the Croats had their own state institutions.

 

With respect,

Milorad Buha, Prime Minister Landscapes

 

forbes.com

Bungled Intervention In Kosovo Risks Unraveling: A New Deal Needed For Peace

Doug Bandow

Washington’s policy in the Balkans never made much sense. The U.S. wanted to keep some nations together and dismantle others. American officials deplored ethnic cleansing in some cases and ignored other instances.

The only principle which explained Washington’s actions was that the Serbs always lose. With Kosovo and Serbia now shouting threats of war, it’s time for the U.S. and Europe to take a more even-handed approach.

A train from Russia, decorated with the Serbian flag and artwork featuring Serbian churches, monasteries and medieval towns, plans to begin trips traveling from Belgrade to Kosovska Mitrovica.  (OLIVER BUNIC/AFP/Getty Images)

Yugoslavia was an artificial creation of the Versailles Treaty. It survived after World War II due to the repression of Communist dictator Josef Broz Tito and fear of invasion by the Soviet Union. But Tito died in 1980 and the Soviet Union collapsed a decade later, eroding the cement which held together the ethnic and religious polyglot nation.

In the ensuing political vacuum Slobodan Milosevic won power by playing the Serbian nationalist card. Other ethnic groups responded by establishing their own nations. The Balkans erupted.

The first Bush administration originally supported Yugoslavia’s territorial integrity, but Germany recognized Slovenia’s secession, spurring Yugoslavia’s serial break-up. The U.S. and Europeans supported creation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (divided among Muslims, ethnic Serbs, and ethnic Croats) and Croatia (with a large ethnic Serb population in the Krajina region). However, after encouraging the break-up of Yugoslavia, the allies suddenly opposed secession of ethnic Croats and Serbs from Bosnia and ethnic Serbs from Croatia.

While Serb atrocities were common and noteworthy, Muslims and Croats were not innocents. Nevertheless, Washington and Brussels expected ethnic Serb minorities to politely suffer under other ethnic majorities, even when faced with ethnic cleansing. For instance, Croatia, buttressed by U.S. aid, launched a large-scale military offensive against the Krajina Serbs, causing hundreds of thousands to flee. Years later I visited the region: the rural landscape was dotted with abandoned farms and ruined Orthodox churches, while the façades of urban buildings were pockmarked with bullet holes. However, Washington refused to acknowledge, let alone criticize, this episode of ruthless ethnic cleansing.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (C) smiles as she walks out of a store named in her honor, which is located next to an unseen statue of her husband, former US president Bill Clinton, on a stop driving from the airport to Pristina. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)

The bias persists today. Last week Washington sanctioned Milorad Dodik, President of Republika Srpska, the ethnic Serb section of tripartite Bosnia, for “obstructing” the U.S.-backed Dayton Accords, which forced ethnic Serbs to remain in Muslim-dominated Bosnia. Dodik responded by calling the U.S. ambassador to Bosnia “a proven enemy.” Certainly Washington rates that title from ethnic Serbs everywhere.

Kosovo became the next Balkan crisis. Intimately tied to Serbian history and culture, the region’s population shifted over the years with an influx of ethnic Albanians, creating a large majority. An insurgency arose in response to Belgrade's repressive rule. However, U.S. officials originally denounced the guerrillas as "terrorists." But ethnic Albanians were media savvy. In the summer of 1998 I met with a top aide to local opposition leader Ibrahim Rugova, who later became Kosovo’s first president. The former told me that ethnic Albanians needed Western military intervention, and that required getting the conflict onto CNN. Hence the sometimes dubious atrocity claims amid a brutal counter-insurgency campaign that killed civilians as well as combatants.

So the U.S. and NATO entered the war, despite the absence of any security threat to America or Europe. The Milosevic government responded by expelling thousands of ethnic Albanians. After the victorious allies ousted Serb security forces, the triumphant ethnic Albanian Kosovars launched their own campaign of ethnic cleansing, kicking out around a quarter of a million Serbs, Roma, and others. The U.S. and Europeans, though occupying the territory, did little. A few years later another round of ethnic Albanian violence drove many of the remaining ethnic Serbs into camps or to Kosovo’s north, in which a majority of residents were ethnic Serbs. Pristina acquired a dubious reputation, essentially a gangster statelet ruled by war criminals. It was a black hole for organized crime, where Saudi Arabia, in particular, underwrote efforts to radicalize heretofore moderate and secular Muslims.

There are worse places to live and Serbia has its own problems, but Kosovo has not earned the right to hold ethnic Serbs in political bondage. For instance, Freedom House’s 2016 “Freedom in the World” report rated Kosovo as only “partly free,” with middling scores for both political rights and civil liberties. Among other problems, “journalists report frequent harassment and intimidation, and occasional physical attacks.” Crimes against non-ethnic Albanians are rarely prosecuted. The courts suffer from political interference and bribery. Corruption facilitates human trafficking and more.

Human Rights Watch said “human rights protections progressed slowly” last year, with “serious abuses” remaining. For instance, there were “threats and attacks against journalists.” The U.S. State Department put together a 36-page human rights report. Among the problems: “Reported police mistreatment of detainees; substandard physical conditions in prisons; drug abuse, corruption, and favoritism in prisons; lengthy pretrial detention and judicial inefficiency resulting in mistrials.” There also were restrictions on religious liberty, intimidation of the media, and attacks on displaced people returning to their homes. A European Commission report last year found many of the same problems: “slow and inefficient” courts, “insufficient accountability of judicial officials,” and extensive corruption.

 

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Mattis NATO ultimatum stutters European collective defence moods

Contributor: Pola Zafra-Davis

Posted: 02/22/2017

 

Comments on the US's conditional commitment to NATO by Def. Secretary General Jim Mattis, in spite of later reassurances from himself and VP Mike Pence, have been met with strong reaction by European leaders.

Responses so far have ranged from agreement and support from the UK's Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon, to the steadfast resolve of Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel in stating that Germany does not plan to accelerate the 2% spending goal sooner than the 2024 deadline agreed upon during the 2016 NATO summit in Wales.

Reaffirmations of US support in NATO soon followed. But despite Mattis, Tillerson and Pence's attempts to dampen anxiety, the renewed comments on burden-sharing signals uncertainty for European leaders on how much they can depend on the alliance and the Trump administration. The American January and February statements to the press in Brussels and in Munich come at a time when Europe's defence and security is being stretched to new extremes between refugee migration in the South and a resurgent Russia in the East.

Timeline of Events

Last Wednesday, General Mattis rattled Europe by issuing what appeared to be an ultimatum for the NATO 2% GDP benchmark of defence spending. The statement – "No longer can the American taxpayer carry a disproportionate share of the defense of Western values...Americans cannot care more for your children's future security than you do" – was made during a meeting with NATO defence ministers in Brussels. Mattis also gave a strict deadline that the spending has to reach 2% by the end of the year or the US would 'moderate' its support in NATO operations.

The pressure towards an increase in NATO contributions came a month after President Trump's described NATO as obsolete during an interview with Germany's Bild newspaper and the Times of London.

"Number one, it was obsolete, because it was designed many, many years ago," he said. "Number two, the countries weren't paying what they're supposed to be paying".

Allegations by the US on European under-spending on defence came after NATO President Jens Stoltenberg's encouraging words at a pre-ministerial press conference. He claimed that, overall, NATO members have increased their defence spending by 3.8% from last year – an increase of approximately $10bn. But presently, only four European NATO members have met the 2% guideline: Estonia, the UK, Greece  and Poland.

In a global context, relative to other global powers, Europe's defence budget has been in steady decline since 2005. From 2005 to 2015, overall defence spending in the EU 27 dropped 11% and landed at it lowest levels of GDP contribution at an average of 1.4%. This amounts to decreases of 2bn euro per year over the past 10 years. This sits is in stark contrast to the US contribution, which has invested twice as much in defence spending, contributing 4.5% of its GDP.

US attempts to reassure European Allies at the Munich Security Conference

After the NATO Brussels meeting, the Munich Security Conference (17-19 February) saw Mattis take a less severe tone. Mattis addressed the audience of military leaders and lawmakers on Friday, saying "The reality is that American security is permanently tied to the security of Europe"

He added that "it is a fair demand that all who benefit from the best alliance in the world carry their proportionate share of the necessary costs to defend our freedoms."

At the same conference, Pence reassured European Allies on Saturday:

"Today, on behalf of President Trump, I bring you this assurance. The United States of America strongly supports NATO and will be unwavering in our commitment to our transatlantic alliance."

Participants have noted that despite the calming tones, the high-level US delegation made no mention of Russia, Iran, Syria, or China. This has supported some commentators' previous views that the Alliance has lost its shared values, a sense of purpose or common vision. Instead, more cynical voices view NATO as  being used on a transactional basis between the US and European countries with Europe 'buying' the US's commitment through defence spending.

On Saturday 18 Feburary, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault lamented in a tweet that Michael Pence spoke of unity at the Munich Conference but made no mention of the European Union. The omission of Europe's supranational political and economic bloc from the dialogue indicates a division in transatlantic attitude.

Europe...poised to stand on its own?

 

Image courtesy of the European Defence Agency

Juncker followed Mattis's statements with a call to "bundle their (Europeans') defence spending better and spend the money more efficiently," while also denouncing the ultimatum by remarking, "I am very much against letting ourselves be pushed into this."

Even prior to Trump's electoral victory last November, European NATO members already started developing action plans for greater defence cooperation amongst themselves. European leaders have touted Europe-wide initiatives since summer 2016 and the September Bratislava Summit. These initiatives included plans to create an EU defence planning headquarters, an increase in R&D cooperation in defence technologies, and the creation of a European defence fund.

On November 2016, the EU Commission unveiled the European Defence Action Plan (EDAP), a three-pillared plan to a) launch a European Defence Fund, b) foster investments in defence supply chains and c) reinforcing a Single Market for Defence.

The key difference between the US's strongly worded suggestions and Europe's planning was that the message of last years' European talks, proposals and declarations were based on increasing the efficiency rather than the overall amount of national defence spending. 

The cries for burden-sharing have existed in NATO memory since the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1992, when the (now-defunct) Western European Union lacked the material capacity to resolve the crisis. The memory of the US intervention in the Kosovo crisis, NATO's Operation Allied Force in 1999, and the ISAF NATO mission in Afghanistan, further drove home the imbalance of military capabilities. Europe is comparatively lacking in strategic transport, command and control, ISR and ground support.

 

France and Germany are now collaborating on a joint-fleet of C-I30Js

Perhaps as a compound reaction to Trump's radical executive orders towards migration, remarks on NATO obsolescence and his renewed line on NATO defence spending; France and Germany have made clear their cooperative acts. The two countries formally announced at the NATO summit, the creation of a joint-fleet of Lockheed Martin C-130J transport planes to later join a Dutch-led fleet of  Airbus A330 tanker planes. Belgium and Norway are also being courted to join the group. German Defence Minister, Ursula von der Leyon had hoped to unveil the plan to Gen. Mattis as evidence of Europe's commitment to NATO. This comes alongside other projects with Norway, Romania and the Czech Republic.

Threats to lessen the US's role in NATO places the pre-existing Berlin-Plus Agreements in peril. These 2002 agreements allowed European  members of NATO, access to NATO (importantly, the US's) platforms and weapons to perform European missions where NATO chooses not to intervene. Since 2002, Berlin Plus has been used twice -- Once in Operation Concordia in the Former Yugoslav Republic in Macedonia, and a second time in EUFOR Althea in Bosnia & Herzegovina. 

While it is one thing to say that the US will not get involved in missions within Europe's geographic interests, it is another to potentially deny access to the US's arsenal as part of the Alliance-commitment. Despite increasing speeches on autonomy and self-sufficiency, current plans for European-specific defence were shared with the public as a basis to ultimately complement and strengthen overall NATO capabilities.

The startlingly stringent tone of the Trump administration is in contrast to the EU-NATO joint declaration signed in Warsaw in July 2016, many months before Trump took office. The declaration was signed by the President of the European Commission, President of the European Council and the NATO secretary general, and for European leaders, symbolises support in the implementation of the EDAP and the Implementation Plan of the EU Global Strategy in the area of Defence and Security.

The Tug-of-War between Humanitarian missions and Hard Defence on the Continent

Calls by the US for European states to increase defence spending come at odds with most European NATO members that have politically and financially invested in a uniquely European project. The urgency of a defence increase highlights the tension that European countries experience between funnelling money into the 'Liberal' soft power emphasis of the EU – a.k.a. 'Civilian Power Europe' – or focussing on building their traditional hard power.

The President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, made a point in the divergent security goals of Europe vs non-European NATO members. After Mattis's quotes on the need for European members to increase their spending, Juncker stated to the media, "If you look at what Europe is doing in defence, plus development aid, plus humanitarian aid, the comparison with the United States looks rather different. Modern politics cannot just be about raising defence spending."

Development Aid reports from the OECD appear to confirm this claim. While the US is at the top of the list for the overall amount of money spent, the Top 10 list for 'donor amount relative to GDP' is headed by European countries such as Sweden, Norway, Luxembourg, Denmark and – again – the UK. The EU's own aid budget is taken from a pooling of member state resources in the EU budget via a combination of VAT, import tax duties and national contributions of about 0.7% of GNI. In 2016, the EU aid budget rose 16% with the humanitarian aid budget rising to 1.1B EUR, along with an additional 200M EUR being set aside in 2017 for 'exceptional' circumstances. 

The heightened alternative security spending of European NATO members comes at a time of migratory crisis following the turmoil in Syria, Libya and other areas of MENA. The EU had already pledged 3B EUR to Turkey for helping to stem the tide of refugees, and an 1.8B EUR emergency trust fund to Africa, in addition to the EU's pre-existing humanitarian aid budget. While by no means a permanent measure, the sudden spiked increase of humanitarian, development and migration-related spending since 2015 brings to light the multi-faceted nature of contemporary European defence and security.

As such, the vague threat of a US pull-out from the North Atlantic Alliance brings an immediacy to defence spending in the already competing demands of Europe's national budgets.

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Thank you, for your interest in, Mattis NATO ultimatum stutters European collective defence moods.

Contributor: Pola Zafra-Davis

 

 

 

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