spiegel.de

Former Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte: "I Keep Telling Myself that Justice Will Prevail"

Mathieu von Rohr, Maximilian Popp, DER SPIEGEL

9-12 minutes

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DER SPIEGEL: Ms. Del Ponte, in your book, the world of 2021 sounds a lot like a jungle, in which the strongest prevail. Why is that?

Del Ponte: The world is still dependent on the will of the strongest countries. It was only possible to establish an international criminal justice system because the U.S. and Russia supported it. Unfortunately, this political will has evaporated.

DER SPIEGEL: You managed to drag some of the worst war criminals of the 20th century into court. What impression did these men make on you?

Del Ponte: Nothing special really. They’re just normal people, unfortunately. I would like to have seen them as monsters, but they aren’t. One thing they do share is a belief that the end justifies the means.

DER SPIEGEL: Former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević is one of the men you prosecuted. When you met him, did anything about him surprise you?

Del Ponte: The only thing that surprised me was the way he questioned witnesses during the trial. Many of them still saw the president in him and were cowed. He even got some of them to withdraw their testimony.

DER SPIEGEL: He intimidated witnesses?

Del Ponte: Our judges were, of course, extremely accommodating with him. "Mr. Milošević, how are you? Did you sleep well? Do you feel well enough to answer some questions?” When I was in the courtroom, I had the thousands of victims in my mind. Milošević defended himself, which gave him the opportunity to hold his political speeches in court. After two years, we had almost reached the end of the trial. I swore to myself: Starting on Monday, I will say what has to be said. And then the news arrived that Milošević had died in his cell.

DER SPIEGEL: Once the trials ended, did you feel like you understood these people a bit better?

Del Ponte: We understand what led them to spread ethnic hatred. But these culprits never expressed remorse or introspection. They never understood that what they did was wrong, even though they were arrested and convicted. They postured as heroes. That’s why I was consistently in favor of long sentences, so that they would have time to recognize their culpability.

DER SPIEGEL: Was it particularly meaningful for you, as a woman, to prosecute these men?

Del Ponte: Not in The Hague. But it was different when I was a public prosecutor in Ticino. I remember that we once arrested a mafioso and it was up to me to question him at the police station. When a police officer pulled a revolver out of the drawer, the mafioso winked at me and said: "Dottoressa, if I had known about the weapon, you and I would already be on our way to Naples as a couple.”

DER SPIEGEL: You write in your book that you were criticized for focusing more of your attention on the Serbian offenders.

Del Ponte: Of course, because the Serbs committed more crimes than the Croatians or the Kosovars.

DER SPIEGEL: Is that true?

Del Ponte: it is true that the international community, NATO, had proof of the crimes committed by the Serbs, and they provided that to us, which made things move faster. But it is also true that the U.S. didn’t want us to scrutinize war crimes in Kosovo, for political reasons. We had a lot of trouble investigating the KLA, the Kosovar militia, because the U.S. slowed us down.

DER SPIEGEL: Did U.S. politicians tell you explicitly not to investigate the Kosovars?

Del Ponte: No, because then I could have complained in public. But Madeleine Albright, who was secretary of state at the time, told me over the phone: Carla, slowly, slowly. Be careful with (former KLA leader Ramush) Haradinaj, otherwise there will be unrest in Kosovo.

DER SPIEGEL: You were self-confident enough to pay little heed to what world leaders expected of you.

Del Ponte: Of course. And they also knew that when they told me to do something, I would do the opposite. And the statutes make it absolutely clear: The chief prosecutor is independent.

DER SPIEGEL: You were consistently exposed to political pressure. In Yugoslavia, you complained that you weren’t allowed to investigate NATO. In Rwanda, you weren’t able to investigate the Tutsis.

Del Ponte: International justice can only work if it is backed by political will. If that political will is lacking, there isn’t much you can do.

DER SPIEGEL: How is that expressed?

Del Ponte: You never know exactly what the motivations are for hindering an investigation, but they were there. An example: NATO was present in Yugoslavia and could easily have arrested (Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan) Karadžić and (Ratko) Mladić, but they didn’t. And yet the Yugoslavia Tribunal was ultimately successful anyway.

DER SPIEGEL: A lot of people thought at the time that an international criminal justice system was emerging.

Del Ponte: Yes, that’s what we thought – fantastic. The Yugoslavia Tribunal was a success, Rwanda was as well, even though some suspects were still at large. And then came the permanent criminal court, and we thought: We have finally made it. There is an international jurisdiction, and it will have a preventative effect. But within just a few years, it started going downhill.

DER SPIEGEL: Do you have an explanation for what happened?

Del Ponte: It mostly has to do with Russia and the U.S. It was primarily thanks to these two countries that the international justice system emerged in the first place. But as soon as these two countries lost interest in it, particularly the U.S., it was a signal.

DER SPIEGEL: Is international justice always the justice of the powerful?

Del Ponte: At the moment, that is unfortunately the case. Founding the International Criminal Court was a huge step. But that alone isn’t enough. You also need people who represent it with self-confidence.

DER SPIEGEL: A lot depends on who occupies the position of chief prosecutor?

Del Ponte: Of course. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who knew me from Davos, realized that I never let up, that I keep digging. For that reason, those in power ultimately had to listen to me. That was the case with (former German Chancellor) Gerhard Schröder. It took awhile before I was able to get a meeting with him, but then he became one of my most important allies in the arrest of Milošević.

DER SPIEGEL: You were the target of several attacks and received numerous threats. Were you afraid?

Del Ponte: Over time, I grew used to the danger and to life under police protection.

DER SPIEGEL: As a public prosecutor in Switzerland, you worked closely together with Giovanni Falcone, the legendary Italian mafia prosecutor who was murdered in Sicily in 1992.

Del Ponte: Two years before that attack, I was with him in Palermo to question a mafioso. Afterwards, Falcone invited me to go to the beach, but I wanted to take a look around the city instead. That saved our lives, because the mafia had planted a bomb at the place we had intended to visit.

DER SPIEGEL: In your life as a prosecutor, what was your principle motivation?

Del Ponte: My focus was attaining justice for the victims. Victims’ families can only find closure when some form of justice is reestablished.

DER SPIEGEL: The lesson that many despots seem to have learned is that they must only rule with a hard enough fist in order to remain in power.

Del Ponte: Which makes it all the more important that the chief prosecutor in The Hague brings Syrian dictator Bashar Assad into court, for example. If there was an international arrest warrant for Assad, he could no longer leave his country. That was the case with Milošević. And there was, of course, a UN investigative commission for Syria. If I was still chief prosecutor in The Hague, I would immediately request access to the evidence this commission collected against Assad. As chief prosecutor, you have to be active. Otherwise, nothing happens.

DER SPIEGEL: You were part of that commission. One controversial issue that you had to address was who had used chemical weapons in Syria.

Del Ponte: The commission didn’t want it to become public that the rebels had also used chemical weapons. But the proof was clear.

DER SPIEGEL: You took it public on your own. Was that a mistake?

Del Ponte: No. It was necessary. The commission was a sham. The goal was to simulate action, but not to actually hold those who had committed crimes accountable – whether it be Assad or the rebels.

DER SPIEGEL: Could the war in Syria have been prevented?

Del Ponte: Perhaps it couldn’t have been prevented, but it could have been contained. For that, though, the U.S. and the EU would have had get involved diplomatically much earlier. When the situation in Ukraine escalated, European diplomats traveled to Kiev immediately. Ultimately, a major conflagration was warded off there. But nobody was sufficiently interested in Syria.

DER SPIEGEL: Is the UN even still necessary?

Del Ponte: Absolutely. It just finally needs to be given the power that it is granted in its charter. The Security Council is paralyzed. Just look at the example of Israel and Palestine. The members of the Security Council come together, and they talk, but they don’t do anything. That is typical.

DER SPIEGEL: You and the UN are essentially polar opposites. The UN wants to talk, but you want to act.

Del Ponte: That’s why I never liked being there. My office was empty. There wasn’t even a single piece of paper on the desk. The problem is that every country has the right to send officials to the UN. Fully 4,000 people work at UN headquarters in New York. But there often isn’t enough for them to do.

DER SPIEGEL: Assad is still the president of Syria. Other war criminals have also gotten off scot free. Does that make you angry or resigned?

Del Ponte: Neither nor. I keep telling myself that at some point, justice will prevail.

DER SPIEGEL: Where does your hope come from?

Del Ponte: My hope comes from the experience that I have gathered throughout my life. My staff and I built up a lot. That is still there. And somebody will arrive to take up the reins.

 

NATO’s War Against Yugoslavia: The Ghost That Still Haunts Europe

by Rick Rozoff Posted on May 20, 2021

Twenty-two years ago the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was subjected to the 55th straight day of bombardment from the then 19-member North Atlantic Treaty Organization, with 23 days more to go. Many families in Belgrade, Novi Sad and Niš daily fled to bomb shelters during the aerial onslaught. The permanent trauma inflicted on millions of civilians, especially children, is perhaps impossible to calculate. And it has been denied or ignored by Europe and the world. As forgotten as the cluster bomb fragments and depleted uranium left behind by NATO’s “humanitarian intervention.”

The air war was justified by U.S. President Bill Clinton, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and NATO Secretary General Javier Solana as a noble crusade to stop, to employ an expression not uncommon at the time, the “worst genocide since Hitler” in the Serbian province of Kosovo. The operation, Operation Allied Force for NATO, Operation Noble Anvil for the US, began with a barrage of Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from ships and submarines in the Adriatic Sea. In all over 1,000 NATO military aircraft flew 30,000 combat sorties over a nation of slightly more than 10 million people, two million of those in Kosovo; a military bloc whose combined population at the time was some 850 million and which included three of the world’s nuclear powers.

During the war, arguably the most lopsided since the US’s invasion of Grenada in 1983, American and other Western officials maintained a steady drumbeat of increasingly hyperbolic, and unprecedentedly unconscionable, claims of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo killed by Yugoslav forces. On May 16 Defense Secretary William Cohen appeared on Face the Nation and said: “We’ve now seen about 100,000 military-aged men missing….They may have been murdered.” Almost immediately afterward another American official raised that number to 200,000.

The scare tactics worked as NATO’s top military commander, General Wesley Clark, was able to continue daily bombing missions over the small nation months after all targets of military value had been hit, and hit repeatedly. A passenger train, a religious procession, a refugee column, a vacuum cleaner factory, marketplaces, apartment courtyards, the Swiss embassy in Belgrade and the Chinese embassy as well, with three journalists killed and 27 other Chinese injured. Cluster bombs, graphite bombs and depleted uranium ordnance were used widely. No one, not a single individual, has been held accountable for those war crimes. Nor for what should be a war crime and one of the most grave at that: intentionally creating and exaggerating atrocity stories to agitate for and escalate a war. Few Western politicians and journalists would have escaped that charge over their roles in 1999.

When the Yugoslav government of President Slobodan Milosevic was compelled to accede to NATO diktat on June 10, over 200,000 ethnic Serbs, Roma and other minorities left Kosovo with Yugoslav troops, and NATO and its so-called Kosovo Liberation Army cutthroats – for whom and with whom it waged the war – marched into Kosovo. After the latter arrived even more, perhaps a hundred thousand or more, Serbs, Roma, Turks, Jews, Egyptians, Ashkali and members of other ethnic minority communities, along with no few Albanians, fled the province. Numerous Serbs, Roma and Albanian “collaborators” were murdered. (During the air war Britain’s Daily Telegraph reported 100,000 ethnic Albanians fled Kosovo to other parts of Serbia.)

The permanent displacement of hundreds of thousands of non-ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and the expulsion of over a quarter of a million Serbs from Croatia in the early 1990s are the two largest cases of irreversible ethnic cleansing in Europe since World War II. Decades later no one has been held accountable for those crimes either.

Most all of the above has been forgotten if it was ever known. That’s how it was planned. While NATO was celebrating its fiftieth-anniversary jubilee in Washington, D.C. and inducting the first new members since Spain in 1986, and former members of the Warsaw Pact at that – the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland – a high-profile, low-risk war was just the thing to launch new global NATO on the world.

The victim, Yugoslavia, had been mortally wounded; four years later it no longer existed, even on the map. The corpse was expected to rest silently.

But its ghost refuses to disappear. On May 14 Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, responding to a comment by his Slovenian counterpart, Borut Pahor, to the effect that there should be no redrawing of borders in Europe, said:

“We have a differing view on Kosovo’s independence. When I hear that, as Pahor says, there are no border changes without conflict, I agree, and that should be clear to all who have been generating conflicts and wanted to change Serbia’s borders.” That is a reference to the West – the US, European Union and NATO – successfully wrenching Kosovo from Serbia in 2008, in violation of the 1999 Kumanovo Agreement. Vucic backed up his contention that national borders should not be arbitrarily or unilaterally changed by stating that only borders recognized by the United Nations are legitimate. However, he said that a contrary practice had been at work since 1999, the result of “the brutal hypocrisy of Western powers that have no principles, or have principles as needed.”

President Vucic was in Prague, the Czech Republic on May 18 and met there with President Miloš Zeman. Zeman was prime minister of the Czech Republic in 1999 when his country joined NATO and the war against Yugoslavia was launched.

The Czech leader’s spokesman, Jiri Ovcacec, confirmed that “President Miloš Zeman presented public apologies to President Aleksandar Vucic for the [NATO] bombardments of Yugoslavia in 1999,” and that he “personally asked the Serbian people for forgiveness.”

During the war Prague refused NATO’s warplanes the right to land in Czech territory. Today Zeman himself told the press after his meeting with Serbia’s president:

“We were hopelessly looking for at least one more [NATO] country that would join us and come out against [the bombardments of Yugoslavia]. We remained all alone.” Displaying that rarest of virtues for a politician, penitence, he also said his government should have exercised more resolve in demanding the end of the bombing once it had commenced.

When the Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999 it was accompanied by Hungary and Poland, fellow members of the Visegrad Four group in Central Europe. The fourth member, Slovakia, was not invited because the party of three-time prime minister Vladimír Meciar was not to the liking of the US, NATO and the EU. The following year Meciar dropped out of politics, with his Movement for a Democratic Slovakia party colleague Augustín Marián Húska disclosing: “The NATO war against Yugoslavia in 1999 was also a signal to us, to not pursue any vision of political independence anymore. We have seen what will happen to forces that want to be independent.”

On May 7 the governments of Serbia and China commemorated the NATO bombing of China’s embassy in Serbia in 1999. Serbian Minister of Labor, Employment, Veteran and Social Affairs Dr. Darija Kisic Tepavcevic, head of the Association of Journalists of Serbia Vladimir Radomirovic, Chinese ambassador to Serbia Chen Bo and others laid wreaths in honor of three Chinese journalists killed in the attack.

The Chinese ambassador thanked the Serbian people for keeping alive the memory of the victims who, she said, “paid the price of truth, justice, and righteousness with their lives.

“We will never forget the crime conducted by the aggressor, who most brutally violated the human rights, in the name of the so-called protection of human rights.”

If most of the rest of the world has forgotten NATO’s first war and its bloody emergence on the world stage, China and Serbia have not.

On March 26, to mark the beginning of NATO’s air war against Yugoslavia and Serbia’s Remembrance Day for the Victims of the NATO Aggression, Hua Chunying, spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, stated:

“China would like to remind NATO that they still owe a debt of blood to the Chinese people….The dead have passed away, but the living need more vigilance and reflection.”

It’s worth quoting him further as a reminder that the crime of 1999 has indeed haunted not only Europe but the world ever since it was perpetrated; that what is seemingly past is really both prologue and precedent.

“Whether in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya or Syria, we should never forget the lives of ordinary people lost to repeated bombardment, the crumbling walls under the shells, the glorious historical sites consumed by the flames.

“The US and some Western countries have kept their mouths open about human rights and kept their mouths shut about their responsibilities….When they blatantly launched a war against a sovereign country without the Security Council’s authorization, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths and the dispersal of millions of people, did they ever care about the human rights of the people in those countries? Is this what they mean by international rules? Shouldn’t they be held accountable for their war actions?”

Those questions, which had they been asked twenty-two years ago might have spared millions of lives in the nations the Chinese diplomat enumerated and others, need to be asked now and with a passion and insistence hitherto absent.

Rick Rozoff is a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. He has been involved in anti-war and anti-interventionist work in various capacities for forty years. He lives in Chicago, Illinois. He is the manager of Stop NATO. This originally appeared at Anti-Bellum.

 

theepochtimes.com

China's $1 Billion Sweetheart Road to Nowhere in Montenegro

Anders Corr

11-14 minutes

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Commentary

Montenegro, a tiny Balkan nation of under a million inhabitants and about $5.5 billion in GDP (2019), borrowed $1 billion from China to pay China, to build its first highway, that is now stalled after reaching only 24 percent of its planned length. If that makes your head spin, it's because China is running circles around this poor little country in Europe's southeast. And you know what? That country reminds me of America.

Plans for the 170-kilometer (106-mile) highway include 90 tunnels and 40 bridges, all to be built by a Chinese infrastructure company. Now that Montenegro can't pay back the loan, construction stopped, Europe refused to bail the country out, and clauses in the contract could give China "sovereignty of certain parts of the land," according to a recent investigation by Hans von der Brelie in EuroNews.

The road will be a windfall for land-locked Serbia, as it goes from Montenegro's deepwater port in Bar to the country's border. Serbia frequently takes pro-China positions, and allowed joint military exercises in 2019. The new road could certainly be useful for moving Chinese tanks across Montenegro for the next games. I can see why China and Serbia liked the project.

The Diplomat in April described a Serbian "love affair" with China that includes a major investment from a Chinese tire company that renamed the country's soccer league the "Linglong Tire SuperLiga." Do what you want with our sovereignty, but please at least leave our football alone. Nope. (In Chinese: Bù, 不). Serbians and Montenegrins better learn that word, and quickly. Americans too.

The failing deal with China created a major embarrassment for Montenegrin President Milo Đukanović, who inked the contract. He charged ahead with his own little silk road of asphalt despite advisories against it from France, the United States, the European Investment Bank (EIB), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). There are allegations that Đukanović is a "thief" through his links to the road's subcontractors, who got $400 million "blindfolded," according to a local non-governmental organization.

A lorry driver in the country whose land was expropriated for the project, went on record with EuroNews to say that $100 million was stolen, which is 10 percent of the total loan. This is higher than the 2 to 7 percent finder's fees I heard about for cronies of the Philippine President, who inked similarly useless deals there.

Chinese and illegal workers are allegedly employed on the Montenegro project. The state-owned China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) is building the Montenegro highway through a subsidiary. In case of financial problems and the triggering of collateral in the sovereignty of land such as Bar harbor, arbitration would be conducted according to Chinese law in a Chinese court. If so, you can kiss your country goodbye, Montenegro. China's judges will fold it up like the card table on which you lost your Mom's farm.

The construction of the section of a highway connecting the city of Bar on Montenegros Adriatic coast to landlocked neighbor Serbia, (Bar-Boljare highway) near the village of Bioce, north of Montenegrin capital Podgorica, which is being constructed by a state-owned Chinese company, on April 8, 2019. (SAVO PRELEVIC/AFP via Getty Images)

"All over the Western Balkans, Chinese investment has slowed down EU compatible reforms," according to von der Brelie. "China's silk road ambitions are not always in line with EU standards of good governance, environmental protection, rule of law and transparency. Their influence is creating a wedge between the EU and the Balkan states."

Montenegro is the latest example of a long line of such disastrous international infrastructure deals that Beijing brokered, apparently through the corruption of local heads of state. Corruption can be of the legal variety, including through lobbying, crony consulting and subcontractor deals, and campaign contributions.

But Beijing can also try to corrupt through illegal boxes of cash wrapped up like presents. Literally. Two paragraphs from an FBI sentencing document in 2019 are instructive as to how China attempted to corrupt officials in Chad and Uganda. They're worth reprinting in full:

"[Patrick] HO orchestrated and executed two bribery schemes to pay top officials of Chad and Uganda in exchange for business advantages for CEFC China, a Shanghai-based multibillion-dollar conglomerate that operates internationally in multiple sectors, including oil, gas, and banking. At the center of both schemes was HO, the secretary-general of a non-governmental organization based in Hong Kong and Arlington, Virginia, and registered as a charitable entity in the United States, the China Energy Fund Committee ("CEFC NGO"), which held "Special Consultative Status" with the United Nations ("UN") Economic and Social Council. CEFC NGO was funded by CEFC China.

"In the first scheme (the "Chad Scheme"), HO, on behalf of CEFC China, offered a $2 million cash bribe, hidden within gift boxes [Classy!], to Idriss Déby, the president of Chad, in an effort to obtain valuable oil rights from the Chadian government. In the second scheme (the "Uganda Scheme"), HO caused a $500,000 bribe to be paid, via wires transmitted through New York, New York, to an account designated by Sam Kutesa, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Uganda, who had recently completed his term as the president of the UN General Assembly. HO also schemed to pay a $500,000 cash bribe to Yoweri Museveni, the president of Uganda, and offered to provide both Kutesa and Museveni with additional corrupt benefits by "partnering" with them and their families in future joint ventures in Uganda."

This sort of corruption might explain why President Đukanović went against the advice of the United States, France, and international lenders when he inked the road-to-nowhere deal with China. Beijing's corruption of high government officials is not the exception, according to one of my government sources. It is becoming quite common, but rarely revealed in public.

Milo Đukanović speaks at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly Spring session in Tirana, Albania on May 30, 2016. (Hektor Pustina/AP Photo)

Huawei deals that have been inked around the world are so opaque as to also likely be the result of corruption. Most are in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and Asia. But Beijing's corruption extends into North America and Europe as well, with Montenegro a case in point. The deals will likely be used by Huawei to electronically spy on their clients through signals intelligence (SIGINT). Ironically, combatting China's corruption requires SIGINT of our own. Fight fire with fire.

There's no way to find all of China's global bribery, and combat it effectively, without U.S. and allied SIGINT. The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) admits quite prominently on its website to conducting SIGINT internationally. It's better that the United States and allied agencies do this to control China's bribery of international leaders, before Beijing uses such bribery to construct something far more dangerous than Montenegro's road to nowhere: the world's 5G architecture. China could use its 5G ascendency to hamper U.S. and allied SIGINT, while enabling Chinese SIGINT. Thinking that China's corruption can be stopped without American and allied SIGINT is naive.

Nobody likes being spied upon, but we do like being watched out for. We appreciate our neighbors' security cameras when they deter (or catch) burglars. Neighbors who both have wide-angle security cameras that cover each others' yards are kind of spying on each other. But good neighbors don't obsessively watch their neighbors either. They don't care about the humdrum mowing, weeding, and taking out the trash. They only bother to examine the recordings if there's a burglary.

Likewise, Americans and allies might in part be pointing their SIGINT at each other, and that's okay. Such mutual understanding, where it matters, will keep all of us more honest. You reveal the corruption of my political bosses, and I'll do the same for yours. Or, vice versa. Let's all expose the burglars in our midst.

But because much corruption is legal, more than SIGINT is needed.

The United States and allies must pass legislation, such as that introduced by U.S. Representative Mike Gallagher, a Republican representing Wisconsin's 8th District (home of the Green Bay Packers), to prohibit "any individual from registering or otherwise serving as the agent of a foreign principal if the individual at any time served as a Member of Congress, a senior political appointee, or a general or flag officer of the Armed Forces." Good for young Mike. Go Pack Go!

Unfortunately, Gallagher's bill, H.R. 1522 – Congressional and Executive Foreign Lobbying Ban Act, promptly languished after its introduction in March 2019, and referral to the House Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties in April 2019. Mike, aged 35 two years ago, got schooled.

Corrupt politicians in both parties didn't want the bill passed, so it went nowhere. Maybe that's why the U.S. government and allies fail to publicize China's ubiquitous corruption. They might benefit from that corruption when they leave office. Apparently, the option of corruption is more important to our patriotic congresspersons than good governance. Noted. I love that flag on your lapel. Was it made in China?

Former President Donald Trump promised to clear out the swamp. He called for a five-year cooling off period for former congresspersons to become lobbyists. He signed an executive order to stop the revolving door for his own administration members. At least half the nation inhaled with a renewed feeling of good old American hope. I remember a whiff of apple pie, back then.

But it went nowhere. The E.O. was reportedly unenforced. Trump hired former lobbyists for leadership positions. When his people quit, some went back to lobbying. After James "Mad Dog" Mattis left Trump's employment as Secretary of Defense, he signed onto former Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen's consulting group. Cohen has admitted to having clients from China. His group opened a Beijing office in 2006, and one in Tianjin in 2007.

That should be illegal. Shoulda, coulda, woulda.

With our Secretaries of Defense making China-linked money after leaving office, they are vulnerable to quid pro quo corruption while in office. Maybe that's why they haven't converted or defeated China over the past 30 years since the breakup of the Soviet Union. Pretty soon it will be too late, and our military will be unable to defend against the rising red star of Asia.

America the Proud is paralyzed by the corrupting power of money on our politicians, and China is the wealthiest country in the world by GDP purchasing power parity. That means, we're about to get bucked.

A friend of mine recently said, "They're inside the wire." He was referring to China, communism, or both. The phrase keeps haunting me. It means until we fix our own corruption problem, America, Montenegro, and democracy globally, are ultimately defenseless against history's most powerful autocracy. It's like one of those nightmares where you're awake, but can't despite your desperation, move to defend yourself.

Anders Corr has a BA/MA in political science from Yale University (2001) and a Ph.D. in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a Principal at Corr Analytics Inc., Publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. He authored "The Concentration of Power" (forthcoming 2021) and "No Trespassing," and edited "Great Powers, Grand Strategies."

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

 

b92.net

"Let me say first: I apologize for the bombing"; "Nobody said that, thank you" VIDEO

7-9 minutes

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President of Serbia, who is on a two-day visit to the Czech Republic, addresses the media after the meeting with President of the Czech Republic, Miloš Zeman.

Source: B92 Tuesday, May 18, 2021 | 13:12

Tanjug/AP Photo via CTK/Roman Vondrous SLOVAKIA OUT

At the beginning, the Czech President Miloš Zeman addressed the media, saying that Serbia was a traditional friend of the Czech Republic, which had been betrayed throughout history.

"Serbia expressed its support for us, and we bombed it. Let me immediately say that I apologize for the bombing of the FRY. It was a mistake. As a man, I would ask the Serbian people to forgive us. It bothered me all the time", Zeman said.

As he explained, the Czech Republic was a young NATO member at a time and was looking for a way to prevent the NATO bombing, but it did not have support.

"We asked for consent and desperately looked for at least one country to be against the bombing, but we were left alone. It was still a lack of courage," Zeman said.

"There, I said it and I saved my soul, and now let me move on to what we talked about," Zeman said.

Zeman said that he talked with Vučić about the successful development of economic cooperation, as well as about the attitudes of the two countries regarding international relations, and he especially emphasized Serbia's ability to establish friendly or correct relations with all important countries.

Zeman also praised the rapid progress of vaccination in Serbia, which, as he said, is related to the fact that Serbia has acquired vaccines from several countries. "I highly appreciate this visit, and I gladly remember my visit to Belgrade, and I hope that I will take another look at that city just before the end of my term," Zeman said.

Due to his poor health, President Zeman was in a wheelchair, but he found the strength to get up and greet Vučić, expressing his respect and friendship.

After Zeman, the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, also addressed the media, thanking Zeman for his words of support and apology for the NATO bombing of the FRY.

"I know that it is not popular to talk about traditional and sincere friendship, but what I experienced today here in Prague and the hospitality that Serbia received here, and what you have prepared for us, it is something that touched me deeply," Vucic said at the beginning of his address.

"The words of President Zeman, a brave man with a unique character, who does not flatter anyone, mean a lot to me... I witnessed how much respected he is and I am a little envious, I want to thank him for these wonderful words he sent to Serbia. The Serbian people perceive the Czech people not as friendly, but as fraternal nation", he added.

"I am known for not flattering anyone, not only because I weigh 120 kilos, but also because I have a bad temper... We will be eternally grateful because what the Czech President said now is something that has never been said by anyone else and that gratitude will never stop," the President of Serbia, who also announced Zeman's visit to Serbia, pointed out.

Vučić also thanked Zeman for the Czech Republic's support for Serbia's EU accession.

"Zeman will visit Serbia before the end of the year, because he promised it. And I promised that Serbia would solve a complicated property problem and that we would give the Czech house from 1928 to the Czech Republic. And I expect him at the opening," Vucic said.

He added that members of the Czech minority live mostly in South Banat and represent the real wealth of Serbia, and that is why he wants them to be able to have their own house, which belonged to them and was confiscated in the 1960s.

Also, Vučić thanked Zeman for the order he awarded him. "For me, this means a great honor. First, I awarded him a medal, which he deserved many times, and what I wear today on the lapel of my jacket presents an additional commitment for me to fight for Serbian-Czech friendship, to work as much as possible. "And you have my promise for that," said Vucic.

He added that it is wonderful to be a Serb in Prague today, and that Serbia will never forget Zeman's words.

https://youtu.be/_9Mhq_paLFE  @ 28:00 minute

budapesttimes.hu

Keeping the Danube shipshape: how blue, and green, is it? | The Budapest Times

Written by Alexander Stemp

9-11 minutes

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Much has been said about the illustrious River Danube and all its splendour in chronicles and popular culture alike. But beyond the flotillas of over-told stories, tourist puns and endless clichés, there is the less obvious managing of the extensive waterway that must take place for the benefit of everyone, including composer Strauss to preserve the legacy of his spirited “Blue Danube”. The immensity of this operation requires continual maintenance from various organisations, before tourism is even considered.

The Danube has always been a vital Black Forest to Black Sea trade link, with Budapest en route. A total 2415 kilometres of its overall 2850 kilometres length is navigable. Remarkably, the Black Sea today also links up with the North Sea, via the 170-kilometre Rhine-Main-Danube Canal that connects Kelheim and Bamberg in Germany. Since the canal’s completion in 1992, both the Danube and Rhine are now part of a trans-European waterway from Rotterdam in the Netherlands to Sulina in Romania, with 3500 kilometres in between. Theoretically, one could “sail” from London to Kyiv without halt via these two seas and the River Dnieper.

This international passage, which wends through Germany, Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova and Ukraine, is only navigable for most large ocean ships from the Black Sea for the first 170 kilometres inland, to Braila, east Romania. Then it’s all change for the millions of tonnes of cargo as smaller craft take over to continue upstream until completion of voyage. Spectacular sights line the way, in particular the Kazan Straits where Romania joins Serbia, Belgrade, Budapest, the Danube Bend in Hungary, Bratislava, Vienna, Linz and many more.

Apart from a few minor and secondary routes leading away from the Danube, the only major navigable rivers that link up to it are the Drava and the Tisza, which both also feature in Hungary, and the Sava, which joins to the world-famous river in Belgrade.

There are 46 ports of international importance along the entire way, as well as some minor ones. Port-sides in Hungary alongside the Duna, as it is known by the locals, include Győr-Gönyű, Komárom, Dunaújváros, Dunaföldvár, Baja and Mohács. There is also the Szabadkikötő dockland at Csepel Island, south of the capital. Large-scale vessels up to 110 metres long and 12 metres wide can occasionally pass through.

To achieve a sufficient navigational system, the Danube Commission was established in Belgrade in 1948 to provide, develop and ensure smooth running, general efficiency and free-flowing navigation. The commission was set up by seven countries (then) bordering the Danube. Members today are representatives from Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Hungary, Moldova, Slovakia, Romania, Russia, Ukraine and Serbia.

The organisation’s aim is to continually improve navigational conditions and provide forecast information for all crews alike. In addition to the regulations, the commission promotes good economic and cultural relations between all the member states, as well as with other countries. Since 1954 this authority has been based in Budapest. Its official languages are German, Russian and French, as clearly cited at its front entrance on Benczúr utca in District VI.

Then there is the International Commission of Protection of the Danube River, based in Vienna. It works more with environmental issues that clearly relate to today’s values. Other organisations also provide solutions and assistance towards general maintenance, safety and all-round improvements to the river itself, the shorelines and anything related to a better balance of nature, including tackling dangerous waste and general pollution.

Water depth “allowance” must be considered, as occasional limitations for each ship have to be recognised before sailing. Weather conditions and high or low water levels frequently vary. Then there are the occasional floods, unexpected rocks, ice and underwater currents that have to be worked around. Climate change means continually adapting to new conditions. There may be less snow and heavy ice on the river these days but springs and autumns are significantly shorter than before and summers are hotter and longer.

All this comes before the final compromise that must be made about how much cargo is allowed on board to balance out these delicate proportions, and prevent any vessel from either drifting, getting stuck, overturning or so forth (remember the recent Suez Canal blocking). Regardless of actual weather and general water quantity, for a quick referral, the minimum recommended safety requirement for depth of water beneath any large cargo ship is 2.5 metres to avoid all possible obstacles.

For the future, it’s a priority to modernise the Danube fleet towards eventual zero emissions, part of greening ships and harbours to meet modern-day standards and overcome environmental concerns. Currently, the coronavirus pandemic has placed many rivers at a critical crossroads with having to adapt to new challenges.

Consider also inland relations, transnational cross-border co-operation and loading on and off. Port hinterlands, especially roads and railways, must enable effective transit of goods for the next stages. As for the administrative side of things, updated and approved travel documents and Customs clearance forms must be provided, plus much more. Crews and workforces need to be organised.

When it comes to supporting Danube tourism projects, the scope is enormous. Benefits can be assured, provided anything “new” will be sustainable. There is no shortage of attractions for active and passive holidaymakers alike, with plenty of national parks along the river as well as many on -the-spot leisure vessels, in particular the very busy Budapest-Szentendre-Esztergom-Vienna service that operates daily.

The Danube delta, known as the Delta Dunării by Romanians, is the largest river delta in the European Union and is spectacular. The greater part of this unique biosphere reserve lies in Romania and is accessible for ships and general traffic alike at Tulcea. Its smaller, northern part is situated by the southern Ukraine borderline. Both parts are the last downstream stop before the Black Sea.

The delta is about 4000 square kilometres, home to an abundance of wildlife. This impressive expanse of water, islands and reeds from Tulcea directly to the Black Sea itself became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1991 and is very much worth a visit.

The lakes and marshes host innumerable freshwater fish species. The wetlands support vast flocks of migratory birds with over 300 species, including the symbolic storks and pelicans. Fishermen are still active at certain points. However, there have been mismanaged mishaps when some of the river’s resources and various old-style infrastructure has been managed in an environmentally damaging way.

In recent generations, still within living memory, there have been alterations to the channel relating to various newish developments in order to promote tourism. Large hydropower dams are now in place along the river and its tributaries, to which the basin has to adapt regardless of all else.

The largest hydropower dam and reservoir system along the Danube is found at the 117-kilometre-long Djerdap Gorge. This peak operation system consists of two dams, Iron Gate I and II operated jointly by Serbia and Romania, producing about 37 percent of the total energy used in Serbia and 27 percent in Romania.

Although impressive, these spelt misfortune for the fish populations, and the possibility of constructing a “fish pass” to enable migration is under review. Downstream from there, much is free-flowing all the way. The views are splendid and tourism in this region flourishes. While the Danube region is of high importance for tourism, as well as shipping, the vulnerabilities remain the same.

Recent times have seen new infrastructure relating to cycling and hiking put in place. For a splendid glimpse of high scenery near Budapest I highly recommend visiting, preferably by bike, both sides of the Danube Bend. This immediate area, with Nagymaros, Visegrád Castle, Esztergom, Szob and the Dömösi peaks, is a wonder and splendour in every sense, epitomising the “Blue Danube” more so than anywhere else I can think of. You will see. After spending years here in Hungary, it is always a pleasure for me to look out onto this river from anywhere, at any time of year, and to really appreciate its momentous worth.

But as we “depend” on this and other areas to provide a great day out, so the Danube, its Bend and elsewhere also depend on us to look after and preserve it too.

If an extravagant river cruise is out of reach, then to see and appreciate this waterway up close take to the Danube Bike Trail, which proceeds along the entire length. It’s 1700 kilometres from the Hungarian capital to the Black Sea and Romanian Riviera along this lane. However, it’s not so far and perhaps less demanding to cycle in the other direction towards southern Germany.

To cycle the entirety, 50 kilometres on average would be required every day for two months. This I would love to do. But until I get the go-ahead from my family, continual cycling around the immediate shorelines and ships will have to suffice just as well.

 

warontherocks.com

Biden and the Western Balkans - War on the Rocks

Vuk Vuksanovic

17-21 minutes

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A lot was at stake for the Balkans in last November’s U.S. presidential elections. Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić made a failed bet on Donald Trump, hoping that the United States under Trump would continue to be more sympathetic to Serbian interests in its settlement of the Kosovo dispute and other matters. U.S. foreign policy toward the Balkans under Trump was marked by a disdain toward the European Union and lack of continuity, best symbolized in the economic normalization agreement between Belgrade and Priština brokered in September 2020. While Vučić still congratulated Joe Biden for his win, other Balkan leaders were probably much more relieved at the prospect of a Biden presidency.

Under Biden, U.S. policy in the region is expected to have a more trans-Atlantic focus, and it will energetically demand the resolution of remaining regional disputes, like Kosovo. In a letter sent to Serbian and Kosovo leaders in February 2021, Biden called for a solution based on “mutual recognition.” Biden is evidently passionate about resolving this dispute, as he repeated the same set of themes on mutual recognition in a more recent letter to Kosovo’s new president, Vjosa Osmani. Many policy hands, including Nicholas Burns, one of Biden’s advisers and a potential U.S. ambassador to China, now expect that Biden will display U.S. leadership in the region. Specifically, Burns expects the White House to advocate resolving the issue of Kosovo, promoting liberal democracy, and integrating the region in the West while cooperating closely with the European Union.

U.S. officials will have to deal with three sets of challenges in the Balkans: the unresolved Kosovo dispute, democratic backsliding in the region, and the influence of Russia and China. While U.S. power is a necessary element in resolving these challenges, the Biden administration will not be able to offer quick fixes. Instead, the United States should have a more modest, calibrated policy on issues like Kosovo and democratic development, while on Russia and China, it should offer alternatives alongside the European Union, rather than try to eliminate Russian and Chinese influence through pressure.

The Unresolved Kosovo Dispute

Kosovo continues to be an unresolved challenge for U.S. policy in the Balkans. For the past decade, Washington left the responsibility for the Kosovo dispute to the European Union as the United States dedicated its attention elsewhere. Since 2011, Brussels has mediated a dialogue on the normalization of relations between Serbia and Kosovo. The United States mostly provided support from the sidelines in the form of encouraging political statements. In fact, during the Obama administration, then-Vice President Biden was the point man for the Balkans and Kosovo issue. Indeed, in 2009 Biden was the first senior U.S. official to visit Serbia in a quarter-century. Biden affirmed American support for the dialogue in 2016 when he visited Serbia and Kosovo.

European efforts to resolve the biggest Balkan dispute (Kosovo) began faltering around 2018. Kosovo unilaterally imposed 100 percent tariffs on Serbian goods, asking for full recognition from Serbia in exchange for their removal, a no-go for Belgrade. President Donald Trump searched for a foreign policy win for his failed reelection bid and decided to act on the Kosovo dispute via his regional envoy Richard Grenell. Trump’s policies were transactional, whimsical, and produced no meaningful results. The administration first backed and then gave up on the idea of a land swap between Serbia and Kosovo. To bring back Serbia to the talks, the United States asked Kosovo to lift the tariffs imposed on Serbia. After Priština refused, the United States retaliated in March 2020 by encouraging a no-confidence vote against the Kosovo government.

Some believe that Biden will be able to succeed where Trump failed. Biden already has met Serbian leaders several times during his long career in Washington, where he served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as vice president. In addition, he enjoys high popularity in Kosovo because of his pro-interventionist stance against Slobodan Milošević’s regime in the 1990s. Kosovo even named a street in Priština after Biden’s late son, Beau, who worked in the country in the late 1990s for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The sentiments are mutual and Biden said during his 2016 visit to Priština: “Beau loved this country like I do.”

Democratic Backsliding

Another challenge for Biden will be doing something to halt or reverse democratic decline in the Balkans. In recent years, local elites in countries like North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia degraded democratic institutions and consolidated their grip over their respective countries. The West was willing to tolerate these illiberal tendencies as long as the local regimes contributed to regional stability, prompting some specialists to call this phenomenon “stabilitocracy.”

Some Balkan strongmen lost power. The former prime minister of North Macedonia, Nikola Gruevski, fled to Hungary in 2018 after 10 years of rule marked by corruption and misuse of the intelligence services. In Montenegro’s 2020 parliamentary elections, the Democratic Party of Socialists of Montenegro, led by Milo Đukanović, lost after being in power for 30 years (75 years, considering that the party is a successor to the Yugoslav Communist Party). However, Đukanović remains the president of Montenegro. These countries are still far from being mature democracies.

Since 2012, the region’s most strategically consequential country, Serbia, has been ruled by the Serbian Progressive Party, led by Aleksandar Vučić and his coalition partners. This ruling coalition has been composed out of former associates of Serbian strongman Slobodan Milošević. The degree of dominance that Vučić and his allies have over Serbian institutions, media, and intelligence services prompted Freedom House to classify Serbia (alongside Montenegro) as a hybrid regime. The draconian measures used to combat the COVID-19 pandemic in Serbia and the Balkans helped cement the extant democratic backsliding. After the opposition boycotted the last parliamentary elections in 2020, on the grounds of unfair conditions, the ruling party has a two-thirds majority without opposition representatives. According to surveys, half of Serbian citizens believe there is no democracy in their country.

Some are optimistic that the new Biden administration will act as a check on the region’s illiberal trends. The State Department’s most recent human rights report was not lenient on Serbia and the rest of Southeast Europe, with criticism leveled on media freedom and police brutality issues. The European Union is also taking a tougher line on human rights in the Balkans, at least in terms of public statements. In the last European Parliament report on Serbia, the country was criticized for backtracking on the rule of law, freedom of expression, corruption, and organized crime.

Russia and China

As North Atlantic powers have paid less attention to the Balkans in recent years, other countries have moved in to fill the power vacuum. This list includes Turkey, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and most notably Russia and China. Despite the limits of Russian influence in the Balkans, Moscow has been adept at capitalizing on three instruments in the region: its own soft power, Russia’s energy reserves, and the unresolved Kosovo dispute. The last one is particularly effective at tying Serbia to Russia, because as long as Serbia lacks a solution that is acceptable domestically and internationally it has to rely on Russian diplomatic backing, primarily in the U.N. Security Council. This is why Belgrade has not fully severed ties with Moscow despite the cooling down in mutual ties in the past couple of years. The region’s energy dependence on Russia has also increased as Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina will be getting their gas via the TurkStream pipeline. In addition, Russia has exported the Sputnik V vaccine to Montenegro, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and potentially Albania. Serbia even signed an agreement to start producing Sputnik V vaccines on Serbian soil.

China poses an even greater challenge to Western interests in the Balkans. Unlike Russia, which solely acts as a spoiler power obstructing the West, China is a rising power offering a strategic vision for Eurasia with its Belt and Road Initiative. In the past decade, Chinese firms invested $2.4 billion in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia. At the same time, Beijing has provided $6.8 billion in infrastructure loans. In Serbia, China is the third-largest foreign direct investor (accounting for 6.61 percent of all net foreign direct investments) after the European Union (72.27 percent) and Russia (11.21 percent). In Montenegro, China owns 25 percent of the country’s public debt. Beijing is supplying Belgrade with drones. The recent visit by Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe to Greece, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Hungary suggests that China wants to expand its military ties with regional powers. On the vaccination front, to Serbia alone China supplied 1 million doses of the Chinese-produced Sinopharm vaccine, and the supply of an additional 2 million doses has also been agreed. However, China is also bringing highly questionable labor and environmental standards to the region.

The United States has already shown itself capable of pushing back against Russia and China in the Balkans, even under Trump. Montenegro joined NATO in 2017 and North Macedonia followed in 2020. In 2017 and 2018, U.S. diplomatic interventions helped resolve the political crises in Albania and North Macedonia, showing that Washington can succeed where the slow bureaucratic policy of the European Union fails. With respect to Chinese influence, the White House agreement on economic normalization between Kosovo and Serbia brokered by Trump stipulates that the two countries will not allow 5G infrastructure from “untrusted vendors,” an apparent jab at the Chinese tech giant Huawei. As a result, Serbia postponed the tender for the 5G spectrum. The Trump administration also persuaded Bulgaria, Kosovo, and North Macedonia to join its “Clean Network” initiative to eliminate China and Huawei from the global 5G infrastructure. The general mood is that Biden can finally close the doors to both Russia and China.

Not So Fast

It is too early for optimism, though. The Biden administration cannot expect a quick resolution of the Kosovo dispute, particularly if it involves Belgrade’s recognition of Kosovo. Any Serbian leader who recognizes Kosovo will be committing political suicide, particularly without face-saving concessions from Kosovo, the United States, or European Union. Pressure on Serbia from Biden himself to recognize Kosovo would be an even tougher sell, as he is highly unpopular in Serbia over his pro-interventionist stance from the 1990s. While Biden, in a 2016 visit, offered condolences to the families of Serbs killed in the NATO intervention of 1999, his track record of supporting Kosovo will not be soon forgotten.

Opposition to recognizing Kosovo enjoys considerable support across the political spectrum in Serbia. Any attempt to publicly pressure the country to recognize Kosovo will likely backfire and present an opening for Russia to increase its influence in Belgrade. Biden’s letter calling for recognition will make it harder for Serbia to compromise. Even if Serbia’s liberal political parties were to come to power at some point, the current opposition would have trouble compromising on Kosovo because of the potential domestic backlash from nationalists. One should not forget that there is also a nationalist opposition that could be even tougher than Vučić.

The situation is also complicated on the Kosovo side, as the new government of Albin Kurti, just like its Serbian counterparts, is not showing a willingness to compromise and does not deem the dialogue important in light of domestic hardships in Kosovo. According to polls, Kosovo citizens consider the dialogue with Serbia as the sixth or seventh issue of importance. Moreover, despite Biden’s and the America’s historical popularity among Kosovo Albanians, Kurti’s populist inclinations might hinder the relationship with Biden. The episode where Kurti refused to lift tariffs against Serbia, prompting Trump to encourage a no-confidence vote, shows that even U.S. leverage with Priština has limits.

The Biden administration has some options to promote democracy and human rights in the Balkans, but none of them are easy or clear cut. For instance, Washington might focus its diplomatic attention on Serbia. Would it not be easy to sever ties with Vučić and extend support to the opposition and civil society? Not exactly. Given Biden’s unpopularity in Serbia, any group or leader who gets U.S. backing would be an easy target for the government propaganda machine. Media attacks and pressure against civil society organizations, opposition figures, and journalists are a recurring theme already. For example, Serbian Minister of Interior Aleksandar Vulin reacted to the State Department’s human rights report with accusations of hypocrisy against the United States. Moreover, the opposition is disunified and unable to animate voters. Most of the opposition leaders have already been in power, like former Mayor of Belgrade Dragan Đilas and former Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremić.

Washington’s considerable influence in the Balkans has limits. The use of America’s most potent tool — secondary financial sanctions — would not instill pro-Western sentiments in the local elites and local population. In addition, some inroads from Russia and China in the Balkans will be hard to roll back. The region imports gas from Russia because there is no alternative. Chinese infrastructure lending is attractive because the funds of the European Union are not available. Russian and Chinese vaccines are being bought because the European Union failed to provide them in time. To increase its regional influence, the United States will have to offer both sticks and carrots to local stakeholders. Historically, Washington has been much more comfortable offering sticks. Transition politics may also make things more difficult for the United States. The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, whose regional office for the Western Balkans was opened in Belgrade by the Trump administration to encourage investments and trade, dismissed the office’s director, John Jovanovic, Trump’s appointee, upon the arrival of Biden, sending a wrong signal to Belgrade. Without a counteroffer, Serbia and the Balkans will not close the door to Russia and China.

Where to Go from Here

What should the Biden administration do in the Balkans? On Kosovo, it should leave the central mediating role to the European Union, to avoid sowing diplomatic confusion and to show respect to the Europeans by acknowledging that the region is Europe’s backyard. Washington should still use its political and diplomatic influence with the Serbian and Albanian side to ensure that negotiations are conducted in good faith and not as a platform for mutual political provocations. More importantly, Washington should avoid setting deadlines and expectations for the final agreement. Instead, with the European Union, it should place the focus on issues that affect the lives of ordinary citizens, both Serbs and Albanians. The United States should concentrate on issues like trade, development, corruption, human and minority rights, the status of Serbian cultural and religious sites, property of individuals and private entities, missing persons, and establishing a visa-free regime for Kosovo citizens. This approach will not yield quick results, but it will pave the path for a breakthrough in the future.

On the issue of democracy, the United States should avoid overtly taking sides in the Balkans’ messy domestic partisan politics. Nevertheless, in places like Serbia, Washington can help level the playing field by intervening diplomatically to ensure media freedoms and equal media coverage for the opposition. By doing so, the United States can ensure that the rules of the game equally apply to all contest participants but without backing any one of the Serbian parties or leaders, as in the case of its support of the anti-Milošević opposition. However, it should do so quietly to avoid becoming an easy scapegoat for the local elites.

To blunt Chinese and Russian influence in the Balkans, the United States needs to work with the European Union. With its proximity to the Balkans, economic influence, and competencies in governance and democracy promotion, the European Union has the ability to make lasting change in the region. The United States can exercise pressure on those leaders in the Balkans who want to play the West and East against each other, but it is the European Union that has to provide the alternative to collaborating with non-Western powers. The United States and the European Union should mobilize their financial resources and offer the governments and citizens projects that matter to them, like infrastructure, health, and the environment. These policy prescriptions may be slow and unsatisfactory for those hoping that the Biden administration will bring swift solutions and ultimate closure of the Balkans chapter. However, gradual but consistent progress sure beats the disappointments of the last several years.

Vuk Vuksanovic is a Ph.D. researcher in international relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), an associate of LSE IDEAS, LSE’s foreign policy think tank, and a researcher at the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy. This piece is derived from analysis he authored for BCSP within the project “A real say on Serbian-American Relations,” supported by the U.S. Embassy in Serbia.

Image: White House (Photo by David Lienemann)

 

nationalinterest.org

Hitler Invaded Yugoslavia instead of Russia. This Mistake Cost Him Dearly

by Warfare History Network

9-11 minutes

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Here's What You Need to Remember: The last Yugoslavian casualty of the invasion did not die until 1970. He was the sad, boozebloated shell of the trim young man who, for a brief moment, had been the hope and idol of at least part of his country, King Peter II.

It was the most exciting scene Associated Press correspondent Robert St. John had yet witnessed in the career he had abandoned for five years to farm in New Hampshire then returned to when he sensed that war was coming.

It was March 27, 1941, and Terrazia, the Times Square of Belgrade, capital of what was then Yugoslavia, was packed with crowds jubilant at their country’s sudden stunning, defiance of Adolf Hitler. The mood quickly turned to anger, though, directed at St. John when he began to get down to his job of reporting.

“If I wanted to photograph these scenes I must be a Nazi agent gathering evidence, trying to get onto film the faces of those responsible, so they could be punished in true Nazi style when and if Hitler got this country under his thumb again,” he recalled. “That was the way they seemed to figure it.”

Early in his journalism career in notorious Cicero, Illinois, the town owned by Al Capone, St. John had been set upon by thugs and left for dead in a ditch. Understandably anxious to avoid a repetition, he waved his passport and a small American flag; the fickle crowd turned to ransacking the tourist agency of Hitler’s ally Italy while he took the opportunity to hotfoot it from the square.

Just 10 days later St. John would be back in Terrazia Square to witness a very different, tragic scene before running again—this time right out of the country before one of World War II’s briefest but most brutal blitzkriegs, the effects of which would be felt to the end of the 20th century. Yet another American, a female member of a distinguished political-military family, would also be on the run—not from danger but deliberately heading straight into it with near fatal results.

Yugoslavia was the makeshift attempt after World War I to bring the lands and people of the southeastern Balkans, formerly part of the Austro-Hungarian empire of the Hapsburgs, under the rule of the royal house of Serbia. But, it turned out, union did not mean unity. Almost a dozen nationalities and ethnic groups seethed with resentment, none more so than the largest among them, the Croats.

The political powder keg finally exploded in 1929 when a member of a different national group gunned down three Croatian deputies during a riotous session of Parliament. Arguing he needed to act to prevent civil war and secession, Serbian King Alexander I moved swiftly to establish a dictatorship.

The response by Croatian extremists out for independence was to found a terrorist group, the Ustachi, which engineered the king’s assassination in France in October 1934.

With his heir Peter II just 11, a cousin, Prince Paul, assumed a regency. The result was power without leadership. The prince, a cultured figure with little interest in or much aptitude for politics, made no secret he was just marking time until he could hand responsibility to the king on his 18th birthday in September, 1941.

Unhappily for the prince and tragically for Yugoslavia, Adolf Hitler would not wait. Preparing for his invasion of Greece, Hitler put relentless pressure on the nations of the Balkans to sign his de facto alliance, the Tri-Partite Pact. Robert St. John found himself rushing from capital to capital: “Weeks of ‘Will they? Won’t they?’ Weeks of dope stories based on the slimmest of chancellery gossip. Weeks of writing two or three long dispatches a day trying to keep the story alive while we waited for the inevitable to happen.”

Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania fell into line, and St. John found himself waiting in Belgrade for Yugoslavia’s turn to fold. Also observing events anxiously there was the other American, the woman of distinguished family, determined to do more about events than merely report on them.

Ruth Mitchell was the daughter of a one-time United States Senator from Wisconsin and the sister of General Billy Mitchell. A journalist herself, she accepted the fateful assignment of covering the comic-opera wedding of Albania’s outlandish King Zog I in 1938. “If I had known then what was coming,” she would reflect after the end of her ordeal, “would I have turned back? The answer is a completely certain No!”

Intending to stay just a few days for her story, she instead became so intrigued by Albania that she gave up her career to stay and study it. Driven out by the Italian invasion in early 1939, she then moved to Yugoslavia. There she became enthralled by Serbian history and culture. “The Serbs,” she was to write, “are a very small race; there were before the war not more than eight million of them. But it is a race of strikingly individual character, of extraordinary tenacity of purpose and ideal. That ideal can be expressed in a single word: Freedom.”

With the same uncompromising intensity for a cause and personal flamboyance that had cost brother Billy his military career due to his vocal advocacy of military aviation in the United States, she went so far as to enlist in the legendary Serbian Chetnik militia, complete with fur hat, skull and crossbones emblem, uniform, boots, dagger, and poison pill in case of capture.

“The soul of Serbia on the march! I was a Chetnik—until death,” she exulted.

For his part, though, Robert St. John was skeptical. “It seemed to me that Miss Mitchell was just looking for some Hollywood adventure. Well, I thought, she’ll probably get all she wants before long.”

Foreign Minister Aleksander Cincar-Markovic, then Prime Minister Dragisa Cvetkovic, and finally Prince Paul himself got the feared summons to meet Hitler at Berchtesgaden. “Fear reigned,” Churchill would record. “The Ministers and the leading politicians did not dare to speak their minds. There was one exception. An Air Force general named Simovic represented the nationalist elements among the officer corps of the armed forces. Since December his office had become a clandestine center of opposition to German penetration into the Balkans and to the inertia of the Yugoslav government.”

Serbian public opinion, remembering their support during World War I and afterward for independence, was overwhelmingly pro-British. “I am out of my head!” Prince Paul bewailed under the strain. After a second visit to Hitler and the assurance—for what it was worth— that all that was wanted was his signature, the prince finally sent Prime Minister Cvetkovic and Foreign Minister Cincar-Markovic to sign the Tri-Partite Pact in Vienna on March 25, 1941. To the protesting minister from the United States, Prince Paul replied bitterly, “You big nations are hard. You talk of honor, but you are far away.”

Ruth Mitchell’s Serbian friends visited, anguished and humiliated at what they considered the betrayal of a friend. “We had written our capitulation stories, packed our bags, and argued over where the next crisis was likely to break out,” St. John later wrote. “But then something happened that forced us to unlimber our typewriters, dig copy paper out of our suitcases, and get to work in Belgrade again.”

Prince Paul had warned Hitler that if he signed the pact he would not last another six months in power. He would be off in his calculations by five months and 28 days.

The day after the signing, demonstrations, started by students, erupted on the streets of Belgrade. As he watched, a secret policeman next to St. John remarked, “You newspaper boys better keep your pencils sharp. Things are going to happen in Yugoslavia yet!”

At 2:30 the next morning, St. John was awakened by a phone call from a colleague who informed him that troops and tanks were in the streets. Rushing out, he was soon led under guard to a park to join prostitutes, cleaning women, and other night-crawlers.

“We were watching the unfolding of a first class, full-dress coup d’etat,” he recognized.

Without a shot, government buildings were occupied and ministers arrested at their homes. At the palace, the guards opened the gates to the rebels without resistance while young King Peter II climbed down a drainpipe to join them. Soon, General Simovic, the leader of the revolt, arrived to announce, “Your Majesty, I salute you as King of Yugoslavia. From this moment you will exercise your full sovereign power.”

Prince Paul had been heading to his country estate for a badly needed rest. He would get a longer one. His train was intercepted and rerouted back to Belgrade. Under guard, he was then trooped into the office of the new prime minister, General Simovic, to sign his resignation. He finally reboarded his train with many of his ministers for a new destination, Greece. They were luckier than they knew. Ruth Mitchell had been tipped that the Chetniks were launching their own coup, which intended to leave none of them alive. Foreign Minister Cincar-Markovic was one the few kept on in the new regime, with a personally tragic consequence.

 

rs.n1info.com

SPS leader Dacic blasts RTS series on Milosevic

Author:Beta

2 minutes

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Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) leader Ivica Dacic said on Friday that the state TV (RTS) series on the arrest of Slobodan Milosevic is “an abuse of one family’s tragedy for the personal promotion of the people involved”.

Milosevic was leader of the SPS during the 1990s and was arrested following a popular uprising in March 2001 on charges of embezzlement and corruption and was later extradited to the Hague Tribunal to stand trial on charges of war crimes. He died of natural causes in the tribunal detention unit. The five-part series Family covers the days leading up to his arrest. It is being aired in a prime time slot every evening of this week.

Dacic, currently serving as Parliament Speaker, said the series should have been about how Milosevic was tricked. “The people who arrested him should be in jail because they tricked him, signed guarantees,” the former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister said on the RTS morning show, adding that “mice arrested Milosevic”. Mice is a slang term used mainly by criminal circles in Serbia to denote anyone considered unworthy.

He asked how the state TV and Telekom could use public money to finance the series. “History will show who was right… It imposes the theory that Milosevic was to blame for everything, for genocide, the wars, bombings,” Dacic said.