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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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The "Adults" Resume Control

chroniclesmagazine.org

The “Adults” Resume Control | Chronicles Magazine

By:Srdja Trifkovic | February 22, 2017

 

At the security conference in Munich over the weekend and at the EU headquarters in Brussels on Monday, VP Mike Pence offered profuse assurances to the European elite class that the Trump administration supports unity and cohesion in the face of various threats allegedly facing the Western alliance. His remarks amounted to an explicit repudiation of Trump’s campaign statements and promises.

“The United States strongly supports NATO and will not waver in our commitment to our transatlantic alliance,” Pence said, in contrast to Trump’s repeated (and reasonable) remarks before the election that NATO was “obsolete.” In a conference dominated by the narrative of the “Russian threat,” hacks and other fake news (Sen. Lindsey Graham warned France and Germany that the Russians were coming after them, vowing to “kick Russia in the ass in Congress”), Pence did not sound a single discordant note. He paid tribute to “our shared values,” our “noble ideals—freedom, democracy, justice and the rule of law.” “As you keep faith with us,” he went on, “under President Trump we will always keep faith with you.”

Defense Secretary James Mattis—who also attended the Munich conference—made similar points in a speech last Saturday—points which until recently would have been considered distinctly un-Trumpian. President Trump has “thrown his full support behind NATO,” Mattis declared, and warned of threats “on multiple fronts as the arc of instability builds on NATO’s periphery and beyond.” Earlier last week Secretary of State Rex Tillerson went to Germany for the Group of 20 foreign ministers’ meeting. According to The Washington Post, as he left the meeting  “there was a palpable sense of relief” among the Europeans, which “stemmed in part from a sense that Tillerson is a serious man who came to Bonn willing to hear their viewpoints.” According to the Post, after Tillerson’s meeting with Russian’s FM Lavrov,

Diplomats said they got the sense that there would be no radical shift in the U.S. stance toward Russia . . . One diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the participants were encouraged when Tillerson said the administration believes that before it can consider any lifting sanctions against Russia, Moscow must meet its commitments to help end the fighting in the Russian-speaking, separatist region of eastern Ukraine.

After Munich Pence went to Brussels, where on Monday he said that it was his privilege “on behalf of President Trump to express the strong commitment of the United States to continued cooperation and partnership with the European Union.” He pledged the U.S. would keep working with the EU to protect eastern EU states from Russia’s supposed designs. He reiterated the pledge he made in Munich that the Trump administration would “continue to hold Russia accountable” for the violence in eastern Ukraine.

“Pence is looking like an adult,” commented James Jeffrey, Obama’s ambassador to Iraq and a distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The question is will Trump listen to him?” The same question was repeated by several European commentators worried about “Trump’s next tweet.” But in the aftermath of national security adviser Michael T. Flynn’s demolition by the Deep State operatives—a sordid affair in which Pence played a significant, albeit not yet fully known role—this is the wrong question. The real question is whether Trump can resist the straitjacket which the Russophobic, NATO-for-ever “foreign policy community” has been hewing for him ever since last November 8.

The answer is “probably not,” and the clue is provided by the appointment of Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster as Flynn’s replacement. In contrast to his predecessor, McMaster sees Russia as an adversary and seems to reject the possibility of partnership. Last May, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, he pointed out Russia’s annexation of Crimea and support for “rebels” in eastern Ukraine as evidence of Moscow’s broader effort “to collapse the post-World War Two, certainly the post-Cold War, security, economic, and political order in Europe and replace that order with something that is more sympathetic to Russian interests.”

McMaster’s views are diametrically opposed to Trump’s previously stated objectives, and the Duopoly was delighted. “The selection encouraged Republicans who admire General McMaster and waged a behind-the-scenes campaign to persuade Mr. Trump to select him,” noted the New York Times, adding that a coterie of national security conservatives, “including a top aide to Senator John McCain of Arizona, also lobbied for him, and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who has worked with General McMaster, encouraged him to take the job.” McCain himself praised McMaster in a tweet as “outstanding choice for nat’l security advisor—man of genuine intellect, character & ability.”

These words of praise for Trump’s choice came from the man who also went to Munich last week, to deliver what one analyst calls “a calculated, planned attack on Trump’s entire system of beliefs.” As the Washington Times editorialized last Monday, it was “without modern precedent, and it was out of bounds.” McCain’s description of the president, to a conference where nobody could miss the point of his remarks, was very close to a declaration of war on Trump, and the fact that he made the remarks on foreign soil is particularly offensive: “The senator apparently accepts the Democratic line that Mr. Trump resides today at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue only because Vladimir Putin successfully manipulated American public opinion and thereby influenced the election in the 50 separate American states. He vows to open an investigation of the extent to which Mr. Trump’s clear and open wish to ease tensions with Moscow could be payback for the help in taking down Hillary Clinton in November.”

A war it is, and Trump cannot win it by making key appointments which are pleasing to McCain and his ilk. If Trump gives up on improving relations with Russia, he will have missed a historic opportunity—perhaps the last – to end once for all the European civil war that erupted in 1914, continued in 1939, and resulted in the frozen conflict called the Cold War. As I wrote in these pages six weeks ago, and elsewhere many times over the years, we need a pan-European entente that embraces the whole of the Northern Hemisphere, from Vancouver to Vladivostok; and Trump seems to understand that we all face “existential demographic and ideological threats—Asiatic and African in origin, Islamic in spirit – in the decades ahead.”

It now appears that this was not the case. Trump has caved in to the Russophobes, and this can only encourage the perpetrators of the ongoing soft (“seed crystal”) coup d’etat to be relentless. Steve Bannon is next on their list, but the final prize is clearly Trump himself—impeached, or humiliatingly tamed, or dead.

 

A “New Birth of Freedom” for Serbs?

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Geopolitics

Europe

24.01.2017

Serbia

Stevan Gajic

A really remarkable chain of events has been happening to Serbs during recent months and weeks. It started at the end of 2016 and continued even faster with the beginning of 2017. Firstly, a proven enemy of Serbs, Hillary Clinton, lost the US presidential election, which was immediately met with rejoice among Serbs, especially in the contested territories. I say lost, because the victory of Donald Trump is not seen as an immediate benefit because of Trump’s qualities, but because the Clinton family has special interest in favoring all Serbian enemies in the Balkans. Bill Clinton ordered the bombing of Serbs, first in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1994 and 1995, and then in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (today’s Serbia and Montenegro) in 1999.

This is why it should not be a surprise that Serbs in Kosovo, Montenegro and Republika Srpska (the Serb part of Bosnia-Herzegovina) erected huge billboards with Trumps face and a message reading “Serbs stood by him all along”.

The second important event was the visit of Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, to Belgrade on December 12th and 13th at a time when he was in the middle of very intense diplomatic activities surrounding Syria. This visit took place during the peak of operations for the liberation of Aleppo. Visiting Belgrade at such a moment clearly signals the place of Serbia on Russia’s foreign policy agenda. Yet even more important was the fact that this visit sealed the deal by which Serbia is to receive a donation of six MiG-29 fighter jets by March 2017.

Thirdly, in spite of immense Western pressure spearheaded by the once powerful ‘viceroyal’ Office of the High Representative of the ‘international community’, nowadays occupied by Austrian diplomat Valentin Incko, as well as despite the pressure marked by both protests and warmongering threats from the Muslim leadership of Sarajevo, Republika Srpska celebrated its official holiday in memory of its founding on January 9th, 1992. The anniversary celebration in Republika Srpska’s capital, Banjaluka, took place on the Day of St. Steven, who is the patron saint of the Republic. This year, the celebration contained an element of well-balanced demonstration of power. Part of it was a parade in which participated, among others, the Republika Srpska’s special police forces who marched in camouflage uniforms with Kalashnikov assault rifles. Sarajevo and Incko also opposed the ceremonial participation of the 3^rd Infantry Regiment of the Bosnia-Herzegovina armed forces, designated as the keeper of Republika Srpska Army traditions after the post-war creation of a unified armed forces. They were invited by Mladen Ivanić, the Serb member of the Bosnia-Herzegovina three-men presidency. Their presence demonstrated that Bosnia-Herzegovina is not an effective state and that Serbs are loyal to the Republic for which they sacrificed during the civil war. Besides Ivanić and the President of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, the celebration was attended by President of Serbia, Tomislav Nikolić, Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church Irinej, Serbia’s armed forces Chief of Staff General, Ljubiša Diković, Serbian Crown Prince Alexander, leaders of Serbs from all former Yugoslav republics, and other high guests. Notably, Serbia’s pro-globalist PM, Aleksandar Vučić, was absent, being away on a several day visit to India where he was participating in the ‘Vibrant Gujarat’ business conference. Vučić was the only Serb leader who supported Hillary Clinton, as he was a guest at an event organized by the Clinton Foundation. Vučić is now trying to get back on track with the new reality by attempting to establish connection with the entourage of the new President of the United States. 

The celebration in Banjaluka was a demonstration of willingness to defend the results of the 1995 Dayton peace agreement which is constantly being undermined at the expense of Republika Srpska by attempts at centralizing Bosnia-Herzegovina by both the Muslim leadership in Sarajevo and the High Representative.

President Dodik’s most important political message was that if the pressure continues, Serbs are ready to defend themselves and proclaim full independence of their Republic with the right to join Serbia in the future.

What really frightened Muslim leader Bakir Izetbegović is that Dodik was invited to Donald Trump’s inauguration, which is perceived as a clear indicator of some new winds blowing in the Balkans. However, in a move unheard of before, the outgoing US administration refused to issue a travel visa to the guest invited by the president-elect. The ‘lame duck’ administration went even an extreme step further: only three days before the inauguration, the State Department imposed sanctions against Dodik personally (ban on travel to the US and freezing assets in the US, non-existent in this case). This unprecedented scandal is just another in a series of moves by which Obama’s outgoing administration aimed to hinder the new president.

And this is not the end. All Serbian opponents in the region seem to have lost their common sense. Albanians are notorious for building a monument to Bill Clinton and naming a boulevard after him, as well as a clothing shop after his wife, Hillary. It is no surprise that every Albanian leader has supported Clinton. Some of them, like the PM of Albania, Edi Rama, went as far as to insult Trump during the campaign. Rama was so sure of his political predictions that at the Belgrade Security Forum in October 2016, in front of many journalists, participants and his fellow panelist, Serbian PM Vučić, he exclaimed how sure he is on who will be the next US president, and that it certainly would not be Trump. Bosnian Muslim leader Izetbegović organized rallies in support of Clinton. He is not at ease with Trump because of the latter’s attitude towards radical Islamic terrorism, and Izetbegović has well known ties with the Muslim Brotherhood. His father, Alija Izetbegović, was the first to introduce jihadi warriors in Europe during the 1992-1995 civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Those courted included Osama bin Laden, who was granted the citizenship and passport of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Croats also supported Hillary, but were more tactical about it in taking care not to show any open dislike for Trump. However, they made another huge incident. During his official visit to Kiev, Croatian PM Andrej Plenković offered his hosts to share Croatia’s ‘know-how’ and experience of ‘reintegrating’ rebellious territories. The Croatian example is that of ethnically cleansing more than half a million Serbs and committing numerous other war crimes in the process. Plenković essentially suggested that the Croats would help the current authorities of Ukraine to get rid of the Russian population. This provoked a harsh reaction from Moscow. But instead of backing off, Plenković reaffirmed his position, which provoked Russia even more. In the context of Trump’s victory and a possible new global deal between Moscow and Washington, these statements were more then harmful for Croatian interests.

Earlier in 2016, Brexit announced a year of great changes and, most importantly, the fall of the EU, which is in a state of utter confusion and submerged in political divisions. On top of this, the US President-elect predicted its demise in his interview to The Times just days before taking office. This might as well be the case.

Let us not forget that after Slovenia’s succession, Yugoslavia still formally existed, but it was in effect broken, never to recover. The EU without the UK is not and never will be the same, even if it survives in one form or another. Another important statement that Trump made in this interview was labelling NATO obsolete. One of the consequences of this statement in the Balkans is that pro-globalist political elites have lost the ideological ground under their feet. This especially goes for Montenegro, whose ruling class dominated by the unchallenged leader Milo Đukanović is now absolutely lost since Euro-Atlantic integration, Russophobia, and Serbophobia are all they have to offer nowadays. Now that the future of both the ‘Euro’ and ‘Atlantic’ communities is questionable, they have nothing to offer. Montenegro has already been in deep political crisis since the October 2016 parliamentary elections. The only logical—and in my deepest belief inevitable—result of this political and ideological crisis will be a Serbian Spring in Montenegro, and an urge for unification with Serbia and Republika Srpska, which would not be the first time.

That state of new affairs is obviously putting pressure of Serbia and Serbs in the region. This was clear after the arrest of the Kosovo Albanian terrorist leader, criminal lord and at one point PM, Ramush Haradinaj, in France on a Serbian warrant for a number of horrendous war crimes.

Serbia told France that if it does not extradite Haradinaj to Serbia then, by reciprocity, Serbia will not extradite people wanted by France that are arrested in Serbia. Such a clear attitude would have been unimaginable just weeks ago, when the process of ‘EU integration’ was the top priority for the Serbian political elite. Another example is the attitude of Serbia’s President Nikolić, who convened an emergency meeting of the National Security Council after a Serbian passenger train from Belgrade was not allowed to enter the Serb-dominated north of Kossovo. In order to prevent the train from entering, ethnic Albanian separatist authorities sent special police forces, which was an act of provoking local Serbs. President Nikolić stated after this emergency session that Serbia will not stand by as Serbs are targeted, but will militarily enter its province. In support of this, at his annual conference on January 17th, Lavrov stated that Albanians should not be present in the Serb-inhabited north of Kosovo. Nikolić went a step further on January 17th by telling the US Ambassador to Serbia: “I always speak frankly and openly and protect the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia. I understand that you unconditionally support a thing whose creation you directly influenced [i.e. secessionism in Kosovo]. By exercising your will, you have created a lot of trouble, and I hope that this behavior will stop with the new administration.”

Before this new wave of confident statements by Serbian officials, probably the only politician in power throughout the Serbian space who predicted these new tendencies and acting accordingly, meaning independently, who was therefore respected home and abroad, was Republika Srpska’s President Dodik.

All of these swift changes in the world — Brexit, Russia’s diplomatic and military victory in the Middle East, Trump’s electoral victory, etc.—seem to have come as unexpected gifts from sky to the Serbs. Serbs are simply not used to such good news. We have been trained to lose and take it like a sport or with a pinch of salt since 1991, the beginning of the breakup of Yugoslavia. Maybe this had an even earlier tradition, since 1918 when the Serbs gave up their own statehood and invested a million and a half lives lost in WWI for a vague “brotherly” Yugoslav identity that failed in 1941 and in 1991, both times with the Serbs betrayed by the ‘brotherly peoples’ with high price in human lives. So what should we make of this, and will Serbian leaders, including those present and those coming in the near future, be capable of capitalizing on these global changes?

Although one should not compare two historic periods - since history almost never repeats itself - there is a striking parallel in US-Russia relations today and during the American Civil War. In the 1860’s, Russia was an ally of the Union and President Abraham Lincoln’s struggle that resulted in ending slavery, while the UK was helping the slaveholding South and invading Crimea just several years before. Nowadays, Russia obviously has sympathies for the new American administration, while many Western leaders and interest groups— whom Alexander Dugin, using Trump’s terminology, generically calls the “Swamp”- openly despise, oppose and almost reject the expressed will of the American people by dismissing the democratic process as “populism”. In 1863, probably the greatest US president and Republican Party leader, and Trump’s predecessor in the oval office, Abraham Lincoln, gave a famous speech known as the “Gettysburg Address”, on the site of a battlefield that saw grand sacrifices of both the Unionist and Confederate soldiers. Talking about the post-war US, Lincoln predicted “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom”. It seems that 2017 might give an answer as to whether or not this unique historical moment in international relations will mark the beginning of a “new birth of freedom” for the Serbs on the Balkan Peninsula.

http://katehon.com/article/new-birth-freedom-serbs

balkaninsight.com

Bosnian Serb Leader Calls US Ambassador ‘Enemy’

Danijel Kovacevic, Eleanor Rose

Republika Srpska’s President Milorad Dodik responded to US sanctions imposed on him with a blistering attack on the US ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina, who he described as Bosnian Serbs’ enemy.

The president of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, hit back on Wednesday after sanctions were imposed on him by the US Treasury, declaring the US ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Maureen Cormack, “a proven enemy” of the Bosnian Serbs who was “unwelcome in Republika Srpska”.

At a press conference, Dodik called on Bosnia’s foreign minister Igor Crnadak to declare Cormack persona non grata, because he claimed the US diplomat had “violated the laws of Bosnia and Herzegovina”.

The US Treasury announced on Tuesday that it had imposed sanctions on Dodik for “for his role in defying the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina in violation of the rule of law, thereby actively obstructing the Dayton Accords [which ended the Bosnian war]”.

On January 9, Dodik led celebrations for a public holiday called the Day of Republika Srpska, which had been banned by the country’s Constitutional Court on the basis that the holiday was linked to an event in the Serbian Orthodox Church calendar and therefore discriminated against non-Serbs living in the entity.

Dodik also held a referendum in September to garner public support for the celebration, also in defiance of a Constitutional Court ban.

The sanctions mean that any of Dodik’s access to any property or interests in property within US jurisdiction is blocked, and US citizens are prohibited from engaging in transactions with him. They do not involve a travel ban.

The EU delegation to Bosnia said however that it was not considering imposing any sanctions on Dodik.

“While no restrictive measures are being actively considered, the EU institutions and member states continue to monitor the implications of the failure to respect decisions of the Constitutional Court,” Jamila Milovic-Halilovic, the spokesperson for the EU delegation and EU Special Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina, told BIRN.

High Representative Valentin Inzko, the top official in Bosnia responsible for implementation of the Dayton Accords, welcomed the sanctions, telling media that Dodik had been “playing with fire and crossed a red line”. 

But Inzko’s office sought to explains that the sanctions were not meant as an attack on Serbs.

“These sanctions should not be seen as anything against Republika Srpska or the Serb people, but rather as a demonstration that when individual officials use rhetoric and actions that violate the Dayton Peace Agreement there are consequences,” the Office of the High Representative’s spokesperson Liljana Radetic said in a statement.

Bosnian Security Minister Dragan Mektic and Sadik Ahmetovic, a lawmaker from the main Bosniak Party for Democratic Action, said Dodik should resign.

But at Wednesday morning’s press conference, Dodik was unrepentant.

“I feel proud and I do not see this as a punishment,” he said. 

He added that the decision to impose sanctions was futile “because they know I have no property in the US”. 

He also said that he expected the administration of Donald Trump, who will be inaugurated on Friday, to take a different approach towards him.

In the streets of Republika Srpska’s administrative centre Banja Luka, the mood was also critical.

“I think this is ridiculous. I don't understand why they sanctioned him. He has my full support. Those Americans are always against Serbs. It is enough,” said Veselin, a retired factory worker.

“I don’t think they can do anything to him. But I am worried about us. This has gone too far,” said Stefan, an administrative worker.

Meanwhile a former vice president of Republika Srpska, Emil Vlajki, who is now a professor in Banja Luka, said he believed the US sanctions had opened a “Pandora’s box” and would unify Bosnian Serbs behind the idea of splitting from Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“These sanctions are sealing the fate of Bosnia,” said Vlajki.

“From now on, freedom is the only alternative for the Serb people,” he added.

 

economist.com

The Yugoslav tribunal shuts down, a Kosovo tribunal starts up

Democracy in America | 1 hour 47 mins ago

The Yugoslav tribunal shuts down, a Kosovo tribunal starts up

IT WAS a historic day for international justice, but it did not look like it. On December 15th Ratko Mladic sat in the dock at the UN’s Yugoslavia war-crimes tribunal in The Hague, grumbling and reading a newspaper. When the prosecutor accused him of organising the massacre of more than 7,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys after the town of Srebrenica fell to his Bosnian Serb forces in 1995, he wagged his finger in denial. It was the last day of his trial, though the verdict could be a year in coming. Verdicts about the court itself, meanwhile, are already being handed down.

The case against Mr Mladic brings to an end the trials of the important figures indicted by the tribunal. (Appeals are being dealt with by another body.) In the Balkans, there is widespread disappointment at the role it has played. Meanwhile, as one tribunal shuts down, a new one for Kosovo was launched in the Netherlands on January 1st. Later this year it should begin issuing indictments for Kosovars accused of crimes committed between 1998 and 2000.

Created in 1993 by the UN Security Council, the Yugoslavia tribunal ultimately indicted 161 people and sentenced 83 of them. “Its greatest success,” says Eric Gordy, the author of a book on war crimes in the Balkans, “is that it did anything at all.” Judge Carmel Agius, the president of the tribunal, admits it has been “a troubled journey” but is proud of its achievements.

The tribunal’s biggest failure was its inability to convince people in the former Yugoslavia that it was impartial. Many in the region saw it as a foreign imposition. It was created by outsiders at a moment when the world had the will to demand justice for war crimes wherever they were committed. But trials have dragged on for years, and judges and lawyers are paid handsomely. People in the former Yugoslavia, Mr Agius says, suffer from a habit of “blaming foreigners or someone else” for their disappointments. But, he says, “not a single mass grave would have been excavated” if the tribunal had not existed.

Mirko Klarin, a journalist who urged the court’s creation in an article in 1991, says one success was expanding the definition of war crimes. Yet this, he thinks, may have been the court’s downfall. Starting in 2012, several acquittals called into question the court’s “command responsibility” precedents, which held leaders culpable for war crimes committed in operations they had ordered but not directly led. Many observers believed that powerful Western countries worried that such standards might be applied to their own armed forces or politicians, and used their influence to turn the tide.

The suspicion that war-crimes tribunals are an alien imposition also afflicts the new Kosovo court. In fact the court is not a UN body. It is a tribunal set up under Kosovo law, with foreign judges, funded mostly by the EU and in response to allegations made in a Council of Europe report in 2011. (One was that several prisoners held by what was then the Kosovo Liberation Army were murdered for their organs.) Florina Duli, who runs the Kosovar Stability Initiative, a think-tank, says many of her compatriots are convinced that the new tribunal is a tool of “big countries and the European Union”. They think the threat of indictments will be used to blackmail Kosovar leaders to do what the Europeans want, such as keeping the EU-sponsored dialogue with Serbia going.

David Schwendiman, the prosecutor, concedes that the aims of the new tribunal are more modest than in decades past. His work may not deter fighters from committing crimes in Syria. Still, he sees a duty to build a body of law with which to try such criminals when the political will to do so returns. In the meantime, the tribunals “[help] people learn what happened, but not be consumed by it.” As an effort to record history, the Yugoslavia tribunal with its archive of millions of pages is an undisputed success. That, and the convictions it has achieved, says Mr Gordy, are “definitely better than nothing—and most conflicts get nothing.”

 

foreignaffairs.com

Dysfunction in the Balkans

By Timothy Less

The political settlement in the former Yugoslavia is unraveling. In Bosnia, the weakest state in the region, both Serbs and Croats are mounting a concerted challenge to the Dayton peace accords, the delicate set of compromises that hold the country together. In Macedonia, political figures from the large Albanian minority are calling for the federalization of the state along ethnic lines. In Kosovo, the Serb minority is insisting on the creation of a network of self-governing enclaves with effective independence from the central government. In Serbia’s Presevo Valley, Albanians are agitating for greater autonomy. In Montenegro, Albanians have demanded a self-governing entity. And in Kosovo and Albania, where Albanians have their independence, nationalists are pushing for a unified Albanian state.

It is easy to dismiss all this as simply sound and fury, whipped up by opportunistic politicians. But it would be a mistake to ignore the will of the electorates, which have persistently shown their dissatisfaction with the multiethnic status quo and are demanding change. The choice facing Western policymakers is either to recognize the legitimacy of these demands and radically change their approach or to continue with the current policy and risk renewed conflict.

A BEAUTIFUL IDEA

When Yugoslavia collapsed at the start of 1990s, there was nothing predetermined about what followed. One possibility was the emergence of nation-states, comparable to those elsewhere in Europe; another was multiethnic states based on internal administrative boundaries. In the end, the West determined the nature of the post-Yugoslav settlement by recognizing the independence of the old Yugoslav republics within their existing borders. In doing so, they were guided not only by a belief that this would promote justice and security but also by an ideological conviction that nationalism was the source of instability in Europe. Multiethnicity was seen as a viable, even desirable, organizing principle. 

Unfortunately, this decision cut across the most basic interests of the emerging minority groups, which saw themselves condemned to second-class status in someone else’s state. In the 1990s, many took up arms to try to secure formal separation. Subsequently, wherever this failed, minorities have struggled to secure as much autonomy as possible within their adoptive states. Given the resistance of majority groups to the fragmentation of their polities, these attempts at separation have built tension into the very nervous system of the region’s various multiethnic states.

As a result, the West has been compelled for the last two decades to enforce the settlement it imposed on the former Yugoslavia, deploying UN-run civilian missions and NATO troops as regional policemen. At first, Washington took the lead, but after the United States downgraded its presence in the Balkans over the last decade, primary responsibility for upholding the post-Yugoslav settlement passed to the European Union. In doing so, the EU substituted the hard power of the U.S. military for the soft power of enlargement. Its assumption was that the very act of preparing for EU membership would transform poor authoritarian states into the kinds of prosperous, democratic, law-bound polities in which disaffected minorities would be content to live.

For a short while toward the end of the last decade, the policy appeared to be working. However, the disquiet of minorities eventually made it clear that the EU’s approach could not resolve the problems created by multiethnicity. Its central misconception was that minorities would give higher priority to political and economic reform than to grievances about territory and security, which would no longer matter after joining the EU. All this made sense to Europeans living in their post-historical paradise but did not hold water for minorities situated in the Hobbesian realm of the Balkans, unable to secure even their most primary needs—their security, rights, and prosperity.

Instead, issues of governance and the economy, and even more peripheral concerns such as education and the environment, were pushed to the margins as political institutions became gridlocked by intractable questions about territory, identity, and the balance between central and regional power. Day-to-day, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Macedonia were mired in political dysfunction, economic stagnation, and institutional corruption, even as their more homogenous neighbors, such as Albania, Croatia, and even Serbia, began to prosper.

The policy is further complicated by the Euroskepticism now sweeping across Europe, which threatens any remaining hope that integration could lead to stabilization. A Eurobarometer poll last year suggested that only 39 percent of EU citizens favor enlargement and 49 percent oppose it. Earlier this year, voters in the Netherlands decided in a referendum to block Ukraine’s integration with the EU; it was, in effect, a vote against enlargement. Previous governments in both Austria and France have also pledged to condition future enlargement upon a national referendum.

As a result, the process of enlargement has stalled. Thirteen years after its launch at a summit in Thessaloniki, four of the six non-EU states in the region have yet to open negotiations on EU membership. Serbia has only tentatively begun, and Montenegro, the region’s most advanced state, has only provisionally closed two of the 35 negotiating chapters, four years after starting. (By contrast, the central European countries completed the entire negotiating process within the same time frame.)

To complicate matters, Russia is using its influence to frustrate the process of integration, encouraging unhappy minorities such as the Bosnian Serbs to escalate their demands for separatism and threatening the pro-integration government in Montenegro. Turkey is nurturing the support of disaffected Muslims such as Bosniaks and Macedonian Albanians. And China is enthusiastically providing governments across the region with no-strings funding for investment in infrastructure, undermining the West’s attempts to promote conditions-based internal reform.

The debate on the Balkans has been dominated for far too long by Western diplomats and academics who deny what is obvious to almost everyone on the ground: that multiethnicity in the region is a beautiful idea and a miserable reality.

Almost every state has recently experienced serious unrest as people lose faith in the power of the EU to deliver them from their current state of hopelessness, poverty, and corruption. Adding to these tensions, minorities are trying to take control of their destiny by demanding the right to a separate territory in countries where the central government inevitably prioritizes the interests of the majority group. This combination of factors is already destabilizing the Balkans and, in turn, threatening to undermine the post-Yugoslav settlement. 

For the moment, the EU’s ability to preserve the status quo in the Balkans is not completely spent because of its collective veto on border changes in the region. Meanwhile, Brussels is continuing to squeeze every last bit of leverage out of its policy of integration. In the last couple of years, it has pushed all the region’s laggards—Albania, Bosnia, and Kosovo—one step closer to membership.

But the EU is still struggling mightily to impose its authority. European diplomats were unable to resolve a two-year political crisis in Macedonia that began when the governing parties, which just won early elections, were implicated in wiretapped recordings revealing gross corruption and outright criminality. The EU also failed to conclude an agreement to normalize relations between Serbia and Kosovo. (In fact, relations between the two governments are deteriorating.) Perhaps most serious, Bosnia’s Republika Srpska proceeded with a controversial referendum in October, despite EU protestations, about retaining its national day holiday, which Bosnia’s highest court found discriminatory against non-Serbs and which Western diplomats said violated the Dayton constitution that holds Bosnia together. The EU’s subsequent inability to punish Bosnian Serb leaders through sanctions could embolden them to organize an independence referendum. 

A MISERABLE REALITY

What happens next, of course, is a matter of speculation. In all probability, the post-Yugoslav settlement will continue to hold in law. But separatist groups can easily gain a kind of functional independence by repudiating the authority of the central government and then waiting for more opportune circumstances, such as the collapse of the EU, to formalize this separation. Left unchecked, the situation risks sliding toward renewed conflict as majority populations fight to maintain the integrity of their states.

If this is the danger, then how should policymakers respond? The key consideration is that the existing policy of stabilization through integration, to the extent that it ever worked, has fully run its course, given the effective end of EU enlargement. By laboring onward with an obsolete policy that relies on an elusive reward, and without any sanctions for noncompliance, the West is handing the power of initiative to local revisionists and their external sponsors, Russia and Turkey, which are pursuing self-interested policies that cut across the West’s objectives.

Some argue that the existing policy could be made to work if only Brussels tried a bit harder, backing up its pledge of EU membership with greater efforts to promote regional cooperation, democracy, transparency, economic development, and so on. However, this is wishful thinking. The promise of EU membership is broken, and every one of these initiatives has been tried in spades for the last 20 years.

Others, especially majority groups on the ground, argue that Europe should get tough with politicians who advocate separatism, as Washington did in the past. This might work if Europe were willing to intervene in the region indefinitely. But the political context has changed radically over the last decade. No one wants another civilian mission, and threatening a group such as the Bosnian Serbs would simply drive it into Russia’s open arms.

A radical new approach is therefore required that forges a durable peace by addressing the underlying source of instability in the Balkans: the mismatch of political and national boundaries. The two-decade experiment in multiethnicity has failed. If the West is to stay true to its long-standing goal of preserving peace in the Balkans, then the moment has come to put pragmatism before idealism and plan for a graduated transition to properly constituted nation-states whose populations can satisfy their most basic political interests.

Given the divisions in Europe, the United States needs to step up and take control of the process. In the short term, Washington should support the internal fragmentation of multiethnic states where minorities demand it—for example, by accepting the Albanians’ bid for the federalization of Macedonia and the Croats’ demand for a third entity in Bosnia. In the medium term, the United States should allow these various territories to form close political and economic links with their larger neighbors, such as allowing dual citizenship and establishing shared institutions, while formally remaining a part of their existing state.

In the final phase, these territories could break from their existing states and unite with their mother country, perhaps initially as autonomous regions. A Croat entity in Bosnia would merge with Croatia; Republika Srpska and the north of Kosovo with Serbia; and the Presevo Valley, western Macedonia, and most of Kosovo with Albania. Meanwhile, Montenegro, which may lose its small Albanian enclaves, could either stay independent or coalesce with an expanded Serbia. In pursuing this plan, the United States would not be breaking new ground but simply reviving the Wilsonian vision of a Europe comprising self-governing nations—but for the one part of the continent where this vision has never been applied.

Inevitably, there would be difficulties and risks, although not as serious as those inherent in the existing failed policy approach. Serbia would have to let go of Kosovo, minus the north, but the compensation would be the realization of a Serbian nation-state in the territory where Serbs predominate. Albanians would similarly have to give up northern Kosovo. More problematic, Bosniaks and Macedonians would need to accept the loss of territory to which they are sentimentally attached and without any significant territorial compensation.

In truth, this would simply be a formalization of the existing reality. But the United States and Europe would need to smooth the transition by investing heavily in their economic development and by involving a range of international partners—including Turkey, Russia, and the key regional states of Albania, Croatia, and Serbia—to commit to their security. During a transitional period, Washington and others may also have to deploy peacekeepers to uphold the borders of the expanded Albanian, Croatian, and Serbian states.

But this would be only a temporary commitment, in contrast with the current deployment needed to uphold an illegitimate status quo—4,300 troops in Kosovo, including around 600 from the United States, and another 600 troops in Bosnia. Ultimately, it is easier to enforce a separation than a reluctant cohabitation.

 

"Serbia has 80% chance of joining EU; but not before 2027"

b92.net

"Serbia has 80% chance of joining EU; but not before 2027" - - on B92.net

The EU’s golden age of expansion is over, and Serbia, one of "at least 10 countries keen to join," won't be able to do that before 2027.

Source: Tanjug Friday, December 16, 2016 | 09:11

This is according to the website politico.eu.

Serbia is thus given "80 percent chance of joining" with the country's "pros" including the fact it is the biggest of the Western Balkan countries hoping to join the EU, as well as that it "could be a pro-EU stabilizing force in the region and good neighbor if kept within the EU’s orbit," while the Commission has "praised Serbia for aligning its legislation with the EU across the board."

As for the cons, they include "no progress over the past year in fighting corruption," while Serbia "may also continue refusing to recognize Kosovo unless offered EU membership, which may be tactically clever but breaches the spirit of EU norms."

The website also sees Albania as capable of becoming "a surprise front-runner in the membership race" - it is already a NATO member and a country "mostly free" from the complications of the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.

 

globalnews.ca

Serbia supports Canada’s bid for UN Security Council seat in 2020

Mike Blanchfield

OTTAWA – Canada has won the support of Serbia in its bid for a temporary seat on the United Nations Security Council in 2020, even though Canada went to war against it 17 years ago, says the country’s foreign minister.

The Security Council campaign is a key pillar of the Trudeau government’s foreign policy and the international politicking is in the early stages. But it is clearly under way.

The public endorsement by a European country, albeit a small one, is important.

 

Canada is running in the 2019 election for a two-year term starting the following year.

Canada lost its last Security Council bid in 2010 to Portugal – a loss that was at least partially attributable to what many analysts viewed as the solidarity of the European countries voting in a bloc for one of their own.

READ MORE: Excitement from international community with a more activist Canada: Rudd

Canada competes in the Western European and Others Group of the UN, and will face stiff competition in 2019 from Ireland and Norway.

“Serbia will certainly support it, support their candidacy,” Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic said in an interview Tuesday during his first visit to Canada.

“We wish to have better relations with Canada. Canada is a very important partner of ours.”

The visiting foreign minister demurred when asked whether Serbia would try to influence European neighbours, saying it is a small country.

Serbia is on a track to join the European Union by the end of the decade and its ambassador to Canada, Mihailo Papazoglu, suggested his country would not be averse to trying to convince some of its neighbours in the Balkans and elsewhere on the continent to support Canada.

READ MORE: Reality check: Is securing a seat on the UN Security Council necessary for Canada?

Dacic was a on a two-day trip to Canada, where he had meetings with Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion and Immigration Minister John McCallum.

The minister, who spoke through a translator, said Serbia wanted to move on from its troubled past and has no hard feelings against Canada, which went to war against his country alongside NATO allies in 1999.

Canada joined the 78-day NATO bombardment of Serbia to support persecuted ethnic Albanians in the province of Kosovo, which has since formed its own country.

Canadian CF-18 jet fighters dropped 10 per cent of the NATO bombs that pounded Serbia, including its capital, Belgrade.

READ MORE: Canada will bid for 2021 seat on UN Security Council

“It’s obvious that many countries participated in the bombing of Serbia, but we cannot live just remembering the past,” said Dacic. “We have to try to find the common interest.

“The administration in Canada changed and everywhere in the world. We have to work with these new people, to find new friends.”

Dacic also pushed for Canada to lift a visa requirement for Serbian travellers, an irritant in Canada’s relations with the EU members Bulgaria and Romania as well.

He said the two countries also finalized an air travel agreement that will pave the way for direct flights between Canada and Belgrade.

 

Serbia: War of spies or public relations debacle?

dw.com

Serbia: War of spies or public relations debacle? | Europe | DW.COM | 31.10.2016

Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com)

Last week's events overwhelmed even the Serbian public, which is accustomed to hearing scandalous rumors. Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic (pictured at top) often holds dramatic press conferences broadcast live by pro-government media outlets. Sometimes he just lashes out at Kosovo, sometimes at political rivals - then, the supposed economic boom that lies ahead is announced. But this time, Vucic touched on some hot topics: espionage, a thwarted coup and the story of a small, but unyielding Serbia that is supposedly being harassed by "Eastern and Western powers."

Coup attempt in Montenegro?

The reason for this was that while citizens of the neighboring Republic of Montenegro were casting their ballots during parliamentary elections in mid-October, the arrest of 20 Serbian citizens attracted a great deal of media attention. They had allegedly planned a coup against outgoing Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic because he wants to lead the small Adriatic nation to NATO membership.

The putschists apparently wanted to help the opposition, supposedly backed by the Kremlin, take power. It is no secret that Russia is critical of NATO's expansion. The Western military alliance's growing reach is painful for the Kremlin, not only because Montenegro is traditionally pro-Russian but also because with the admission of the small nation to NATO, the alliance will have secured the last piece of the Adriatic coast it was missing.

 

After his party's parliamentary election victory, Djukanovic surprisingly said he would step down

The pro-Western Djukanovic won the election by a narrow margin. The arrests on election day were decisive for his win. Now, his Serbian counterpart insists that a coup in Montenegro had been orchestrated in Serbia. The Serbian prime minister did not provide details, and people are speculating whether Russian intelligence agencies are involved. Many observers feel that this incident was a public relations debacle. Vucic only noted that Serbia would not allow itself to become the puppet of world powers.

"An unclear situation is ideal for populists," said Milos Vasic, an experienced journalist from the weekly paper "Vreme." He is surprised that the government was talking about spies without anyone having been arrested in Serbia, and says everything is a show to divert attention from the real economic problems and intrigues.

"Whenever the government has no arguments, it likes to talk about foreign spies, local traitors and alleged foreign agents," Vasic told DW.

Mysterious visit paid by Patrushev

Musings over a "war of spies on the Balkans" were officially fed when Secretary of the Security Council of Russia Nikolai Patrushev visited Belgrade to strengthen cooperation of the two countries. However, many different Serbian papers reported consistently that Patrushev flew three exposed Russian spies out of Belgrade. This was done to avoid a public scandal - that was also written in the Muscovite newspaper "Kommersant." The Serbian minister of the interior and Russia's Kremlin spokesman Dimitri Peskov denied the reports. Officially, relations between the Orthodox nations are still good.

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin is a popular figure in Serbia

"Because we have so little reliable information, we have been forced to interpret the prime minister's words," Sofija Mandic, of the Belgrade Center for Security Policy, told DW. "If foreign intelligence agencies are planning terrorist attacks in Serbia or Montenegro, then one must ask why is this being discussed publicly without it leading to criminal proceedings. And if some Russian citizens really have been deported from Serbia, why where they not arrested?"

If that was not enough: Last week, it was said that a high-ranking former justice official has been selling confidential information to the CIA for a long time now. The Belgrade paper "Blic" published names and details.

Spy stories lend themselves to the invention of conspiracy theories - a popular pastime in Serbia. "These are the dreams of Serbian nationalist," said journalist Milos Vasic. "The only geopolitical importance of our country is the fact that important traffic routes run here. We should try to establish better train connections instead of wasting our time with these fabrications."

Weapons find

On Saturday, things got even hotter. Police seized a weapon stockpile buried not far from Prime Minister Vucic's apartment. It contained a missile launcher, four hand grenades and ammunition. Vucic seemed nonchalant about it, and the weapons likely came from the wars in Bosnia and Croatia in the 1990s and had nothing to do with the present situation. Yet the tabloids were already outlining a potential attack scenario. "This is the alley where they wanted to blow up Vucic with a missile," was the headline on the pro-government newspaper "Informer." It seems like the PR debacle is far from over.

 

Book: WHILE THOUGHTS CREATE THE COSMOS.

 

The first author's book in the part of the oeuvre on the power of thoughts. What thoughts can influence and what can have impact on them. Energy and thought in networking of people. New scientific paradigm, that will soon change all sciences.

 

Од 26. априла 2016. године у понуди је књига ДОК МИСЛИ СТВАРАЈУ КОСМОС на енглеском језику, под насловом WHILE THOUGHTS CREATE THE COSMOS. С обзиром на то да сам за енглеско говорно подручје непознат аутор, био бих вам веома захвалан уколико обавестите ваше пријатеље и рођаке широм света који знају енглески језик да ова књига постоји.

 

Линкови књиге су:

iBooks:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1106807671

Google Play:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.newlookentertainment.WTCTC.AOVVPCAOJWPBFTXFRK

Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/WHILE-THOUGHTS-CREATE-COSMOS-Svetozar-ebook/dp/B01EN0WE4C?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

Светозар Радишић

http://www.svetozarradisic.com/

nationalinterest.org

Why Russia Fears NATO

Ted Galen Carpenter

Adam Twardowski takes umbrage at arguments that I and other members of the realism and restraint camp have made that NATO’s behavior over the past two decades has exacerbated tensions with Russia. He begins his rebuttal with a drive-by smear that is increasingly in vogue among neoconservatives, dismissing such arguments as coming from “Russia’s apologists.”  Elsewhere in the piece, he resorts to the even uglier smear of NATO critics as “Putin’s apologists.”

Twardowski begins his substantive case with the argument that if Russia truly feared NATO because of the alliance’s allegedly belligerent actions “then it makes no sense from a realist perspective that U.S.-Russian relations warmed at all following the Soviet Union’s disintegration.” That is a puzzling argument. Moscow clearly hoped for a new, united European security architecture in the years following the demise of the Soviet Union. It was only when NATO intervened in Bosnia in 1995 (some four years later) and idle talk about expanding the alliance eastward turned into an actual offer (three years after that) that Russian suspicions about Western, especially U.S., intentions became prominent.

Throughout the piece, Twardowski states or implies that Russian hostility toward NATO is a new phenomenon, basically dating from 2014 and the crisis over Ukraine. Nothing could be further from the truth. I encountered numerous Russian diplomats, journalists, and scholars during the mid-and late 1990s who were mystified and resentful at the U.S. decision to expand NATO eastward—in violation of what they regarded as a solemn promise not to do so. They were even angrier about the U.S.-led military interventions in the Balkans, a traditional Russian sphere of influence, in support of anti-Slavic factions. Although Russian leaders complained about such matters, Russia was simply too weak to do anything about it except issue impotent protests.  During the Kosovo intervention, however, the commander of British forces worried that the United States was pushing Russia too far. He directly disobeyed a direct order from NATO Supreme Commander U.S. General Wesley Clark to attack Russian military personnel at Pristina airport, saying that he wasn’t about to start World War III. That was a strange fear if the Russians didn’t care about NATO’s actions.

One sign of Russia’s growing disillusionment with the West was seeing a series of generally pro-Western prime ministers under President Boris Yeltsin succeeded by the enigmatic but decidedly more nationalistic Vladimir Putin. And as Yeltsin’s successor, Putin would move to rebuild Russia’s military strength and adopt a much more assertive foreign policy.

The consequences of NATO’s arrogance became evident in 2008—long before the dust-up over Ukraine in 2014. The United States and its allies again double-crossed Russia regarding Kosovo, bypassing the UN Security Council (and a certain Russian veto) and acting as the midwife for the province’s unilateral declaration of independence. U.S. leaders then piled on the arrogance, asserting that the Kosovo situation was unique and set no precedent. Russia’s answer to that absurdity came a few months later when it exploited a reckless military move by Georgia against a secessionist region, South Ossetia, to counterattack and preside over the detachment of that region and another secessionist enclave, Abkhazia.

Twardowski argues on several occasions that NATO poses no “existential threat” to Russia. But I know of no realist who makes that argument. Indeed, “existential threat” is a concept that is used in a far too promiscuous fashion by Twardowski and his neoconservative colleagues, not by realists and not by the Russians. American hawks even use the term to describe the threat that a few thousand stateless Islamic terrorists pose—as though they truly threaten the very existence of the United States.

But NATO can and does menace important Russian interests without posing an existential threat. As I have described elsewhere, it would be a useful mental exercise to consider what the reaction in this country would be if an alliance dominated by another major power, say China, began to add the Caribbean countries, the Central American countries, and the northern tier powers of South America to a military alliance that it controlled. Consider further the probable reaction if the Chinese equivalents of neoconservatives campaigned to bring Canada and Mexico into such an alliance and deploy Chinese military forces in those countries. Would any U.S. leader—indeed, any prudent American—not consider that a threat to the nation’s security?

That is essentially what the United States and NATO have done to Russia. Yet Twardowski believes that the Russians have no legitimate complaints. His response is an operational definition of willful blindness.

 

Cold War, today, tomorrow, every day till the end of the world.

Cold War, today, tomorrow, every day till the end of the world.

“Russia suspected of election scheme. U.S. probes plan to sow voter distrust.”

That’s the Washington Post page-one lead headline of September 6. Think about it. The election that Americans are suffering through, cringing in embarrassment, making them think of moving abroad, renouncing their citizenship; an election causing the Founding Fathers to throw up as they turn in their graves … this is because the Russian Devils are sowing voter distrust! Who knew?

But of course, that’s the way Commies are – Oh wait, I forgot, they’re no longer Commies. So what are they? Ah yes, they still have that awful old hangup so worthy of condemnation by decent people everywhere – They want to stand in the way of American world domination. The nerve!

The first Cold War performed a lobotomy on Americans, replacing brain matter with anti-communist viral matter, producing more than 70 years of functional national stupidity.

For all of you who missed this fun event there’s good news: Cold War Two is here, as big and as stupid as ever. Russia and Vladimir Putin are repeatedly, and automatically, blamed for all manner of bad things. The story which follows the above Washington Post headline does not even bother to make up something that could pass for evidence of the claim. The newspaper just makes the claim, at the same time pointing out that “the intelligence community is not saying it has ‘definitive proof’ of such tampering, or any Russian plans to do so.” But the page-one headline has already served its purpose.

Hillary Clinton in her debate with Donald Trump likewise accused Russia of all kinds of computer hacking. Even Trump, not usually a stickler for accuracy, challenged her to offer something along the lines of evidence. She had nothing to offer.

In any event, this is all a diversion. It’s not hacking per se that bothers the establishment; it’s the revelations of their lies that drives them up the wall. The hack of the Democratic National Committee on the eve of the party’s convention disclosed a number of embarrassing internal emails, forcing the resignation of DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

On September 12 we could read in the Post that a well-known physician had called for Clinton to be checked for possible poisons afer her collapse in New York. Said the good doctor: “I do not trust Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump. With those two all things are possible.”

Numerous other examples could be given here of the Post’s near-juvenile anti-Russian bias. One of the most common subjects has been Crimea. Moscow’s “invasion” of the Crimean peninsula in Ukraine in February 2014 is repeatedly cited as proof of Moscow’s belligerent and expansionist foreign policy and the need for Washington to once again feed the defense-budget monster. But we’re never reminded that Russia was reacting to a US-supported coup that overthrew the democratically-elected government of Ukraine on Russia’s border and replaced it with a regime in which neo-Nazis, complete with swastikas, feel very much at home. Russia “invaded” to assist Eastern Ukrainians in their resistance to this government, and did not even cross the border inasmuch as Russia already had a military base in Ukraine.

NATO (= USA) has been surrounding Russia for decades. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov captured the exquisite shamelessness of this with his remark of September 27, 2014: “Excuse us for our existence in the middle of your bases.”

By contrast here is US Secretary of State, John Kerry: “NATO is not a threat to anyone. It is a defensive alliance. It is simply meant to provide security. It is not focused on Russia or anyone else.”

NATO war games in these areas are frequent, almost constant. The encirclement of Russia is about complete except for Georgia and Ukraine. In June, Germany’s foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, shockingly accused NATO of “war-mongering” against Russia. How would the United States react to a Russian coup in Mexico or Canada followed by Russian military exercises in the same area?

Since the end of Cold War One, NATO has been feverishly searching for a reason to justify its existence. Their problem can be summed up with this question: If NATO had never existed what argument could be given now to create it?

The unmitigated arrogance of US policy in Ukraine was best epitomized by the now-famous remark of Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary at the State Department, reacting to possible European Union objection to Washington’s role in Ukraine: “Fuck the EU”, she charmingly declared.

Unlike the United States, Russia does not seek world domination, nor even domination of Ukraine, which Moscow could easily accomplish if it wished. Neither did the Soviet Union set out to dominate Eastern Europe post-World War II. It must be remembered that Eastern Europe became communist because Hitler, with the approval of the West, used it as a highway to reach the Soviet Union to wipe out Bolshevism forever; and that the Russians in World Wars I and II lost about 40 million people because the West had twice used this highway to invade Russia. It should not be surprising that after World War II the Soviets were determined to close down the highway.

The Washington Post’s campaign to depict Russia as the enemy is unrelenting. Again, on the 19th, we could read in the paper the following: “U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies are investigating what they see as a broad covert Russian operation in the United States to sow public distrust in the upcoming presidential election and in U.S. political institutions, intelligence and congressional officials said.”

Nothing, however, compares with President Obama’s speech to the UN General Assembly (September 24, 2014) where he classified Russia to be one of the three threats to the world along with the Islamic State and ebola.

A war between nuclear-powered United States and nuclear- powered Russia is “unthinkable”. Except that American military men think about it, like Cold-War US General Thomas Power, speaking about nuclear war or a first strike by the US: “The whole idea is to kill the bastards! At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win!” The response from one of those present was: “Well, you’d better make sure that they’re a man and a woman.”

 

https://williamblum.org/aer/read/145

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Sanctions Against Russia Contradict Serbia’s National Interests

Sputnik

Europe

22:57 24.09.2016Get short URL

© Sputnik/ Ruslan Krivobok

BELGRADE (Sputnik) — Belgrade will not support sanctions against Russia as they run contrary to Serbia's national interests, the country’s Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic said Saturday.

"Introduction of sanctions against Russia contradicts national and state interests of Serbia, and that's it! There is nothing more to talk about this subject," Dacic said at a briefing.

Serbia would "act against itself" if it backed sanctions against the country, which supports Serbia over the issue of Kosovo, the minister added.

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in February 2008, and has since been recognized by over a hundred UN member-states, including the United States. Belgrade considers Kosovo to be part of Serbia. Dozens of countries, including Russia, do not recognize Kosovo's sovereignty.

Since 2014, relations between Russia and the European Union deteriorated amid the crisis in Ukraine. Brussels, Washington and their allies have introduced several rounds of anti-Russia sanctions since Crimea became part of Russia in 2014 and over Moscow's alleged involvement in the Ukrainian conflict. Russia has repeatedly refuted the allegations, warning that the Western sanctions are counterproductive and undermine global stability.