nationalinterest.org

The Submarine Row Marks the Dawn of the Franco-British Rivalry

by Ali Demirdas

7-9 minutes

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“It’s a stab in the back. We had established a trusting relationship with Australia, and this trust was betrayed,” French Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said upon the abrupt cancellation of the $66 billion submarine deal with Australia. Furious, Paris reciprocated by recalling its ambassadors from Canberra and Washington—a first in the history of the long alliance between France and the United States, dating back to 1778. 

Some argue that the decision to favor the U.S.-made nuclear submarines was partially due to the perception that French-made diesel-powered submarines on long transits from Australia to potential conflict zones in the Asian region would have to spend time traveling on the surface (where they are at their most vulnerable) using diesel engines while they recharge their batteries. Some claim the cost blowouts, schedule slippages, and concerns over commitments to use local contractors led Australia’s Morrison government to finally pull the plug on the French submarine deal. While those can be contributing factors in the “submarine saga,” a very important factor is being omitted: London’s aspiration, in the aftermath of Brexit, to ascend in the Great Power Competition that is rapidly reshaping the global geopolitical order. After all, British prime minister Boris Johnson promoted Britain’s departure from the European Union as an opportunity for the country to strike more global strategic deals unrestrained by the EU. 

To this end, the UK is trying to achieve three goals: preventing a European power from rising as a challenger to London, preventing Russia from dominating the Eastern Mediterranean, and preventing China from controlling the Indo-Pacific trade routes that are vital for Britain’s economic prosperity. Not surprisingly, those three pillars are intertwined and involve London’s power struggle with Paris. 

The Franco-British rivalry is most visible in the eastern Mediterranean. London has taken every possible step to undermine Paris’ perceived national interest, particularly in Libya, thus weakening France’s prospects of becoming a dominant power in the European Union in the UK’s absence. In this regard, the British have sided with Turkey, France’s archrival in Libya and the eastern Mediterranean. Subsequently, France did not hesitate to irk the British by pursuing a policy of rapprochement with the Russians in Libya. 

London’s aide in the EU, after Brexit, is Malta. Malta, one of the two British Commonwealth and European Union members (the other being Cyprus), was an intercessor in the Brexit negotiations and has been a port of call for Royal Navy patrols in transit to and from the Gulf, the Horn of Africa, and the Indo-Pacific. In May 2020, it was Malta that vetoed the funding for Operation IRINI, the EU naval mission tasked to enforce an arms embargo in Libya, particularly those arms that Turkey intended to deliver to its proxy, the Government of the National Accord (GNA), and the archrival of the French-backed Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar. 

Malta was also among the five countries, with the others being Germany, Spain, Italy, and Hungary, who blocked a Franco-Greek sponsored EU resolution that would have imposed an arms embargo on Turkey due to Ankara’s policies on Cyprus and drilling in the eastern Mediterranean. Furthermore, in an effort to counter Turkey’s growing influence in the region, France has stood by the Cypriot Greeks, and in August 2020 went so far as to send naval vessels off the coast of Cyprus as well as deploy Rafale fighters jets to the Greek island of Crete. Yet, Johnson called Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and urged him to pursue a more diplomatic solution, indirectly supporting Turkey’s “gunboat diplomacy.” Whereas France sees an ascendant Turkey in Syria as a threat and has condemned Turkey’s Syria incursions, London threw its support behind Ankara, citing Turkey’s right to self-defense. While Macron hosted the representatives of the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) at the Elysee Palace, drawing Turkey’s ire, London stated that the YPG was part of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), which is considered to be a terrorist organization by many NATO members. 

Even though French interests were hurt in Libya, Syria, and the South Caucasus, London continued to supply Turkish drones with necessary technology at a time when American and Canadian firms imposed an arms embargo on Turkey. Most notably, in May 2020, Turkish drones and air defense systems helped the Turkish-backed GNA government retake nearly all of western Libya from Haftar’s forces.

The Franco-British rivalry also flared up in the English Channel. In May 2021, Johnson didn’t hesitate to dispatch two Royal Navy patrol boats to protect Jersey (the largest channel island) from a feared blockade by French fishing vessels in an escalation of a dispute over post-Brexit access to waters around the Channel Islands. France retaliated by blocking a post-Brexit financial services deal between the EU and the UK until Johnson’s government granted fishermen fair access to British waters. French government spokesman Gabriel Attal did not deny that Paris was holding up the deal for the financial sector as a lever in the fishing dispute.

By leaving the European Union, London has severed the “restraining yokes,” allowing its leap into the great power competition that is rapidly heating up. For the UK, this competition entails containing the rise of any continental European power, most notably France. It appears that London is sabotaging France’s moves wherever it can. Soaring Turco-British relations, for instance, not only facilitate London’s ability to project power deep into the Caucasus and Central Asia, but also helps the British undermine France’s perceived interests that greatly contradict those of the Turks.

It should be no surprise that Australia’s decision to ditch the submarine deal with France came hours after the declaration that the United States, the UK, and Australia formed a security pact (AUKUS) to counter China in the Pacific. Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, said, “the submarine snub is a symptom of a toxic turn British-French relations have taken in the last few years.” Increasingly rendered impotent in the eastern Mediterranean, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Sahel, Paris is likely going to take steps to restore its wounded pride, with severe consequences. The French have already been questioning the purpose of being a part of NATO, and the submarine issue has given them a concrete reason to revise France’s place in the Transatlantic alliance, just like Paris did in 1966. Having already cozied up with Russia in the eastern Mediterranean, Paris should be expected to increase its intimacy with Moscow, which is more than enough to damage the foundations of NATO, raising concerns among Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Georgia. Given his slumping performance against his political rival, populist Marine Le Pen, who has close ties with Vladimir Putin, Emmanuel Macron may resort to taking drastic steps in foreign policy.  

Europe is increasingly resembling what it was before 1939. Whether AUKUS is going to trigger a wider conflict in Eurasia has yet to be seen.

Ali Demirdas, Ph.D. in political science from the University of South Carolina, Fulbright scholar, professor of international affairs at the College of Charleston (2011—2018). You can follow him on Twitter @DrDemirdasEn

Image: Reuters.

 

jpost.com

A collage of lies: the Croatian right's Holocaust revisionism

By IVO GOLDSTEIN   AUGUST 21, 2021 18:06

7-9 minutes

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A few days ago a certain David Goldman published an “opinion article” in The Jerusalem Post in which he mentioned me. I was shocked with this collage of lies, distortions and fabrications. I had never heard of this Goldman until I read his article. Apparently he runs some organization in Australia, ironically called the Centre for Historical Truth and has a blog where he uncovers the rehabilitation of Nazi collaborators. He has a particular focus on the Serbian Chetniks, but studiously avoids mention of the Ustasha regime. It seems that he is friendly with some people in right-wing circles of the Croatian diaspora in Australia. It is generally known that some people in the Croatian community in Australia openly celebrate their Ustasha links.

My late father Slavko and I have had fierce debates with these pro-Ustasha circles in Croatia and abroad for at least 20 years. I published The Holocaust in Zagreb (2001, US edition published in 2015 by USHMM) and Jews in Zagreb 1918-1941 (2004). The prominent Croatian-Bosnian writer Miljenko Jergovic recently wrote that “Ivo Goldstein’s books were met with flaming hatred or scornful silence by the better part of the public, the right-wing media, Croatian National Television and in academic and ecclesiastical circles, while the author found himself on various informal blacklists.”

Among his many other books my father wrote 1941 – The Year That Keeps Returning, which was a mixture of memoirs and historical analysis (NYRB, 2009) and which has become internationally renowned. We were both dealing with the Ustasha Independent State of Croatia (ISC) and its largest camp, Jasenovac. We consistently described the criminal character of that state and the camp in which genocide against the Serbs, Roma and Jews was committed, as well as mass crimes against Croats and others.

The pressure from the Croatian pro-Ustasha Right was enormous. For example, Stjepan Razum, the head of the Archbishop’s Archives in the Zagreb Archdiocese and the holder of many other important functions, claimed in 2014 that Jasenovac was a “myth” that was “planted among Croats,” and claimed that it was “a labor and transit camp.” He also stated that in his public appearances Slavko Goldstein tried to “describe it as one of the blackest features of the ISC,” calling it “the Goldsteinization of the ISC.”

When Slavko Goldstein died in 2017, Mili Plenkovic, a priest on the island of Hvar, announced on Facebook that he was “delighted by the news that Dr. Slavko Goldstein has died. I am glad that one hater of Croatia has disappeared from the stage of this world. Nevertheless, I wish him eternal peace and that Yahweh will be a merciful judge.” Others launched a hate campaign on the Internet claiming that “[Goldstein] was a liar and a hypocrite who spent his entire life trying to blacken Croats and all Croatian people as if we were all Ustasha,” and “One stink less,” or “Everything is clear, Croatia has lost one great enemy,” and “Thank goodness, wonderful news,” and “Come on !? Thank God! He was a (Jewish) chauvinist and a racist, not a man worth mentioning.”

Croatian soldier of the Ustasha, 1942 (credit: WILLY PRAGHER/BADEN-WÜRTTEMBERG STATE ARCHIVES/WIKIPEDIA)

The Croatian pro-Ustasha Right has been trying to deny the historical truth regarding the Holocaust in Croatia in various ways for decades, and, among other things, claims that the list of victims of the Jasenovac camp is in fact a forgery. Over the past decades, several curators in the Jasenovac Memorial site have worked studiously on it. Some 83,145 names of victims were collected, of which 48,217 were Serbs, 16,164 Roma, 13,143 Jews and 4,281 Croats. These figures should be increased by approximately 10 to 20% to arrive at an approximate final total death toll.

In the manner of Croatian radicals, Goldman lies when he claims that there were “less than 4,500 proven victims” in Jasenovac. He also lies by saying that “the victim list has repeatedly been proven to have been doctored.”

The radical revisionist and pro-Ustasha Right claims that the actual number of victims at Jasenovac should be determined by exhuming the bodies. This is nonsense. I have proven it on many occasions, especially in the book Jasenovac (2018, Serbian edition 2019, an English edition is expected to be published by USHMM).

There are many reasons why nothing can be done by digging up corpses. Among other things, as early as 1964, when excavating some tombs, researchers found that many corpses had already “rotted and disintegrated,” and that “human tissue had turned into a soapy mass of a yellowish-orange color,” probably the result of successive floods of the nearby Sava and Una rivers. Today, almost 80 years after those murders, there would be significantly less physical evidence to be examined.

In addition, just a few days before the breakout of the detainees (April 22, 1945) from the camp, the Ustasha began to systematically burn the corpses. Numerous witnesses claim that on April 6 and 7 “the Jasenovac cemeteries were dug up and the corpses and skeletons of the victims were exhumed and burned.” The detainees dug pits “over which iron traverses with thick trays were placed. Corpses would be placed on the tray and living detainees would also be brought in and slaughtered and thrown on the tray. They would all be soaked with oil and burned. After the pit was filled with the ashes of burnt corpses, they would move to another pit.”

A narrow-gauge railway was even built to transport the ashes and mortal remains to the banks of the Sava and then thrown into the river. “For days, the black smoke from the burning of human remains rose into the sky, evidence of the destruction of all traces of the crime.” After the war, the Ustasha also described the burning of corpses and the British Royal Forces recorded evidence that clearly showed traces of these activities.

In the TV show Sunday at 2, which is quoted by Goldman, I did not mention Hitler – this is another lie. I put forward a thesis that the corpses were also destroyed with a “bone crushing machine,” which was used by the Nazis during the well-known “Aktion 1005” cover-up. The Ustasha cooperated closely with the Nazis in various ways, and there are clear indications that they did so in this case as well.

I will not comment on Mr. Goldman’s nonsense about how I “mock” the Holocaust. It is clear that he and the people behind him are scandalously relativizing the Holocaust in the ISC.

The Croatian radical Right has experienced successive electoral defeats in the last year-and-a-half. Recently, the leader of the most important party aligned with this orientation had to resign on charges of embezzling party money, including the purchase of expensive gifts for his 25-year-old assistant. After such a political and moral debacle, Goldman’s article in the Post was supposed to be a balm to the far-right. In recent days, they have been talking about it in the media, triumphantly claiming that “Jasenovac will never again be the Jasenovac as they imagined it and what the luminaries of Greater Serbia and Tito’s Yugoslav historiography wanted to turn it into.” They called Goldman “a serious Jewish historian” from Australia who unmasked “our Ivo” (meaning myself). One of the weeklies published a front page with the main headline: “The Jerusalem Post has unmasked the liar and poisoner of Jasenovac” (again meaning myself).

My article here will not defeat this circle of people. But it shows, I hope, that they are intellectually incapacitated and immoral.

 

Shame on those who seek to revise history of the Holocaust

jpost.com

Shame on those who seek to revise history of the Holocaust - opinion

By Dejan Ristic   AUGUST 17, 2021 20:50

9-11 minutes

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Museum of Genocide Victims, a national cultural institution of the Republic of Serbia that researches and nurtures the memory of victims of genocide committed against Serbs in World War II, victims of the Holocaust and other victims of Nazism and Fascism, expresses astonishment and sends a public protest to your daily newspaper.

Despite its carefully created reputation as a relevant daily, The Jerusalem Post published just before the sad 80th anniversary of the establishment of the concentration and death camp in Jasenovac (Croatia) – one of the most monstrous execution sites in all of Europe during the Second World War which functioned within the framework of the puppet Independent State of Croatia – a pseudo-scientific and revisionist text by journalist David Goldman.

With the text entitled: “This disgraceful mocking of the Holocaust needs to stop immediately,” an author, without any professional qualifications and completely unknown to the international scientific community, became involved in the ongoing debate on the phenomenon of Holocaust distortion as a phenomenon on a global scale.

And that’s where almost everything positive in this article ends.

Using a series of inaccurate statements and semi-information with only a few sentences, the author tried to make meaningless 76 years of continuous research, both by experts and institutions of Yugoslavia – later Serbia and Croatia – as well as institutions such as Yad Vashem and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM).

The system of concentration and death camps in Jasenovac, founded and managed by the Independent State of Croatia, without the influence of Nazi Germany, was taken as an example of the mentioned distortion.

The only thing that is stated correctly refers to the geographical position of Jasenovac and the percentage share of Jews in human losses (15%).

And that is where the factual and historical reliability of the claims presented in the article ends.

In a series of problematic information contained in that revisionist review, we first point to the statement about forensic research conducted in Yugoslavia, which allegedly determined that the total number of Jasenovac victims was between 2,500 and 4,500, which is an absolute and shameful untruth.

The Museum of Genocide Victims, above all, points out that forensic research cannot yield results in the number of victims which ranges in a huge range from “from – to”.

Above all, no exhumations were performed in 1947 and 1948.

During 1946, four graves near the Uskocka forests were excavated in which 967 remains were found (311 men, 467 women and 189 children).

Based on the further research, it was estimated that there were about a thousand killed in the tomb near the Strug Forest, but experts concluded that due to the position and the intertwining of the victims as well as the condition of the bodies, it was not possible to perform a completely precise investigation.

Thus, there is no forensic examination that resulted in data on 2,500 to 4,500 Jasenovac victims, conducted during 1947 and 1948, as stated in this revisionist text.

It is also indicative that this article misses the opportunity to mention the actual forensic research conducted during 1964 by a commission of experts composed of Alojz Šercelj, Vida Brodar, Anton Pogacnik and Srboljub Živanovic. This research resulted in the discovery of the remains of a total of 284 victims in 7 probes (of which 197 were in one grave).

This extremely revisionist article also mentions various established and/or estimated numbers of people killed in the system of the concentration and death camp in Jasenovac, as follows: 59,000 (census of victims of World War II conducted in 1964), 72,000 and 77,000, which at one point represented an achieved result of supplementing the number of victims based on the revision of the already mentioned census from 1964 which was conducted by the Museum of Genocide Victims.

The Museum of Genocide Victims uses this opportunity to emphasize that its databases contain data on almost 90,000 identified victims of the Jasenovac concentration and death camp system which currently represents only the smallest possible, but not the final number of all those killed at that execution site.

As the research of the experts of the Museum of Genocide Victims – which is conducted according to the same methodology that has been done for decades in Yad Vashem – continues, it is to be expected that the number of identified Jasenovac victims will be corrected in the coming years. The estimated total number of Jasenovac victims is, unfortunately, far higher than the one that historical science will ever be able to identify with the precise data.

The same revisionist text also mentions the number of 99,000 victims of the system of the concentration and death camp in Jasenovac which at one time was an estimation of the USHMM, but also a scientifically completely unknown estimation of about 250,000 victims. Finally, the same text contains some alleged number of 800,000 killed at all Jasenovac execution sites.

The Museum of Genocide Victims possesses no information that Yad Vashem demanded “original documents from Jasenovac” from the Republic of Serbia during the last decade of the previous century since historical science does not know that there is a significant corpus of material other than the one Antun Miletić has already published in four books (three of which as early as the late 1980s).

It is also possible that this revisionist-intoned article refers to the evacuated museum material from the Jasenovac Memorial Centre (Republic of Croatia) which was located in Bosanska Dubica (Bosnia and Herzegovina) during the 1990s.

However, that is a question to which some others can and should give, but not the Republic of Serbia.

Moreover, in 1997, the Museum of Genocide Victims submitted to Yad Vashem a list with the names of 52,500 Jews killed in Yugoslavia during World War II (of whom 10,500 lost their lives in Jasenovac), which is included in the official Yad Vashem list of Holocaust victims.

Following the ridiculous, pseudo-scientific, anti-civilization and shameful logic which in this revisionist article denies the number of victims in Jasenovac solely on the grounds that there are no adequate forensic data (except for 2,500 to 4,500 victims, as the author falsely claims), we could ask a question as to whether it is possible to deny in the same way the number of 1,200,000 to 1,500,000 killed in Auschwitz since there is no forensic evidence for that claim either?

It would be interesting if the author of this revisionist text, denying the number of victims in Jasenovac, answered the question regarding where 30,000 Jews who lived within the territory of the Independent State of Croatia came from?

The Museum of Genocide Victims reminds that, according to available data, about 7,500 of them were killed in German concentration camps.

What happened to the remaining 22,500 of them?

Where did they “disappear” to?

Through many years of research by its experts, the Museum of Genocide Victims has shown that between 18,000 and 19,000 Jews from the Independent State of Croatia were killed in the Jasenovac concentration and death camp system, and that their share in total civilian casualties was many times higher than their population (10.23 times higher).

Experts from the Museum of Genocide Victims continuously clearly separate the suffering in the Holocaust victims from the victims of the genocide committed against the Serbian people on the territory of the Independent State of Croatia.

The research of the Museum of Genocide Victims continuously emphasizes that the loss of Jews in the concentration and death camp system in Jasenovac, given the representation in the population, was realistically 13 times greater than the loss of Serbs in the camp, which refutes the absurd claim that “Serbia is trying to oust Jews from the Holocaust and replace them with Serbs.”

Pointing out only the most obvious untruths presented in the article published in the Post, the Museum of Genocide Victims points out historical facts, but at the same time calls on everyone to treat the victims of the Second World War with full responsibility and reverence.

Museum of Genocide Victims points out that, among numerous others, even three presidents of the Republic of Croatia publicly stated that a genocide committed against the Serbs had been performed by the state system of the Independent State of Croatia between 1941 and 1945.

Having that in mind, the one and only disgraceful mockery is that the author of this revisionist article tries to deny this tragic historical fact.

The Museum of Genocide Victims publicly and resolutely rejects and condemns the untrue claims contained in the above mentioned revisionist article which attacks historical truth and dignified memory of the victims of World War II and request from you to publish this reaction so that The Post’s readers can be aware of what really happened in Jasenovac, one of the largest and most monstrous execution sites in all of Europe during the Second World War.

The writer is a historian and the acting director of the Museum of Genocide Victims in Belgrade.

 

blogs.lse.ac.uk

The Taliban’s victory proves the West has failed to learn the lessons of the past

Effie G. H. Pedaliu

8-10 minutes

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The Taliban has taken control of Kabul and declared victory in its attempt to establish control over Afghanistan. Effie G. H. Pedaliu writes that the rapid collapse of the Afghan government is set to trigger a major geostrategic realignment.

As the Taliban seek to reestablish the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and the ‘Stars and Stripes’ is lowered at the Kabul American Embassy, I cannot but think back to the 1997 SHAFR conference that I attended as a young academic. At the conference, John Cooley, an American journalist, depicted a very dark picture of how the Taliban would remain a threat for the security of the West in the years to come.

Shortened attention spans, poor strategic thinking, bad policy decisions and the legacy of Trumpist ‘America First’ foreign policy are coalescing to obliterate the promises of a better future offered to the people of Afghanistan and the hopes they fostered over the last 20 years. During this time, the US, the British, their allies and every international institution, from the UN to NATO, invested much ‘blood and treasure’ to turn the country around.

Comparisons have been made between Saigon and Kabul. They make for good copy, but they are false and misleading. In the 1960s and 1970s it was American credibility that was at stake. Now, it is the trustworthiness, reliability and relevance of the western model of governance. The damage from the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban, once more, will be longer lasting and more disruptive and destructive than the fall of Saigon.

Twenty years are not enough to allow a ravaged country to blossom again. South Korea is a testament to this. In the 2,500 years from Alexander the Great to the British and the Soviets, full control of Afghanistan has never been achieved. Yet, this time there was hope that the future might be different.

A new generation of men and women were being educated; they were introduced to the values of human rights and democracy; they were growing up to share a stake in a peaceful and orderly future. This generation was not given the opportunity to show its mettle, as it had not yet matured to take on the mantle of governing their country from the corrupt Kabul body politic. The future and lives of ‘the brightest and best’ are now at risk. The UK Chevening Fellowships for Afghans have been, for example, reportedly, paused.

Valuable lessons from the past have not been learned. Wishful thinking seems to have prevailed.

For some peculiar reason the rapidly evolving situation in Afghanistan seems to have surprised many analysts and foreign ministries in both the US and Europe. One wonders about the quality of the advice decision makers have been relying on. It reveals narrow inputs based on a lack of pragmatism feeding into foreign policy making. International historians have been side-lined at a time when they could have helped their social scientist colleagues by offering up long-term perspectives of how the modern world has developed and not how one wishes it was. Valuable lessons from the past have not been learned nor highlighted. Wishful thinking seems to have prevailed.

Diplomats were taken in by the double speak diplomacy of ‘Doha’ to think that the Taliban had changed. What is happening now in the Afghan provinces proves such assumptions were wrong. People have been massacred. Children have been kidnapped. Girls have been sold as child brides. Women, entertainers, historians and poets have been tortured and murdered. Public hangings are taking place. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced. Kabul is overflowing and people are taking the road to exile – if they can.

The UN Secretary General has asked Afghanistan’s neighbours to keep their borders open to avert a humanitarian catastrophe. Even if Iran and Turkmenistan are willing to so and to build refugee camps for the numbers required that are sustainable over the long term, they do not have the resources to set them up without western help. No such humanitarian aid has yet been organised nor it is easy for western countries to do so.

There is no adequate humanitarian presence in Kabul right now to keep the refugees there safe. It is no surprise that those who believed western promises and worked with the West to achieve them now feel betrayed and abandoned. The EU has made no move yet and, in any case, it is not realistic to expect it to cooperate with Tehran. America is still imposing sanctions. There are no easy solutions here. Turkey has reached a refugee saturation point.

A new wave of migration could soon be manifesting itself and not just to the neighbouring countries of Afghanistan. The refugees will have only one option and that is Europe. Soon this will be Europe’s problem and Europe is again unprepared. Syria, before the start of its civil war, had a population of roughly 21 million people. Afghanistan has a population of nearly 38 million people. The once in a lifetime unprecedented refugee crisis of 2015 could be repeated if no urgent action is taken. How many EU governments are strong enough to survive the new refugee influx? Can the EU overcome its divisions over ‘migration’? Do EU countries have the economic wherewithal to accommodate the new wave?

The EU is unable to elaborate a foreign policy and does not seem able to understand that it has external borders. In an unstable world, an entity that cannot defend its borders is inherently weak and has a bleak future. Germany, the strongest power of the Union, is still haunted by its past to such a degree that it cannot formulate a foreign policy based on realistic assumptions and realistic evaluations of the dangers it and the EU face. It has decided to relegate foreign policy to the status of ‘economic foreign policy’.

These realities have led the EU to now watch the events unfolding in Afghanistan stunned, indecisive and divided. On 5 August, six EU countries, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece and the Netherlands ‘urged the EU’s executive branch to “intensify talks” with the Afghan government to ensure that the deportations of refugees would continue’. The events of the past few days suggest that what happened in 2015 was no one off.

The legacy of the West will be that of botched interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

Afghanistan’s plight signifies nothing less than a major geostrategic realignment. The US and its allies are in retreat. China will be the main beneficiary and there will be some gains for Russia too. However, the legacy of the West will be that of botched interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

Yet, it did not need to be thus. Clear aims and exit strategies are always part of the success of any intervention. It requires a clear understanding that, once the decision to intervene is taken, there must be staying power, achievable goals and a safeguarding of ‘hearts and minds’.

Reports that the US has pleaded with the Taliban to spare its Embassy in Kabul are a prudent, but also a problematic course of action. It may be perceived as weakness and this is not the right way to enter into Middle Eastern haggling. President Biden decided to implement a decision taken by his predecessor. He wanted out of Afghanistan and Trump’s deal with Afghanistan in February 2020 offered him an exit option.

However, the Republican Party of today seems to have no truck with the truth or reality. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has described President Biden’s strategy in Afghanistan as ‘reckless’ and former President Trump has blamed him for the ‘unacceptable’ surge of the Taliban. This is mind-boggling. Yet, Biden’s strategy in Afghanistan is nevertheless a poor advertisement for his slogan that ‘America is back’.

The British, too, have a role to play. Few governments have the insight into a country that the UK Foreign Office and its FCO-historians have at their fingertips. One can only hope that the Johnson government becomes more vocal rather than assuming the role of the bystander. As for the EU, it needs to brace itself for meeting the uncharted waters ahead of it. It seems to be, rapidly, running out of opportunities to get its act together. Only time will tell if the nightmare of Afghanistan as a haven for anti-western elements is coming back to haunt us.

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Note: This article gives the views of the author, not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy or the London School of Economics. Featured image credit: European Council

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jpost.com

Kurti’s momentous opportunity to transform Kosovo

By ALON BEN-MEIR   JULY 10, 2021 15:44

7-9 minutes

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 Prime Minister Albin Kurti came to power in Kosovo fortified by a landslide victory that allows him to have greater maneuverability and latitude to initiate bold policies – be they domestic or foreign – to advance his country’s national interest. Another big advantage Kurti enjoys is that US President Biden has a special affinity to Kosovo and has already demonstrated his wholehearted willingness to assist Kurti to overcome many of the problems facing his nation since its inception in 2008.

Whereas any newly born country goes through the painful processes of becoming economically viable, self-reliant, and at peace, Kosovo faces the extra burden of not being recognized by its neighbor, Serbia, which is impeding its integration into the EU. But for Kurti to succeed where his predecessors have failed, he must focus on what is ailing his country while demonstrating his willingness to have a continuing dialogue with Serbia as long as such a dialogue does not compromise in any way Kosovo’s independence.

Kurti must tackle several major domestic problems to help Kosovo stand on its feet and considerably enhance its chances to integrate into the EU, which he and his fellow citizens strongly aspire for.

Corruption

Addressing the endemic corruption in Kosovo from within government strata as well as the private sector should top his agenda. To weed out corruption is a monumental task and cannot be dealt with in a wholesale fashion. The Inspector General office should be adequately funded and given the authority to inspect the working of any ministry or private companies at will and with no advanced notice.

The persons involved in the inspections should be men and women of impeccable reputation and integrity who enjoy the public’s trust. Dealing with corruption will have a direct effect on foreign investments, as investors shy away from countries where corruption is widespread, especially when government officials are on the take. In addition, Kosovo’s prospective integration into the EU will dramatically improve.

The recent arrest of seven officials at the Agency for Agricultural Development suspected of taking bribes in exchange for receiving grants, and the pending arrest of an additional 23 people provide a good example. These arrests and prosecutions will not only punish the perpetrators but send a clear message to all government officials that corruption has consequences.

Human rights

Protecting human rights is one of the utmost requirements that allow the citizenry to feel safe, secure and live without fear or intimidation. Human rights must be blind to color, ethnicity, sexual orientation and religion, and all must stand equal before the law. Moreover, children in particular have an inherent right to healthcare, free education, and adequate nutrition to grow cognitively healthy. Indeed, social equality is the bedrock of human rights.

Citizens who are not abused, whose rights are not violated, and who are treated fairly and with dignity become more productive and patriotic, caring deeply about their country and often going out of their way to contribute to the welfare and wellbeing of their society.

Economic development

Economic development is the beating heart of any country and in the case of Kosovo it is even more critical, especially because of the rampant poverty, high unemployment, inadequate domestic and foreign investment, and the overall unfriendly business environment. Weeding out corruption in high places will encourage investment in major development projects, including infrastructure, manufacturing, housing and in hi-tech.

However, one of the most critical investments by the government should be in sustainable development projects, whereby small communities collaboratively develop their own projects that provide jobs for local individuals, especially young adults. Such projects, for example, may include small animal farming, tree planting, manufacturing of certain machinery components, etc. These projects are cost-effective and often produce income in a fairly short period of time.

The government’s appropriation of funds, along with USAID and World Bank financial support for sustainable development projects, will go a long way toward economic growth as long as the investments are made for specific projects and the community involved is accountable.

Safeguarding democracy

Although Kosovo is a secular democratic country, like all democracies it must be protected with zeal, nurtured and never taken for granted. There are always anti-democratic forces who will exploit any opportunity to undermine the democratic process for personal gain. Poland and Hungary, which ironically are EU members, and the US, which is one of the most democratic countries in the world, were seriously threatened by authoritarian leaders – in the US by president Donald Trump and his followers, which would have been inconceivable before his rise to power.

For Kosovo to remain a vital and flourishing democracy, the government must ensure that the basic elements of democracy are fully protected by law. This includes free and fair elections, freedom of the press and assembly, judiciary free of political influence, and accountability by all governing authorities. Moreover, Kosovo as a secular democracy must protect its democratic foundation by not allowing religion to intercede in civilian affairs and not allowing any foreign power, such as Turkey, to use Islam as a tool by which it can influence the domestic affairs of Kosovo.

Collaboration with Serbia

The concerns that Kurti has about the degree to which Kosovo should collaborate with Serbia on major projects, like water management of Lake Ujman, renewable energy, trade and the conflict over the association of three Serb-majority municipalities in Kosovo, should not prevent him from collaborating with Serbia as long as such cooperation does not infringe on Kosovo’s independence.

Moreover, given that the US and the EU strongly support dialogue between the two countries, Kurti should demonstrate that he is more than willing to follow their advice and put the onus on Serbia for any lack of progress. Kurti was on the mark when he recently tweeted, “To renew our transatlantic alliance, I suggested synchronization of #Washington and #Brussels in the Western Balkan while we work on three goals. 1. Democratization by strengthening rule of law. 2. Security through NATO membership. 3. The unity of Europe through Western Balkan membership of the EU.”

That said, Kurti should have also added the need for continuing dialogue with Serbia, because any progress on that front will dramatically help him realize his three aforementioned goals. Otherwise, absent mutual recognition and the continuing conflicting issues between Serbia and Kosovo, the prospect of normalization between the two countries remains as distant as it has ever been.

Kurti has a momentous opportunity to dramatically transform the socio-political and economic conditions in Kosovo. He should be wise enough to not allow his personal convictions in relation to Serbia in particular to translate into stubbornness, and remain open-minded to the advice of the EU and the US, which are committed to Kosovo’s wellbeing and independence.

The author is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.

 

valdaiclub.com

Russia’s Public Diplomacy: Successes, Shortcomings and Suggestions

Oleg Barabanov

11-14 minutes

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In recent years it has become commonplace in Western academic discourse to discuss the Kremlin’s influence (or “soft power”, if we are talking about extra-academic discourse) in the Western Balkans, particularly in Serbia. However, if one is to evaluate the real situation on the ground, Russia is playing second, if not third fiddle, side-lined by the US-led NATO in the military sphere, by the EU member-states (and China, as of late) in the economic sphere and by the collective West in the cultural, or even more generally, public sphere. The last point is rather surprising, considering that Serbia happens to be a somewhat perfect country as far as the promotion of the Russian culture and cultivation of a pro-Russian society are concerned. Hence, this report is going to evaluate the successes and shortcomings of Russia’s public diplomacy in Serbia, and, most important of all, suggest a few initiatives that may strengthen its effectiveness. 

First of all, it should be noted that in political science, in particular in the theoretical frameworks of Nicholas Cull, Joseph Nye and Jan Melissen, public diplomacy (PD) is a mechanism in which the “agents” of the state A are running a number of activities as to generate pro-state A attitudes among the public of the state B. The second part of this mechanism (along with other power mechanisms) presupposes facilitation of actions by the ruling elites of the state B that would work in favour of the ruling elites of the state A. However, seeing as it is practically impossible to isolate the effect of PD from those of the other mechanisms, its effectiveness is often measured via the public opinion proxy – by looking at the popularity of various PD initiatives among the public of the state B. 

Morality and Law

The phrase “Be realistic, demand the impossible” is well-known. Russia and Serbia now face approximately the same task in order to preserve their partnership in the future, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Oleg Barabanov.

Expert Opinions

Cull’s taxonomy lists seven types of PD. Considering Russia’s PD in Serbia in the previous decade, the first one – “listening” (collection and collation of data on the public attitudes with the purpose of readjusting PD strategies accordingly) has existed ever so vaguely. However, such a mechanism can and must be put in place (perhaps, at the Belgrade University’s Centre for Russsian Studies or at the newly founded Russian Balkan Centre) if Russia intends to get serious with its PD activity in Serbia. 

The second type of PD, advocacy, which presupposes public interpretation and promotion of (Russia’s) political initiatives, for a long time has only been implemented by top state officials occasionally visiting Serbia, while the previous ambassador and his team had remained unknown to most of the public for much of their stay in the country. Current ambassador Aleksandr Botsan-Kharchenko seems to be taking a more active approach in that sense. However, perhaps, this type of PD can be systematised in the format of a weekly or monthly open briefing, where the ambassador or one of his designated colleagues would comment on Russia’s policies of the day and answer the questions that concern the Serbian public.

Analysing the results of the activity in the cultural diplomacy sphere, one may come to a conclusion that they have been rather mixed. Russian Orthodox Church remains the strongest and most credible actor in this area. Ruski Dom, on the other hand, essentially the key organisation with the resources and credentials to promote the Russian culture in Serbia, for many years has been failing to realise its full potential. Most of their events, based around the themes of the First and Second World Wars and the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, have been attracting the same, relatively narrow crowd and have made a limited impact. In order to increase the effectiveness of Russia’s cultural diplomacy in Serbia it is necessary to research the interests of the various layers of the local population and start exploring new formats of events – for instance, video-game tournaments, programmers competitions, interactive exhibitions of Russia’s achievements in the hi-tech sector, etc. Judging by the rhetoric of the recently appointed head of Rossotrudnichestvo, Yevgeniy Primakov, and director of Ruski Dom in Serbia, Yevgeniy Baranov, they may already be planning to move along that path.

When it comes to mass culture, there are a few Russian media products that have had some success in Serbia. These are the animated series “Masha and the Bear”, the sitcom “Kitchen”, and, to some extent, the films “The Balkan Line”, “T-34” and “The Peasant”. However, these projects are but a drop in the ocean of foreign mass culture in Serbia, which is dominated by the Western products. As a result, most of Serbia’s youth prefer Western mass culture to that of Russia, as the presence of the latter is very low. Hence, it is necessary to start translating Russian series, films and cartoons into Serbian and promoting them to Serbian TV channels at subsidised rates. Apart from that it is important to facilitate more collaborations between Russian and Serbian music artists, actors and other types of influencers, as well as promote them in both Russian and Serbian media spheres. Along with the likes of Emir Kusturica and Miloš Biković, they could function as the goodwill ambassadors, bringing together Russia’s and Serbia’s multiple audiences.

Speaking of the fourth type of PD, exchange diplomacy, for several years now a number of state agencies and organisations have been running exchange programs between university students, young professionals and other types of individuals from Russia and Serbia. However, the quotas have been rather modest, and the budgets of their American and European counterparts are often much higher. Hence, if Moscow needs pro-Russian elements in various layers of Serbian society, from the elites to the working class, the quotas need to be raised and post-exchange communication programs must be developed. In that sense it may be a good idea to also think about popularisation of Russian social networks in Serbia, where their presence has been next to none compared with that of the Western social media platforms, many of which have been increasingly pursuing anti-Russian policies in recent years. 

As far as the fifth type of PD, international broadcasting, is concerned, the reality has been rather grim. The biggest shortcoming has been the absence of a Russian TV channel broadcasting in Serbian, while CNN-affiliated N1 has been gradually becoming part of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, Russia’s Sputnjik and Russia Beyond only exist in less popular formats and their recognition in the country has been extremely low. Considering that television remains the most popular medium and source of information in Serbia, the most efficient PD solution that Russia can take would be to launch their own Serbian TV channel. Of course, Serbia’s media advertising market is rather modest and does not offer prospects of a king’s ransom, but at the same time there is no need for an RT-scale budget. Essentially, 90% of the channel could consist of Russian programs, series, films, cartoons and music videos, with Serbian subtitles, and 10% - original programming in Serbian (news, interviews and talk-shows). TV Most and Russia Clarified SRB (YouTube) projects should be researched during the planning phase. 

Furthermore, one may also note a few successful projects along the lines of PD-by-deed, which presupposes certain initiatives which are run outside of the traditional PD institutions but nevertheless make an impact and thus generate favourable attitudes. Among them are the funding of the restoration of Serbia’s landmark cathedral (St Sava) by Gazprom Neft and organisation of transportation of Holy Fire to Serbia by Ruski Ekspres and Russian Orthodox foundations. Along with the Gazprom logo (on everything from petrol stations to FC Crvena Zvezda jerseys) one can increasingly spot the logo of the Russian Railways company, which has been modernising Serbia’s rail network. Sputnik-V has recently joined the ranks. On the other hand, visibility of the work done by the Russian-Serbian Humanitarian Centre and Russian Humanitarian Mission is exceptionally low. These organisations have a major potential when it comes to “PD-by-deed” and more exposure must be facilitated for them. This once again demonstrates the salience of the need for the Russian TV channel in Serbia. 

Finally, the “ideas-based” PD comes to flourish when the idea is separated from its source of origin and, like a meme, begins to spread within the society from one person to another. Popularity of Vladimir Putin in Serbia is a good example of an ideas-based PD in action. His image can be seen everywhere, from souvenir stalls to bar signs, for he has become the symbol of the Orthodox defiance in the face of the American hegemony to certain layers of Serbian society, along with the old concepts of “Moscow is the Third Rome” and “Russia the Defender”. However, one must keep in mind that there are also other, more rational-minded, and even liberal segments in Serbian society, who consider the aforementioned ideas to be rather primitive. One must therefore look for other ideas-based approaches, instrumentalising the suitable “agents”, which would be appropriate for these and other social groups, as there is no one-size-fits-all strategy when it comes to public diplomacy.  

Based on this report, it can be concluded that the Russian Federation’s public diplomacy has a lot of potential in Serbia, which can only be fully realised by stepping up the game and moving to a new level of engagement. Otherwise, Russia will be ousted by the US, EU and China within several decades. 

When it comes to the creation and dissemination of worldviews, Russia in Serbia is faced with some shortcomings, or rather, with the so-called two-tier intellectual system that does this job. Russia lacks a significant pro-Russian intellectual elite in Serbia, which influences the formation of cultural policy in a broader sense, and, first of all, at the university level, writes Siniša Atlagić, Head of the Centre for Russian Studies at the University of Belgrade.

Expert Opinions

Views expressed are of individual Members and Contributors, rather than the Club's, unless explicitly stated otherwise.

 

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.