Vichy Serbia Sends War Hero To His Death
By Vojin Joksimovich, Ph.D.
Modern Tokyo Times
Arrest of General Mladic
The Serbian president Boris Tadic triumphantly announced that General Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb commander in the 1992-1995 civil and religious war in Bosnia, was arrested. The arrest took place on May 26 in the village of Lazarevo (to be renamed by residents to Ratkovo or Mladicevo in honor of General Mladic) near the northern Serbian city of Zrenjanin. The same day baroness Katherine Ashton, EU's foreign policy commissar, was visiting Belgrade. Tadic has been viewed by many, in particular in the Serbian diaspora, as President of the Vichy Serbia. He pompously stated how the arrest of the 69 year-old Bosnian Serb war hero means: reconciliation in the region, end of a difficult era in the Serbian history, lifts stain from the face of Serbia and from Serbs, fulfillment of national and international obligations, and rule of law. Some 12,000 Bosnian Serbs protested in Banja Luka against the arrest. One of the protestors said that Mladic's arrest was the "greatest disgrace the Serb people had seen in the past 20 years." The president of Republika Srpska (RS) veterans said: "President Tadic cannot speak about the need to remove a stain from the Serb people, because the Serb people's face is clean." There were demonstrations in Belgrade as well organized by the Serbian Radical Party (SRS in Serbian). Dr.Vojislav Seselj, the party leader, sent a letter from detention in The Hague saying that the stain will be removed once president Tadic is arrested and accusing him of being a traitor.
Mladic was staying in Lazarevo with his relative Branko Mladic without any physical protection whatsoever. At the time of arrest, Mladic told the policemen: "Kudos, I am the one you are looking for." This fact didn't prevent Tadic from claiming that his government worked very hard to arrest him for years and that he didn't know about his hiding place. Srdja Trifkovic, quoting his Belgrade sources, said that General Mladic decided to give himself up in return for a substantial financial reward to his family. The Serbian authorities stopped paying his pension in 2005. John McTernan published an article in the London Telegraph four hours after the Mladic's arrest titled: "The Arrest of Ratko Mladic Tells Muammar Gaddafi—You Can Run But You Can't Hide."
Tadic even had audacity to tell the French TV that arrest of General Mladic wasn't done to please the EU or the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) but that the arrest marks a proud day for Serbia. Unlike Osama bin Laden, who was killed by U.S. forces on Pakistani soil, Mladic was arrested in Serbia by Serbia's own authorities. Tadic has obviously learned this trait from his western mentors how to spin an outright lie in order to advance his cause. The arrest came days after Serge Brammertz, the ICTY chief prosecutor, filed a negative report with the UN Security Council about Serbia's co-operation with the ICTY. Brammertz's negative report would probably have buried Serbia's candidacy this year, threatening Tadic's chances of re-election next year.
Tadic was of course aware that the public opinion in Serbia was against the arrest as illustrated in the polls. The last one conducted some ten days before the arrest showed that 51% were against, 34% were in favor, 40% felt that Mladic was a war hero, and 53% that the ICTY, where the Nuremberg principle is applied to Serbia, is biased against the Serbs.
The ICTY has failed miserably to provide justice in many cases, notably in Milosevic and Seselj cases. A poll conducted after the arrest suggested that 71% respondents felt that Tadic was a principal beneficiary. "Now, no EU government including the Dutch, should continue putting off a decision to grant Serbia status of the Candidate to join the union," Tadic stated.
The Dutch badly want to use the Mladic case to exonerate Dutch UN peacekeeping battalion accused of standing by and watching the Srebrenica "massacre." Srebrenica was a UN designated demilitarized enclave, but instead was used by the Bosnian Muslim Army as a base for their murderous forays into the surrounding Serbian villages. 3.250 Serbs were massacred in those villages. This is well documented by medical examiners. Mladic was offered as a human sacrifice on the altar of political expediency when his only "crime" was the defense of Serbian civilians from Croat and Bosnian Muslim brigands.
In a matter of five days, the Serbian Justice Minister Snezana Malovic signed the extradition order. Previously a Belgrade court rejected an appeal filed by his lawyers to stop his extradition claiming that their client was not mentally or physically fit to stand the trial. His lawyer, Milos Saljic, claimed that he was in possession of a medical record showing that Mladic received treatment at a Belgrade clinic (April-July 2009) where he was operated on and received chemotherapy. Mladic was allowed to see his wife Bosiljka and son Darko after 10 years. The court also allowed him to visit the daughter's grave. She died tragically at the age of 23. He is obviously a sick man and in all likelihood will end up like the Serbian president Milosevic did, who died in custody while he was on trial due the ICTY denial of his medical treatment. Hence, in all probability Tadic has sent the Bosnian Serb war hero to death.
It doesn't appear that Serbia will get much in return if anything. EU Parliament Rapporteur for Kosovo Ulrike Lunacek said that extradition of Mladic is insufficient for Serbia to join EU and that Serbia must do a whole lot more if it wants to join EU. "Serbia must show that it is ready to expand relations with an independent Kosovo." The Dutch Parliament delayed initiation of the ratification process regarding the Serbian EU candidacy until they have an opportunity to study Brammertz's report and until the last Serbian inductee, Goran Hadzic, is delivered. The western mainstream media cared little about Tadic's spin of the events and as Nebojsa Malic stated "proceeded to dredge up every bit of mud they've ever slug at Serbia and the Serbs." The Financial Times (FT) was an exception advocating that Mladic's arrest "deserves a generous EU response."
In addition to Tadic the most jubilant have been his mentors in Brussels and Washington, as well as the NATO, the ICTY and the Dutch government. The Dutch PM stated that the arrest represents the victory for the international law. In The Hague Mladic has faced eleven counts of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The genocide charge is of course also known by many as the "Srebrenica Hoax". This giant hoax, however, is likely to be used yet again to undermine legitimacy of the Bosnian Serb Republic. Numerous articles, testimonies, and several books have been published, as well as a recent Norwegian documentary produced after four years of research, challenging the ICTY Srebrenica unsubstantiated version based upon a testimony of a Croatian mercenary, Drazen Erdemovic, who earned release for his damning testimony. Mladic personally oversaw evacuation of civilians after five Serbian tanks and several hundred soldiers entered the town on July 11, 1995. The Muslim garrison in town, in access of 5,000 troops, acting upon orders from Sarajevo, made a break to reach Tuzla. On the way to Tuzla they were crossing mine fields and fighting fortified Bosnian Serb Army. They had experienced heavy casualties, anywhere up to 3,000 of them didn't make it to Tuzla. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright didn't announce the Srebrenica "massacre" until August 10, after the "Operation Storm," conducted against the Krajina Serbs by the neighboring Croatia with support from the Pentagon contractor MPRI. Several thousand Serbs were murdered in that operation and over 200,000 were ethnically cleansed. Albright subsequently displayed some doctored satellite shots with an alleged mass grave in a soccer field. An American soldier who guarded that field for four months told this writer that nothing was ever found there.
Mladic, facing the ICTY inquisitors, declined to enter a plea to "obnoxious" charges, meaning he doesn't accept the ICTY legitimacy. He was then granted a request to move the court into private session in order to make statements regarding his health. His lawyer said that he is suffering from cancer of the lymph nodes.
New World Order (NWO) and Yugoslavia
In 1990, President Bush 41 declared the NWO, the U.S. led unipolar world. Subsequently, Francis Fukuyama published the book in 1992: The End of History and the Last Man. The book provided a philosophical/ visionary backing for the NWO. In it he argued that the worldwide spread of liberal democracies may signal the end point of humanity's sociocultural evolution and become the final form of human government. The economic component of the NWO is globalization, centered on a capitalist corporate hegemony. It is a collection of transnational corporations with their astronomical resources and control of the world economy. Essentially it amounts to yielding of political sovereignty to the proven corporate system. This writer has used the term era of corporatocracy.
Reflecting the NWO, the U.S. policies regarding Yugoslavia were formulated in 1992. Yugoslavia became an experimental ground for testing the NWO premises: democratization, market economy, and if democracy is not the right approach than the war option. The U.S. endorsed the EU (then EC) Badinter Commission recommendation that Yugoslavia should be dismembered along the republican borders of Tito's Yugoslavia. As a result Bosnia was recognized as an independent state. The Bosnian Muslim leadership saw this as an opportunity to create the first Islamic republic in Europe with support from the entire Muslim world including Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Osama bin Laden's mujahedeen. The Bosnian Serbs opposed this Islamic Republic remembering vividly the WWII genocide committed by two Muslim SS divisions. Bloody 42 months civil and religious erupted. Part of the game was to prove that the Bosnian Muslims were victims of genocide like the Jews were in WWII. Srebrenica "massacre" was used by the NWO to justify the NATO intervention against the Bosnian Serbs. Subsequently it was up to the ICTY to punish the Bosnian Serb political and military leaders. The ICTY has used faked legal evidence in order to retroactively justify the U.S./NATO aggression on the Bosnian Serbs in support of the Bosnian Muslims.
The "Racak massacre" was a replica of that well established methodology in Kosovo. It became the casus belli for aggression on the then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) consisting of Serbia and Montenegro. The Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija was amputated from Serbia and turned into a UN/NATO protectorate.
Vishy Serbia
Vichy France, Vichy Regime, or Vichy Government is a common term used to describe the government of France from July 1940 to August 1944. Vichy France was established after France surrendered to Germany on June 22 1940. It was allied with the Axis powers. Marshal Philippe Petain proclaimed this collaborative government with the Nazis and established a reactionary program of so called Revolution Nationale, aimed at "regenerating the nation." In 1945, Petain was sentenced to death for treason, but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
On March 24, 1999 NATO bombs and cruise missiles started raining over Serbian targets, marking the first time in NATO's history that the alliance directed its military might—second to none in the world— at a sovereign nation, which posed no threat to anybody. This naked aggression broke international law seven different ways as discussed in my book Kosovo is Serbia. Former Nuremberg War Crimes Prosecutor, Walter Rockler wrote: "The attack on Yugoslavia constitutes the most brazen international aggression since the Nazis attacked Poland to prevent 'Polish atrocities' against Germans. " After 78 days of incessant bombing the Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija was amputated from Serbia to become the UN/NATO protectorate. In 2008 Kosovo Albanians declared unilateral declaration of independence in unprecedented violation of the UN Charter and the Helsinki Accords. Thus far no more than 75 UN members have recognized this illegitimate U.S./NATO creation. Serbia has refused to recognize Kosovo but has been under constant pressure from the U.S. and the EU to do so.
In order to remove Milosevic from the office in October 2000, the U.S. invested some $100 million by supporting the Serbian "democratic" opposition parties (~$70 million) as well as the student movement called Otpor (Resistance), which championed non-violent approach to overthrow the government. Otpor developed methodology, which was subsequently applied in Ukraine and Georgia, more recently in the Cairo Tahir square. The Serbian "democratic" parties, some 17 of them, could be divided into so called globalists and nationalists.
The globalists have been led by the Democratic Party (DS in Serbian) in essence following the Vichy France model and thus becoming vassals or quislings supported by their mentors in Washington and Brussels. The fact that NATO demolished the Serbian infrastructure, committed an ecocide and killed some 2,500 citizens didn't prevent the DS from wanting even to join NATO step by step. However, thus far this hasn't happened because of the negative public view of NATO. According to the last research, only 20% Serbs would support NATO accession. However, joining the EU became an equivalent of the Revolution Nationale especially during Tadic's presidency.
In addition, the Serbian globalists were ordered to implement economic reforms aimed at wholesales of state properties to multinational companies. Previously, the Serbian companies were controlled by the worker's councils in accordance with the self-management doctrine principles introduced by the communist party in Tito's era. Many of these companies were sold to companies, which participated in the 1999 bombing of Serbia. Thousands of companies were sold in forthcoming 2-3 years. The World Bank was full of praise for the Serbian "reformers." Needless to say, the prices sky-rocketed impoverishing the Serbian people but enriching the "reformers." Serbia became the country ruled by kleptomaniacs.
The "rabid" nationalists were the Serbian Radical Party (SRS in Serbian) led by Vojislav Seselj. They were accused of supporting the "Greater Serbia" quest in Croatian and Bosnian civil wars. Hence, their leader Seselj had to be indicted by the ICTY. The true motives were not alleged "crimes against humanity" but what the global elite sees as the greatest risk to their hegemony: sovereign states. Dr. Vojislav Kostunica; a constitutional lawyer who defeated Milosevic in the 2000 crucial federal presidential election was viewed as a moderate nationalist and tolerated for a while because he defeated Milosevic and he was viewed as a true democrat. He became the president of Yugoslavia and later the PM of Serbia, 2004-2008. After refusing to deliver Kosovo to the Albanians, following orders from Washington, president Tadic became their true quisling. In addition, Kostunica didn't believe that Serbia should lose its sovereignty through Atlantic integrations; i.e. integration into NATO and had serious reservations towards the EU integration. This writer believes deeply in the sovereignty principles such as contained in the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, the basic principles of which have shaped international relations since. The treaty's foundation was the doctrine of sovereignty, which declared a state's domestic conduct and institutions to be beyond the reach of other state.
Djindjic's Faustian Bargain
The NATO countries took the position that unless "Milosevic was ousted and handed over, the country would never emerge from the ruin in which it was reduced to by NATO bombs and sanctions. Yugoslavia's children would face the same fate as Iraq's. Carla Del Ponte, then the ICTY Chief Prosecutor, threatened that if Serbia fails to hand over Milosevic, its children would not be permitted to eat. "No cooperation with the Tribunal, no assistance."
The U.S. demanded from its Serbian vassals to arrest Milosevic on April 1, 2001 to meet the deadline established by the U.S. Congress, which linked the U.S. assistance to arrest of Milosevic. Late Zoran Djindjic, a DS founder and the PM of Serbia, was groomed by the U.S. and Germany to become a loyal quisling. He was praised by western leaders such as President Bush and Tony Blair for his leadership, energy to reform Serbia and for being a true democrat. Neil Clark, in his March 2011 Guardian article, claims that Djindjic, using underground criminal groups in conjunction with the CIA, orchestrated a series of assassinations of Milosevic supporters. The U.S. got the reformist government in Belgrade. Djindjic then complied with the demand from Washington to arrest Milosevic on charges of corruption and abuse of power. Milosevic surrendered after a 40-hr standoff. He was held in Belgrade's prison for three months without being arraigned. Dragisa Blanusa, the Belgrade Central Prison chief, guarded Milosevic and wrote a book. The book contains numerous valuable insights including Milosevic's blood pressure readings of over 200/110 clearly proving that he was sent to The Hague with a serious heart ailment.
Then June 29 deadline was set by the U.S., when a donor's conference was to take place. About $1 billion was allegedly at stake. Djindjic kidnapped Milosevic and handed him over to the ICTY, at its detention facility at the former Gestapo prison at Scheveningen, despite ruling of the Constitutional Court, which issued an order blocking his extradition. It was June 28, St. Vitus day, a special day in the Serbian history, anniversary of the Kosovo battle. President Kostunica was informed post-factum as he was against it. Djindjic was more interested in the Faustian bargain with the masters in Washington and Brussels than observing the rule of law that his party advocated. Serbia sacrificed its sovereignty and its nine months old democratic soul. Milosevic was a huge asset but he was sold for a token amount of money. General Clark, Supreme NATO Commander, immediately claimed that handover of Milosevic completely vindicated NATO bombing of Serbia. Krajina Serb leaders were extradited hours after Milosevic. After a pause, allowing another detention facility for the Serbs to be built in The Hague, other Serbian political and military leaders were delivered.
Milosevic at ICTY
In January 2002, the ICTY amended the Kosovo Milosevic indictment to include Bosnia and Croatia. A genocide charge was added. The Western governments with full cooperation from the mainstream media have designed the propaganda lies package (agitprop) so that all Balkan ills have been blamed on the Serbs. In this fairy tale, Slobodan Milosevic was almost as omnipotent as Hitler, a rabid Serb nationalist hell-bent on creating an ethnically pure Greater Serbia. The Clinton administration used him prolifically as a bogeyman for its failed Balkan policies in large context of the NATO expansion. He was the butcher of the Balkans who unleashed four wars so that Greater Serbia could be carved out. The Los Angeles Times wrote: "Slobodan Milosevic unleashed four wars in a bloody decade of ethnic cleansing that recast the map of Europe…His sinister nationalism propelled a vicious campaign throughout the 1990s…His quest for a Greater Serbia brought the 20th century to a messy end in Eastern Europe." The facts are that Milosevic supported secession of Slovenia and Croatia without the Serb inhabited territories. He even tacitly recognized Bosnia and Macedonia by creating the FRY. He supported all peace plans to end the Bosnian civil war, while the Clinton administration sabotaged four UN/EU (EC in those days) peace plans prior to arriving at the Dayton Accords in 1995.
The Milosevic show trial started on February 2, 2002. The ICTY had an annual budget of $100 million and employed staff of 1,100. In contrast Milosevic had a 9 by 15 foot cell and a pay phone with his conversations taped. The prosecution accused Milosevic with 66 counts of war crimes in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo and asserted that he was driven by quest for power to create Greater Serbia and that he participated in a Joint Criminal Enterprise (JCE). Under the JCE doctrine, not found in prior law or even in the ICTY Statute, an accused is individually liable for crimes committed in the pursuit of the JCE. The British lawyers attending opening sessions stated that 80% charges were hearsay, and, as such would be dismissed in British courts. Milosevic, representing himself, countered that he was a fighter against Albanian terrorism, a Bosnian peace-maker and pointed the finger of blame at NATO for the very crimes for which he was being charged. Canada's best-known criminal lawyer, Edward Greenspan, pronounced that the Milosevic's trial was a "lynching,""a show trial," and a "kangaroo court."
Throughout the four-year trial Milosevic admirably defended himself as well as Serbia. The prosecution couldn't prove the above mentioned scripts. Even the Chief ICTY prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, admired his defense. Because of Milosevic defense successes, his trial had completely disappeared from the TV screens and the newspapers by the time he died. He died March 2006 in the cell at the UN Detention Unit in The Hague after his human rights had been grossly violated in a medical and judicial malpractice case. He was not allowed to receive treatment in Moscow despite guarantees from the Russian government that he would return. President Tadic didn't even allow a proper funeral for the former President.
Seselj at ICTY
Seselj has voluntarily surrendered to the ICTY in 2003 but his trial is still going on. The ICTY delayed the process and prevented Seselj from pleading not guilty. However, he has been treated as convicted. Seselj, well versed in the law, proved to be the master of his own defense. The court didn't have much evidence against him so they pulled one of their standard tricks of introducing so called "protected witnesses." How the system works is illustrated with the case of protected witness DS-1. The trick of protected witnesses has been widely used by the prosecutors. In Milosevic's case the ICTY trained an Albanian witness. Milosevic cross-examined him and asked him who wrote his testimony. The witness replied that he did it. Milosevic: "How could you do it when you are illiterate?"
DS-1 witness, a former policeman from Subotica, was forced by the prosecution to give false testimony both against Milosevic and Seselj. DS-1 testified in the court recently and said that he was threatened by the ICTY prosecutor Paolo Pastore to be indicted unless he testifies. Before testifying he had spent a year and a half in Netherlands being trained how to testify. "It was a sad testimony," he testified. "They trained me for one month what to say and the prosecutor would give me a signal if I said something wrong." After testifying against Milosevic he was transferred to Norway under false identity where he was given" an apartment, automobile, documents and a lot of money." The U.S. taxpayers should take a note of this since the U.S. is the biggest ICTY contributor. When called to testify against Seselj, DS-1 fled Norway and returned to Serbia, "leaving everything behind." "I had nothing to testify against you" DS-1 told Seselj in the courtroom. Needless to say, this scandal was not reported in the American mainstream media.
Seselj was previously sentenced 15 months in jail for revealing the names of protected witnesses in the mail trial. He was indicted again this year for contempt of the court for allegedly revealing the names of all 11 protected witnesses. Seselj claims that witnesses themselves revealed their identity before he did so and DS-1 confirmed that in court. On a 2-1 decision the court decided to keep him in prison. It is speculated that President Tadic doesn't want him in Belgrade because of the elections next year.
Tadic: No Alternative to EU
Shortly after assassination of Zoran Djindjic, executed most likely by his organized crime contacts in 2003, Boris Tadic, a former Defense Minister, in 2004 was elected the DS leader and the President of Serbia, re-elected in 2008 with 50.31% of the vote. He has been pursuing pro-western policies and even apologized to both Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia for crimes committed in the name of the Serb people. In the 2004-2008 timeframe his DS party was in coalition with Kostunica's Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS in Serbian). This era was dominated by Kostunica's battle for defense of Kosovo, pursuit of national interests, balanced commitment for the EU membership and some economic successes like balanced budgets for two years. Washington and Brussels decided that Kostunica was a nationalist and actively supported Tadic's 2008 campaign including his paradoxical coalition with Milosevic's Socialist Party as the DS-DSS coalition fell apart. Tadic declared that Serbia's entry into the EU had no alternative and subordinated both the Serbian economic and foreign policies to meet that goal. Joining the EU became truly an equivalent to the Revolution Nationale. A new religion has been created. The EU entry conditions created new dogmas, while the promised entry date varies between 2018 and 2035! Croatia was promised membership on July 1, 2013, while the process was initiated in 2005. There are still unresolved issues of the legal system reform in particular fight against corruption, war crimes and restructuring of the shipbuilding industry. All 27 EU members must support the Croatian entry into the EU. Tadic's job is, however, much tougher.
In order to qualify for the EU candidacy, Serbia had to respond to 2,600 questions posed by the European Commission. There have been numerous demands on Serbia to give up what was left of its sovereignty. Two examples of these capitulations are offered herein: the Srebrenica resolution in the Serbian Parliament and the UN General Assembly Kosovo resolution.
In early January 2010 Tadic made a surprising announcement even to this writer. He declared that the Serbian parliament would pass a resolution condemning the "genocide" in Srebrenica. Bosnian Muslim nationalists or one can call them fundamentalists (Bosniaks) have seized on Srebrenica to claim the status of victims equivalent to the WWII Jewish holocaust. On March 30 the Serbian parliament did pass the resolution condemning and apologizing for the "Srebrenica massacre" with the vote of 127 in the 250 member legislature.
However, the word "genocide" was missing. Neither the Bosniaks nor the EU was happy with the resolution. It was revealed by EU's envoy for Serbia Slovenian Jelko Kacin that the resolution was composed elsewhere back in December 2009 and presented to Tadic as a done deal. The Turkish newspaper Zaman claimed that Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was also privy to the text of the resolution prior to the Serbian public.
Tadic and his cohorts have been looking for a way to capitulate on Kosovo, while pretending not to. The formula was simple: place all diplomatic eggs in one basket—that of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Prior to that Tadic made a disastrous decision to accept the EU's EULEX Mission in Kosovo against the advice from Moscow. On July 22, 2010 the ICJ ruled that the general international law, UN Security Council Resolution #1244, or the Constitutional Framework did not prohibit declarations of independence in reference to the unilateral declaration of 17 February 2008 by the Kosovo Albanians. The advisory ruling was requested by the UN General Assembly. The Serbian resolution requested from the UN was not to support secession and to encourage dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina instead. Then Tadic yielded to the EU/U.S. pressure to enter into talks with how to redefine the Serbian resolution. The EU was obviously concerned that the Serbian resolution might be voted in and demanded a joint resolution instead. Tadic went to Brussels for a two-hour session with Baroness Ashton. The next day the Serbian resolution was redefined and became a joint resolution. It acknowledged the ICJ ruling. As such it was accepted by the General Assembly without a vote.
EU Skepticism
This writer shares skepticism of Timothy Bancroft-Hinchley and Dr. John Laughland. Timothy Bancroft-Hinchley said in the Pravda magazine: "And congratulations Serbia. Now you can join the European Union. Wonderful! Stand back and watch your industry destroyed as what you export is assimilated by German industries, watch your agriculture decimated as you are paid not to produce and your production goes to France before you are left with barren fields, stand back and watch the EU label Sljivovica illegal because some idiot in Brussels doesn't like it. Stand back and watch your unemployment rate skyrocket, watch a clique of elitists whisked off to cushy jobs in Brussels, watch your prices treble and your salaries stagnate and watch your customs destroyed as you become assimilated first by the EU and then by NATO. You will have to pay for it, you know. The people, not the leaders, of course…Nobody will ask you if you want to join NATO but you will be expected to buy its equipment and participate in its wars."
Dr. John Laughland, a British author and a believer in the national sovereignty principles, made two remarkable statements, regarding the EU and Serbia, while delivering a presentation in Belgrade on May 26 at the conference on Serbia: Survival Strategy. He said that Serbia represents the first recorded example of a last rat wishing to join the sinking ship. Secondly, he recalled Arab saying about the British, which suggests that it is better to be their enemy than a friend. If enemy, they may buy you, as a friend they will sell you. All in all, Dr. Laughland believes that Serbia's foreign policies have been completely submerged into wishes to join the EU for which Serbia has paid huge price: economic and the supreme price of losing its province of Kosovo and Metohija. In return Serbia got nothing.
Serbia in State of Misery
Economically Tadic brought the country to the state of misery. Out of approximately 8 million population, 700,000 live below the poverty line, 760,000 are unemployed (~20%), 13.3% in 2005, 178,000 are on social assistance, and 343,000 pensioners receive pensions below $110/month. Tadic's presidential salary is about $2100. Middle class has essentially disappeared. The Serbian diaspora — about 4 million living primarily in the Western Europe, U.S., Canada and Australia—provides $5.5 billion/yr. aid to their relatives and friends.
This figure exceeds all the investments from foreign countries into the Serbian economy. The external debt is about $34 billion. The ratio between this debt and the GDP amounted to 79.6%. Serbia was in a serious economic crisis prior to the world one initiated in 2008 by the failure of Lehman Brothers. Some suggested that Serbia has been in an economic crisis over the last 20 years. Industrial production in 2010 reached only 43% of that in 1990.
More than half of the Belgrade University students, in a recent poll, expressed no confidence in any institution. The Government, the Parliament, President, Military, Police and Healthcare got an average of 2%, while the Serbian Orthodox Church got 15%. As a result 40% do not plan to vote. Upon graduation 63% intend to leave the country.
EU Crises and Serbia
The EU has survived several crises in the last decade, e.g. Iraq, rejection of the EU Treaty. This time it could be different. Both the euro and the visa-travel zone, the most visible integration achievements, are under serious assault. In Greece, drachma may return. French police and Danish customs are returning to their national borders, while Brussels is reconsidering the rules of the Schengen borderless zone. European voters are no longer accepting bailouts and austerity measures. Governments have fallen in Ireland and Portugal.
The trade unions are blockading the headquarters of state-owned companies in Athens. The Netherlands, which was a trend setter in the European postwar integrations, has become the most obstructionist country in Brussels' fight over the EU future. They oppose giving the Eurozone bail-out fund to help so called debt-laden periphery. It is blocking EU enlargement to the western Balkans, and this is where Serbia comes into the picture. This picture leads me to conclude again that Tadic's delivery of Mladic, despite jubilation in the Netherlands, will not advance Serbia's EU chances.
Serbia's Alternative
There are viable alternatives for Serbia more promising than joining the EU such as an association with the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). The BRIC countries have much more economic potential than the stagnant EU. South Africa has recently joined the BRIC countries. Unlike the EU, with 22 out of 27 recognitions of Kosovo, the BRIC countries have been supporting the Serbian position with regard to the illegal Kosovo unilateral declaration of independence.
*The writer has written three books and some 80 articles and presentations about the Balkans.
Dr. Vojin Joksimovich wrote this in depth book http://www.gmbooks.com/product/Kosovo-GM.html about Kosovo and it is a must read if you want a deep knowledge of this complex topic.
The Revenge of the Prophet by Dr. Vojin Joksimovich is another classic book which gives great insight and knowledge and is a fantastic read.
http://moderntokyotimes.com
