NATO’S MONTENEGRIN OPERETA

[dropcap]M[/dropcap]usic buffs will recall Franc Lehar’s amusing 1905 operetta “The Merry Widow,” set in the exotic European principality of Montenegro. With uncanny anticipation of what would actually come to pass a hundred years later, albeit in a somewhat different geopolitical context, the composer depicted a wealthy American heiress (Madame Hanna Glawari) courting Montenegro’s dashing crown prince Danilo.

Mutatis mutandis, a century later Montenegro is the target of another intense trans-Atlantic romantic offensive. This time around it is courted not by a love-struck moneyed American socialite, but by a coldly-calculating (and rumored to be nearly bankrupt) U. S. global empire, with its notoriously unsentimental military arm, NATO, assigned the role of suitor. Another notable difference is that at the Montenegrin end of the current romance we find not a dashing princeling, but a rather sinister mafia don with many skeletons in his closet.

As it turned out, reversing Marx’s famous dictum, Lehar’s early 20^th century lighthearted musical farce was reenacted as an early 21^st century grim geopolitical reality. Contrary to the desires of a substantial portion of its citizens (whom, by the way, their blackmailed and bought-and-paid-for government rudely deprived of the opportunity to express their preference in a referendum) Montenegro is the latest country to sign on to the NATO alliance, thus sacrificing its modicum of autonomy in order to acquire the status of just another vassal feather in America’s imperial hat.

Sellout Filip Vujanovic (right) shaking hands with German official.

It would be an understatement to say that the people of Montenegro, with their long and extraordinarily close ties to Russia feel utterly humiliated and helpless in the face of their corrupt rulers’ decision to nullify their nation’s historic alliance and turn their land into another subservient platform for NATO’s Drang nach Osten. Months of citizen gatherings and mass petitions to the ruling elite to desist from its project bore no fruit whatsoever. Knowing full well what the result would be if NATO membership were submitted to a referendum (President Filip Vujanovic insolently remarked that the issue was “too complicated” for ordinary voters to handle) on April 28 the regime entrusted formal decision-making to the parliament, where it has a thin majority. It was only thus that in Montenegro a decision of such a nature could ever be adopted with a simulacrum of procedural regularity.

Not that, as the latest member of the Western “democracies” club, Montenegro bears any recognizable resemblance to a democratic society. For nearly the last thirty years, while part of Yugoslavia as well as after “independence” in 2006, Montenegro has been ruled by the deceptively misnamed “Party of Democratic Socialists,” a reinvented off-shoot of the old Communist Party, but now with opportunistically adopted globalist policies and pro-Western rhetorical trappings devoid of any substance. Presidents and Prime Ministers of Montenegro may rotate and change, but the regime’s éminence grise since mid-1990s (occasionally even personally doing the honors in both top positions) has been the PDS party boss and Montenegro’s long-time shadow ruler, Milo Djukanovic.

Traitors and opportunists come in all sizes, and Milo Djukanovic is size extra large (he even dwarfs Obama who is 6.2"). Here he is seen with his wife and the Obamas, paying obeisance and burnishing his creds as a reliable ally of "the West" at the very seat of the empire. Need we say anything else? At 55 this traitor has many more years to betray the cause of an independent, anti-imperialist Montenegro.

Djukanovic is a ruthless crook and consummate political chameleon and survivor to boot. Once a pro-Serb ally of President Slobodan Milosevic and an enthusiastic supporter of military operations against Croatia during the early phase of the Balkan conflict in the 1990s, Djukanovic made a quick volte face when he judged that the Milosevic regime was on the skids. By that time, in the late 1990’s, Djukanovic was deeply compromised in illegal drug, cigarette, and prostitution activities in his Montenegrin fiefdom, extending into the surrounding states. His business cooperation with the Italian mafia became so notorious that prosecutors in the Italian town of Bari – just across the Adriatic Sea – opened an ongoing criminal investigation against him. In order to immunize himself, Djukanovic sheltered NATO operatives on Montenegrin territory during the Alliance’s devastating three-month bombing of Serbia and Montenegro (then known as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) in 1999. As a service to his Western partners he agreed in 2006  to assist in the dismemberment of the remaining Yugoslavia by staging a tightly engineered independence referendum (that is a vehicle he does not  necessarily oppose if he judges it to be suitable to advance his agenda). Independence was barely approved by a miniscule (and highly controversial) .5 percent margin, and even that thanks to the efficiently mobilized support of anti-Yugoslav ethnic minorities.

The significant point is that the regime’s personification over nearly the last thirty years, Milo Djukanovic, is a seriously blackmailable and, particularly in the era of “colored revolutions,” politically extremely vulnerable figure. His Western “partners” and NATO “friends” are apparently well aware of Djukanovic’s pressure points. Over the years, at the slightest hint of disobedience to Western masters, the Bari prosecutors would “reopen” their criminal trafficking case against him, only to shelve it again once he fell back into line. That is hardly the sort of leader that any nation not bent on self-destruction would want for the purpose of making important decisions on its behalf.

President Vujanovic’s hare-brained comment that by joining NATO Montenegro has “secured the bases of its existence for eternity” is emblematic of the leadership’s utter foolishness. It is comparable to the equally shallow geopolitical assessments, in another era, by pro-Fascist European elites which imagined that they could eternally secure their future by aligning with the Axis. The Russian Federation Foreign Ministry hit the nail on the head however in its official reaction to Montenegro government’s decision in April to join NATO:

“Those who voted in Skupstina [Parliament] to support NATO accession, citing the alleged Russian threat as a pretext, will bear responsibility for the consequences of plans implemented by external forces seeking to deepen the existing dividing lines in Europe and the Balkans and fracture the foundations of the deep-rooted historical traditions of friendship of the Montenegrins with the Serbs and the Russians. The shameful episodes of NATO’s illegal bombing of Yugoslavia, which caused casualties among Montenegrins as well, including children, were hypocritically interpreted in such a way as to suggest that Serbia was to blame because it confronted the alliance. The will of almost half of the country’s population, who oppose such NATO-oriented foreign policy priorities, was ignored. How utterly cynical one has to be to declare that there is no need to ask the opinion of the people for such a decision, as Montenegro’s President Filip Vujanovic said a few days ago.”

Indeed, that is a correct analysis. Furthermore, the corrupt and autocratic nature of the Montenegrin regime was conveniently disregarded when it was “invited” to join NATO (that is, of course, one of those offers that it is highly inadvisable to refuse) exactly as was done in the cases of Romania and Bulgaria, and for essentially the same reason – the contemplated war against Russia. Not that Montenegro would make a huge difference in the prosecution of such a military campaign, as the Foreign Ministry statement also rightly points out:

“Given Montenegro’s capabilities, it will hardly be a significant ‘added value’ for the North Atlantic alliance. Even so, Moscow cannot disregard the strategic consequences of this move. Therefore, faced with this situation, we reserve the right to take decisions to safeguard our interests and national security.”

On the strategic level NATO is motivated by exactly the same rational military calculus that propelled Hitler to secure the Balkan rear, by attacking recalcitrant countries and suborning the more pliable ones, prior to his planned attack on the Soviet Union in June of 1941. The military potential of Montenegro has precisely nothing to do with it; its strategic position is what matters. Equally important, on the symbolic level, is Montenegro’s demonstrative crossing over into the camp of Russia’s opponents.

Montenegro’s NATO accession, accomplished under virtual duress, renders   questionable the wisdom and practicality of Russia’s hands-off policy in the Balkans. Far from being a “malign influence” in that critical part of the world – as hypocritically alleged by State Department’s abrasive regional arm-twister Brian Hoyt Yee – Russia in fact has been scrupulously uninvolved not only to the detriment of the hapless Balkan peoples, which are being ensnared by their mostly despicable rulers in a doomed imperial crusade, but also its own vital interests.   

Balkan nations need more, not less, of Russia’s “malign influence,” if that is defined as respect for their sovereignty and support for cultural identity. They have no use for the sort of “benign influence” that is exemplified by NATO’s brutal three month depleted uranium bombing in 1999, that has resulted in a manifold increase in cancer-related deaths, ecological disaster, massive flows of refugees, and physical devastation on an epic scale.